Tag: South Korea

From the South to South Korea: a drastic change in plans 

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

I’m supposed to be in Nashville right now. But I’m not, and I’m glad. 

A trip down South was planned as a post-France jaunt, 3.5 days, fast, domestic, easy and fun. I’d do it in early March while the weather’s still mild, my final trip till the annual fall journey in October or November, wherever that may be.

I booked a Nashville hotel, some tours and great restaurants, and of course a flight. But very late in the game it struck me that the math wasn’t computing. The damn thing, for hardly four days in a city of modest attractions, was costing just shy what a longer trip abroad would cost. I blanched, then I panicked. What was I doing, numbskull?

This was two weeks ago, this brilliant epiphany I should have seen months ago. Text my brother, I thought and I did. He began firing off trip ideas — Granada and Valencia, Spain, for starters — then, boom, he sent me a swanky hotel bargain in … Seoul, South Korea. My immediate text response: “Oooooo.” A fire was lit.

Despite having in the past mulled Seoul as a destination, it never quite captured my imagination, even though it looks like the sister city — high rises, high tech, sleek and seductive, old and new — of Tokyo, one of my favorite places. 

Quick like, I was on the web, from Chat GPT and Lonely Planet, to TripAdvisor and YouTube, researching and rummaging. And, hell, if Seoul wasn’t completely captivating. Pagodas meet K-Pop, kimchi mingles with Korean BBQ, and temples to godlike emperors and gaudy consumerism abound. I checked mid-April weather (cool to warmish) and saw that it’s also peak cherry blossom season. What!

I’m a capricious creature, incurably impulsive, too often following my gut before my head (see: Nashville). But while this reversal — I booked the Seoul hotel and swapped my Nashville flight credits for Korea credits — is dramatic and sudden, it is not rash.  

Rash implies foolish and reckless. This time I’ve thought it out, lured to a place I’ve never been, based on hours of homework. Frankly, my heart was never fully in Nashville. It was whimsical, poorly reasoned. They may serve soul food there, but they don’t serve Seoul food. Tours are booked — I might be most excited about the “Anthony Bourdain Ultimate Korean BBQ Experience,” and why not? — hotel secured, etc. The flights are a time-sucking monstrosity — 20-some hours — but you gotta roll with it if you’re committed.  

I am at peace. I’m also madly excited.

Don’t eat dogs. Just don’t.

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

I would never eat a dog. This goes without saying, but I’m saying it anyway to broadcast loudly that I would never eat a dog. Or a cat for that matter. But this is about dogs, a bit broached by a new law in South Korea banning the consumption of dogs.

In a brief from today’s newspaper: “Breeding, killing and selling dogs for their meat will be banned in a country where it has fallen out of favor. Hundreds of thousands of the animals were still being bred for human consumption.”

The first sentence fills me with joy, relief and pathos.

The second sentence renders me a clenched fist of disgust, outrage and sorrow.

The story goes on: “A person who butchers dogs for human consumption could face three years in prison or a fine of 30 million South Korean won, or about $23,000 … The breeding and selling of the animals would be punishable by two years in prison or a fine of 20 million won.”

Not nearly as draconian as it should be, but a start. 

While South Korea joins Hong Kong, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan as places prohibiting the trading of dog meat, millions of dogs are still slaughtered for their meat in Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam and other barbaric regions.

I know first-hand about the trade in Vietnam. Some years ago, riding on the back of a ramshackle moto-bike in Hanoi, my makeshift guide decided to swing by an open-air market where cooked dog remains — whole torsos, heads and tails — were displayed. 

He then took me to a “dog restaurant,” where a trio of giggly, visibly drunk male diners beseeched me to join them for some bubbling dog stew (I waved them off). It was nauseating. (Of course later, the guide and I feasted on a cobra that was slaughtered in front of us. This was not a banner day for animal welfare.)

Thank god I saw none of this sort of atrocity, dogs caged like chickens:

The newspaper story has a link to Four Paws, an animal welfare group out of Australia, to which I just recently and coincidentally donated $100 and plan to drop more. I implore all animals lovers to do the same. Look at the site. It will break your heart, hopefully not your bank.