Creepin...

Adam, who is a relentless photographer (he had already gone out into the hills behind BPU in the morning) gave me a call and politely bullied me into going out to the haunted city I had discovered. Here we crawled in and among the wreckage and took a bunch of photos.

I’m glad Adam called, or I would have sat at home drinking beer, which would have been a waste of a perfectly good Saturday afternoon. Well, except for the part about sitting at home and drinking beer. So we walked over by the river to the fenced off bits. We clambered over this and that, occasionally becoming the object of interest of wandering Koreans who couldn’t figure out what the silly Waeguk were doing, and the one who wanted to invite us to church.

What struck us both, and I’m not sure if you can see it in the photos, since the trashing and junk is so predominant, is that many of the houses were once quite nice. This wasn’t a slum of squatters such as might have been condemned in Seoul in the 60’s and 70’s – these houses were multistory brick ones with substantial rooms, western toilets (in most cases – there was the odd outdoor WC), and yards. This looked like a neighborhood that should have had enough political/economic power to put up a fight, but the place was trashed. I’d love to find someone from the area who could explain what had gone down here. The electricity was still hooked up, but no juice was running through the lines though we spotted evidence that a few people might still be surreptitiously living in some of the flats. Oddly, we didn’t see any rats or cats.

It felt a bit ghoulish to be walking through the tatters of someone’s busted lives. Adam found some kids collection of balls and that hutch I picture here still has its table-settings inside it. Whoever lived there got out so fast that they couldn’t or didn’t take all of their belongings.

We’ll be going back to document whatever it is that goes up here. I need to find a nice high perspective around the place to get a picture. I wonder if I could see this from the tower at BPU?

The whole shooting match is up in a webfile at www.spunangel.com/scraphix/haunted/index.htm

Alla this was so interesting to me that when a guy from the Gwangju Times solicited articles for next month I was all hepped up to go off on some kind of uniformed tangent about Korea destroying its cultural history.

Which, sadly, I know nothing about. ;-)

I was all rushing online to find something to say, to cobble together with these pics and some article I saved from the flight magazine and then realized.. hey, I'm and idiot!

I have an article..

So I am pimping my marketing piece as a 4-5 segment thing to run for the next couple of months.

This wasp picture looks computer generated to me, but it is actually one of the few living things left in the Condemned Zone...

Spooky place..

Walking by Braille?

Here's my boy!

Marketing Abstract

Ugh..

After leaving all my articles locked up in my inacessible office (BPU is closed due to a three-day weekend) I had to kind of fake the rest of my abstract together as today was the deadline for application. This is what I get for dicking around. It isn't what I wanted, but down below is what I sent in. As soon as I hit the "send" button I regretted including the final paragraph - it is trying to do too much and I'm not sure it is as relevant as it could be. Also, the "research" I mention is barely begun so if I'm accepted there will be a shitstorm of emailing and computering to do.....

Oh well...

----------------------------------------------------
International Tourism Opportunities in Korea: Opportunities for Autocatalytic Emergence

This paper will discuss Korea’s increasing tourism deficit in the context of international brand-creation and the particular opportunities that Korea’s current lack of brand gives the nation. The United Nations World Tourism Organization (2006) calculates that in 2003 International tourism accounted for roughly 6 per cent of exported international goods and services (as measured in U.S. Dollars). When focusing exclusively on service exports, this number jumps to an astounding 30 per cent. Korea, unfortunately, has not been able to take advantage of this market.

According to data from the Korea Tourism Organization (2008), Korea’s tourism deficit not only continued to climb as Korea entered 2008, but it topped $10 billion (on an annual basis) in 2007. Korean travelers overseas spend $15.8 billion dollars while foreign visitors to Korea spent a mere $5.7 billion dollars. This problem is not a recent one, although its scope has dramatically increased (As recently as 2004, the deficit was a ‘mere’ $3.8 billion). Worse, Korea’s market share of Asian-Pacific tourism has been dropping. From 1990 to 2005 Korea was one of only three Asian Pacific countries to lose market share (Mongolia, which is statistically nonexistent, and Indonesia were the other states), going from 7.7% of the region to 4%. (UNTWO, 2006)
This problem has not escaped the notice of Korean politicians, policy-makers, and those in the tourist-dependent industries. New Korean President Lee Myung-bak has promised, “We can no longer leave domestic tourism unattended. I will come up with measures to develop the tourism industry into a future growth engine of our economy.” These promises follow on several decades of similar promises that have been without successful issue.

