When is it due?

There are many things that annoy me about Korea.
I hate the staring, I find that extremely frustrating and rude. I also think it is something one can never get used to. I have been stared at for nearly 5 years and it still drives me insane. I understand their curiosity but I wish, like home, they were taught that staring is rude. I remember sitting on the subway once and a mum actually encouraged her child to look at me.

*possible translation “Hey son, look at the waygook (translation- foreigner in Korean), look at her isn’t she different, isn’t she strange? It’s ok you can point!”

I hate the treatment of animals. My opinions on this subject are, apparently, controversial and I understand that western treatment of animals is also horrific and something I find hard to deal with, but in Korea ...somewhere I have lived for almost 5 years, I still cannot handle their superiority complex when it comes to what we know as ‘pets.’
I hate that they cough up phlegm and spit, yet it is rude to blow your nose at a restaurant! When I lived in my last apartment in Changwon all I heard, every day, was phlegm being coughed up; GROSS!

I hate the insulting ‘fat’ comments. Korea I am not fat, obese, pregnant or slightly overweight I am normal, average and acceptable by western standards.

In 2010 I lost quite a bit of weight. Weight that I put down to, being in a burdensome relationship! I left that relationship, of which I had spent 2.5 years of my Korean experience unhappily in, and suddenly I was ‘slim.’ I was never fat but I was definitely ‘growing wider.’ When I arrived in Korea in 2007 I was ushered out of numerous stores, as were a handful of my friends, because we were ‘big size’ This shocked my father, who I recently told but will not shock anyone who has been to Korea. I was British size 12 and therefore relatively average in the U.K, no one would pigeon hole me as ‘big size’ but compared to Koreans I am definitely tipping the scales. The majority of Asian women are noticeably tiny. Their legs are half the size of my arms and they have significantly narrower hips than the average western woman. We have curvaceous bodies which we have no problem in flaunting and enjoying whilst home but in Korea I became really conscious of my size. It is not just the ‘get out of this shop since you are too fat to fit in anything’ demand but the stares and giggles. I had numerous young students who said I was fat, asked if I was pregnant and one even wrapped her fingers around my leg in curiosity of the sheer size of my thigh!

I got angry and, she never did that again!

I realize now that my quick tempered reactions were because I was unhappy with my body and being pointed out about it by 12 year olds is not a comfortable situation to be in!
However, I do not justify the Korean attitude to weight . It comes down to ignorance, black women have beautiful curvaceous bodies with the well known ‘booty’ and it is pure ignorance to jot this down as ‘fat’ or ‘oops too many hamburgers!’

Since 2007, things have changed I am fortunate to be around to watch the development (or one would say regression) of this society! I have not been thrown out of a store for a few years now, unfortunately this is not down to education, this is down to unhealthy exportation.
Korea has a McDonalds on every main street corner, they have numerous pizza restaurants including the American Pizza hut and Dominoes. Every supermarket: Emart, Lotte and Homeplus (which is a Tesco owned supermarket) has a pizza point, at which you can buy a HUGE pizza for the family to take home fresh. The pricing is of course reasonable and let’s be honest, with a family to feed who wouldn’t love the convenience of not having to cook, not having to do dishes and keeping the husband and kids smiling from ear to ear?

The sad reality is however, that this trend in fast food and take away consumption is growing...and so are the Koreans!
Whether I feel slim next to the Korean on the bus or not, the attitude is still pretty prevalent. Not long ago I went for a health check.These themselves are questionable to foreigners, the very fact that a foreigner has to go for regular health checks fills us with unease and the whole concept oozes with discrimination. So, let me get this straight, if I have a health issue (bear in mind, the tests are for eyes, blood, urine, weight and chest) then I am ‘incapable’ of teaching?!
When I got my results I was extremely proud of my body and fitness at the time. I had lost the weight I previously spoke of, I was a regular at the gym and I had even had a note from the gym expressing the fact that, although I am 27, my body measurement was that of a 24 year old! I was on cloud 9, that is until I got the results.

