The Mokpo Transit System

Mokponians either buy their own transportation (it should be noted that, like wearing socks with sandals, scooters are socially acceptable in Korea) or simply use the cheap taxi system to get from point A to point B. Consequently the transit system is often an overlooked resource, but consisting of a variety of buses the Mokpo transit system is clean, efficient, and comparable to any counterpart city in North America. Sadly English information about this system is non-existent (and again if you're in Seoul you'll have better luck). Here's what I've figured out.

Routes & Services
Routes are classified into four different lines.

1. Red Lines (간선 – The Main Line) cut through the city along the major streets, going from east to west and back again along the same route.
   
2. Green Lines (도심 순한 – The Gentle City Center Line) circle the city.
3. Yellow Lines (지선 – The Branch Line) cuts through the city like the red lines, but travel along minor streets, resulting in longer routes and less frequent buses.
   
4. Orange Lines (외곽 연계 – The Outside Connection Line) all focus on the outskirts of Mokpo.

The buses themselves are colored accordingly except that the yellow line buses look more orange and the orange line buses are white. The orange line buses are also a higher class of bus, more like city coach than city transit and demand a higher fare.

Schedules
There is a bus guide online but it was last updated in 2005 and it doesn't believe in implementing maps. Some bus routes are non existent while some exiting bus routes are missing. But it creates a useful picture of the system; the transgooglelated version lists some information, like the interval time between buses and the operation times for each bus. On average each bus operates between 6am and 10pm and its frequency can be as quick as every 15 minutes or as slow as every hour; generally the lower the bus number the more frequent the turnover.

Luckily printed guides do exist and there is at least one location in Mokpo where they can be obtained, free of charge. Students may know of other places, but the main map poster-pamphlet is available in 시청 (aka Shi Cheong), Mokpo's city hall, at the 교통행정과 (aka Gyotong Haengeonggwa), the Transportation Administration department (pictured).

The process to get one is very informal: ask for a bus map and one of the office workers will lead you to a box and you can take as many as you want. They're free like like leftover Hallowe'en candy. The guides are written in Korean but the maps are easy to interpret. Scans are available at the bottom of this post.

Terminals
Each bus route has a starting and stopping point and it's important to recognize where these are in your schedule. For some routes that operate in a straight line across the city the terminals are fairly obvious; the bus starts at one terminal, travels until it reaches the other terminal and bounces back again. But other, more circular routes, hide their terminals within their loop so if you're not paying attention you'll end up with your bus pulled over and watching the driver's smoking break pass the half hour mark.

Bus Stops
Everybody in Mokpo (and I guess Korea as well) can't be bothered with streets; each bus stop is named according to its closest landmark. On the bus, a pre-recorded voice will announce the next two bus stops and help you practice your Korean listening skills.

Fares & Passes
As of of this post's date the regular fare (at least the one applicable to English speaking Native Speakers) is ₩1,000 for Red, Green and Yellow Routes and ₩1,400 for Orange bus routes. The seniors, students, and other special cases have a reduced fair.

Bus Passes
There are Bus Passes – translated as Traffic Cards (교통카드) – and in it's popular form resemble key chains more than North American credit card sized passes. As of this post you have a couple options. There actually is a credit card size pass but everyone I spy on seems to choose the more popular circle key chain and the rectangle key chain. All of my students have these key chains and they run in between ₩4,000 and ₩6, 000. I used have one and use it as an actual key chain; the proper Korean way is to use them as cell phone jewelery.

Using the Traffic Card is fairly easy; each bus is equipped with a Traffic Card touch pad right by the driver and you simply touch the traffic card to the key pad. Upon a successful transaction the pad will play a pre-recorded 감사합니다 and the LCD displaying the time will switch to funds remaining. There's a similar pad near the exit but that is uses for transferring.

There’s no concept of unlimited ride; the traffic card is really a debit card (also usable in other supported transactions around town) and nothing similar to a North American bus pass where we would expect to pay for unlimited transportation in special 7 day or 30 day increments. Apart from the convenience an added bonus of using the traffic cards is fare reduction by ₩50. Basically use the card traffic card 20 times and the next ride is free.

Cards can be purchased and re-charged at local book stores, convenience stores, etc. all around Mokpo; look for the 마이비 (aka MYBi) signs. Or to find one closer to you, ask your students or get somebody who can translate to call the Traffic Card Hot Line (1588-8990) for more information.

Transfers
Only the Traffic Cards allow you to transfer from one bus to another. The 30 minute transfer window starts when you swipe the Traffic Card on the exiting Traffic Card pad. The transfer is only valid on a different bus; you can't hop off and hop on. And if you've paid cash you're out of luck.

T-Money
T-Money is Seoul's transportation payment system that's viable for Bus, Subway, and even Taxis trips. Normally the two systems are incompatible but this hasn't been tested or verified. I found a story once that T-Money was trying to buy out MyBi, but that link has expired and any Google search come up empty.

Bus Etiquette
Entering a bus is always done at the front door and exiting is always done out the rear door. Do not try and exit out the front door. Bus drivers will yell at you. And when you want to exit you can press the little buzzer found on the walls and ceiling of the bus. Hyunwoo Sun has some key bus phrase in the case there is a break down in communication:

You can say "내려 주세요(Nae Ryo Joo Say Yo)" to mean "Let me off here, please", or add "죄송합니다(Jae Song Haam Nih Dah)", meaning "I'm sorry" in front of that.

Miscellaneous
Here are some notes that don't quite fit in anywhere else:

• All buses are equipped with a commercial radio and pipe in radio stations for the enjoyment of the passengers. It is the bus driver who is in charge in the in-trip radio entertainment and they do not take requests.
• The bus rides are crowded during rush hours. You will be forced to stand and consequently people will fall into you. Be strong.
• I inherited the booklet guide from the previous native speaker but I have yet to find where they hand those guides out. To cut costs it looks like the city has switched to cheaper, 'pamphlet' printings.