This deficit is the result of a handful of historical and social realities. First, Korea has not forged an international brand. Attempts at branding have been inconsistent at best, frequently having little or no impact on potential tourists. Part of the difficulty in effective branding stems from a deficit in, or perhaps a lack of, appropriate market research. Lacking understanding of what potential tourists desire, Korea is consequently unable to develop campaigns, symbols, slogans, or even advertisements, that appeal to foreigners. The inconsistent nature of Korean branding has left Korea with no ‘image’ in the international community. In comparison to neighboring countries, Korea is an international unknown. Secondarily, Korea has not fully addressed what Gi-Wook Shin (2003) calls its “paradox of globalization.” That is to say it has not fully reconciled its desire to extend itself to the entire globe with its sometimes contending desire to remain homogenous.

Using a theoretical framework borrowed from Gunn (1988), particularly focusing on notions of ‘organic’ and ‘induced’ images of potential tourist destinations, this paper will discuss some aspects of Korea’s historical inability to achieve appropriate international tourism results as well as the startling opportunities that this now leaves for Korea. Some of this discussion will center on original research which indicates that Korea has an undefined international brand and has sometimes misjudged its market’s tastes. This research includes a survey of travel-agencies, analysis of Korea’s position in “image-making” travel publications, and surveys and interviews with Korea-bloggers (that is, people who have extant knowledge of Korea).

With no existing international image, Korea finds itself in a rare position – it is first in line at its own palimpsest. Korea has an opportunity to create the initial conditions for the autocatalytic emergence of its own international tourist brand and success. These opportunities are focused around 8 related initiatives that can be loosely grouped into three categories:

BRANDING
• Branding Korea.
• Staying on focus.
• Involving citizens of targeted countries in developing branded materials.

IMAGE PROPAGATION
• Working with overseas ‘destination makers’ to extend the brand.
• Promoting Cultural Exchange at all levels of culture, not just the academic.
• Focusing on two kinds of tourists – Tour based tourists and ‘seekers’.

DOMESTIC EXPERIENCE
• Creating a comfortable experience for international tourists who do visit Korea.
• Understanding that driving tourism is not just economic but also cultural.

Finally, this paper will briefly analyze other tourist destinations (e.g. Hawaii and Japan) that have been successful at creating linked organic and induced images that now function autocatalytically on the international level. By applying the lessons learned, it should be possible for Korea to reverse its unfortunate trend in balance of tourism.

Around about here is where I live..

The neighborhood here isn't the greatest in the world. Bad, I suppose, but nothing like a ghetto. Korean society is still too cohesive to have ghettos (oh what brave new worlds globalization will bring!). BPU is in the old neighborhood and Korea being what it is, the newer neighborhoods are grander and more sterile. Bee's nests in the sky.

We have an old Ajumma who cruises up the street each day at about 6:30 or so and each day she's on a collection mission of some sort. I haven't quite sussed out how she decides what she is collecting, but some days she is collecting flattened cardboard and on some other days she has a box and a bag of something on her cart and she fills it with ???? something. She's either working pretty late in life, or work has prematurely pushed her to a pretty late state in life, or one-million other possible things that I couldn't possibly understand. I will say, women of her generation (whatever that might be) seem to have a rather staggering amount of widow's humpage (that sounds just terrible, but you know what I mean). It looks like a generation that didn't get enough calcium. Perfectly possible if you think that they came through WWII, the Korean war, and the rather poor patches immediately thereafter.

OTOH, while I was taking that picture of her there on the upper left, a guy came staggering down the street and reminded me a phrase that an old friend, Thea, used to use... "driving by braille." This guy was walking by ping-pong braille.. Soju, it's a hell of a drug! Anyway, I can't tell here from the PC Bang if the swf below works. I hope so, but if not it's a fix for manana (that's Korean for "when I have a hangover")

The Birds, however, are more suspicious

I'm waiting for my man

Hey, white boy, what you doin' uptown?

don't you holler, darlin' don't you bawl and shout

Im feeling good, feeling so fine

I sometimes make light-hearted fun of BPU for the way it teaches things, particularly EFL. But I can proudly say that BPU's character building mission is a profoundly serious (you can turn that around and be just as vacuous - "a seriously profound" one). For evidence I can point to it's determined, steadfast, and obstacle-overcoming commitment to.. CANCELING CLASSES THAT I TEACH!

Woot!