‘Regular exercise is needed and diet must be regulated’

Translation

’ you are STILL a fat, unfit foreigner!’

I have never been more disheartened, angry or just plain annoyed in all my life,

it was like a punch to my new chiseled abs. The worst thing was that my co teacher came up to me shortly after the results, she perched her bottom on the edge of my computer desk, looked at me with pity in her eyes, sighed heavily as if the next words out of her mouth would break my spirit, and she began;

“Ruth I think we need to discuss your results”

Blood started to simmer from the bottom of my feet up and I had to move before my whole body boiled over into her face. I simply replied that I do not think the results were accurate since I am probably the most fit I have ever been and with that, I walked away.

The simple bare necessities

If my memory serves me correctly, I was about 8 when I got a ‘WereBear.’ Apparently, it seems, I was quite the tomboy since these bears were made to be bought for boys, while the famous ‘CareBears’ were bought by parents for their princesses. I demanded a ‘WereBear’ and Howler was his name. He was awesome, a sky blue bear (Koreans love to throw this color around) with yellow pants. The great thing about him, the thing that separated him from the other bears such as Steiff and the new up and coming Tatty bear was that he could morph into a scary monster, hence the ‘Were’ part of his name. ( I don’t think I need to explain further, do I ?)

All one must do is pull his cute face over and underneath lie fangs and bulging red eyes, his paws could even be pulled over to reveal dark black claws. Ok, maybe I wasn’t that much of a tomboy because I remember approximately 3 occasions with which I morphed him into his scary doppleganger, but I loved him and that was that.

We used to build forts together...

When I was 8 and lived my life alongside Howler, people didn’t do bad things. I did not know what conspiracy meant let alone had theories of my own. When Howler cuddled me at night I thought that everyone in the world was just as lucky, if not more lucky than I was. I could not fathom that I was actually living a life in the top 10-15% richest people in the world!!
On paper it wouldn’t seem that way, I was from a ‘broken home’ ( a stupid term, that seems to sound as if people are failures when really my life was far happier than some ‘fixed homes’) we lived in rented government housing, albeit it was a 3 bedroom, 2 story house. My mother held down a variation of jobs including a secretary and a sales assistant position. In school I could say I was scoffed at and I, myself, was even embarrassed by my situation. Shame on me because, again, there are approximately 75% of people in the world who would give their left arm for my life.

You grow up and you get a heck of a lot wiser. (well, some people)

Teddy bears may be the stuffed animals that kept us warm at night and loved us unconditionally, even when you had a rough day at school but in reality we don’t deserve their love.
Grown ups can be evil. On Christmas day they buy their child a teddy bear to show their love; in real life bears are becoming extinct. In the not so distant future they will NO LONGER be on Earth and the teddy bear that cuddles you at night will be part of a myth.

Moon bears (or Asiatic black bears or Ursus Selenarctos Thibertanus yeah, forget that one) are part of the Black bear family and are often known to be the most dangerous of the bears. I have no sympathy with the humans in this case. Of course, if my boyfriend was ripped apart by a savage bear I would be a little annoyed, but what we have put these animals through is revenge enough.
It’s the age old tale of man vs predator and man will always win. How can an animal ever win against a man with a weapon and miles of distance? You didn’t ‘survive’ and you shouldn’t be honored, you merely took an animal by surprise and ended it’s and it’s offsprings life as they know it.

Moon bears (and also the American black bears) have it worse. No animals leave this world untouched these days and Moon bears are no exception. From hunting as a sport (gross), timber harvesting, poaching, or capturing for the pet trade, moon bears are highly desirable among the immorality of Asia.
China, North and South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Cambodia...they all want their pound of flesh.

