Dear Family and Friends,

Under the influence of time, experience, and a wry sense of humor, friends and I have begun to rely on the comment: “how very Korean” to respond to factual observations regarding our surroundings. But we also use this comment to describe any phenomenon that occurs in Korea and is out of the realm of our understanding. And there continues to be A LOT that falls outside of my realm of understanding! So I - and we use - this comment a lot. Definitely more than we should.

You see, this comment could almost be a metaphor for a contradiction that I live with now and cannot yet settle to my satisfaction. For so long, I resisted this comment because utilizing it means that I have arrived at a snap judgment: I am surrendering to the notion that I will never understand the whys or what fors of my observation. Snap judgments are very bad in my situation because it is rare that Korean cultural phenomena are exactly what first meets my western eyes. It is so very difficult to live amongst a culture that is so different from one’s own and sustain openness and impartiality - yet why live amongst another culture unless one is open to learn? But how far must impartiality be adhered to? Isn’t it fair to eventually arrive at some judgments? In the end, I know my “how very Korean” judgments to be very bad – and ardently resist them - and yet my experience in Korea has taught me that there is much that I am not likely to ever understand.

I bring this shameful habit up now because the day following my birthday in Jeju was… well, very Korean. And even now, weeks later, I haven’t concluded if this is an impartial factual observation or a “I’ll never understand” judgment.

Either way, our Sunday morning on Jeju did not start on the right note. In a decidedly non-Korean way, the hotel restaurant waitress was rude to us at breakfast, not allowing us to sit near the window in the empty restaurant and she was either too tired or too crotchety to understand that when she told us that we couldn’t have toast, we wanted to substitute rice. Breakfast ended in sour looks from waitress and patrons alike and I was presented with a $33 bill – high in the States, practically highway robbery in Korea. But we had places to go and snacks stashed so we laughed our annoyance away as we piled into the car and drove west to satisfy our cerebral cortex with an examination of sculptures at the Jeju Art Park.

The weather was nippy but we weren’t displeased to find ourselves in a large park with impressive natural scenery that would’ve been stunning had we been viewing it in the full profusion of spring or summer. We paid a pittance for admission and wandered the grounds, interested but unenthused. At first, we found the western-styled sculptures unremarkable, well, unremarkable until we stumbled upon a grove trees with sculptures nestled inside labeled on the map as the “Love Grove.” We laughed at the name but our jaws dropped at the explicit sculptures of couples making love. Frankly, I suspect that leftover Puritan sensibilities in American society would deem these statues as unlikely in a public park. But not only were two of the statues wrought with remarkable beauty but they were astounding because Korean society is generally conservative - the only display of public affection that you see in Korea is hand-holding. Statues frozen in rapt ecstasy do not fit into my understanding of Korea.

We moved on, now a mite stunned, and the day warmed. As we ambled, we found sculptures to admire, sculptures to joke about, sculptures rusting with neglect, and many more unclothed statues, uh… surprisingly positioned. Our tour of the park culminated with us mounting a hill and entering a rectangular glass viewing tower which spread the park below us with the sea in the distance and Mt. Halla-san, for the first time since our arrival, evident to our side. Having momentarily satisfied our cerebral, we decided to take a break at the Jeju Teddy Bear Museum.

Resuming my earlier theme of shamelessly generalizing about Korean culture, I must now assert to you all that Koreans are a determined bunch and that usually, when given a task, their want is to accomplish the task plus raise the result beyond mere accomplishment. I am not yet sufficiently acquainted with the whys and what fors of this mentality – but I suspect that it is the root of many of the phenomenon that cause “how very Korean” to slip from my tongue.

“If it is not too far out of the way…” was how my friend Emily phrased her destination choice of Teddy Bear Museum but Julie and I were in full agreement having both summoned our understanding of the Korean preference for accomplishing tasks with vigor plus the amazingly high Korean tolerance for all things kutuh (Konglish for cute). At Emily’s statement, Julie and I simultaneously grinned. We knew that at the very least, the Teddy Bear Museum would be remarkable. And it was.

Teddy bears illustrated the history of the 20^th century in full case-encased tableaus: teddy bears in silk swirled to music on the deck of a teddy bear Titanic with an iceberg painted dead ahead, teddy bear soldiers landed on a beach of Normandy and commenced shooting other teddies (not a good moment for teddy bears, actually), teddy bears attended the opening of Disneyland, and teddy bears perched on the top of an already crumbling teddy bear Berlin Wall. The skirts of a teddy bear Marilyn Monroe fluttered away from a vent, an imposing teddy bear Michael Jordan cast a shadow on his basketball hoop, and teddy bears Prince Charles & Princess Diana had frozen into their own wedding. Not far from cases of original Smoky the Bears and much loved Paddington Bears stood the most expensive teddy bear in the world a Louis Vuitton Bear clad in a printed monogram raincoat and accompanied by matching luggage, who had been purchased at a charity auction in Monaco for a cool $190,000.

But teddy bears aren’t just about history – the museum demonstrated their wide range of talents by fitting them into the Sistine Chapel and by marrying them in a traditional Korean Confucian wedding. Teddy bears modeled haute couture down a long runway while backstage teddy models powered their noses and one model boasted a studded bellybutton. On behalf of civilization as we know it, Julie, Emily & I discovered that the Louvre has been pulling several hoaxes for years – Leonardo really painted a bear in his famous painting titled, “The Mona Lisa” and Rodin’s famous sculpture, “The Kiss”? Yup, you guessed it: two teddy bears, locked in passion. And we didn’t fail to note the male teddy’s weeny – our day of arrestingly proper anatomical statues continued. We completed our visit at a teddy bear wedding village, where the whole population celebrated while music rang out and lights in homes flashed.

On teddy bear overload, we stumbled about the museum vicinity searching for lunch and ended up with kimbap and ramyun outside a convenience store with a fierce breeze forcing us to anchor our wrappers with every bite. (Kimbap = ubiquitous Korean street food similar to sushi rolls; Ramyun = Korea’s version of instant ramen). But we compensated for our pain by availing ourselves in the delights of a Cinnabon (the only one I’ve seen in Asia) and a Seattle’s Best Coffee.

Lunch over, our energy restored by copious amounts of sugar, we rounded the corner and found ourselves at Jeju’s Yeomjiji Botanical Gardens…

(more to come)

Pardon me for saying it, but these botanical garden decorations?

(factual) "Very Korean." --Laura