Just like that (the little note in my box saying that a class is cancelled for some kind of 'athletic'* festival) my character is fucking built. Built my droogs, built. And out of the same rotted planks, diseased mortar, and uncertain foundations it was ever built from: Drinking, sleeping in late, and not working until mid-afternoon.

Tomorrow morning's class is cancelled and this means I don't have a class til middle afternoon. Weather permitting it will be a day for a longer walk then yesterday and a fuller exploration of empty town (BTW - for those of you who don't look at the comments, do look at the comments from my previous ghost town post. MAF has an excellent link from a few years ago about an intrepid woman on a motorcycle who photo-journalized the dead areas around Chernobyl).

On other notes, the weather has been freaking spectacular - hottish (upper 70's and lower 80's) and clear... not even any smog to mention. Also, of interest to my mottled self, I learned today that doctors here do laser mole-removals for about 13 bucks, including totally superfluous unknown injection into the buttocks.

WTF? How cheap is that?

It's like, not socialized medicine, but also completely without any threat of a lawsuit. And, it isn't corporatized.

Do we have a model here people?

And then, the OAF got all of her paperwork done and will be arriving here in about 10 days. YAY! My presumption is that the move here will be like it was for me - a lovely way to get out of a crappy job and get that palimpsest scraped clean yet again. I hear rumours she can be allowed at dinner tables with settings! I intend to try this rumour out after I re-try a couple of other things out.

You gotsta have priorities

---

*This is an oxymoron. As I'm sure I've covered elsewhere, BPU students are shockingly un-athletic. I set me this yearly physical goal that I should surpass in the first 4 months here. Then, then, I will buy me a basketball and unleash my ghetto skills on these foos'.

No, really. For this place I would have ghetto skills. And I'd be a decent soccer player as well. I don't get this part of things here. It probably awaits my closer analysis of BPU, college status, and students?

Ghost Town that's the Most Town

Took a 1.5 hour ramble along the fetid creek and came across some Urban Redevelopment sort of near my neighborhood. Whenever you see this kind of fencing you know that something old is being torn down and something new put up. This area is gigantic, probably 6-8 of the gigantic Korean 'blocks' run through with alleyways. I have no idea if the folks who lived here were adequately repaid for their land and homes, but given recent Korean history, I kind of doubt it.

Anyway, the area is still accessible by a few roads, and I was alone inside it except for an ajeoshi who seemed to be glaring at me. Perfectly reasonable as there was no reason for a fat white guy in a purple football jersey and black nylon shorts to be wandering through.
I'd like to get back in there when the sun is coming in at angles.. probably some great shots as well as my inevitable arrest.

On the way back, I spotted this little spring-like thing in a concrete box on the culvert. An odd flash of life in a grey little area.

The other shots down there below are of various ghostscapes in the place.. it might even be cool to go there at night, with a full moon, and do some long exposures.

Might have to get me a tripod.
And a lawyer!

Got up and luck was with me. Even though Changdeokgung Palace is supposed to be closed on Mondays the fact that it is Children's Day means that it will be open. I noticed folks queuing up as turned the corner towards the subway station and quickly altered my quick escape from Seoul plan. Grabbed a cup of coffee from the cafeteria (which mysteriously serves no food - just a small selection of appalling looking candies). I have toured this before, but it was on a Korean tour and in the middle of a freezing winter. In addition, many buildings were closed and I'm hoping that is not the case today. The only bummer so far is that they are out of brochures in English, but my scheme is to get enough pictures to create my own brochure and so this should not be a problem. There are several specific pictures I want (based on memories of the last trip) so I should keep the tour nice and slow ;-)

Today is glorious - dead blue skies and a slight wind cutting the heat. The tour is a half-an-hour away and so far I don't see many waeguk, though I suppose it is foolish to assume that they all plan as incompetently as I do. They might even have known the place was open, and the time the tour begins.

The dinner with Ms. Shin was excellent, in a grill in the Marriot and we chatted for about three and a half hours, even though I never was served my wine. Turns out she feels responsible in some way for the collapse of the "Yi-Saeng" translation and no amount of explanation seemed to convince her that I had fun through the entire process and that just having done it gave me cred at the conferences I was going to. Shin is nicely honest (at least with foreigners) and we talked about the "status" of BPU (which is more or less negative) and she said, "well, you know, I’ve never even heard of that school." I laughed and did my best to explain what BPU was up to (as far as I can tell). Her thought is that after this first year, with the kind of other things I am involved in, that I should try to work as a "visiting lecturer" which is in some way better than the position I have now. I'm not sure how, but Ms. Shin was certainly convinced.

