Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Hans Blix]

the following is quoted in Winchester's 'Korea - A walk through the land of miracles':

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The Corean process of heating the houses is somewhat original. It is a process used in a great part of Eastern Asia - and, to my mind, it is the only thoroughly barbaric custom which the Corean natives have retained. The flooring of the rooms consists of slabs of stone, under which is a large oven of the same extent as the room overhead, which oven, during the winter, is filled with a burning wood fire, which is kept up day and night. What happens is generally this: the coolie whose duty it is to look after this oven, to avoid trouble fills it with wood and dried leaves up to the very neck, and sets these on fire and then goes to sleep; by which time the stone slabs get heated to such an extent that, sometimes, notwithstanding the thick oil-paper which covers them, one cannot stand on them with bare feet....

The Corean custom is to sleep on the ground in the padded clothes, using a wooden block as a pillow. The better classes, however, use also small, thin, mattresses, covered with silk, which they spread out at night, and keep rolled up in the daytime. As the people sleep on the ground, it often happens that the floor gets so hot as to almost roast them, but the easy-going inhabitant of Cho-sen does not seem to object to this roasting process - on the contrary, he seems almost to revel in it, and when well broiled on one side he will turn over to the other, so as to level matters. While admiring the Coreans much for thes proceeding, I found it extremely inconvenient to imitate them. I recollect well the first experience which I had of the use of the 'kan', which is the native name of the oven, On that occasion it was 'made so hot' for me, that I began to think I had made a mistake, and that I had entered a crematory oven instead of a sleeping room. Putting my fist through one of the paper windows to get a little air only made matters ten times worse, for half of my body continued to undergo the roasting process, while the other half was getting unpleasantly frozen. To this day it has always been a marvel to me, and an unexplainable fact, that those who use the 'kan' do not 'wake up - dead' in the morning!

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it's by Henry Savage Landor - who also wrote the catchy-titled 'Alone with the Hairy Ainu' - and i'd be interested to know if anyone's managed to get a paper copy of this. i say 'paper' since it's available on the internet for free, but reading a screen or printing it off ain't really my cup of tea.

anyone else wanna recommend some other korean travel literature?

[cruisemonkey]

I accidentally closed my window with the fan running... Hell isn't that bad.

[uberscheisse]

i slept in a jimjilbang once.

i woke up with a sunburn on my arse.

not much has changed since this writing.