Korea is a country that came from behind. It was occupied by Japanese forces for 35 years at the beginning of the 20th century, and came out wounded, poor, and angry. After WWII and its own divisive war, the democratic South struggled along for a while, and eventually caught fire when (ironically) it could start taking advantage of Japanese investment money.
Now, in the display industry at least, South Korea is number one. It's a powerhouse of efficient manufacturing joined with plenty of money-- quite a potent combination. I attended a display conference there, where I unfortunately experienced what happens when a strong force comes from behind. On the highway, that is.
As last time, this trip was blogged, so the entries read in that style.
Singing the Praises of Singapore Air
I flew to Korea yesterday, taking Singapore Air instead of my usual United. [I got on with United's frequent flyer program, and take them by habit now. But actually, Singapore is Star Alliance, so that works too! Singapore had a better return flight this time]. Even though Singapore is the cheapest airline in Korea, it is a notch better than United in every way.
First off, they do the very sensible thing of giving you the arrival card when you check in, rather than just after take-off. This means I was able to fill it out at my leisure while waiting to board the plane. Usually I have to dig out my pen, passport, and return flight number while on the plane, which means dragging out my carry-on bag. Here I just got those items out while seated comfortably in the lounge. How intelligent.
Also, the food is actually good, for an airplane. It's not business-class fare, but it's about halfway there. And enough Indians fly Singapore as part of their voyage to justify having an Indian "special meal"-- perhaps I'll try to get that on the way back.
And the movies! They were running 60 movies, many of them quite decent. You have a screen at your seat and just tune into the one you want. They run continuously, starting over as soon as they end. On United, they show everyone the same movies on common screens. I saw four excellent choices: "Ray" (biography of Ray Charles), "The Motorcycle Diaries" (Che Guevara and his friend take a voyage of self-discovery around the end of medical school), "Sideways" (a high school English teacher and his friend take a voyage of self-discovery just before the friend's wedding), and Harry Potter 3 (holy cow, those kids look older than they did in the first movie). I also saw a few bits of "Bride and Prejudice."
Other nice amenities include giving out socks to wear and a toothbrush/paste set.
See? Not all airlines have abandoned decent service (just the US carriers, apparently). It's not that I'm hung up on being treated like nobility, but a few little touches do make 12.5 hours sitting in one place seem more tolerable.
The night I arrived, and was supposed to be sleeping soundly, I was awakened by a powerful thunderstorm (quite atypical for Korea, actually). In my generally muzzy head, I wondered vaguely if North Korea was attacking. Thankfully no.
Ka-Bam!
That's the sound of my neck whiplashing (is that a word?) when we got rear-ended on the Seoul highway today. Ouch! It was a gigantic SUV, which suffered no damage, while our bumper was seriously dented. The interesting part was that my colleague kept the other guy's driver's license (!). He will give it to the person who repairs his car, and the SUV guy will have to pay for the repairs in order to get his license back. I'm not sure what happens if there is disagreement about whose fault it was.
Kimchee, Food for Life
During my time in Korea, there was plenty of opportunity to eat kimchee, the national dish served at nearly every meal. In case you are not initiated, the most common form of kimchee is fermented cabbage soaked in a very spicy, red sauce. It is made by sealing the cabbage underground for about 3 months. (There are other varieties of kimchee, such as "water kimchee," which may be made of other things like daikon and may or may be quite so spicy).
Anyway, the Koreans take great pride in kimchee, and love to expound its health virtues. In this respect, it is sort of the equivalent of having a glass of orange juice in the morning for Americans. When the SARS epidemics were in full swing, Korea was fortunate enough not to be affected, and Koreans claimed it was due to their consumption of kimchee.
Along the same lines, I asked my Korean guide if it was safe to eat raw eggs in Korea. (I was reminded because I had recently had this as a special treat in Japan). He said, "Of course!" But the reason had nothing to do with strict animal health guidelines, as I had been told in Japan. It was because eating kimchee would prevent any problems with salmonella or other bacteria!
At one restaurant, we were served a small bowl of something doused in the usual fire-red Korean sauce. My guide said it was "special seafood," so I tried a piece. It resembled kimchee with an underlying fish-and-salt taste. He explained that it was cuttlefish that had been salted and buried for 3 months with the spices. In other words, kimchee cuttlefish.
