Kimchi Mamas

Turn that frown upside down!

Apparently, many South Koreans are taking that to... the knife.  Smile surgeries, such as the Smile-Lipt, are one of the latest fads in Seoul surgery.  For a mere $2,000, you, too, can smile forever. 

I always wanted to look more Korean (I live in Alaska, most people think I'm Alaska Native), but it seems that Koreans want to look less Korean?  Eyelid surgery was always known to us; Mema had double eyelid surgery.  Make-up tattoos have been known of for a while; Mema said she wanted to "always wake up looking beautiful". These were things known, but never spoken of.  Double eyelid surgery is, allegedly, so commonplace now that they don't even refer to it as surgery anymore.  And it's not just for women!  South Korea has the HIGHEST number of plastic surgeries per capita.  There's even one of those tumblr pages dedicated to it.  Is K-pop to blame?

Another Day, Another Adorable Yerin Video

Yerin of YouTube fame perfectly demonstrates how we feel every morning.  Hope the rest of your day went better, Yerin-ah!

--Julie

 

Notice Anything Different About Us?

Welcome to the newly redesigned Kimchi Mamas site!

Please poke around and get re-acquainted, and let us know if there are any dead links or other oddities.

So, for the internet equivalent of "Testing Testing 123," here is an animated gif of the cutest Kimchi Baby in the world, Yerin Park of YouTube fame.  Hopefully she doesn't react to our new look-and-feel this way:

Here now is a video of Yerin, who is now old enough to talk, and her voice and mannerisms are so freaking cute I diiiiiiiiie:

A Piece of Korean Romance

When people think of the world's greatest tragic romances, they may conjure up Romeo and Juliet, Rhett and Scarlet, or Cathy and Heathcliff.  However, I hope after this, people will also think of Eung-Tae Lee and his widow.

In 1998, South Korean archaeologists found the mummified remains of Eung-Tae Lee, who died in 1586, buried with one of the saddest, most romantic letters I have ever read, written by his widow.  Here's just a small snippet: (hat tip to Letters of Note...seriously, folks, it is the best blog out there right now.)

How did you bring your heart to me and how did I bring my heart to you? Whenever we lay down together you always told me, "Dear, do other people cherish and love each other like we do? Are they really like us?" How could you leave all that behind and go ahead of me?

So long ago, and she was so distraught, she could easily have jumped off the nearest Lover's Leap to rejoin her love.  But she didn't!  She had to raise their son, and here's the dramatic twist...SHE WAS PREGNANT WITH THEIR SECOND!!!  So instead of completely succombing to her grief, she cut off her hair, weaved her locks into one last pair of sandals for her husband, and buried them with him!  Even Sophocles and Shakespeare couldn't come up with a gesture more poignant than that.  Le sigh.

Romance, it's in our blood, Kimchi brothers and sisters, and for much longer than "Winter Sonata" has been on syndication.  Now go forth and woo.

--Julie

 

Awesome design proposal for new building in Seoul

This building looks so cool, I just had to share it. It's a design proposal for a new skyscraper style apartments in Yongsan, Seoul. When I lived/worked in Korea, I remember going to Yongsan with my friends whenever they wanted to buy a new electronic gadget. There are SO many vendors there selling the latest cell phones, cameras, and bootlegged copies of DVDs.

Read more about it here.

Kind of reminds me of Jong-ro tower building that I used to see everyday while working near there.

- Mary

As promised....Giveaway results.

But first, what did Weeny Beeny sell?

A lot of you were right!  It's a Candy shop. I think they do specialize in jelly beans but they have a whole bunch of other candies too and it's selft serve, kind of like our Sweet Factories.  I snapped these shots at the Lotte World Weeny Beeny store.

Onto the winners!  I really wished we had a doll for everyone.  But since we can't, the following winners were chosen at random:

For the doll with the green top and red skirt:  Amy Bringham

For the doll with the yellow top and pink skirt:  Kat

Thanks for participating and Thank you for reading Kimchi Mamas!

