Down and Dirty
(or alternatively, The Very Cruel Weekend)
 
After that disturbing Friday night, I went to the beach on Saturday with Hank and Etsuko. The Boryong Mud Festival is held every July in Daecheon Beach, on the west coast of Korea. For some reason this festival is heavily marketed toward foreigners, and I saw more westerners in one place than I have in nine months. Perhaps because only westerners would be willing to pose with only their bathing suits, covered head to foot in mud? Seriously, Koreans don't wear swimsuits to the beach. We saw a couple men in swim trunks (and a few in tighty Speedo-type things -- ew), but not one woman in a swimsuit. They all go into the waves wearing shorts and shirts. Bizarre. 

Being the tail end of the monsoon season, we were worried that we were going to be rained out, but miracle of miracles, somewhere along the 3-hour bus ride, the rain stopped. I woke up from one of those motion-induced naps and couldn't figure out what was different about the landscape for a moment. Then it hit me -- weak sunlight. No rain. I watched as brilliant green rice paddies rippled in the breeze.
 
We got  into town and had to catch another bus to the beach, and then walked around for quite a while searching for a place to sleep. Because of the festival, places were going for ridiculous amounts -- 100,000 won for a decent room (about USD$85) that in any other town would have gone for half the price. After looking at a tiny closet of a room with a smellerific bathroom in the hall that was going for 50,000 won, we walked outside and were hailed by a fellow across the way. After seeing what he had to offer for 40,000 won, we couldn't believe our luck. Yeah, no central air and a little moldy, but neat and spacious.
 
After dumping off our stuff, we went out for a long walk on the beach. Inspired by kids, we dug a very big hole, which unfortunately wasn't very deep, as the sand kept sliding down. However, we did find some clay about six sinches in. At least, we hope it was clay.  
 
Playing in the sand whetted our appetites, and we went to dinner at one of the dozens of shellfish restaurants in town. (This is the first of the cruel weekend experiences.) You sit down around a metal container topped by a grate-like grill. The employee using tongs, brings over a red-hot charcoal briquette to put under the grill, and a basketful of shellfish to put on top of the grill. The shellfish start bubbling as they are baked alive, and pop open when they've given it up, at which point we gobbled them down.
 
A couple months ago, I went to Sokcho, on the eastern coast, and accidentally ate of a fish that was still moving. I literally cried, I was so shocked. This time, I still felt sorry, especially when a large oyster opened and closed its shell, clearly wondering what the hell was going on, but instead of bursting into tears, I moved the guy into the center of the heat. Better that it die quicker, I reasoned, and my companions agreed with me. 
  
"We should have some soju," Hank suggested, "in case there's parasites in the shellfish." I was skeptical about the efficacy of this cure, but amenable, so we polished off a bottle of soju with the fresh-as-fresh-can-be seafood.
 
After dinner, we went out to the beach again to see the fireworks, which were pleasing, as fireworks always are. Launched from a ship off the coast, they lit up the night sky over the water, scaring a few fishies, I'm sure. The fireworks finished around 11 pm, and energized by the coffee we had after dinner, we wandered around some more, noting the location of the inflatable mud slides and the mud makeup table. We finally ended up at a small amusement park, and watched one ride that was being DJed by a particularly amusing fellow. The ride was a cross between one of those gravity rings that spin you round and round until you're flattened against the sides, and a .... uh, actually, I don't know. Basically, you get into this ring-shaped vessel and are whirled around and bumped up and down, and the point is to hold on and not get tossed into the middle of the ring. I can't describe it, but the DJ was very funny, picking on a couple of people every time as he prompted the machine to rock and jump at their part of the ring.
 
We kind of wanted to ride it, but Etsuko and I were worried about motion sickness, so we went on one of the Swashbuckler rides instead, with the pirate ship that swings back and forth until you're at a 90 degree angle from the ground. I don't know if the woman next to me was taller or if the safety bar just didn't go down very far, but I kept lurching against the safety bar everytime we swung up. Fun! Not. Add to that a touch of nausea, and I was screaming just to have something to do besides hurl. In fact, I screamed so much, I nearly lost my voice yesterday.
 
After the Swashbuckler, Etsuko and I felt a little queasy, so we promptly went to a convenience store and split a bowl of instant ramen three ways. I love that about Korean convenience stores. They have hot water and chopsticks, so you can have your Cup-O-Noodles straightaway, sitting at one of the plastic tables outside in the summer. But ramen isn't just Cup-O-Noodles here; there's a huge variety of instant noodle flavors and kinds of noodles. 
 
A cold shower (there was no hot water) wasn't the best soporific, but we made do and slept in our 40,000-won room with the fan on and a mosquito coil burning.
 