Red Line (간선) Bus Map:

Green Line (도심 순한) Bus Map:

Yellow Line (지선) Bus Map:

Orange Line (외곽 연계) Bus Map:

Mokpo's "Casual Dining" Restaurants

Wikipedia describes Casual Dining Restaurants as

A casual dining restaurant is a restaurant that serves moderately-priced food in a casual atmosphere. Except for buffet-style restaurants, casual dining restaurants typically provide table service. Casual dining comprises a market segment between fast food establishments and fine dining restaurants (see also Fast casual restaurant).

Family-style restaurant is often a synonym for a casual-dining restaurant, particularly used for chains such as Denny's and IHOP that serve mild breakfast-style foods around the clock. A diner is a specific casual-dining restaurant in the United States that emphasize traditional food such as hamburgers and sandwiches.

The closest American Casual Dinning restaurant to Mokpo is a couple of Outback Steakhouses in Gwangju (most of the Mokponians use the one across the street from Starbucks).

I'm not a big fan of casual dinning restaurants. In a snobby kind of way I see them as the awkward puberty stage in your palate's development, where young boys and girls can learn about the wonderful world of asking for menus and tipping waiters. They allow you to graduate from McDonalds with the training wheels of cheese sticks and fried onion rings to something that’s considered good sports bar food. Now there's nothing wrong with sports bar food, it's just that it's food that you get while polishing off a couple pitchers of beer and yelling at TV screens. Unfortuntely, if you're in Korea, it also happens to be the ambassador food of your home country. Sometime that's a dangerous precedent to set:


Mokpo has at least two Korean causal dining restaurant 그랑삐아또 (aka Gerang Piatto) and 베네치아 (aka Beahneahchia), or as the English translations tell us Gran Piatto and Venezia. The fare is imported western food with Korean twists. Such twists include putting shrimp in the spaghetti and spam in the salad bar. Using kimbap as an economic unit, the average price of a single meal hovers between 10 to 15 rolls. Brief surveys of Koreans that I know consider these restaurants 'too expensive for the food portions' and I tend to agree with them. Venezia seems to be the more expensive of the two and the least appealing choice. And the opinions in the foreigner community are mixed. From a couple of e-mails I received I have this:

It has steak and pizza and maybe some other stuff (been a while since we were there) and a salad bar, and I don't recall the rest of the the entrees. We actually didn't think it was worth the money spent or the time we were in line waiting to be seated either (over 30 minutes on a busy Sat. night). The way they do the steak isn't that great either.

And this:

I like the buffet, but the meals were okay-ish. Pretty much I order the cheapest non-meat thing, then eat bread sticks burritos and fruit all night. But yeah, it's nothing special and is rather overpriced.

But on the flip side I have this from Todd Hurst's 2005 post:

The weekend started right - eating grubs. A restaurant called Venezia. It does fusion food. Hearing mixed reviews, I was a little apprehensive but the big red neon sign had been calling my name since November. It’s hard to say no to neon. I managed to convince Laura and May Lynn to meet me and try it out. One of my adult students told me the food was delicious. It was the kind of place a Korean can go for a juicy hamburger steak.

The food was plentiful and delicious. The atmosphere was what I expected. It was done up nicely, a real classy joint.

The salad bar went on for ten miles, they brought free wine (well, they called it ‘wine’) and my spaghetti could drown Genghis Kahn’s army with the amount of cheese it had.

More information can be found on both restaurants' online menus and I can think it's safe to say that, even with my own food bias, these restaurants are actually on par with their western equivalents of casual dinning. The food is Koreanly okay and the prices are a little high. But at least they don't have flare:

Mokpo's Oldest Blog

In the same way that Matt at Gust of Popular Feeling delves into Korea's history I present you with a rare anthropological find from Mokpo's past: the oldest waygooken blog.

I'm welcoming corrections on this but after some searching I'm going to nominate Bulgogi and his Teaching English in a Fishing Town blog dated to the pre-jellomando year of 2002. It's a small sample but it does document a slice of the FIFA World Cup:

Tickets are pretty hard to come by for the world cup. First off only 8% of the stadiums are open to public tickets, the rest are corporate allocations. Thats why for most of the games the best seats are empty, and the stadium only looks half full. there are two ways to get tickets in korea. the first is for international ppl, tourists. you have to apply and they are usually allocated out as part of a package deal. they are also bloody expensive. The other way is for korean residents. You have to apply way in advance, so by the time i got to mokpo, the expats here had already applied, as both korean residents and international visitors. a coupla weeks ago they came through, and of course i didn't have one. then one of the guys had a huge falling out with the girls he was going with, and so he suggested that i use the ticket. if i got in (i might not have because everyone's name is on the ticket) i could pay him the 66,000face value. If i couldn't get in, i wouldn't owe him anything, as he wouldn't have gone anyway. good guy. this was all told to me only last tuesday, so i was stoked that i was going. We took the bus to Kwangju, only 1 1/4 hrs away from Mokpo, good fun, enjoyed the ton of extra expats, including the spanish chicks (i am going to spain soon. the women are phenominal. Everyone remember Andy from Oz Big Brother [the Brazilian dominatrix who got kicked out first]? these chicks looked like that). we watched the world cup games playing before ours (8:30pm, Spain Vs Slovenia, hence the spanish chicks), including the excellent England Vs Sweden (1-1 draw), at this cool dingy pup with abot 100 other expats. there are a sum total of 28 expats in mokpo, 14 of which i hang around, so it was really special. there were no koreans in the pub, including behind the bar (it was an aussie pub), and we loved it.

