Camping Korean Style!

This blog post could also be called Sapshido 2, since we went to this island last year for a service trip, but this year we went early to go camping.  This was the first time we went to an actual campground in Korea, before we just found a nice place on the river.  This time we had a site, a shower, a bathroom, a small store that sold ice cream and bottled water, and neighbors.  This is all very normal things when you go camping.  So, you are wondering, what is different about Korean camping vs US camping?

Well, it seems Koreans view camping differently than I am used to.  (Disclaimer: Please remember that all this is compared to how I (Margaret) have camped growing up.  This will affect some of the opinions about why you should camp, but I do at least have extensive experience with various styles of campgrounds.)
Anyways, Koreans like to sit outside and cook lots of food on their nice gas grills that they brought, then they sit at the table they brought, sit on the benches that they brought, and eat.  Then they lay back in their open tents and nap while the kids run around.  The campground was next to a nice beach, so between the large meals and the snacks, the kids went to the beach and the men went fishing or clam digging.  The wives, between cooking and cleaning up, would just nap.

What I have failed to mention is the most obvious strange thing about Korean camping.  The reason I have such detailed information on how Koreans camp, is because there is no space between sites.  Tents are set right next to each other.  You also have to bring everything because your site is a 12ft x 12ft square of ground.  That's it.  The one we were at didn't even have sites mapped out, you just had to squeeze it in where you could.

Each tent is on a separate site.  You can't see our tent, but its a lot smaller than the tents you see.

Camping was a lot of fun.  We spent the morning peering into tidal pools and finding anemones, and spent the afternoon hiking all the way around the island (it took about 4 hours).  After our busy day, we went swimming at the beach.

Now, the other difference between US and Korean camping is the idea that there is only one way to camp.  (The idea that there is a "best" way to do everything pervades society here and explains a lot about Korea generally.)  We stood out in many many ways, and this caused concern for some, and we got lots of strange looks.  It didn't help we had the site closest to the edge that everyone had to walk by to go to the store, cars, shower, bathroom, and beach.  Every time people would walk by, especially when we were cooking, we would get long looks out of the corner of people's eyes. 

One evening it started raining, and all the men grabbed their shovels and dug trenches.  We are assuming that they get all their camping skills from the military.  It didn't matter to them that we were camping on sand and the rain didn't even leave a puddle, much less be affected by trenches.  We had trenches dug for us, since we obviously had no camping experience or adequate camping equipment and were basically considered to be helpless foreigners.  After the rain stopped, we had a concerned guy come up to our tent who was extremely concerned that our trenches were too shallow and our tent too small.  He was also worried that we didn't have a lantern hanging up somewhere.  We tried to convey that we were fine, everything in our tent was dry, and we didn't have a lot of stuff because we carried everything there on our backs.  Seeing that we put our backpack on the bare sand, he gave us a lot of giant plastic bags to put our stuff in and our bags on.  He even put our bag of plastic bags in a bag.  It was all very nice, but it conveys how concerned they were that we did not bring a huge tent with tables, benches, and the kitchen sink.

So in summary, Korean camping is car camping with a lot of food and relaxing, but not in seclusion.  This may be similar to what other people do (though how you can go camping and not explore stuff is beyond me), but the two major differences is that the sites are closely packed and anyone who does things differently is considered very strange.

Our tiny tent with our tiny stove and our tiny "table."

Grading and Parking Garages

Even though we have lived in Korea for almost 2 years now, there are still little things that surprise me.  For example, the concept of tissue paper is foreign here.  Whenever I asked for it they started heading to the Kleenex. 

Two other little things have caught my attention.  Riley got his papers back from one of his classes, and they were covered with 0s.  It looked like he had gotten no points at all for most of his answers.  This was extra strange since he got 100 or greater on all of them.  We found out the a 0 is the same as a check mark here.  Xs still mean the same things, but triangles mean you get partial credit.

The other thing I saw recently is the amazing parking garages!  I don't know if this is a city thing everywhere, but the signs in the parking garage I went into were better than any I had ever been to before.  As you are driving around, each aisle has a little light up sign that tells you if there are any free spaces down that way.  If there is a free space and you turn to go down the aisle, you just look for the green light on the ceiling that indicates there isn't a car below it.  Once you park, the light turns red, and the aisle number goes down one.  This solves the drive around in circle problem common to most parking garages!  Alas, they have not come up with an easy way to remember where you parked your car.