A Korean Wedding

Last weekend I went to a Korean wedding. Kristen, one of the teachers at my school, was getting married. Now she has to move to Seoul where her husband's job has been transfered and become a housewife. She's not too keen on that.


The wedding was largely like a Western wedding, with a few obvious differences. The first thing I noticed was that people didn't bring gifts. I brought a gift, which was a surprise to Kristen, but everyone else was dropping off envelopes with money at the sign-in desk. Just like in the Godfather, but with no pillow cases. There was also no guest book to sign, and seemingly no souvenirs at all for the bride and groom, save the clothes and the rings.

My favorite difference was that Kristen entered the wedding hall to the Star Wars Theme. I got really excited for a second, but they only played about 30 seconds of it, so I couldn't get my video camera out in time to prove it was really happening.



There were also these sword chicks involved with the ceremony. They were dressed in little red uniforms and the bride and groom walked under their swords. Heather says that's not traditional--it's just the way this wedding hall operates. Usually the swords are part of military weddings.


The whole atmosphere was much less solemn and serious than at Western weddings. It was actually treated more like a show than a ceremony. There was actually an emcee at the front of the room, announcing over the speakers what was going on through every step of the wedding (I assume that's what he was saying, anyway). The guests were pretty casual, too. Although everyone was dressed to the nines, not all of them chose to sit down, but instead stood up at the back of the room and talked the whole time. I felt the steady din was quite rude, but I guess that's what they do here.


After they were married, there was a quiz, which I thought was pretty cool. Wasn't there some newlywed gameshow that tested couples' knowledge of each other? Maybe that's where they got the idea. They had big cards with answers gotten prior to the wedding, and they had to answer the questions. Actually, I think it may have been only Kristen who had to answer the questions. I don't recall ever hearing her husband speak. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention...

Here is the wedding hall with the groom at the front, talking to one of the sword chicks:

These flower towers are an obligatory fixture at Korean weddings and other events. I see them all the time:

Here is Leon and I with Kristen before the ceremony. I read about a Korean superstition that if a bride smiles at the wedding, the first child is supposed to be a girl. I was curious to see if she put any stock in it, but I guess not.

Here are Kristen, some kid, and her primper:

This is the beginning of the ceremony, when the sword chicks escort the mothers to the altar to light candles:

The bride's procession with her father:

This is when the bride and groom first meet and bow to each other:





These are from the ring ceremony:

I took this from the back row, so my focus is off from the zooming, but here are Kristen and her husband after they were pronounced married:

Here is the cake cutting ceremony. I don't know what happens to the cake, because we sure as hell didn't get to eat it. Heather said only the top part of the cake is real. I did notice that some people were tipping the table at a 45 degree angle with the cake still on it before the ceremony began.

Here they are walking back up the aisle after everything was over, and that was the last we saw of them.

Korean weddings don't have a reception like ours do. They generally include a buffet for the guests, but the bride and groom leave for their honeymoon, or for home, immediately after the wedding. The wedding hall had a restaurant a floor above, where the buffet was served. Some people ate, some people went home. The only traditionally required food at a wedding, I've read, is noodle soup. There is a saying which goes, "When are we going to eat noodles?" It's a way of asking when someone is going to get married.

I think it's ironic that there's no reception after, and the whole ceremony seemed kind of isolated, with people just talking amongst themselves and not necessarily paying attention to the wedding. It seems antithetical to the whole community/family-oriented culture.

Ppaeppaero Day

November 11th is an unofficial holiday for children and couples, as I found out yesterday. It's kind of like Valentine's Day. Apparently, 11/11 reminds them of a bunch of sticks, so not too many years ago, it became popular to give chocolate-covered wafer or pretzel sticks, called Ppaeppaero to friends, relatives, and teachers. (My romanization is based on the standard that I always use, but I've been seeing it online as Pepero.)

The inception of this pseudoholiday is somewhat apocryphal, but the general consensus seems to be that a company called Lotte, which is a major Korean producer of everything imaginable, including chocolate sticks, made up the holiday for capital gain. I did read one story that suggested that some schoolgirls in Busan started the tradition in 1994 because they wanted to grow as tall and slender as the Ppaeppaero, but it seems unlikely that the practice would spread so effectively from that beginning.

So today, my students gave me three boxes of original Lotte Ppaeppaero, one box of chocolate-coffee-latte (or something, I forget 'cause I ate 'em all) Ppaeppaero, and five or six large chocolate pretzel sticks. I don't like the big ones so much, because a chocolate-covered pretzel isn't very good unless it has salt on it. Damn them for not realizing that.


Here are a couple pictures of the Engrish on the pretzel wrappers:

This is a box of the original Ppaeppaero. You can see the name in Hangeul here:

On the Lotte box, it says "Since 1983," so I asked the kids and one of the Korean teachers if that referred to Lotte or to the holiday, and she said it was Lotte, so the holiday is definitely less than 25 years old.