There's another candidate, one Daniel Roy, dated to April 2001. Unfortunately it's about his wife giving birth to their son in Mokpo while he's in Mongolia. I like this anecdotal proof that Koreans are dicks to people other than waygookens:

Ah, Korea... Sun-duk told me that Hye-young's son was born in Seoul last Thursday, but that his boss (Hye-young's a government employee in a town near Mokpo) wouldn't grant him leave on account of "urgent business". In fact, Hye-young had to work all weekend, and has seen even less of his son than I of mine! I mean, at least I've got a photograph; but the hospital where Soon-joo gave birth doesn't have a web site... Poor Hye-young! Poor us!

산정스포렉스

산정스포렉스 (aka SanJeong Sporex) is a fitness center right in front of 중앙하이츠 (aka JungAng Heights) in Old Mokpo and it's a pretty decent gym even by North American standards. It has the usual fare of treadmills, exercise bikes, weight machines, free weights, and (a real selling point for me) a swimming pool. But it also has the usual fare of Korean accessories:

Loud N-R-G Music
It's a safe stereotype to make that Koreans enjoy cranking up the volume in their daily activities:

The city here is like a giant amusment park without any rides. Lights are flashing at you from every direction, there 101 different pop-and techno-music songs always within earshot, and billboards assault your English skills with strange slogans like "Happy Awesome 100" or "Ace Perfect". It's never really wrong, it just feels so far from being right.

While places like grocery store will probably have the same repeating mix of top 10 k-pop hits, all gyms are regulated to have loud techno music turned up to eleven. I don't know why but SanJeong is no exception.

Televisions
I could really enjoy the TVs if it wasn't for the lack of ear buds. In SanJeong there's a good collection of 20 or so treadmills lined up all along the windows on the second floor and in front of each treadmill is a decent flat screen television. It's even better than other fancy fitness centers since we get our own personal TV. But Korea (and yes I mean the country) doesn't believe in earphones and FM transmitting technology so the only way to hear the TV is to over-crank the volume past the eleven-dialed techno music resulting in the perfect metaphor for Korea's work harder, not smarter mentality.

Vibrators
Foreigners are often confused about certain aspects of Korean society. We think that either they're so backwards that they're stuck in 1950s America or they're so frickin ahead of us that their minds have literally evolved to a point beyond our comprehension. Using vibration machines for exercise is one of these contradictions and SanJeong has both old and new school body vibrators. Now, the academic opinion is that vibrationizing is a just a fad exercise that is coming back for another round but at SanJeong theses machines are right next to the massage machines. So I guess the Korean see the value of a jiggling rubber band tied around your waist as a relaxing Swedish massage chop. Westerners have other ways of recognizing their value:

The Mokpo Mega-Store Review

Despite it's small stature Mokpo is home to three competing big box stores: E-Mart, Lotte Mart and (new this year) Home Plus. All three are what you expect, playing the economies of scale game and and delivering goods that might otherwise be unobtainable at the local market. And by unobtainable I mean foreign goods like Maple Syrup (available at the same, universal price of 12,000).

The usual exercise that helps foreigners understand the big box store here in Korea is to start with the image of Wal-Mart back home and think it better; the make-up of a Korean big box store is typical of the Wal-Mart model, something along the usual mix of grocery, clothing, animal (eating & pet), sporting goods, housewares, and home electronics store under one warehouse roof.

But even though Wal-Mart is painted as an evil soul-sucking, community destroying entity, the foreigners in Mokpo actually appreciate their stores and are thankful for their existence even if they too are probably putting small business out of business. We like them cause they remind us of home -- especially the grocery section. In Korea all grocery sections in the big box stores are more like the grocery stores back home and occupy an entire floor in their respective multi-level buildings.


As a side note, there actually was a Korean Wal-Mart; it started in 1998 but ended up selling all 16 stores to Shinsegae (owner of E-mart) in 2006:

Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) announced Monday that it is withdrawing from the highly competitive South Korean retail market, agreeing to sell its 16 stores to the country's top discount chain.

The world's largest retailer said Shinsegae Co. would buy Wal-Mart Korea for 825 billion won ($882 million), pending approval by South Korean regulators. Wal-Mart said the decision to withdraw is part of its global strategy.

"As we continue to focus our efforts where we can have the greatest impact on our growth strategy, it became increasingly clear that in South Korea's current environment it would be difficult for us to reach the scale we desired," said Mike Duke, vice chairman of Wal-Mart Stores.

...

"They failed to attract customers to the stores," said S.K. Lee, a retail analyst at Hyundai Securities in Seoul, adding that housewives in particular were dissatisfied with food and beverage offerings.

The New York Times, in a similar article describing Wal-Mart international difficulties, gives us this little graphic depicting Wal-Mart's world:

But I digress. As I mentioned before, the big box stores in Korea are like Wal-Mart but better and that includes food. ZenKimchi's video tour of Home Plus illustrates what's on par with mega-store food offerings.

Click To Play

Now ZenKimchi focuses more on the wacky (i.e non-western) aspects of Korean grocery stores (and, trust me, come Chuseok even convenience stores will have Economy Size pre-wrapped gifts of Spam) but for the Mokponian Waygooken, which store is better?

E-Mart
E-mart is located in the center of town and ranks 3rd in my list. On an random sampling it appeared that E-mart offered the cheapest prices but the difference never went higher than a 1,000. Cheap prices should have placed it closer to the top but unforunatly E-mart was the cause of the Great Brown Bread Depression of 2007 in which E-mart management decided that 'whole wheat white bread' was not worth keeping in stock. This caused cartoon sadness ripples throughout the entire foreigner community. And by foreigner community, I mean me.

