Cabbages and radish lined up for sale in Uijeongbu

Kimjang season is here once again -- that time of year when families gather together to make kimchi for the upcoming winter months. I wrote a post about this topic last year, Kimjang - Winter Cabbage in Korea and Alsace, and recommend it for those interested in reading a bit more about the process. My friend from Yangju complained about her arm hurting during our meeting last weekend -- turns out that she had helped her mom and sisters prepare 80 cabbages a few days earlier. One of my coworkers shared similar sentiments after helping her family with a more manageable 20 cabbages.

I heard from a different friend that her mom makes kimchi throughout the year so they don't have to worry about doing a lot of work all at once. She also brought me a container of home-made kimchi for the second year running. Awesome!

One thing I failed to mention in that earlier post is that the earthenware pots used to store kimchi (as well as other foods) are called 'Onggi' in Korean. In fact, the city of Ulsan on the east coast of Korea holds an annual Onggi Expo that I was hoping to attend this year -- though, sadly, it was canceled due to concerns over H1N1. There is also a locally famous kiln site not far from Ulsan that I tried to visit last year before getting lost in a hamlet by Jiha Beach. Maybe I'm just not meant to see onggi being made?

The introduction of the "kimchi fridge" has made storing kimchi much more convenient for people today than in the past - particularly useful for those families living in the upper portions of high-rise apartment buildings - but it wasn't that long ago that one could see the following scenes:

( Images of Onggi (옹기) + Kimjang in America )

Probably the most popular entry on my LiveJournal to date is the one I wrote about school uniforms and how the Korean government banned uniform companies from using celebrity endorsements for promotional purposes. It turns out the ruling put a moratorium on making new advertisements but doesn't have any affect on the use of already-made material -- which means you can still walk around and see Big Bang and the Wonder Girls looking their best in a uniform that looks nothing like the real thing. Imagine my surprise then to come across a school uniform store in Ulsan that actually had one of these 'celebrity uniforms' on display in the shop window.

The uniform in the middle doesn't look out of the ordinary for a Korean public school while the one on the left may or may not be a legitimate outfit. (My initial impression is that the design and cut are used by a local school while the colors have been changed to give it some extra flair. But that's all a guess on my part.) Meanwhile, I have to wonder about the school that would introduce a uniform that features large star patterns splattered across the jacket.

Zahra Dehganabnavi of Iran

Attending the 45th World Archery Championships in Ulsan two weeks ago was a fantastic experience, and I'm definitely glad I woke up early to make the five hour trek out to the east coast. It was my second time visiting the port city and I managed to interact with more people than I had in my previous trip -- chatting with a few of the athletes competing in the championships, encountering a woman from Seoul who was biking around Korea to support children's cancer awareness, and being treated to a deep bow and greeting in Korean after crossing paths with an older woman and her granddaughter in the city center at night.

Early on the second day of the championships I came across two competitors from the Islamic Republic of Iran; one was filling out a form while the other waited nearby. By no means did I want to interrupt anything important, but I did work up the courage to ask the second girl if she had the time for me to take her photo. She agreed, although she seemed rather bemused by the request. Probably understandable, as I doubt she expected to have a (sunburned) white guy walk up to her in the middle of an archery competition in the Republic of Korea asking to take her photo.

In the competition itself Zahra Dehganabnavi went out in the first round after losing 108-97 to Elena Kuznetsova of Belarus. I came across Ms. Dehganabnavi with her teammate Leila Sakhaei later in the day, when both were eagerly watching the progress of a compatriot on the men's team. Any time he shot well they would both jump up and down excitedly, clapping their hands and squeeing with delight. Very cute to watch, and a nice reminder that the cool-and-collected appearance an athlete makes on the field of play isn't necessarily how they always act.