It is hard for me to shy away from my thoughts on Korea since I have lived here for nearly 5 long years and so I feel I have somewhat of a right to talk about the country and it’s part in the destruction of these beautiful creatures.

I will try and make this as clear as I possibly can from my plethora of notes. Luckily, I am not on my own in my despise of this ‘business’ so the internet is packed to bursting with articles on this subject.

Let me start at the beginning. Birth.
Asiatic black bear cubs are in demand. From day one the hunters have their tasks and that is to bring home a cub. They are taken to be ‘pets.’ Not a puppy or a hamster, but a pet bear..'cause of course that makes perfect, logical sense ! At 3-4 months the cubs are removed from their mothers, either born in captivity or in the wild, where hunters await the mom to be asleep before they cowardly rip a family apart. There are approximately 140 bears that live in Taiwanese homes!

Of course, it is far too dangerous to keep an adult bear at home and so when the cuteness wears off and the family has had quite enough of playing fetch and wrestling with a bear that can be 110-450 lbs, they are sold onto their future homes: for slaughter or for a life of suffering.

It is said, in some circles, that bear paws are one of the best delicacies. In the Hilton hotel in Seoul ‘braised bear paw’ is sold for $492-$562. The price is high not just because of demand but because someone has to go and get the bear. There is usually a waiting period if you want the bear dish. For example, a restaurant in Japan will serve bear paw as an entree for $236 but it will take 10 days! *shudder*

It is known that Korean tourists enjoy taking trips to Thailand to attend banquets. A live bear is the centre of attraction and is killed before the tourists and the gall bladder removed and eaten...

I cannot help but wonder about Koreans and their heartless attitude when it comes to animals. We have all heard the tales of dog eating and of course the thought of Rover being on the Saturday barbecue makes our teeth itch, but it’s the ‘way’ Koreans do things that fascinates me. I do not know if it just because the newly developed Korea, that we know of today, is only 60 years old and so the generational thinking is still in the hardship days of the war. Where people HAD to survive by eating dog meat that was discarded by the affluent Japanese rulers after they killed the dog for their pelts. Or just because that is the way of their culture but they are a group of tough cookies.
Another example is with moon bear farming, my main qualm.

The most desirable asset a moon bear possesses (poor things) are their gall bladders.

As mentioned previously at the Korean’s lavish banquet in Thailand *insert rolling eyes*

I will tell you a short story here as, let’s say, an intermission.

Last week I was teaching 3 middle school Korean boys English. We were talking about folk tales and they had to tell me Korea’s own folk tales. One boy, very painstakingly, told me about the folk tale of the first King of Korea ‘Tan-Gun.’
Hwan-Ung, the son of God, asked to be put on Earth, for he longed to live there. So God sent him to Korea (I would be so angry and demand to be put somewhere a little more exotic, like Hawaii) Once there he met a tiger and a bear who desired to become human. Hwan-Ung told them that if they ate only garlic cloves and mugwort (my student said worm wood and I was baffled for the rest of the lesson) for 100 days and lived in darkness, they would then become humans. The tiger gave up but the bear persisted. She became a human!

Hwan-Ung then married the bear (I know it got weird) and they had a baby together (then it got awkward.) Tan-Gun (the baby) became the first king of Korea!
The bear is the mother of Korea, how ironic.

Intermission over.

A gall bladder’s function is to store bile produced by the liver; when food is consumed the acidic bile is released to help break down the food.
In asia, the gall bladder of a moon bear is used for medicinal purposes. A bear’s gall bladder in South Korea sells for $18 one more time, $18 that is less than a dinner for two or if you are as tight as me, a dinner for three! Other bear parts that are used for traditional medicines are: fat, meat, paws, spinal cord, blood and bones. The gall bladder is the most infamous and is used to treat liver disease, heart disease, hemorrhoids, and to stop people getting a hangover, yep!

The bile is the part of the gall bladder that makes it invaluable.

