On Friday January 5th I got on a plane and went to Korea for Dave Han’s wedding. He married Jiseon Park, and the ceremony took place in Gangneung Korea, on the East coast. It was very exciting for me for a few reasons: I’ve been friends with the Hans since I was a kid, and it is always lots of fun when I can spend time with their family. I’ve seen Dave a few times at UT when I go there to visit my sister, and was excited to meet his fiancé. I also haven’t seen Greg (the eldest Han brother) in a really long time, and I’m always happy to see Eric. I’ve also never been to Korea before, and one of my good friends from New York was in Seoul visiting her family, so I was really looking forward to seeing her in her native Korea. Finally, I really love Korean food and have been looking forward to eating the real authentic deal for years.
Since Gangneung (compare to Wikipedia’s entry on Gangneung) is about three hours away from Seoul by express bus, it was an all-day affair getting there. The wedding was on Saturday, Dave was looking dapper in his tux and Jiseon was beautiful in her Christian-style wedding dress. Christianity is very popular in Korea, about a quarter of the population is Christian, so it makes an interesting comparison to Japan. The ceremony, was entirely in Korean except for a few bits that the preacher also said in English directly to Dave. The night before, when I just arrived, Eric, Greg, myself, and Jiseon’s brother-in-laws all went out drinking (something that I did an unreasonable amount of in Korea) but Dave Han begged off because he had to study for the wedding. He did in fact have a few lines that he said in Korean. It was actually a very nice ceremony, even though I didn’t understand anything. The choir also sung in Korean, and sounded amazing.
After the wedding everyone went downstairs and we had lunch and a reception. There were not speeches or anything, just lots of very good food. For the reception, Dave and Jiseon changed into traditional Korean outfits. We all sat around and ate for about an hour, and in fact had lots of food left over. Gangneung is right on the coast, so there was a lot of sashimi and fresh seafood. After the
lunch, the “young people” and the newlyweds squeezed into a van and we went to the coast for … four more hours of eating and drinking. I was going to explode. The food was excellent though. The table was just piled high with plates, and lots of very fresh food. There was some octopus sashimi that was so fresh that the autonomous nervous response system was still running, so when you grabbed one of the cut-up tentacles, it would wiggle around. After the post-lunch gorging, we went to Jiseon’s family’s house for more food. I was going to explode.
Back at the house, everyone played a very fun traditional Korean board game called Yut. You play with four sticks that can land either round side up or round side down (so basically four two-sided dice) and the point is to move five pieces around a board before the opposing team can move their pieces around the board. The Wikipedia articles gives an in-depth explanation, so I won’t talk about that. But while our team was down at first (lost the first two games) we came back for a strong win by taking the next three games! We did have to extend to a best-of-seven series though.
The next day I went to Seoul, which again took up the majority of the day for the three hour bus ride, and spent some time in the large COAX shopping mall. My friend Lena showed us around the city, and we also were kept very well fed. It seems like there is a cultural tradition to keeping guests extremely full. Since the food is great though, I really couldn’t complain. I did gain a kilogram over four days in Korea though, which is frightening. It is going to take me ages to work that off while in Japan (which also has great food.) We also did some Karaoke singing in Korea, which is very popular (just like here in Japan, but perhaps even more popular?)
Sadly since I only had four days in Korea, I didn’t really get a chance to explore any temples or museums. I plan to go back sometime when it isn’t so cold, and I have a bit more time to explore. Still, I really enjoyed seeing my friends in Korea, and eating until I was about to explode.
Leave a Reply