Korean Job Discussion Forums

[tob55]

My wife was kind enough to read me several of the posting from Koreans about the Mud Festival today.

1. One Korean thought the festival was good, EXCEPT for all those damn foreigners! (My, how can we have an international festival without all those foreigners, hmmm?)

2. Another Korean wrote, the festival is very nice, but why do all the foreigners get all the free stuff and us Koreans get nothing? (Good question)

3. Another Korean wrote, nice festival, but the foreigners are throwing too much trash on the ground, they should treat it like it was their own country. (Maybe they are, but I suppose you have never seen a Korean throwing trash on the ground before.)

4. Another Korean wrote, an excellent festival. However, I really didn't like seeing the foreigners "hitting on the drunk Korean women, trying to get them to the hotel for sex." (I'm married and spent the time with my wife, but I have to say I saw way more Korean men hitting on drunk Korean women with the same plans or worse. My wife and I watched a team of Korean guys making the moves on a couple of Korean chicks and I guarantee you they weren't thinking of a movie and a nice dinner afterwards.)

5. One thoughtful Korean wrote, this festival reminds me of Thailand and not Korea because when I go to Thailand I see many more foreigners than I do in Korea. (You had to go all the way to Thailand to figure this out, and besides who do you expect to see at an International festival geared towards attracting a foreign crowd?)

6. One irritated Korean wrote, good festival but the foreigners make way too much noise. (I vaguely recall the last four years in my little town more times than I can remember, Koreans fighting and carrying outside my apartment windows at all hours of the night while decent people were trying to have a life and sleep. I guess that doesn't count, and I shouldn't get started on that one.)

7. A Korean man said, there is not much going on when the foreigners are not around. Not much service and not much going on. (Guess who likes to have fun when they travel and attend festivals, come on, guess?)

8. One Korean wrote, not as many venues for activities this year. (Not sure, but he might be right. Everything is pretty well confined to a couple of square blocks.)

9. Another Korean wrote, good festival, but too few helpers who actually know what they are doing here this year. (I would have to agree with this point, even though it was my first visit to the festival. Nothing worse than having a bunch of "helpers" standing around picking their noses rather than actually helping.)

10. Finally, the last one we sourced mentioned that the trash situation was way out of hand. (I personally saw this on Sunday morning after one day when there was loads of trash that had not yet been picked up from the night before strewn along the boardwalk area of Daecheon Beach.)

We are going back to take in the last couple of days of the festival. It isn't a bad gig. People are not overly unruly, and all in all I have to say the crowds are decent. There should be an enormous crowd this weekend to close out the festival and I have to say the tenting area isn't bad. We stayed in a low budget hotel the first couple of days, but would have done better to stay in a tent closer to the action.

[orosee]

Thanks for the summary and comments, I had to laugh a few times

[Bibbitybop]

When I go to a busy beach on a non-festival weekend (hardly and foreigner), there is trash after the day on the beach. Where did that come from? Where do Koreans put trash when they walk down the street? Right on the street.

[Ilsanman]

Daechun beach has a reputation of being a pigsty all year round, not just at mud festival time.

That one poster (at least) is a pot calling the kettle black.

[Young FRANKenstein]

i was asked to go with the Chinese exchange students on Thursday, and since they are the only class I have, I figured why not? Then I find out they are going Thursday and coming back Saturday night...Three days with people I don't know and can't communicate with (I no speekee Chinee), and jammed 15 to a room? Pass.

[Frankly Mr Shankly]

And they wonder why they have so few tourists coming here. Maybe an attitude shift towards those who are non-Korean would help.

[endo]

More trash bins would of easily solved the garbage problem.


I had a great time there. While there were plenty of foreign guys hitting on the Korean women (can u blame them? K-girls in bikinis!), tone of Korean guys were doing the same.


There were plenty of American soldiers as well. I recall someone on another thread mentioning this as a reason why they wern't going this year.

This was totally uncalled for in my opinion. All the American soldiers I saw there were cool. No fights or anything.

The people who made the biggests asses of themself were actually English teachers. But that was only two people that I remember. So generally most were well behaved.