We parted about 9:30 with the promise that when the OAF lands we will come back up to Seoul and eat dinner at Mrs. S's house. She asked me, "do you like Korean food?" and I answered in the strong affirmative (while snickering inside about the OAF's stance on that cuisine – it could be a long night for the OAF!)

Perhaps it's time to totter down to the sidewalk and see if anyone is serving any ick-on-a-stick, since I am pretty hungry. Then try to get that rare shot of the place with no one in front of it.

That latter never happened although I did procure a lovely breakfast of whole-fried potatoes (boiled first for extra-delicious softnosity!), but the tour was outstanding. The guide-woman checked to make sure that no one was Japanese in our tour and then talked trash about them for 80 solid minutes. Highly entertaining.

Got out of the Palace and took a hard right to go to the Buddhist Art Museum. This was rather sparse, maybe 40 items in all. They kind of made up for this by comping me three postcards, but that only kind of made up for the lameness. I suppose I should be happy there was anything in a Buddhist museum – it could have been eternal nothingness and I wouldn’t have had grounds to complain. Then there was the fact that I was the only person in the whole place and so until I noticed, when almost done, that there were no-camera signs in the place, I did take pictures. The most interesting of which were the Golden Buddha and the rowboat mysteriously constructed out of pencils. What in the world this has to do with Buddhism was entirely opaque to me, but then I am far too much of this world.

Then it was into the subway, off to Seoul Station, and onto the train, which according to my computer should have departed a minute ago, but according to my rough physics, is not moving (relative to the earth). I didn't realize that seats were assigned - duh!- but thankfully the confused person whose seat I had taken spoke excellent English and it all got sorted before I had to come to blows with all of Seoul. I'd have taken them. No doubt!

And then home with no incident, and to IMs that I had tragically missed

Reppin' the Warriors!

Did not expect to see this - Checked into the Beewon Guest House in Seoul, snapped on the TV and the "teach English" channel was using Rick Barry (with an amusingly non-Rick Barry graphic) to teach language having to do with arcs and angles..

Laughed,

Then drank more!

Off To Seoul

Some Pics from yestiddy and then off to Seoul, Buddharama, and dinner with Ms. Shin.

Bang a Gong

Little Ninja

Bigger Ninjas

Books for the OAF to drool over

Then, of course, that Korean Tradition:

The Hula-Hoop Contest

Sparklers

Opening Salvo

kapow!

Broken Rock in the Hot Sun ( I Fought....)

After an exhausting 5-day work week it was the start of what may be three consecutive three day weekends.

Dinner with TSR last night - a curry of brilliant provenance and, happily, three bottles of wine between the two of us. Or sadly, when I remember how I felt when I woke up this morning. ;-)


But the trip to the festival was delayed until 1:30 (and then another hour because Adam's kid was cranky) and that helped. The festival lasted until just after 8 and it was hot.. probably near 90 and, as usual, the "field" was sand and dried spit. Still, some very nice cultural acts, an Indian lunch that wasn't within miles of what TSR had prepared the night before, and some very nice chat with Adam, who I rarely see except in passing. His wife drove us and she has perfect English, although she rarely spoke.



The festival ended with an awesome fireworks display. It was set off not 100 metres from us and it blew the sky open. The bonus thing? As I'm goggling like the idiot that you all know I am at the magnesium-based, steel backboned sparklers of my youth (you know, the ones that give third-degree burns on contact?) Adam says, "oh yeah, you can buy fireworks in any major store. Year round."

Now, Koreans may pile up in the thousands to hold candle-light vigils against US beef (Hey, genius, just don't eat it if you don't like it) at the same time that fans and taxi drivers freely take lives all across the country. And that would be a point against..



But, dude... fireworks.. all year. And, really, no crime worth mentioning (which comes up as a draw when measured against the fact that drugs aren't available). And the price of the food...



Korea.. not "sparkling" - and, that evil looking Ralph-Steadmanesque thing on the left is the new fucking OFFICIAL "mascot" (if by mascot you mean that thing that, after getting up from its position as recently sodomized beast is probably going to kill you) of Seoul - but pretty darned cool..



I mean really.. a fucking horned lion... drawn in random circles and inkblots.

Is there anything Korean Marketing can't fail?