To be honest, I get tired of kimchee pretty fast because the fermented flavor just tastes wrong to my palate. Although I do like the water kimchee, which has less of that fermented flavor, and does not rely on the hot red sauce (it is pickled daikon in a mild, clear brine). I suppose I would get used to kimchee if I had longterm exposure through living in Korea, however.
For now, I'll just be content with my Kim, and her chi.
Cho-Sun Medicine
As noted a couple posts back, I was involved in a minor car accident in Korea. My neck was mildly sore and pretty stiff the next day-- it often seems to happen that way, with a 1- or 2-day delay. I mentioned this to my Korean colleague by email, but waved it off as something that would heal soon.
Nonetheless, he showed up at the conference I was attending the next day, and told me he had filed an insurance claim that allowed the two of us to get X-rays to verify that nothing was amiss. I wasn't so sure I wanted to run off and do this, but he convinced me it was worth it, and we headed out to a nearby hospital.
At first I felt mildly annoyed to miss the last few talks of the conference (including a panel I was supposed to sit on), and then I felt a little scared about seeing a doctor in a foreign country where I couldn't communicate with him/her. And eventually that gave way to curiosity and interest. What will happen at a Korean hospital? This is certainly not a typical experience, so I set out to enjoy and learn from it.
The nearest health service place was a clinic about 2 miles from my hotel. We couldn't find it because it wasn't labeled very clearly, but eventually saw the entrance. Then there was the matter of parking-- there was none nearby, just crowded streets with catch-as-catch-can parking. We flagged down a woman in nursing garb on the sidewalk to ask where to park, and she pointed out that we couldn't see anyone at that time anyway, because they were closed for lunch from 12-1:30! (Emergencies would be seen).
So we headed out to a larger hospital, and ended up at Seran General Hospital. It was a bigger establishment that operated at all hours and had its own parking area. I was amused that there was a golf range above the parking lot. The lot was covered with a large green see-through tarp, and the balls were landing on it because people were hitting them off the second-floor balcony out onto the tarp! I guess that's one way to pass the time while your friend is in surgery or your wife is having a baby.
In the lobby, we took a number like at a deli counter. When it was our turn, my colleague explained that we were there on an insurance claim to have an X-ray. The nurse told us to fill out a form. So we went off to do that, and then took another number. After we were processed, we were directed to the ER. The check-in nurse took the forms, and told us to sit on a nearby gurney.
The ER had very little privacy. It resembled an army ward, with two rows of beds (really gurneys) separable only by curtains on two sides, and several of them weren't drawn. Pretty much everyone could see and hear what was going on with all the other patients. There were perhaps 4 patients there, ranging from an old man hooked up to an IV dripping yellow liquid into his wrist, to a young man who had perhaps been in a car accident (worse than ours). The old man was alone, and some other people had as many as 4 companions clustered around the gurney.
A doctor appeared to talk to us within minutes. He asked my guide to ask me where my neck hurt, and whether my back also hurt. The doctor, who was about 40, looked tired and aged beyond his years. And he didn't even look at me. He spoke only to my guide, and he didn't smile or show any animation. He jotted a few notes for the X-ray, then strode off.
We had to wait a few more minutes while the nurse called the insurance company to get a fax confirming that they would pay for the X-ray. It happened in real time. She made a phone call, and the fax rolled in about 5 minutes later. I was amazed at the speed of processing in all the places we encountered the hospital bureaucracy.
We traipsed off down the hall the to radiology department and gave them our forms. There was no one there but us, so we went right in with the technician. My guide went first and emerged 3 minutes later. He said I needed to take off my shirt, and the tech showed me a small changing room that included a hospital gown and slippers. I suppose it was the same gown everyone before me had used.
I stripped down, and wondered briefly how to put the gown on. In the US, the gown goes on with the opening in the back, but this seemed more like a standard bathrobe style. I opted to put it on like a bathrobe, although it still wasn't totally clear that that was correct. I sort of held it closed since the ties were awkward. When I came out of the dressing room, the tech motioned with hand signals to remove my earrings and glasses also. Then he positioned me standing in front of the film and took a mugshot of X-rays-- one from the front, one from the left side. I thanked him (it's the only word I can say in Korean). He clearly didn't speak English, and it seemed I was just another body to him.