Lotte Mart
Lotte Mart is located in Peace Park and is more convenient for people living in Hadang and a more expensive taxi-ride for people living anywhere else. Lotte Mart ranks a solid second place. On the same random sampling that determined that E-mart has lower prices it was also made clear that Lotte Mart has more variety than E-mart. As an added bonus the location is right next to Lotte Cinema if eating in movie theaters is you thing. Unfortunately, as of this blog post, it has nothing resembling brown bread.

Home Plus
Home Plus has the luxury of being the last arrival to Mokpo and has taken advantage of E-Mart and Lotte Mart's shortcoming. It's closer to old Mokpo, right off of 3rd Square and awesomely enough right next to my school. It wins 1st place since, in addition to having that 'whole wheat white bread' thing it also carries tortilla shells, dairy-free ice-cream, ginger ale (along with black cherry and orange soda), and waffles. The downside is that yes, prices are more expensive but until people can show me another place that gives me something resembling Mexican food and vegan friendly organic ice-cream waffles, Home Plus shall remain the undisputed leader of Mokpo Mega-Stores.

The Shinan Ship

As I mention during my trip down Museum Road, Mokpo is home to the Shinan Ship, a 14th-century Yuan ship discovered in 1976 just north of Mokpo in Shinan. Surprisingly it's one of the things that really puts Mokpo on the map. Well, at least for Nautical Archeology and Asian Maritime Trade and History nerds; they all stopped by for the 30th anniversary in 2006:

From 17-19 November 2006, approximately 30 scholars including underwater and maritime archaeologists, historians, and ceramics researchers presented cutting-edge studies of artifacts recovered from the Shinan shipwreck and of the Asian maritime trade of the 14th century at the National Maritime Museum of Korea in Mokpo, Korea. The discovery of the Shinan Shipwreck in 1976 greatly stimulated the growth of underwater archaeology in Korea, and after 30 years of research on this site Korean researchers felt it was time for an international discussion of the site and their work on it.

But the more interesting aspect of the Shinan ship is its contribution to China's emerging medieval maritime history:

...two early Chinese shipwrecks and their subsequent archaeological excavation cast new light on early Chinese shipbuilding technology. The two ships noted are a Song Dynasty ship found at Hou Zhu, near Quanzhou in Fujian Province dating from about 1277; and a Yuan Dynasty ship found at Shinan, near Mokpo in South Korea, dating from about 1323. Both ships depart significantly from generally accepted theories of ancient Chinese shipbuilding techniques and the finds raise fundamental questions.

Raising fundamental questions is always exciting but most of the background information about the ship is hidden behind register-required academic journals. Luckily I did find this lengthy snippet, posted on China History Board:

Quanzhou wreck

In 1975, workers dredging a canal on Quanzhou Bay (24?1N, 118?9E) in Fujian Province, China, uncovered the remains of what turned out to be a thirteenth-century ship dating from the end of the Southern Song Dynasty. Over the course of the summer, the remains of the vessel were completely excavated and taken to Quanzhou for conservation and study. The remains of the hull, which has a V-shaped bottom, includes the keel and the remains of thirty strakes, fourteen to port and sixteen to starboard. There were steps for two masts, the placement of which forward and amidships suggests the existence of a third mast in the stern. Although the remaining vessel members are only 24 meters in length by 9 meters wide, interpretation of the finds suggests that the ship originally measured 34.6 meters by 9.82 meters, with a loaded draft of 3 meters. The hull is solidly constructed, with two layers of planking below the waterline, the first eleven strakes from the keel and three above, using a combination of clinker and carvel joinery that Australian archaeologist Jeremy Green has described as "complex rabbeted carvel-clinker."

The first pair of strakes out from the keel is joined by a "rabbeted carvel joint" in which the edge between the strakes is rabbeted with simple lap joints. The second and third strakes are joined by a "rabbeted clinker joint" in which a rabbet is cut in the inside lower edge of the third plank, which is fitted against the uncut upper edge of the second. The third, fourth, and fifth strakes are joined by the rabbeted carvel joint, and the fifth and sixth by the rabbeted clinker joint, and so on. This innermost layer of planking is sheathed by a second layer of strakes that are edge-joined to one another. However, as these are laid directly on top of the inner layer, the third, sixth, ninth, and thirteenth strakes are clinker laid over the second, fifth, eighth, and twelfth, respectively. The third layer of planking is carvel laid from the thirteenth to the seventeenth strakes.

Twelve bulkheads divide the ship into thirteen compartments; there are waterways cut into the base of all but the aftermost and foremost bulkheads, which were watertight. The bulkheads were fastened to the inner layer of planking with iron braces and iron nails, the latter being set and covered with t'ung putty as a preservative. Another interesting find is the placement in the keel of seven coins in the pattern of the constellation of Ursa Minor, and a bronze mirror, both of which were thought to bring the vessel good luck. While the underbody of the hull tapered towards the bow, the upper decks fore and aft were probably trapezoidal.

The cargo reveals that the Quanzhou wreck was originally a "spices and pepper ship" or a "spice junk." The cargo included medicinals and 2,300 kilograms of spicewoods including laka-wood, sandalwood, and black pepper from Java, garu-wood from Cambodia, betel nuts from Indonesia, frankincense from central Arabia, ambergris from Somalia, and tortoiseshell. It is not clear from this manifest that the Quanzhou ship actually sailed as far afield as Africa, but it does attest to the importance of the port of Quanzhou (on mainland China opposite Taiwan), whose merchants began trading with Africa and the Middle East in the sixth century. Comparing Quanzhou with the great Mediterranean entrepot, Marco Polo wrote,

The quantity of pepper imported there is so considerable, that what is carried to Alexandria, to satisfy the demand of the western parts of the world, is trifling in comparison, perhaps no more than the hundredth part. It is indeed impossible to convey an idea of the number of merchants and the accumulation of goods in this place, which is held to be one of the largest ports in the world.