Shoeshine Pastor

 

Throwing a little bit of inspiration your way.

 

- Mary

When worlds collide

One interesting part of living here in Korea is watching Korean TV.  You'd think that I'd be glued to Korean dramas all the time, but really, it turns out that I can only handle only one of them at a time which ends up being just a couple of hours a week.  Not that I don't love them.  I have my favorites that I look forward to and I get happy on my K-drama nights.

But I was surprised at how much TV time was taken up by Korean versions of shows we watch in the US.  Mostly reality shows like, Top Model, Project Runway, Biggest Loser, Dancing with the Stars, and American Idol.  Well, it wouldn't be called American Idol here.  It's called Superstar K (K for Korea, I guess) and it's just as addicting with an additional crossover factor for me because they keep bringing on past American Idol contestants. 

But before I get to that, there's something just fascinating watching the Korean version of these shows because though the set up is the same, the way the people go about solving the problems and hashing out the issues seems different.  Example.  When one group is told they are moving on in Superstar K and another is told that they have reached the end, the group that has passed on is usually the group to shed tears and carry on.  They talk about how they don't deserve it and how they sad they feel for their friend.  Or on Top Model, the youngest of the bunch is put in her place by her Unnis who feel it is their duty to teach her how to be respectful.  So Interesting.

Anyway, back to the tie in to my former American life.  Last year, my first season being sucked into watching Superstar K, John Park was on and made it really far.  Like to the finals.  He eventually took second place and kind of became a celebrity here in Korea.  Then, this year I tune in, and find it just as addicting.  I also find in the sea of dark haired and brown eyed talented Koreans, Chris Golightly, who looks familiar.  With some googling, I find that he'd been on American Idol before too.  Remember this story?  So sad.  But I guess he's friends with John Park who encouraged him to come to Korea and the story seems to be that he's been in Korea working in the music biz and was encouraged to try out for the show. 

He made it into the top 10 (through all the initial audtion stuff and mission stuff even with the language and cultural barriers) and it's time for the Korean public to vote.  EEK!  Here's his first performance all gussied up.  Only Korean songs allowed.

 

Wasn't he amazing?  This performance got him into the next round.  Team Chris!  I am also Team Christina because she is an awesome kimchi sister from America (her korean is pretty good but with her totally perfect English and American way of thinking you can tell she's a second generation) doing her best in the competition.  So I guess I am the Team Chrises.

  

 

Book Review: "This Burns My Heart" by Samuel Park

How could the world fit so many lives, so many iterations?  It couldn't be that big, it couldn't fit so much.  We're only given one life, and it's the one we live, she had thought; how painful now, to realize that wasn't true, that you would have different lives, depending on how brave you were, and how ready.

This little nugget was excerpted from Samuel Park's This Burns My Heart. Three of us got to read the novel, we received advanced copies for free, and here is what we thought:

Mary:

This Burns My Heart by Samuel Park tells the story of Soo-Ja Choi's life in South Korea in the 1960's. I've never read a book quite like it. Set in Korea during a period that I can imagine (I was born in the 70's) and written in English from the perspective of a woman, I should have been able to relate to this book a whole lot. And while I could related to Soo-Ja in some ways, I also found myself being somewhat distracted by what I thought were unrealistic dialogues between her and the other characters of the book such as her Father-in-law, her husband, and her parents. I found Soo-Ja to be a somewhat likable character. Her husband, Min, seemed unreal. Did men seriously fool women into marrying them? Despite these distractions, I found myself drawn to the book and into the story of Soo-ja's life. I wanted things to work out for her and for her to finally be happy. I also wanted to shake her and tell her to just speak the truth about her feelings. Why is it that Koreans say the opposite of what they want?

On a side note, I loved the art cover and found myself staring at that shadowy figure.