In the morning, we quickly ate a simple bread and milk breakfast outside, and went to go play in the mud. Hank, being more adventurous, was the first to go down the inflatable slide and into the large mud tub. Neither was very muddy -- all the mud was brought to the beach in industrial-size plastic tubs, which makes me wonder just where the famous Boryong mud really is. Anyway, Etsuko and I also finally shed our inhibitions and slid around in the muck as well. 
 
We went to the beach to rinse off, and enjoyed the waves that were at least in part created by the water scooters (for the LIFE of me, I cannot think of the English word, but you know what I mean) going back and forth just beyond the designating swim area. We then -- still dripping wet -- had lunch at a BBQ place, where the owner was at first like, no, you can't come in, and then changed his mind. As long as we stayed in one place, he said, we could come in. Very nice people in Boryong.
 
After lunch we bought some mud products (a mask for Hank's girlfriend in Taiwan, moisturizers for me and Etsuko), and headed back to our digs, where we washed up. Then we got on the bus to Seoul.
 
Very satisfying weekend.
 
Oh, but the cruelty! I forgot. Actually, the second cruel act of the weekend took place today, so technically not part of the weekend, but let's just count it as such, shall we? 
 
So I went to a market called Moran Market this morning with my grandmother. Moran Market is a real country-style open-air market, where you can get clothes, fresh octopus, eels, dried moles (you know, the blind little guys underground), turtles, silkworm larvae, dried frogs, herbs, a dozen kinds of grain, plums, toys, live bunnies/dogs/chipmunks/lizards for pets, and Chinese herbal medicine ingredients, to name a few. But most impressively and memorably, you can select your own chicken, duck or dog to be butchered and taken home.
 
I saw a cage of cats, too, but they're used only for medicinal purposes, according to my grandmother.
 
The live dogs are all kept in large cages, crowded and panting with the heat. They look pretty similar, and much different from the pet dogs and puppies being sold 30 feet away. Somewhat German shepherd-like in appearance (though slightly smaller), they all had dirty blonde fur.
 
The dead dogs are either chopped up or skinned and (I believe) blow-torched -- they looked a little like plucked Peking ducks, lying on top of counters or, unbelievably, on top of the cages of the live dogs. The dead dogs that still were dog-shaped uniformly still had snarls on their faces, teeth bared. I saw one with dried blood coming out of its nose and unseeing eyes. 
 
I wondered out loud to my grandmother how the dogs are killed -- I glimpsed what looked like a jugular cut on one of the corpses, but not the others. She said that they're strung up and then struck on the head. I've read that the fearful rush of adrenaline caused by this method is believed to make the meat tastier, but I've also read that this method isn't used anymore, in favor of more humane (?) electrocution.

I pulled out my camera to take a picture, but a vendor stopped me. "You can't take a picture," he said. "The vendors here will make a huge fuss." I was about to push the point, but my grandmother hustled me along, and I lost the opportunity. I suppose what with Bridgitte Bardot's campaign and general world opinion against the eating of dogs, dog meat vendors tend to be a bit sensitive on that point, and foreigners shooting pictures of the dogs have not been received well, according to this article. There's a lot of issues tied up with eating dog meat, some of them persuasively addressed here.
 
If you know me, you know I hate kids and I love dogs. So what I'm about to tell you might not make much sense, but... I ate dog meat stew today. After seeing those dogs locked up. After seeing the bare, blow-torched carcasses lying on top of the cages. After having had and loved a pet dog as a kid.
 
I admit, it was a bit difficult to swallow the meat while thinking of those dogs in the cages just a few dozen feet away. But there were also ducks and chickens caged up nearby, and I wouldn't have felt so bad about eating them. And just two days ago, I'd waited in anticipation for clams to be boiled alive in their own juices on top of a flame before popping them into my gullet.
 
Point is, it's an arbitrary line, and it was more important to me to try something that's part of Korean culture than to stick to a highly subjective standard. That being said, this is part of Korean culture that's not THAT widespread now -- dog meat stew is mostly eaten in the summer, by older men. In the food tent we ate in today, there were a few older women, mostly with their husbands, but mostly groups of men in their 50s and older. Dog meat stew is believed to be beneficial for sick people -- my own grandmother said that eating it years ago, when she was very, very ill, helped her get better. Plenty of Koreans, particularly young people, have never eating dog meat, and don't intend to.
 
So why did I? Curiosity, for one, and yeah, a little bit of "well, I ate dog meat once!" bravado. I don't think I could eat it again -- I had a hard enough time today, but it was more, I think, due to the possible cruelty done to the dogs in raising or killing them. The meat itself is tender, with no particularly offensive or outstanding taste. It's certainly a taste you could get accustomed to, though.