Golden Crowns and Shining Clay

First off, check out the new "Blogs I Read" box on the left, which currently contains Zak's blog Impatient Pudding and Jue's blog Orange Orange. Disregard the fact that I wrote the latest entry on IP - it was a guest blog, I swear. Anyway, give them a read, especially if you like science, web 2.0 culture, or any song with the word "remix" in the title.

The highlight of today was meeting a Korean master potter who makes replicas of pottery produced during the Shilla dynasty, which was around for a thousand years somewhere around 0 B.C. Ancient Koreans were apparently prolific potters in the Chinese tradition, and delicate green Korean celadon vases are still prized today. This guy insists on making pottery the Shilla way without fancy firing techniques or clay additives - it's all just mud, a wheel, and a wood-fired kiln dug into the side of a hill. The mud in this area (Gyeongju city, south of Seoul somewhere) apparently has a high silica content, which when exposed to temperatures above 1000 degrees Celsius naturally melts or activates somehow and gives the finished piece a glossy sheen. This means Shilla-type pottery needs no glaze or varnish, and so the potter was keen on telling us that what he makes is not pottery but actually "clay figurines." I guess the strict definition of "pottery" involves glazes or something. Anyway, we got to watch him work, check out the inside of the kiln he uses, and even make our own pots on little wheels! It's been at least 10 years since I tried to make anything resembling pottery, especially on a wheel, and it was a marvelous experience. Good art (as well as good science, math, etc.) requires singlemindedness, and although what I produced didn't really resemble good art (as much as the potter guy helped me out), the intense clarity with which I saw myself manipulating my hands, the clay, and the tools as well as the speed with which the time flew made me feel like a real artist. A dazed but happy artist, anyway. We left all of our creations there to be fired by Mr. Potter Dude, who will ship them to Ewha after they're done so we can bring them home. With any luck, mine will be sitting on my desk or a shelf next year, hopefully all in one piece.

We also walked around a museum of artifacts from the Shilla dynasty, including beautiful golden crowns worn by some of the 50-odd kings and queens before the unification. Korea, like China, was a bunch of warring kingdoms sometime around 500 A.D. and then became unified under one dynasty, never to be split up again until 1945. The "headband crowns," as they are called, are masterpieces of metalwork and symbolic design. The crowns have vertical "branches" that are supposed to mimic tree branches or antlers, both of which symbolized the king's position as intermediary between heaven and earth. Some of the "branches" have a particular shape that is actually a Chinese character repeatedly stacked on top of itself; this character is "chu," which means "to exit" or "to go out," pointing to the king's widespread influence throughout the kingdom. The goldwork of these crowns is very delicate and precise, with little golden "spangles" attached to the branches and cashew-shaped pieces of jade hanging off of it (pictures to come). Although the material is the same, the style is extremely different from stereotypical Western crowns, which are traditionally heavy, inlaid with large gleaming stones, and don't have anything hanging off of them. Western crowns are meant to be purely visual status symbols, while Shilla crowns engage hearing as well because they jingled. This difference intrigues me. I wonder what Jared Diamond would have to say about it (proximal explanations include: the availability of facetable gemstones and the intimidation factor of jingling).

We also saw an ancient bell that supposedly was only successfully cast once a baby got mixed in with the molten metal and also found out that we have karaoke on our bus. Of course - Korea is nuts about karaoke. It was funny singing Bohemian Rhapsody while watching background montages of forest critters on our bus's plasma TV.

WTF moment of today: our tour guide was telling us about what we were going to have for dinner and described it as "Korean burritos." Then she jumped into an explanation of the history of this food that went something like this: "The story of this food is that sometimes if pretty Korean women are out alone at night, ugly old men might want to take them and so they would rape them with a plastic bag." No preparation for this pronouncement whatsoever. I was traumatized. I think the actual explanation is a little more nuanced, but I'm pretty mystified at this point.

I'm all over Korea like egg on bibimbap

The Korea blog has officially started operations! I'd like to say hi to my family, Harvard homies, Washington, D.C.-area peeps, Brooklinians, and anyone else I've met in my travels through life who has stumbled across this blog. I will be here until September 3rd, so hopefully there'll be interesting things to read about along the way.


I've officially been in the Motherland for over a day now - it's 9:45pm on the 20th and I got here around 5pm yesterday (after leaving Boston at 8am on the 18th). I got off the plane and collected my heavy but super stylin' luggage, then met my "PEACE buddy" Hyun-jin outside baggage claim. Hyun-jin is pretty, petite, and super fluent in English, which is awesome. We took a bus to Ewha University in Seoul and found out that I'm staying in this dorm at the other side of campus from the International Dorm (of Pancakes?), which is kind of lame. The Ewha campus is extremely hilly and all the girls wear high heels ... this must violate some law of physics. My room is small but adequate and I have a nice roommate named Michelle who goes to Smith. I went out to dinner at this small noodle place with Hyun-jin and then barely had time to take a shower and settle in before I was overcome with jetlag (or ennui from being such a world-class traveler? who knows.). Today about 35 of us in the Ewha International Summer Co-Ed Program set off in a bus and with some guides on a "pre-orientation" field trip. We walked around a Buddhist temple named Haeinsa and a museum featuring artifacts from the Daekaya dynasty/kingdom and had some delicious food: the infamous bibimbap and shabu-shabu (Korean hot pot). Then we walked around the commercial center of Daegu, the third-largest city in South Korea, and now we're at a hotel.


Seoul and Daegu are cool but kind of smelly. Seoul in particular is sort of a cross between midtown Manhattan, Boston, and Singapore. Also the ceilings everywhere are like 6.5' high, and the toilets, while Western-style, only come up to my knees. I feel so tall!

This hotel, the Daegu Grand, is freakin amazing. The breakfast buffet not only had all the traditional American breakfast delights plus kimchi and various kinds of porridge, but also smoked salmon and black caviar. The caviar in particular was delicious. I wish I had a sturgeon farm so I could have my own supply. The buffet area had ceiling-high windows that looked out onto a beautiful little waterfall that was probably 3 feet away from the side of the building. Zak, you would've liked the minibar in the room - two kinds of whiskey plus a can (yes, a can) of beef jerky.

Speaking of waterfalls, this country is gorgeous. The upstart hills and rocky streams may not be wheelchair-friendly, but they certainly make for amazing vistas. I think I'm in love. I'll post pictures once I'm back at Ewha and figure out how to get online via my laptop.

I have only seen one television in this country so far that wasn't a state-of-the-art flat panel high-def. Even the public buses have them. I am in awe.

Most of the others in the summer program are a) girls, and b) ethnically Korean but grew up in the States/Canada. Why are we all here? What are we collectively searching for? I don't think it's as simple as a place to belong or a new language to speak. I'll think about it and get back to you all.