"What defines beauty?"

I've posted multiple times (see here and here) about image issues and plastic surgery and how people want to be beautiful by doing all sorts of crazy things to their bodies.

and how messing with your body can be a horrible thing sometimes...

A young film-maker Kelley Katzenmeyer created this interesting look at Korean education. Specifically in this link is discussed what beauty means to Korean high school girls.

I also recently saw this short article/video on CNN about plastic surgery in South Korea and how Asians want the "western look". The article focuses on a young 12 year old girl (Min-kyong) who wants plastic surgery because she considers her eyes to be too small.

She lacks confidence, explains Min-kyong's mother, a problem she hopes will be solved when her pre-teen undergoes plastic surgery, to westernize her eyes.
"If I get the surgery, my eyes will look bigger," explains Min-kyong. Everyone, she says, points out her small eyes. It's why she doesn't think she's a pretty girl. A surgery which cuts a fold into her eyelid to create a double fold will widen her eyes. The effect will also be to give her a slightly more western look.

Her mother, Jang Hyu-hee, says her daughter didn't ask for the surgery.
"I'm having her do it," says Jang, "because I think it'll help her. This is a society where you have to be pretty to get ahead. She's my only daughter." (emphasis, mine)

But surgery doesn't stop at the eyes, nose, cheekbones, and other body parts. It's become more than cosmetic on the exterior. It's become a little too extreme.

A global ideal doesn't stop at the face, says dental surgeon Jung Hak. Dr Jung says he's been fighting a trend. Korean mothers who have been bringing in their toddlers to have the muscle under the tongue that connects it to the bottom of the mouth surgically SNIPPED. (again, emphasis is mine)

The belief, explains Dr Jung, is that it will help a Korean speak English more clearly. People from the Asia Pacific region have difficulty in pronouncing the "L" sound, says Dr Jung. But he calls the surgery, if it's only for pronunciation, misguided, and caused by the hyper-competitive drive in Korea.
"For 10 years, there's been this crazy drive for early English education. Mothers long for their kids to have better English pronunciation," says Dr Jung.

What makes a person beautiful? Are these surgeries worth it in Korea? What do you think? 

Chuncheon

Last week we took a afternoon trip to the city of Chuncheon. The city is located east of Seoul and is the capital of Gangwon province. It is easily accessible by train and bus, about 1.5-2 hours from Seoul.

Thankfully our friend Binah has a friend who was willing to drive us instead. Assah!

We had planned to visit Lake Soyang which was created by daming the Soyang River. It is a huge dam that reminded me of the Hoover Dam (but probably half the size).

We were also in the mood for Chuncheon's most famous dishes. Chuncheon Dalk-galbi (a chicken dish that is either served grilled, or stir-fried with cabbage, rice cake (tteok) and other vegetables). It's one of my favorite dishes in Korea, and I had high expectations. Unfortunately, the restaurant we chose served us basically grilled chicken that we wrapped in lettuce leaf. Not what I'm used to, and not as delicious in my opinion.

The other dish Chuncheon is known for is makguksu. This is a cold soup of buckwheat noodles, similar to naengmyeon. I've had this in Gunpo as well, and I wasn't a huge fan of the noodles. I found them difficult to swallow and was suffering the begining of the flu when I was forced to eat them with teachers. This time around, I actually enjoyed them a little more. I found that the noodles were lighter and easier to swallow this time around. It's still not something I would crave for like dalkgalbi, but it was decent.


After lunch we visited Lake Soyang. You have to ferry across the lake to reach the mountain hiking area popular with tourists. It isn't too far of a hike to the buddhist temple that most people frequent.

The mountainous views are splendid, there are plenty of small restaurants along the way to grab some pajeon (scallion pancake) and makkoli (rice wine) as well. Along the way up, you will pass a beautiful waterfall, and can enjoy the clean mountain air.  If you plan on visiting make sure you note the time the last ferry departs, as the line can get really long. It departs early as well. The last ferry out was listed as 5:30pm, which is realtively early in my opinion. But hey, this isn't Seoul...


We planned on visiting the Jade Garden and forest near the city, but ran out of time as they are not open too late....maybe next time (but there are just too many places to see still). Instead we kicked back with some more makguksu and pajeon for dinner along with a couple bottles of makkoli. All in all, a pretty good day.



Here are some photos I took:

Jeju

I've recently taken a couple of small trips. A few weeks ago I finally visited Jeju-do, a large island off the southern coast, which is commonly referred to as South Koreas "Hawaii".

Jeju has a long history which you can read about here.

The weather wasn't very cooperative, between bouts of rain and fog, I saw some sunshine, and experienced some awesome things. There was so much to see and the tour only covered so much. I can't wait to go back and visit some other things I didn't get to. Tickets are relatively cheap, you can get them for as little as $20 sometimes. Our package was booked late, and we ended up paying almost $300 per person including flight/hotel/tour for 2 days.

You can find your own way for much cheaper in the off season, I'm sure.

The trip was a tour package - all in Korean, so I can't tell you too much about it. I'll let the photos do most of the work:

First stop: A horse show. The performers did riding tricks, and acted out a battle with Mongolia.

 

 

 

 

Next we stopped at a garden and buffet restaurant (which was amazingly good), and had a little time to tour the garden as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also stopped at O'Sulloc, a tea company that specializes in greent tea. We had a brief moment to take a photo of the tea fields and sample some green tea.

 

Jeju is famous for it's oranges (hallabongs) We visited an orange grove where they explained how to tell if an orange is ripe and sweet. Hint: if it feels hard around the diameter of the stem, it's not sweet.

 

 Next we visited the southern coast of the island, and walked along the edge of the ocean and took a short cruise that toured it as well. Too bad it was a little foggy, off the coast, but still beautiful.

 

For dinner, we ate some fish stew(I can't recall the name) but apparently it's pretty famous in Jeju. I thought it was decent.

a

The following day, we took a tour to Eco-Land (I wouldn't recommend this, especially on Parents Day). There were throngs of pushy elderly people, and Eco-Land was boring in general...I think they all just wanted to ride the train around the park.

 

 

After a Chinese cultural performance at Sam Guk Ji land, we headed to a traditional village  (I won't post photos of Sam Guj Ji Land because it was really corny and boring) - besides their mask changing act...which was kind of cool.

The village still has people living there. They survive by selling products like honey, berry juice, and ground horse bone pellets that are supposedly good for your bones and fights osteoporosis. I tried some, but my bones feel the same. ^^

 

 

The highlight of the trip by far was the horseback riding experience. I haven't been on a horse in ages, so this was rather enjoyable. Plus, they are so darn cute.

 

 

 

We had a foal following us around .. she was cute.

 

We were only alloted about one hour to visit Ilchul Land next, which is not enough time. Ilchul Land has a cool cave created from old lava flows, and some beautiful gardens - and even a cool cactus house.

 

 

 

 

Towards the end of the tour we visited Yongduam Rock (Dragons Head Rock), which becomes less and less dragon-esque the longer you stare at it. We stayed at the rock for a while in order to see it at night, which was said to be the best time. Unfortunately the area was overcome by dense fog, and you couldn't see much. But it did look eerie and cool that way.

 

 

 

 Too much fog...

 

 Our last day on Jeju wasn't a happy one. It started off like this near our hotel:

 

yay!

Then we traveled back to the central southern area of the island to see Jungmun Beach, supposedly one of the nicer sights on the island.

We ended up seeing this before having to head back to the airport:

 

Jeju is totally worth going to if you have time to travel around. Again, we do plan to go back in the late summer or early fall. Hopefully we can see a lot more and take our time to enjoy ourselves rather than be hustled around by a tour group.