The ship has been dated based on evidence provided by the hoard of 504 coins, the latest of which were struck in 1273, about the time the ship is thought to have sunk. Today the reassembled hull is on display at the Quanzhou Museum of Overseas Communication History.

Green, "Song Dynasty Shipwreck at Quanzhou." Keith & Buys, "New Light on Medieval Chinese Seagoing Ship Construction." Li Guo-Qing, "Archaeological Evidence for the Use of `Chu-Nam'on the Thirteenth-Century Quanzhou Ship." Merwin, "Selections from Wen-wu on the Excavation of a Sung Dynasty Seagoing Vessel

Shinan wreck

In 1975, Ch'oe Hyong-gun recovered a number of encrusted ceramic containers from a ship lying in about 20 meters of water off the coast of Shinan, South Korea (in 35?1N, 126?5E). These containers were positively identified as antiquities, and divers began to loot the site before government authorities put it under the auspices of the Cultural Property Preservation Office. Proper archaeological excavation began in 1976 and continued through 1984, culminating with the salvage and conservation of the ship's hull in a special shoreside facility.

The remains of the hull include 445 ship's timbers and 223 planks of Chinese red fir and Chinese red pine, both of which are native to southern China. The ship is similar to the thirteenth-century Quanzhou wreck, though there are differences in the construction details. In both ships, the bottom of the hull is V-shaped, and the hull planking is joined in a variety of ways. The Shinan wreck yielded the keel, fourteen starboard strakes, and six port strakes. The strakes were laid over one another in a rabbeted clinker construction, with the rabbet being cut out of the inner lower part of the plank. Towards the bow, this changes to a rabbeted carvel construction to give the hull a smooth side. Parts of two mast steps survived (fore and a main) and the interior of the hull is divided by seven bulkheads.

Further study of the site revealed that the wreck was of a Chinese vessel en route from China, possibly Ningpo, towards Japan, when it sank in a storm. The cargo consisted of more than 12,000 pieces of Chinese ceramics, including celadon vases, plates and bowls, stoneware, incense burners, and ching p'ai (bluish white) porcelain pieces from the Yuan dynasty. Among other artifacts related to the cargo were numbered 729 metal objects, 45 stone objects, 20,000 individual Chinese copper coins, 1,017 pieces of red sandalwood measuring between 1 and 3 meters in length, and over 500 other objects, including the crew's personal possessions. Many of the finds were still packed in their shipping containers marked with the year, 1323, towards the end of the Yuan dynasty.

Green & Kim, "Shinan and Wando Sites." Kim & Keith, "Fourteenth-Century Cargo Makes Port at Last."

Now the previously mentioned "significant departure" of "generally accepted theories of ancient Chinese shipbuilding techniques" is a hot topic because of the 1421 Theory, a theory that China was the first country to:

...discovered Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, Antarctica, the northern coast of Greenland, and the Northeast Passage and that the knowledge of these discoveries was subsequently lost because the Mandarin bureaucrats of the Imperial court feared the costs of further voyages would ruin the Chinese economy. According to Menzies, when Zhu Di died in 1424, the new Hongxi Emperor forbade further expeditions and to discourage further voyages the Mandarins hid or destroyed the records of previous exploration.

It's a controversial theory and many critics question the evidence and the manner in which it has been presented to the public. One of the main pillars of the theory, the massive Treasure Ships or Treasure Junks that made the intercontinental journeys, has yet to be verified with physical evidence. So, as a PBS Nova special describes, any vessel now connected to China's medieval Asian maritime trade, just like the Shinan, is worth more in information than its recovered cargo.

Extending the E-2 Visa in Mokpo

I'm in a situation where my work visa will expire before my contract. This isn't anything new and is easily fixed by getting a short term visa extension. With the new E-2 regulations rumours were abound that I would have to jump through more hoops (i.e. HIV tests, etc.) for what amounts to an extra week of legal residency. But contrary to those rumours and the nice summary from What a Korea the E-2 extension process is easy and didn't I need:

...to apply for the Criminal Background Check Record in advance and have the document ready. The time required in receiving a Criminal Background Check Record varies from country to country. The Criminal Record notarized by either the Korean Consulate (Canadian citizens) or the Apostille (all other citizens) needs to have obtained within the past 90 days. Therefore, too early application will not work.

Of course I'm willing to bet Mokpo has that small town factor in full effect -- the same small town factor that lets five on-duty policemen learn ultimate frisbee from a bunch of waygooken on a sunny weekend. Seriously. True story.

Anyway, the process at 광주출입국관리사무소 (aka Gwangju Chulibgukgwanri Samuso), the Gwangju Immigration Office (Mokpo Branch Office) took no more than 15 minutes; I did it by myself and all I needed was my passport, my ARC, a form filled out on the spot, and a printout of my plane e-ticket. They gave me a new stamp in my passport so now I'm good to hang around for the Jeju Ultimate Frisbee Tournament:

Anonymous HIV testing in Mokpo

Via waygook.org the closest anonymous HIV testing in Mokpo is in Gwangju. An interesting note from that thread is that if you are identitifed as HIV positive you will be deported within 2 weeks. That idea is being challeneged as an assault on human right in one court case:

The commission last week submitted its opinion to the Seoul Administrative Court, which will rule on his petition against the order. "The HIV virus is not transmissible through normal contact. Living together with his family members here, the plaintiff can get active and voluntary treatment, meaning that the possibility of HIV infection by him is extremely low," the human rights watchdog said in a statement."Because of the situation in China - where such people are quarantined, and only rudimentary human rights protection exists for HIV patients - deporting him could adversely affect his health and life. By international human rights standards, such an order is excessive."

