Korean Punk and Hardcore

Hello All :D

I had quite an eventul weekend in Hongdae. Hongdae is short for 'Hongik University' and the area that surrounds it. This part of Seoul is famous for bars, music venues, live performance art, clubs and lots lots more.


Tonight I went to a hardcore punk show that was the album release party for a band called 13 Steps. It was great cause I could talk to Koreans about hardcore and I even met the guys from the Korean Straight Edge band, The Geeks. I talked to the lead singer, Ki, for quite a while about the Straight Edge (drug/alcohol free) lifestyle from a comparative American perspective, and he told me about how he learned English so that he could understand the hardcore lyrics he loved from American bands. After the show I followed everyone from the venue to get Korean barbecue. A great time and good allies/friends to have while I'm in Korea.

Look at the girl on the left, I love it cause here the girls are right there in the pit and sing-a-longs with the guys, there were no fights, and the only problems were when some drunk US servicemen stumbled in and got in the way of the kids dancing. They took care of it in hardcore fashion and ganged up to clear them out of the pit. xStrength in numbers x .


~Rant Warning~ Notice: American military men and sketchy English teachers in Korea: YOU EMBARASS ME 1. Get a life 2. respect yourself 3. Respect your country and represent it well 4. Respect this country we divided and exploited in the name of Empire

I also stopped in Seodaemun-gu which holds the Prison History Museum that serves as a reminder of the Japanese Colonial Period in Korea. Below is the monument to those who took part in the March First 1919 Anti-Japanese Movement. I will be studying museums and monuments like this for my senior thesis.

sXe

This Friday was the 100th of a monthly event called 'Club Day.' The last Friday of every month, the clubs in Hongdae have a special night where you can pay one fee and get in to many clubs all around the neighborhood. As part of that event I went to a ska show (complete with carefree lyrics in Korean and skanking Korean kids all over). It was a great time!

Some anti-Japanese graffitti in Hongdae. ***I remain neutral towards the statements on the wall but I do study the Japanese colonial period in Korea, so I totally understand why this type of graffitti exists and 'it is very interesting to me' (as Raighne Mitchell-Luft would say).

The walkway in front of the entrance to my dorm. Really nice balcony that's on my floor.

I start classes on Wednesday, one of which is my intensive Korean course, which is 2 hours per day, M-F. If I don't learn the language after THAT for a year, I don't know what will work.

:D

Love and Miss You All,

James

Moving Into Ewha-Samsung International House

Today I moved into my dorm at Ewha, but i'll have better pictures of my room in the daylight. For now I just have some pictures from outings with the new friends I'm making. Turns out, we have a LOT of European international students in this program. Within 10 min of being on campus I met 4 Germans (not to mention Swedish, Dutch, Chinese, and Japanese students to name a few others). After shopping for household supplies and groceries, some new friends and I went out to get Sang-gyeup-sa, or "Korean Barbecue", in Hongdae, the club/bar/artsy-fartsy district in front of Hongik University (just two subway stops from Ewha).

Pretty enticing eh? SoJu (Korean liquor), a SoJu girl, and ....raw pork......

J.L. Godard Cinema Bar (my favorite bar) where we discussed U.S. Healthcare and European social democracies with vibrant political scenes and parties (Marna, not pictured, told us about white nationalism on the rise in the Netherlands)---it's going to be an interesting semester with all these people from all over!

I found a Mexican restaurant! Maybe one of a handul in this entire country! It's right near my dorm! yayyyyy

(guerilla art in an underground tunnel that connects two sides of a busy street in Sinchon)

More Gwanghwamun fountain pics... :D

In a sort of Korean-style Stimulus Package, the city of Seoul has been hiring a lot of elderly people to 'patrol' tourist areas (they mostly just yell at kids who are playing in the wrong water displays). This guy looked pretty stoic.





Here we have Phillip, Michael, Jenny, Soua and Taba (all from Germany except Soua, who goes to Madison!)

Show ya the room and more campus later.

-James

More Pics :D

The kid who, when running by, MiJin shouted "That one! That one!" so I would take his picture.

There's some historical weight here....

Doo and her adorable boyfriend :D

So far, yes :D

Mr. Hillmer Goes to Gwanghwamun-gu

So it's finally come to this. After about a year of telling everyone "I'm 90% sure..." and "I plan to..." etc., I'm finally studying in South Korea! It still hasn't hit yet that I'm not just on vacation and that I won't be going home very soon. I think that will hit when I move into my dorm on Wednesday at Ewha Womens University (yes, I'll be attending a girls' school; No, that wasn't my choice, it's the only Korean school that UW has a formal study abroad relationship with *eye-rolls*).

So..after the 2am bus ride from Madison to O'Hare, and then getting lucky with an earlier standby flight to San Fran, then the 12 hour flight to Seoul (a total of about 24 hours of travel/downtime) I arrived in Seoul to meet my beautiful girlfriend of about a year, MiJin!

On Saturday, after I slept for 6 hours at the completely wrong time of day (jetlag) MiJin and I went out ot get some good street food, and in the most populous district of Seoul, Songpa-gu, we ran into one of MiJin's best friends, Doo! (or just Doodie, Doobie, or DooDoo to me) and her friend HwiYoung (the 'prettiest' man I've ever seen!). I missed her so much since January! :D We talked for a while at a kind of street food vendors tent (common hangout for young Seoulites) then went to play pool at one of about a million pool halls in Korea (or 'pocketball', as you have to be precise, since most koreans play the weird one with no pockets....)

After about 8 months of a distance relationship :S MiJin and I finally went on a real date (that didn't involve MSN instant messenger or facebook *more eye-rolls*) at a Japanese fusion restaurant called "So Yummy". I also got to see MiJin's workshop where she is preparing several works of art in textile design for her Senior gallery showing this winter.

After watching her painstaking weaving, we went to the Gwanghwamun district of Seoul , which is sort of the "Washington D.C." of South Korea. In addition to government buildings, the U.S. Embassy, and the Blue House (Korean 'White House'), Gwanghwamun has recently redone a monument to Yi Sun-Sin, a famous admiral (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi_Sun-sin), with fountains, gardens, and lights. This was all just an extremely ugly construction site when I last visited in January. The statue of Yi Sun-sin glares down at you as you are humbled before the long stretch of road that leads to the palace of the last Korean dynasty, Choseon. There were little kids screaming and running through the fountains everywhere while I was surrounded by traffic on both sides, on one of the busiest streets in a city of 10 million+ people, with mountains and the palace in the distance.....I was quite overcome, and couldn't stop smiling! :D I'm in Korea!

Keep you posted how moving into my dorm goes, 'til then...

Still holdin' it down for the underground, WI I love you!

-James