I urge you to visit www.animalasia.org a non-profit organization set up by a British (yeah, I shamelessly boast my country) woman called Jill Robinson whose life goal is to rescue and rehabilitate moon bears, who have lived their lives, thus far, in a bile farm.

Ah, the infamous bile farms.

Imagine a farm from your childhood picture books and toys, then remove the grass, the air, the food, the water, and replace everything with small, metal cages. That’s it, no more.
Bear’s in these farms can live up to 10 years longer than in the wild. 33 years!
In the farms they are put into inadequate sized cages and kept there for their entire lives. They are starved, and only fed enough to be kept alive, because the less food eaten the more bile is produced and is stored in the gall bladder. Water is a privilege that is given when it is the bear’s turn to give their bile.
The bears are strapped down, de-clawed (sometimes de-pawed) and their teeth ripped out so they cannot attack the ‘farmers.’ A needle is punctured into the stomach, and subsequently into the gall bladder and the bile is then extracted through a tube. The bile is extracted EVERY day and sometimes more than once.

Legal methods allow this permanent hole to be made, while illegal methods include using metal catheters and rubber tubes. The line between legal and illegal is hard to ascertain and it isn’t difficult to imagine how many cross it for convenience. Metal [straight] jackets have been known to be put on the bears and, never removed, to prohibit movement which is very frustrating to the farmer who just doesn’t understand why the bear’s would be wailing in agony!

All this is done without anesthetic or sterilization. It’s just too costly.

The wounds that will never be permitted to heal because the hole is kept open can easily cause:
infections, tumors, peritonitis, disease, and cancer.
Sure glad I don’t take bear bile for my ailments. God only knows what I could get in the process. And yet more than 50% of traditional medicinal shops in China sell bear bile in their products, 100% of which is from farmed bears, living their 33 years in constant fear and pain.

In South Korea, my home for the past 4.5 years, there are 23 bear farms where 'customers' can come and watch the bile 'milking’ process. Just to check on it’s authenticity and of course continue my belief that some Koreans lack much, if any, empathy with animals.

To end, I should address the actual truth about UDCA or Ursodeoxycholic acid, the acid in bear bile.
There is evidence that this bile can treat liver ailments and dissolve gall stones and bear bile does seem to contain the highest quantity; 0-32% per pool of bile. However, there has been known cases of harm caused by taking bear bile since it could contain puss, feces and even rust. There are 54 alternatives found in plants.
As Jill Robinson once said “No one is going to die from a lack of bear bile.”
There are actually more synthetic UCDA alternatives than bear bile in Asia but, it seems, to display affluence then you must consume the bile from a magnificent animal.
Sadly rhino, tiger, and bear parts are viewed as superior to any type of herb or plant based synthetic since humans are much closer in the evolution cycle to a bear than a rhubarb.

Recently, I read an article about South Korea finally making a stand against bear bile farms. A huge sum of money has been invested into research and movement towards ending the practice and this is a huge step. There are now only 10-20 Moon bears in Korea.
This number has always been said to be protected, but in 1983 one of these bears was illegally killed and so the government couldn’t think of another alternative than to auction the gall bladder to the highest bidder ($64,000.)

My eyes are twitching now from looking at my computer so long and I must take a rest. I have read more about moon bears than I spent years playing with Howler and it is all over the net for people to see. Articles, pictures, videos. The Moon bear is on www.redlist.org as vulnerable but I am pretty sure that if their are 10-20 left in Korea ‘vulnerable’ is an understatement.

The mother of Korea should be ashamed to have ever wanted to be a human.

It started with itchy feet

My Korean time is finally drawing to a close. I can hear the sigh of relief from some and the ‘ha, yeah right’ from others.
I have been here for a little over 4 years. I came in August 2007 with a bunch of canadians and that has pretty much been the same way for most of those 4 years.
I have experienced extreme culture shock, hate/love with Korea, falling in love, heartbreak, travel, misery, beyond happiness, a new found intelligence, extreme alcohol consumption and home sickness.
No one can tell another what their time in Korea (or another country) will be like, you really have to step forward and play your own game.