While the case is so specific to China it could set a precendent, one that may have a disastrous side side effects:

The Korea Federation for HIV/AID Prevention said the deportation could have side effects. "It could drive more foreign HIV positive people to hide their illness fearing deportation,'' its spokesman said

Of course cases like these, as unfortunate as they are, are common throughout the world. The issue of deportation (or at least refusal of entry) based on HIV screening is also common in most countries and Korea is not alone in automatic explusion:

United States of America
In principle, the USA refuses entry to foreign nationals known to be HIV positive. In exceptional cases, a stay of 30 days may be granted (for family visits, medical treatment, business travel or participation in a scientific, health-related conference).
HIV testing or a medical exam are not required. In the visa application form, the applicant has to say if he/she has a “communicable disease of public health significance”. The visa will be denied if this is the case. An applicant who answers “no” despite better knowledge commits an immigration fraud, which leads to immigration prohibition. HIV-positive foreign nationals lose their right to remain in the USA and are expelled if their status becomes known.

Mokpo Medicine

A personal note: I have contradicted a virus. Or maybe a bacterial infection. Or maybe just a normal killer cold transmitted to me by one of my students. In either case something is making me fells sick enough to not go to school, skip out on the eco-gooken oil clean up this weekend, and (the scariest part) to go to the doctor.

Now, it's not that I'm scared of going to the doctor, I'm just not that confident with the language to ensure that I get proper medical attention. I mean let's transfer the hilarity that one has with trying to get a hair cut into trying to get medical care. In which situation can you walk away from "I didn't want that cut off" and well, actually walk away?

Galbijim has a nice post about what to do when sick and even a page for Hospitals with English speaking staff. Lucky enough Mokpo has at least one English speaking doctor: 김건형 (aka Kim Kan Hyan) at the 21세기하나내과 (aka 21 Century Hana Medical Clinic). He's not completely fluent but we managed to talk about me and my symptoms without the need of an interpreter, something that generates so much material for sitcoms:

No one here could speak much English (the doctor knew some words), so the process of getting me prepped for deeper observation was a challenge. They had to get at my hip, so I was told to undo my pants. Makes sense, but in my mind, that meant take them right off. So that's what I did, right there in front of the nurse, who gave a good loud scream and ran into the back room. I had underwear on, but it didn't seem to be enough to calm her down, so I wrapped a towel around myself, shouted some "I'm sorry"s over the curtain, and got back down on the table.

Even though my students tell me it is a hospital, the part where I went to, on the second floor, was really a walk-in clinic. I managed to get Kim Kan Hyan by asking "English Doctor?" to the receptionist and the subsequent service was relatively quick. I received the required shot in the bum, eye drops, and an individually wrapped cocktail of pills from the pharmacy on the first level. I have five pills in my cocktail to be taken three time a day and that looks to be on par with the national average:

The average number of pills prescribed to those with colds in Korea was 4.73, compared to 1.61 for the US, 2.58 for the UK, and 2.2 for Japan. People under 18 in Korea were given an average of 4.56 pills per prescription, compared to 1.64 for the US, 1.77 in Switzerland, and 1.85 in Germany.

전라남도 목포 상업 고등학교

Jeollanam-Do Mokpo Commercial School or Mokpo School of Commerce (전라남도 목포 상업 고등학교) is the former name of Jeonnam Jeil High School but despite the name change it is still active, at least on the Internet, and through events like an alumni concert that included the current school band, guest alumni performers, and other, uniquely high school things.

Korean Orphans

Recently a Dutch diplomat and his wife made headlines when they returned their adoptive Korean daughter:

HONG KONG ― A high-ranking Dutch diplomat and his wife, who adopted a 4-month-old Korean girl in 2000 when he was posted in Korea, gave up the child last year, officials here said.

Now, officials here are looking for someone to take care of the school-age child.

The girl, Jade, is still a Korean citizen because the adoptive parents, whose names were not released, never applied to give her Dutch citizenship, according to an official at the Hong Kong Social Welfare Department.

She doesn’t speak any Korean. She speaks only English and Cantonese, according to people close to her.

And she doesn’t have Hong Kong residency status, either.

The Hong Kong Social Welfare Department, where the Dutch diplomat left Jade in September last year, has had responsibility for her ever since, the official said.

Jade has been in Hong Kong’s foster care system, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.

The paper also reported that the diplomat, who has a senior management role at a European consulate in the city, said “the adoption had gone wrong,” without any further explanation.

“It’s just a very terrible trauma that everyone’s experiencing,” he told the paper. “I don’t have anything to say to the public. It is something we have to live with.”

The diplomat’s wife thought she was infertile when the couple adopted the Korean girl in 2000, the official said. After they moved to Hong Kong, the wife got pregnant. They now have two children of their own.

The story has fueled anger among the Korean immigrant community in Hong Kong, which criticized the diplomat couple for “irre-sponsibly renouncing their custody of a child who’d been with them more than six years after delaying the naturalization process in Netherlands for years.”

A couple of potential families in Hong Kong showed interest in the adoption, but are struggling to complete the adoption process because of the strict legal qualifications here, Koreans familiar with the incident said.

The Korean Consulate in Hong Kong said it is aware of the situation.

“We could send her back to a Korean orphanage, but she’s been away from Korea for so long, and it would be very difficult for her to re-adapt in Korea,” said Jeong Byeong-bae, a consul of the South Korean consulate in Hong Kong. “So it is for the best under the circumstances to find a Korean family in Hong Kong.”