Park Sung-hyun from Daylife Publishers

Back in December of last year I wrote about the Korean city of Ulsan, out on the east coast, focusing on the whaling industry and a couple of the local sights related to it. One other aspect to the city that was brought up is that it is hosting the 45th World Outdoor Archery Championships -- I thought that they weren't starting until mid to late September, but it turns out the championships are going on now and run from 30 August to 9 September. Anyone familiar with the Olympics in general or archery in particular will know that Korea typically fields very strong teams in recurved bow events, and the current standings of this year's event show that the women's team is doing quite well:

( Standings From 3 September, 2009 )

The event is taking place at Ulsan's Munsu International Archery Field (Ulsan Sports Park, 855 Ok-dong, Nam-gu, TEL: +82-52-226-5436~7) located across from the Munsu World Cup Stadium Car Park Cinema. If I'm not mistaken, the bus from Gangnam (고속버스터미날) makes a stop near the World Cup Stadium on its way to the city center. (Not true)

According to the archery championship's tourism page the Munsu International Archery Field was built in 2004 and has a 25,000-pyeong main field capable of holding 240 athletes competing against one another at once. The stands hold 1,000 spectators, though I'm not sure what the attendance figures have been like to date. There are 80 nations participating in this edition of the biannual event and this weekend will see the 1/64 - 1/4 elimination rounds for Compound Individual and Recurve Individual, plus the final match for Recurve & Compound Mixed Team Elimination. The Recurve and Compound Team Finals will take place on Tuesday (8 September) while the Recurve and Compound Individual Final will be held on Wednesday (9 September).

As you can see from some of the scores above, there are times when the difference between places is only a point or two. During the 2008 Archery World Cup in Lausanne, Poland's Justyna Mospinek beat Korea's Park Sung-Hyun in the final by a score of 109 to 107. Assuming I wake up early enough to catch an early morning bus to Ulsan, I'm looking forward to checking out this event ...

Justyna Mospinek from Daylife Publishers

As my earlier update probably suggested, I did make it to Ulsan to catch the first sunrise of the new year -- and not just the first sunrise of 2009 in general, but also the first one visible on the Korean peninsula. It may not mean very much in the greater scheme of things, but it's fun to use that qualifier when discussing my trip. Despite my late start to the day I was able to take advantage of the extremely convenient public transportation here and hopped on an express bus to the East Coast. The trip took roughly 4.5 hours and involved a stop in the western part of Ulsan before we reached the express bus terminal in the center of the city.

Online research before my trip showed that city buses 715 and 1715 both went from Ulsan to the beach and promontory at Ganjeolgot (간절곶), with both located right outside the Ulsan Express Bus Terminal. However, after waiting for roughly 30 minutes - and with the time nearing 11:00 pm - I decided to go with a taxi instead. The fare was a lot more than I had expected (22,000 won) and my driver thought it was acceptable to go 110 km/h in a 70 km/h zone with lots of sharp, winding turns and oncoming traffic, but it did get me there before midnight and was certainly more, euhh, interesting than the express bus earlier in the day. I was later told that the city had run free shuttle buses from Munsu Stadium all that night -- information that was conspicuously absent from the city's official website. Presumably our first stop in Ulsan was near the stadium - located in the western part of the city - although anyone considering the trip next year would do well to ask the bus driver before getting off.

After making it to Ganjeolgot I started walking around to check out the sights and was approached by an elementary-aged girl who asked, in good English, if I could take a picture of her family together. I was more than happy to oblige, which was followed by the girl's father asking if he could take a photo of me with the other members of his family. Oh sure, why not? I saw them again by the food stalls, where the girl asked me if it would be alright for her father to buy me some food. So we snacked on fish cakes and beef broth while trying to hold a conversation in a mix of English and Korean.

Pajeon (파전) and whale meat (고래 고기). // Stuffed squid, which Roboseyo calls Korea's haggis.

Just before the fireworks began at midnight I was asked about my sleeping arrangements for the evening, which was an unplanned part of my trip. I was under the (mistaken) impression that there would be activities for the entire night, but most people packed up to go home once the fireworks finished. I was told that there weren't any open rooms left in the area, but after consulting with his wife the father invited me to spend the night at their house.

After a short drive from the cape we arrived at their home, which turned out to be a wood farmhouse built on the hillside. The only door was the one leading outside and blankets were strung up in all the other doorways for privacy. We stayed up until 2:30 chatting and watching television together - the father, mother, son, daughter, a grandmother, two cousins, and myself - before turning in for the night. The underfloor heating had been going strong while the family was out but we all went to sleep in the clothes we had been wearing outside; everyone slept together on mats and blankets in the main living room. The complete silence that night was incredibly relaxing and unlike anything I've ever experienced before.

Of course, then we woke up at 5:50 in the morning to grab a good spot on the cape for the sunrise ...