But alas, I will share my experience.

I was 23 years old when I stepped off a plane to live a year in Incheon, South Korea. I am now 28 (and living in a different city, Changwon) so one can imagine how different I have become and, I have become very different. The things that mattered to me then are meaningless now and vice versa.

I was devastated, to say the least, when I first realized that my vegetarian diet wasn’t going to be a smooth ride here. I remember sitting down with my new co teacher at a huge orientation, being given chopsticks (HELP) and what seemed like food scraped from the bottom of the ocean. Seaweed smelled, Kimchi was disgusting, fish still fought for breath and after all that you had to share ?! You had to literally lean over each other to take food from the plethora of side dishes available.
(please bear in mind that I am not being an arrogant westerner, just explaining initial impressions)

I still receive the very same looks of confusion, awkwardness and disgust when I explain that a vegetarian does NOT eat fish or chicken! I am on the verge of becoming a vegan right now but I am holding off until I am in Europe...explaining ‘no eggs’ as well may make me lose my already withering toleration.
Hats off to vegans in Korea.

The first night I went to my apartment (box) was a sad time. I ventured out for food and remember getting completely lost. There is nothing more scary than being lost in a foreign country at night. I found a good samaritan who put me in a taxi, even though the taxi did not want me in there, ( of course I had only got lost...6 steps away from my room which is not a huge fare for the taxi driver) and I found home.
I sat on my floor and cried, a lot.

Working a public school was the easiest part of my life, it was tedious and mind numbing at times but it is still, quite possibly, the easiest job I’ve had and will ever have! All those hours of ‘desk warming’ ( time when you are not teaching you are to spend sitting at your desk) ,together it adds up to months of time, that I wasted when I could have doing wonderful researching makes me want to pull my hair out but alas, regrets are completely pointless.
Instead I discovered...facebook BLAH. The addiction in my life that will drive my partner nuts one day.

After a few days and the first weekend came I met up with people from the orientation and we all tried to work out where each other lived..it was impossible and took a few weeks to get it all organized, after that it was pretty easy. Korea isn’t as scary as you may think; who knew?
From my first year in Korea I developed some of the closest relationships in my life. Those girls know who they are, they are all beautiful in different ways and helped me through that year and the continuing ones after, through email.

Welcome to the savannah

It is 7.20am, Saturday morning, and 4 degrees in South Korea. I have just spent my Friday night doing 2 things.
1) listening to Colin (my boyfriend) calling International schools in Poland ( our next destination)
2) sticking a hot pink felt sticker onto my laptop. It took us about 2 hours of careful planning and precision and after all that I have debated taking it back off.It just doesn’t look quite right !

In 1 week we will leave Korea together. He has lasted 16 months and I, 4.5 years. I am not sure how I have done it and how I haven’t saved an extreme amount of money but, it’s finished. I have changed a lot in these long years. I know more about the negative things of the world and I also know that juicing vegetables is probably the best things for you. I know more about what I want to strive towards and that is working with animals and that also means I know that my time in University was a complete an utter waste of time! BAH
I know that, when in a relationship, screaming about things is pointless and the best way to settle an argument is to stay calm and forgive. I know that I am so over Korean winters!

In this blog I will attempt 2 things.

1. to paint a picture of my life in Korea, how it has shaped me, annoyed me and amused me. And my other travels along this disturbing route they call, life...
2. Disturb all readers with the bad things in the world. I am a vegetarian and so, of course, my main priority is the treatment of animals. It isn’t pretty.

Being from the U.K and falling in love with an American probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do since each country doesn’t seem to want to give the other a visa, but in 1 month we will know our fate or a sniff of it anyway, hopefully someone takes pity on us !

keep fingers and toes crossed, here goes nothing ....