I understand the anger coming from everybody, but since the various takes are giving me flashbacks of another child in limbo I'm more curious about the parent's decision rather than simplynjoining the bandwagon of eople calling for their heads. After some researching on why people return their adoptive chilren I found this story where the adoptive child turned out to be harmful to the younger children:

The agency didn't tell us about his mental health issues, and they knew he had them. It took us 4 years to figure out that he had Reactive Attachment Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, Fetal Alcohol Effects, and Mood Disorders. By the time we educated ourselves and recognized what was going on, it was too late. Our son was raging in our home everyday and had tried to kill his little sister twice in front of me. This started many trips to the ER and to psyche hospitals. Two in one month.

I found some other takes on the Dutch story but the additional information is minimal. One give the girl's age as 8, the outpouring of support from the Hong Kong Korean community and even this bit of trivia:

In Korea, parents cannot return adopted children, but no such law exists in Hong Kong.

At first read it seems like a laughable sentences. I mean, it poses the questions: Is this incident so crazy that the Hong Kong courts haven't had any history to create a precedent or did Korea experience a time where Korean children were being returned to the orphanages. The outpouring of support from the Korean community should be a good sign about how Koreans feel about adoption but then I find this in a post by the happy couple in Kimchi and Cornbread:

The wrong is this: single mothers in Korea are forced by societal norms to either give up their baby for adoption or have an abortion (Korea has one of the highest abortions in the world). This equates to 6 children per day being put up for adoption, despite the country's low birth rate (the 4th lowest in the world.)

But Koreans do not and will not (for the most part) adopt other Koreans. Bloodlines are important in Korea. So important that they would never adopt another child not related to their family. Especially if it were a boy, who would one day receive his parents' inheritance.

It doesn't shed light on the discrepency in law, ut it's interesting that the attitude of Korea Koreans kind of contradicts the offers of help from the Hong Kong Koreans. Then again, the cynical side of me see the Hong Kong incident as something more to do with uniting against the white devil motif rather than show of support for a girl who has been tainted in the eyes of Koreans.

In the same Google search I also I find that it is possibly illegal to volunteer at an orphanage thanks to an interpreation highlighted by last year's Babopalooza Incident. In fact volunteering for anything isn't as easy for a foreigner:

Han Heek-young, who works at the information desk at the Seoul Help Center for Foreigners, had also never heard of non-Koreans getting in trouble for volunteering.

"I’ve never even before thought that it could be illegal," she said.

When she called the Immigration Bureau on Friday, officials would not provide her information if she would not tell the nationality of the inquirer. She said officials said the question was important because foreigners for these purposes are divided into two groups: Chinese and everybody else.

Officials said foreigners were less likely to have problems if their volunteer work was unrelated to their paid work, Han said. For example, English teachers volunteering in kindergartens are likely to be suspected of taking money under the table for English instruction.

When Han spoke to immigration officials on Monday, they told her that foreigners should have no trouble volunteering, as long as no money is exchanged, even to recoup costs.

It's somewhat related (if only by the fact that it matches the key words of 'foreigner adoption korea') but it's good to know for the Mokpo foreigners who do help out at the local orphanages.

Update: The story has evolved the past week; Monsters & Critics has this account from the maid:

The woman, who has requested not to be named, worked for the Dutch vice-consul Raymond Poeteray and his wife Meta in Hong Kong and when the family was based in Jakarta in 2002.

She said she thought it strange that the girl, now eight, was so quiet.

'They did not treat her the same way as the son. There was not the love there,' the maid told The Post.

And this analysis:

However, the couple issued a declaration which was published in the Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf Thursday that rejected the accusations published in the Hong Kong media.

The Poeterays said their eight-year-old daughter Jade, adopted in 2000 as a four-month-old, was suffering from what they called 'commitment anxiety' and that they were advised by the Chinese Social Services to 'place her in foster care temporarily.'

They wrote that 'contrary to what has been written in the media, we do not want to get rid of our daughter. We never even considered giving her up.'

텍사스문

텍사스문 (aka Texas Moon) is a themed bar in Mokpo's downtown. Normally I'd post the Naver Local entry but Naver only recognises the one in Seoul as the 올드뮤직 재즈카페 Texas Moon (aka old jazz music cafe Texas Moon).

There are some photos but I can't tell if it's the Seoul branch, the Mokpo branch or some other city. Regardless it's an officially sanctioned foreigner hangout thanks to the awe and wonder surrounding its famous Magic Sparkle Drink.

Mokpo's Novelty Plane

It's been well documented that I'm a map nerd. When I first got to Mokpo I immediately set about using Google's Satelitte photos to compensate for the touristy map that I was given:

View Larger Map
Thanks to great Korean Internet Controversy I took the effort to learn some Korean (via my language tools) and I've managed to move away from my Google maps and fully embrace Naver maps. But Graham over The Scroll of Bifurcating Considerations has found what I thought was too nerdy to talk about: The Novelty Plane. While it's old news to me (Google maps tells me that I found it June 2nd), Graham goes for gold with his analysis:

These measurements put it WELL within the realm of a normal jet airliner. The length is consistent with the larger models of the Boeing 767, as is the fuselage. What I haven't been able to match to my liking is the wingspan; 134ft for a 201ft long plane is a bit short. That gives this a wing:length ratio of about 2/3 (.0667). Most jet airliners I looked at have a ratio closer to .8333. So, the mystery lives on. What jet has these specifications? and more importantly, why is it perched on top of a building?

P Club

P Club is drinking gambling pool lounge in Mokpo that has been adopted by most foreigners as an official hang out. It recently hosted the Mokpo Halloween party but it's internet claim to fame is being the host of Fat Hitler:

B & P 헤어클럽

If you do spend a year in Mokpo you'll have to plan for your hair. Sooner or later you'll have to get a hair cut and since most people like me are either utterly incompetent with the Korean language or have completely foreign hair, the prospect is downright scary scary.