[Jeaves]

One of the single most frustrating things when walking around in some places in Korea was the absence of public trash cans. Don't remember seeing a whole lot around the main festival area when I was there last year but then again I was only there for about four hours of one day and mapping out trash cans wasn't exactly priority number one. On the other hand, getting all muddy and smurf-like certainly was o(^^o) (o^^)o

Smurfs!

One thing that I do remember off had was that the only people walking about with the huge oversized plastic bottles of Hite, Cass, OB, etc, were foreigners. Don't remember any real fights, but there was one close call with some people acting a bit on the belligerent side and an ajosshi that decided to tell them off.

[blaseblasphemener]

Tells you all you need to know about how Koreans respect their own country when they choose to save a few bucks by not having nearly adequate garbage cans and by not having trash collection on the beach, before the tides comes in and washes away hundreds of beer cans and soju bottles.

Koreans commenting about littering? Wow, they truly have no shame.

[Jeaves]

I asked one of my friends why there were so few public trash cans in many places and they said something along the lines of the government being afraid of people sticking bombs inside of them. No idea if this has any merit or not. I'd completely buy the answer if I was in Tel Aviv or Baghdad, but don't ever remember hearing of trash can bombings in Seoul or any other part of Korea.

Perhaps she didn't know and was just giving me an answer for the sake of giving an answer? Wouldn't be the first time. Like the time I was in Yongsan looking for Asus laptops and a guy told me that they weren't available for sale in Korea... and then I walked two shops down and there was an Asus dealer...

[southern boy]

[southern boy]

wooops didn't get to read Jeave's post before posting mine!

[Jeaves]

[tob55]

Nice pic Jeaves, I must say, you all look good in blue.

I put the list out because my wife and I actually had a few good laughs as well. I wanted to add the commentary to liven it up a bit, but for the most part it is a fairly accurate translation from what my wife told me people were saying about the festival.

Of course, the comments are representative of only a small portion of the Korean people posting to the Korean side of the Boryeong Mud festival website. I've posted this website in other posts so I hope it isn't offensive to those who see it here again.

http://mudfestival.or.kr/lang/en/index.jsp

I enjoy reading different perceptions of the festival from Koreans who haven't a clue about the fact that foreigners have just as much right to have fun in this country as they do. It was somewhat comical and sad at the same time, because it shows how they truly feel about opening up the racial boundaries in this country.

Coming from a country that happily allows people from other cultures around the world it is occasionally hard to see the views of Koreans. I am married to a wonderful Korean who exemplifies honesty and willingness to accept those who are not of her race. This look at the views of Koreans is not to slam them as a people, but to demonstrate how far they have to come in their closed thinking of the way the world operates. I love it here and wish more of Korea would be open to having other nationals living among them.

This festival is cited as the #1 festival throughout the year among the 360+ festivals taking place across Korea. I have to say I saw more foreign nationals during the first two days of the Mud festival than I have seen in 4 years of life in Korea. It was nice and certainly a change from the norm where I see only a token foreigner at so many other festivals (We have been to over 25 festivals this year because we are trying to do 1 - 2 festivals every weekend this year.)

[seoulsucker]

It's been posted here before, but basically because the government doesn't trust people here to follow a few rules to keep their own city looking good.

Currently, people have to pay to dispose of personal trash by purchasing special bags. Before they put this progam in place, there were lots of bins throughout the city.

The result when the new program kicked in was that people went into their culturally intrinsic subsistence mode and saved a few won by putting trash in other bags and just started dumping them in/on/around the public bins for free.

This became incredibly unsightly, and so the brilliant minds of Korean government came up with this equation; Fewer Bins = Less Trash.

Another beautiful example of Korea, Where Logic Comes to Die...

Oh, and the terrorism thing was pretty much a damage control press release once the complaints started piling in. Instead of telling Koreans to grow up and spend a few won to take care of their own city, they issued that nonsense. The people in charge at the time considered this "win-win" because it shut the people up and left their failed plan intact without too much embarassment.

BTW, all of this comes from a former student at the Korea Development Institute, the leading thinktank in Korea.