Angie:

Was the yearn and understanding of a "what if" life there for me as a reader? Of course it was.  "The saddest words of tongue or pen are what could have been . . . " But in what I think was Park's intent to make Soo-Ja's plan clever - I found only manipulation and cunning - and the consequences for those choices. 

Throughout the narrative, I wanted to like Soo-ja.  I wanted to feel bad about the decisions she made and the perceived tragedy of her life . . . but I couldn't. We all make decisions in life - some people regret, others move on, others are forever frozen in place. 

Here was a woman who in youth was beautiful, educated, well taken care of and practically revered/loved by her family and yet none of it was enough.  Instead she plays chess with the very people who care for and about her - treating them as her pieces.  Does she make up some of her trangressions in judgement with her best friend? Yes, but much later in life.  

Soo-Ja's relationship with her daughter, Hannah, could have been better developed.  I did not get from the text a sense of a special bond or particularly deep relationship. (Semi spoiler alert!) I was also a little perplexed about how at the end of the novel Hannah could so freely forgive her mother and her relationship - it felt like a loose thread in a blanket that failed to warm my heart. 

Julie:

I for one fell in love with Soo-ja.  Soo-ja really reminds me of my own mother...both women grew up in boy-less households in the post-war south.  Both were high-maintenance, coy, intelligent young girls, with their little world their oyster.  However, a series of decisions (sometimes their own, usually not) led them into an adulthood that was quite the opposite: the vivacious girls had to quickly morph into respectable, honorable wives.  Their lives once seemingly so open, now uni-dimensional, full of stubborn self-denial, servitude to their husband's families, and buried regrets.  My mom found some amount of relief by emigrating to the US, but Soo-ja's invisible shackles prove to be much stronger.

To me, this novel is an allegory of the state of womanhood in Korea.  Females can be quite treasured in their youth and encouraged to dream (if those dreams do not overshadow their brothers' dreams), but once they grow up, those dreams are almost always an impossibility.  The institutions of marriage and motherhood have very well-defined rules (backed by history and by the law) that must be followed in order to maintain honor, and those rules do not leave time for individual pursuits or personalities.  Even today, employment, inheritance, and divorce laws in Korea are seemingly equitable, but they are not fully enforced.  This kind of repression is most clearly reflected in the fact that Soo-ja's most original, most relatable thoughts are merely inner dialog and never spoken aloud.  That must be the most frustrating part about that life, because it certainly was the most frustrating part reading about it.  Where does empowerment begin: from the woman who finally says what she really means, or from the society that allows her to do so?  

I don't want to give away the ending, but I hope that the Soo-jas of today can find themselves a similar one.  I highly recommend this book to people who would like to see the Korea our parents grew up in come alive. 

From the publisher: 

Set in South Korea in the 1960s, THIS BURNS MY HEART (Simon & Schuster; July 12, 2011; $25.00) centers on Soo-Ja Choi, an ambitious young woman who finds herself trapped in an unhappy marriage. Faced with adversity and oppression, she struggles to protect her daughter and to fulfill her own dreams—all against the backdrop of a postwar society caught between tradition and modernity.  Samuel Park based the character Soo-Ja Choi on his mother, who grew up in South Korea. Park says, “The book is based on my mother’s life, but it is ultimately a work of fiction. I was inspired by all the stories my mother told me about her life.” 

Learn more about THIS BURNS MY HEART at www.samuelpark.com.

You can buy the novel on Amazon.com.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Please keep South Korea in your thoughts as residents face astonishing amounts of torrential downpour. The resulting floods and mudslides have already killed 38 people in Seoul and the central regions, and the death toll is climbing.  There seems to be a lot of infrastructure damage, so we will keep you posted with ways we can help once things settle down and the full amount of damage is assessed.

Kimchi Mama jooliyah, we hope you and your loved ones are staying dry and staying safe!  Please check in when you can.

Article from the Korea Herald, English edition

Blog post from Koream Magazine