Some of the boxes even have little cards built into the back so you can write messages. Here's a message from Kate:

Here's another message written directly on the bag (which is inside the box):

It's funny, I think I got the bags without the boxes because some of the boxes have the same kind of contests our candies have. Lotte owns cinemas, and if you find a ticket in your box, you can use it for a free movie at Lotte Cinema. So I think they checked before giving me the candy, haha. Wesley told me about that. Such a nice boy.

I was thinking about why this got so popular on the way home tonight, and I decided that Koreans have all these extra fun candy and present days (White Day, Children's Day, etc.), because life sucks so much here, what with 12-15 hours of homework or work six days a week for most people. Kids and young people have these holidays, and adults have binge drinking every night. It seems to work well for them.

Leafing and Human Sacrifice

A couple weeks ago, Heather took Leon and I with her whole family to a mountain in Eonyang, a neighboring city, to see the foliage. It's quite nice.

First we went to Heather's parents' house in the countryside of Ulsan. This is their place:


That's Heather's mom coming out of the house, her sister-in-law with little Jiseok (my favorite Korean), Kate (Heather's daughter) in the foreground, and Jane (Jiseok's sister) in front of Heather's grandmother off to the right:



Atop the mountain was a temple with female monks. There was some confusion as to which sex was actually in residence at the temple, since both men and women monks were there, but somehow someone figured out that it was women. The men must have been visiting. There was even an American monk there, and she said hi to us, but only Leon heard her and responded.

Here is a bridge we saw at the temple and were not allowed on. Monks only:


One of the buildings at the temple from outside the entrance:

Mountains, and parking lot:

Me and some trees:

More mountain:

I took this picture from the car:

Heather was telling us all these crazy stories about Buddhist temples for some reason. She was saying that women used to come to the temples when they couldn't have a son. They would pray to the statues, and the monks would "help" them. Heather got a big kick out of telling that one. It reminded me of Dad's old joke about the kids looking like the milkman.

She also told us that people sometimes sacrifice their babies to the monks, who would make huge bells out of metal and babies melted and molded together. Heather said it makes the bells sound different once complete. She told us the temples were generally built in places with dark histories, because the people there needed to sacrifice their children to atone for evil deeds. Very, very strange.

I think she got her story a bit wrong, though. She seemed to be saying that this happened (and still happens) not infrequently, but the legend seems to be a one-time thing, with one specific bell. I found this entry on the internets:

The Gyeongju National Museum holds many beautiful artifacts inside and outside the main buildings. The centerpiece is the very large Divine Bell of King Songdok, constructed in 711 A.D. Upon its debut the sound which rang forth was not the sweet sound anticipated, but a dull cracking sound. Each subsequent design failed to produce the desired effect, so it was determined a child sacrifice was necessary to obtain a perfect bell. Legend states a poor farm woman offered her daughter, who was thrown into the melting copper pot. The bell made from this copper appeared to be singing, “Emille” — “Mommy.” To this day, people mourn for this child.

It's funny, I went the that museum a few months ago, and I vaguely remember there being a bell there, outside. I didn't know anything about the legend, though. I read a couple different versions of the child sacrifice online--one said it had to be a purehearted child, another said it had to be a child born in the year, month, week, day, and minute of the Dragon and there was a mighty search held to find one. At least it was only one child in the legend, and not as rampant as Heather suggested.

Halloween

On Halloween, my school had a Halloween party, in which we gave candy to the kids and watched Halloween movies instead of learning. We were supposed to get a projector and have one big screen for everybody all day, but the dude who was going to lend it to the school ended up needing it at his work. Booooo-urns. So instead, those of us with laptops downloaded movies and played them for each of our classes. I gave my classes the choice of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," "The Nightmare Before Christmas," and "Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were Rabbit." The two latter were 80 minute movies, so most of the kids either saw the first half or the second half, but they didn't notice. They could barely sit through that.

Most of the kids didn't dress up, since it's not a widely accepted holiday here, but some did. Here are some pictures:

This is Nancy:


I think this is Kevin:


This is Jack. He played video games somewhat noisily the whole time, and complained about the amount of candy I gave out. He's my biggest shithead and one of my biggest dumbshits.



Some of the other kids in the same class also spent the whole time playing video games:

Amy, Na-huin, Nancy, and Kevin, enthralled by Wallace and Gromit:

Hollis, John, Pam (yes, he's a boy with a girl's name), Lauren, and Bunny watching Charlie Brown. Hollis particularly enjoyed this show, although some of the kids found it a little boring at times.

In addition to the above, Harris in the front, and Any in the back. Harris sulked for a few minutes because he didn't like the cartoon, then he asked to go out in the hall. I let him go because none of the kids like him and he's a Ruiner.

Back left to right: Sally, Ava, Lucy, Jenny, and Jessica (Jessica came as a Korean--this is hanbok, traditional Korean clothing). Front: Patrick, Major, and Joey

Back: Sean, Albert, Martin, Wendy, and Celina

Front: Teresa, Erin, and some girl Erin brought with her who isn't a student at our school, I don't think.

Wendy, Erin, and Stranger:

Some kid isn't my student:

Two other kids who aren't my students:

Albert again:

There are pictures of me with the other teachers and staff in existence, but I need to ask them to email them to me so I can add them. I dressed as a witch because all the kids said I laugh like a witch.