Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mithridates]

I used to live in Fukuoka for a year and last weekend was in Pusan for the second time. Something that's always been interesting to me is that the three capitals of Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing are constantly bickering about something petty while Fukuoka, Pusan and Shanghai seem to cooperate quite well with each other. I picked up a bit of the dialect there as well. When I lived in Fukuoka I noticed a lot of the dialect being similar to Korean (Some old ladies in Kyushu say 'nai, nai' instead of 'hai, hai', people say 'ken' instead of 'kara' in Fukuoka and apparently this becomes 'kke', same as Korea in Kitakyushu and so on), and this time I finally got the opportunity to hear the other end of it, though the time was much too short. The most similar word I heard to Japanese was a lady who said "�ø��� �ض�!" - finish it up, which has the word 'shimai', exactly the same as Japanese.
I know for a fact that despite the language difference people in Pusan feel much closer to people in Fukuoka than they do to people in Pyongyang and other parts way up north. Pusan and Fukuoka are also sister cities so I decided to see what kind of cooperation and exchange they carry out.

(my translation)"The two cities have carried out exchanges with their city employees in the fields of city planning, housing, environment, women, and youth. Since October 1997 they have also sent their employees across the channel for long periods of time to work in the other city's government.

The Pusan daily and the West Japan newspaper (?, don't know if this is the correct translation for it) also cooperate in a similar fashion, organizing various events and the like.

I also remember reading an article some time ago where some universities in Pusan, Fukuoka and Shanghai decided to recognize degree-holders from each others universities as the governments of the various countries couldn't seem to get around to doing it and were in the midst of squabbling about something. Sort of reminds me of the time when Quebec and the New England states decided to ignore Bush's turning his back on the Kyoto treaty and signed an agreement among themselves to improve their air quality beyond the federal governments set goal.

Back to Pusan and Fukuoka, I would love to see the two governments deciding to implement a year of language education into each others curriculums. Fukuoka students would get a year of Korean and Pusan students would get a year of Japanese. The first nine months would work on the basics and then the remainder would focus on each other's dialects and their similarities, etc.

Last thought on the subject: if Korea ever became united with the North and people up there (Pyongyang and the like) started working in the government and influencing decision-making and the like I could see the south of Korea feeling quite isolated from the whole thing. That could reinforce their closeness to Kyushu even further.

[mithridates]

24 hours passed and no replies confirms my suspicion that most English-speaking people don't care about Pusan-Fukuoka relations. Ah well... I also see I misspelled something. Time to fix it up.

[Zyzyfer]

I kinda care...but I'm dumb.

[taobenli]

I agree with you about the Pusan-Fukuoka relationship, and have thought about this a bit. Last year I lived in Kagoshima on southern Kyushu, and in the spring went up to Fukuoka and then took the hydrofoil ferry ("The Beetle") to Pusan. The trip took a little over three hours, and was about $200 US. Going through immigration was also just not a big deal...the line was moving along nicely and we didn't get any hassles. (I don't know if it would have been different if we had been teaching English in Korea and trying to take a weekend jaunt to Japan, if immigration is tighter on that side.

Aside from the fact that Pusan was a bit more chaotic tha Fukuoka, I noticed a lot of similarities. And Pusan is the bigger city of the two, so was actually more "cosmopolitan." I really liked Fukuoka, too, though, and would consider living there one day. I don't much care for living in either Tokyo or Seoul, and feel a similar way about China- I have lived in Beijing, but prefer the more relaxed, cosmopolitan Shanghai.

Don't they have plans to build a tunnel between Fukuoka and Pusan? Any plans on extending it to China? Once I have all three languages down, working on that project would be one of my dream jobs...

I was surprised that the Kagoshima accent had a lot of Korean influences...much more ups and downs than the usual monotone Japanese. And if you listened to real, old Kagoshima-ben (dialect) the relationship with Korean was very clear. And no one drinks sake in Kagoshima, it's almost always sochu (soju) at parties....

I would love to direct a study abroad program that took a tour of the "southern cities" of East Asia- Fukuoka, Pusan and Shanghai (although you could get farther south than Shanghai and Fukuoka...maybe a more tropical trip to Hainan island, Okinawa, and Jeju-do or surrounding islands...mmmm).

[seoulmon]

[just because]

It was a good and interesting post, just don't know what to say.

I suppose Shanghai and Busan are shipping posts so there has to be some co-ordination between them.

[mithridates]

taobenli, you sound a lot like me...as for that tunnel, it seems to be in the works but no government has expressed official interest in it so it hasn't started yet. Donga construction here would be in charge of it in Korea along with a Japanese company the name of which I forgot to ask. I coincidentally know quite a few people from that company...a guy who is the husband of a lady who ran a coffee shop at my old hagwon is one of the project directors there and his coworker lived in Libya for seven years while working on their man-made river that will take another 20 years or so to finish.

Is immigration in Pusan a lot nicer? I'm curious about that.

[kangnamdragon]

I would image that those cities which were part of the Baekjae Kingdom to have a more close historical relationship with a Japanese city.

[mithridates]

I once imagined how possible it would be to unify Korea and Japan by making Pusan and Fukuoka the two capitals, joined by a bridge under the sea and with two official languages (the two dialects). Parliament would be convened half the time in one city and half the time in the other. I wouldn't mind being the ruler there - haven't ruled a kingdom for 2068 years now.

[kangnamdragon]

They were united. The Koreans didn't like it very much.

[mithridates]

Yes, that was Tokyo - Seoul style unification. They made a few grave mistakes when administering things here. Baekjae and west Japan used to be one and the same way back though and that why I wondered what the feeling would be towards that.

[Zyzyfer]

[peemil]

I don't know... I didn't read the post.

[mithridates]

The tunnels they are planning to build number three in fact. One for cars, another for trains, and the third is to be an insanely thick fibre optics cable. I think it might have been some 15 metres or so but I can't remember the exact number; when they showed me the diagrams I thought "That's an insanely thick cable!" and that's what became ingrained in my memory.

As for uniting the two, I don't think one country is feasible (drastically different constitutions) but something similar to the EU might be possible. Were something like that to happen I would like to see Pusan and Fukuoka as the centre though, not Tokyo and Seoul.