Back in the ER, our films arrived along with the same doctor again, about 3 minutes later. He put them up on the light board and fiddled with the contrast. As always, I found it eerie and fascinating to glimpse my own skeleton. (I'm skinny enough to see parts of it all the time from the outside, but the inside view is different and weirdly compelling). Neck bones look so delicate with their interlocking parts! Like they shouldn't be trusted to support the weightiness of the head. And yet they do a fine job.
The doctor declared us normal. And that was that.
Total elapsed time from walking in the front door: 45 minutes.
During our stay, I had noticed a few sights, really just disconnected images because I was trying to take in so much at once. A recall seeing a woman with a foot cast hopping down the hall. Not sure why she had no crutches or wheelchair. And in the front lobby, a group of people walked in off the street, with two members in hospital gowns, one in a full neck brace! It was as if they had been dressed and treated at home or at an accident scene, and then had come by their own transportation to the hospital. Or perhaps the patients were staying at the hospital, but were well enough to get up, and the people in the group had taken them out for lunch.
In foreign countries, you learn to suspend judgment about what makes sense, because much of what we think "makes sense" is really just habit or convention or the "way we do things" in the US. There are, in fact, lots of other ways to do things that work just as well.
I took the opportunity to ask my Korean guide how health care works in Korea. It seems that there is a national insurance plan that everyone buys, which allows you to go to any hospital at any time. But all the hospitals are private and for-profit; none are state-run. So it's some combination of public and private, "universal health care" and capitalist competition.
I recalled that on my first trip to Korea, I heard that many people come to Seoul from the countryside for medical treatment because it is supposed to be really good in Seoul. (And this has spawned a large industry of shadier medicine also, peddlers on street corners claiming to have vital tonics and the like). Now I have experienced the Seoul medical system, and at least in my case, I have to concur. The system worked really well bureaucratically. I can't speak to the medical care itself since there really wasn't anything wrong with us, but the machines were modern, the place was clean and organized... it all looked good.
Not the usual view of a country I get on business trips!
Indian Air
I flew back on Singapore Air again, and this time I requested the Indian vegetarian "special meal." It turned out I was supposed to request it a day in advance, but luckily they came through with it for me.
Yum! It always smells good on the plane, and I'm glad I got to taste it. For dinner, there was spiced potato salad, kidney bean masala, and eggplant with coconut curry sauce. It came with tamarind dressing and the standard assortment of pickle. And it was hot! The spicy bite was blissfully calmed with the plain yogurt that came as a side dish. For dessert, there was some kind of carrot pudding made of shredded carrots and condensed milk. I washed it down with a Tiger Beer (from Singapore).
The flight had many Indians passing through Seoul on the way from Singapore, which was on the way from somewhere in India. Naturally, they looked bedraggled, but were in good spirits. Some were dressed traditionally. They had tons of luggage, and I almost couldn't find a place for my travel bag and laptop. Some toted babies-- even tiny ones just a few months old! Thankfully, the one right in front of me only cried once, during dinner. I was allowed to sleep peacefully for the rest of the flight. This baby also had a little chiming music machine, but I was able to tune it out.
Just prior to arrival, you get another meal, and here I found the drawback of ordering the Indian meal. I wasn't ready to face Indian food at what felt like the middle of the night to me. I ate the fruit and yogurt, but passed on the lentils and spiced rice.
Good deal. I want to take Singapore Air more often.
Gobi in the Air
On my last day in Korea, I got a full dose of what has become common spring weather there. When the winds kick up from west to east, sand from the Gobi Desert in China sweeps across the Korean Penninsula. The sky turns yellow, the air feels gritty, and cars get smeared with fine swirls of dust. It was, quite honestly, gross.
This is a result of environmental degradation. China has drained so much of the water from the Gobi region that the desert sand is able to blow away in huge clouds that travel hundreds of miles. If it's bad in Korea, imagine how it is in China just east of the desert. It's one more indication that water is becoming a key resource in the 21st century.
Copyright © Kim Allen 2005