Fortunately there are enough foreigners in Korea to pool their collective knowledge and provide hope. One of the first things that you learn is the barber pole system. One barber pole means barber. Two barber poles means naked barber.

A doubled barber's pole with red, white, and blue is a common sign that a building contains a brothel or a massage parlor that offers sexual services.

In Mokpo, some of the foreigners go to B & P Hair Club (B & P 헤어클럽 aka B & P heeo keulleop), a single pole, unisex, and multi age salon. From the foreigner collective I learned that that the salon is run (maybe owned or managed) by a pair of fairly stylish sisters and one of them remembers enough English from high school to meet you half way in your communication adventure. But of course it always help to come prepared with a couple of reference photos or whatever.

In the end I managed to get a simple cut (which includes a cool shampoo scalp massage) for 7,000₩. It's an average price around here and seems like it's on par with with the rest of the country. The staff was friendly, the atmosphere was nice, and there were enough people to walking in and out and just hanging around to create a real Barbershop atmosphere. Well, a Korean version at least.

비금도

비금도 (Bigeumdo) is a fairly large vacation island that lies just outside of Mokpo in Sinan county's archipelago. Even though it is largely ignored by Mokponians who prefer Oedaldo, the island is arguably better thanks to its two large sand beaches 원평해수욕장 (Wonpyeong Beach) and 하누넘해수욕장 (Hanuneom Beach); the latter is used as a shooting location for the television show Spring Waltz while the former has a...

...falling sunset beyond the horizon is so beautiful that it makes you feel like fantasy melting into the sea.

A 50 minute high-speed ferry is available from Mokpo's Yeogaekseon ferry terminal to Bigeum's Sudae-ri (Sudae Wharf) and is operated by Namhae Express. If you can handle Korean credit card transactions you can also buy tickets online via Seomticket; if you can't, there's always the ticket counter inside the terminal. Regardless, a Mokpo to Bigemdo ticket will cost you 14900₩ and the return ticket (purchased locally at Sudae-ri) is 13350₩.

Mokpo to Bigeumdo	Bigeumdo to Mokpo
07:50	11:50
13:20	17:30

There is an alternative ferry that's cheaper at 6300₩, stops at Gasan-ri (the other wharf), but takes over 2 hours.

The island is large enough to have it's own fleet of taxis, bank branches and seaside resorts. On the Internet, the island is popular enough to have a slighted outdated official page in English, an entry on Tour2Korea, a nice map and, of course, the various blog entries and the photos.

The House Filled with Hapiness

행복이 가득한 집 (The House Filled with Happiness or more commonly known as the Happy House) is a 1930's Japanese colonial house transformed into a semi-luxurious restaurant cafe.

Information on the Internet is difficult to come by and so far all I've found is this review that talks about both the cafe and the neighbouring Mokpo Modern History Museum. The review is entirely in Korean, but it does have this useful line of information:

행복이 가득한 집 061-247-5887, 11:00~24:00, 차 5000원대, 식사 1만원대

Which roughly translates out to this:

Phone: 061-247-5887
Hours: 11:00 to 24:00
Prices: Tea 5000W & Meal 10000W

The food is an average mixed of western and Korean dishes, but most of the foreigners in Mokpo really dig the place for its cafe decor and its five dollar shakes.

Mokpo Movie Theaters

Searching the Internet for movies in Mokpo will probably lead you to Mokpo Harbor, Gangster’s Paradise, the only film in the world to actually feature (let alone mention) Mokpo. However, a quick search of 목포시네마 (Mokpo Cinema) on Naver gives the following collection of theaters:

Movie Theaters	Street Address
CGV Mokpo	sang-dong 892
Joongang Cinema	namgyo-dong 70-1
Lotte Cinema	sang-dong 1129-6
Mega Line Mokpo	sang-dong 980-1
Primus Cinema	sang-dong 860-1

CGV and Lotte are your best bet for English movies, even though they tend to be of the blockbluster variety that can afford an opening half way around the world.

Wikimapia's Mokpo

Similar to Flickr's Memory Maps, Wikimapia is a online collaboration that pinpoints locations on Google's Satellite Images and, funny enough, it has an entry for Mokpo.

As previously posted there is no perfect mapping system for the Google Generation in Mokpo. Wikimapia uses Google's outdated satellite images that still hide a quarter of Mokpo under clouds or low resolution images. But the genius comes in the collaboration and completely replaces my own private endeavor albeit without the nice Google icons and whatnot.

More information on Wikimapia is available via the Wikimapia Blog, Matt's Wikimapia Blog and (as always) Wikipedia.

외달도

외달도 (Oedaldo) is Mokpo's tourist island and is often referred to as Love island. It has two beaches, a resort boasting a salt water pool and an indigenous farming community; enough to warrant its own tourist entry and of course some blog posts, (and some with their own spellings).

The ferry schedule is posted (along with other tours) on the Tour Mokpo site and is fairly straight forward if you can read Korean. The translated version clears it up a bit, giving us the following table:

No.	Mokpo to Island of Love (Oedaldo)	Island of Love (Oedaldo) to Mokpo	Remarks
1	(06:50)	(07:25)	Rising
2	08:30	09:20	Rising
3	09:30	10:20	Provisions
4	10:30	11:20	Rising
5	11:30	12:20	Provisions
6	12:30	13:20	Rising
7	13:30	14:20	Provisions
8	14:30	15:20	Rising
9	15:30	16:20	Provisions
10	16:30	17:20	Rising
11	17:30	18:20	Provisions

There are two notes at the bottom of the table:

• The 1 ferry runs only in season (when the resort swimming pool is open).
  
• Rising and Provisions are the companies operating the ferry during the run.

Tour2Korean provides some more information with the Mokpo Ferry Terminal phone number:

☏ Tel : 061-240-6060~1