Tag: Busan

Run-up to Mid- Autumn festival in South Korea

 Food prices have gone up by an average of 28% ,
 and a super typhoon on the way.
Sept 3, 2022
By Foong Pek Yee
Ahead of Chuseok coming Saturday, South Koreans are set for a simple celebration.
Soaring food prices saw Chuseok or Mid -Autumn festival sales all time low since the Asian financial crisis 25 years ago.
 The  four-day holiday to thank ancestors for a bountiful harvest is the second biggest festival after Seollah (South Korean lunar new year).
By tradition, many South Koreans from Seoul with a population of about 10 million, will return to their hometown to celebrate Chuseok with their elders.
 But Typhoon Hinnamnor, along with strong winds and heavy rain,  and  is expected to hit the country in the next two days, is a cause for concern.
The Korean Herald reported yesterday that the typhoon  is set to hit the southern part of the country including Jeju Island.
Quoting the state weather agency, it said the typhoon’s trajectory however will only become clearer by tomorrow.
Update Sept 4 evening: Arirang News reported that Typhoon Hinnamnor is due to arrive in South Korea by Tuesday morning (Sept 6), quoting the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters.
 
It also reported on the cancellation of  Monday flights in and out of Busan and  Jeju Island.
Jeju Island, and the Jeolla and Gyeongsang Provinces are put on high alert.
The oncoming typhoon also saw public hiking trails in South Korea closed to the general public  until further notice.
Arirang News reported yesterday that people are spending less for  Chuseok this year, with prices of major food items like vegetables up by almost 28% from a year earlier.
And the price for napa cabbage used to make kimchi has shot up by about 80%.
Sales for must have food items for Chuseok memorial tables also took a plunge.
Arirang News quoted a trader saying the price for dried fish for the memorial tables has went up by 500 won, and traditional sweets that used to cost 5,000 won are now 6,000 won.
Ahead of Chuseok and to ease the burden on the people, Arirang News said the government will release about 4,000 tons of goods in high demand, including cabbage and garlic from its  stockpile.
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Of war and love

By Foong Pek Yee
13 Dec, 2021
LOVE  brought them together,  war tore them apart.
A beautiful love story  cut short by the Korean War.
Lee Jung-Seop, born to a wealthy family in North Korea, and Yamamoto Masako met and fell in love when they were studying art in Tokyo in 1939.
They got married in 1945, the year World War II ended, and she took up the Korean name  Lee Nam-Deok.
The couple were blessed with two sons when the Korean War (1950-53) erupted.
Together with  their sons Tae-Hyun and Tae-Seung who were four and two respectively, they survived the 1951 mass exodus from North Korea to  South Korea where they stayed in Busan and Jeju for a year.
In a bid to save their children from hardship in a war torn country, Nam-Deok and her sons boarded a Tokyo-bound repatriation ship in 1952.
The separation was meant to be a temporary one.
The following year, Jung -Seop managed to make it to Tokyo for a weeklong reunion with his wife and sons.
Upon his return to South Korea, Jung -Seop who struggled to make money to bring his family home succumbed to hardship and poor health.
He died alone in a hospital in Seoul in 1956 at the age of 40.
Fast track to 2002, the South Korean government set up the Lee Jung-Seop Art Gallery in Seogwipo in Jeju and the road leading to the museum is named after the renowned artist.
 Legacy: Visitors learned about Lee Jung -Seop  as they stroll along the street named after him.
Jung-Seop’s life and times, written in English,  is displayed prominently at the gallery
I wished I had read about the Lee family before I visited the museum in the Summer of 2018 to better appreciate his art work which says a lot about love for his family and life in a turbulent era.
Happier times:  The two paintings by Lee Jung -Seop.
Next to the gallery is a small house where the Lee family stayed in a rented room measuring 1.5m by 2.4m for about a year in 1951.
Evolving times: The Lee family stayed briefly  in this house about 70 years ago.
According to The Korean Herald in a report on Jun 6, 2016 – It was in Seogwipo  that Jung -Seop created paintings that portrayed children playing with crabs and fish, in cheerful colours, and that his wife later recalled that it was the happiest time for the family.

A street dedicated to coffee lovers

By Foong Pek Yee
13 Dec, 2021
Jeonpo Cafe Street in Busan, South Korea has 40 cafes and still counting.
It is the place for coffee lovers; from good coffee, ambience and  service to an interesting history behind it.
Stumbled upon the place during my trip to Busan in the Summer of 2019,  I went there a few days  to try out the cafes and has plans to go there again.
After all, my favourite pastime is sitting at a cafe reading or watching the world go by.
I learned  that South Koreans are particular over the  ambience of a cafe, and this is not without reason.
To begin with, coffee was the drink for only the royalty until 1930.
In 1896, Korea’s King Kojong was introduced to coffee in Russia  where he took refuge from invading Japanese.
He fell in love with hot coffee with sugar and brought home his favourite beverage.
From then until 1930,  sipping hot coffee, eating sweet snacks and listening to classical music was only for the royalty.
Coffee beans were available in the market from 1930 but only the rich had access to it.
By 1950, coffeeshops or  Da-Bang started to crop up in town areas.
In 1970, a  company, Dong – Suh, started manufacturing powdered coffee in South Korea, making coffee easily available to the people .
The history of coffee in Korea is proudly displayed at the entrance to Busan Coffee Museum (BCM)  in Jeonpo Cafe Street.
Kim Dong-Kyu – the founder and owner of BCM- has an extraordinary love for anything coffee.
Focus: Dong-Kyu aims to make Busan Coffee Museum the largest of its kind in the world.
Allergic to coffee beans and never tasted coffee before, Dong-Kyu went on to marry Woo Hee Nae, a licenced master Barista.
BCM was set up in 2018 and Dong-Kyu in his early 30s, says he has researched on coffee for a decade by then.
His collection of some 450 exhibits;  from roasters, grinders, coffee makers, coffee beans and literature from all over the world, some dated back a few centuries, makes BCM a one-stop-centre for coffee lovers.
Fascinated : Visitors to Busan Coffee Museum.
Priced collection: An old fashioned coffee grinder.
Your favourite pick :  Coffee beans from around the world.
The Korean Economic Institute of America was reported saying some  two billions cups of coffee are consumed daily worldwide.
Koreans reportedly drink an average of 12.3 cups coffee a week in 2019.
Dong-Kyu –  a professionally trained curator  and landscape engineer-  has plans to turn BCM into the largest of its kind in the world.
He  has another coffee museum in his house in Yangsan, a 30-minute-drive from Jeonpo.
Attention : You can find anything coffee.
Jeonpo cafe Street is certainly an ideal location for BCM.
Jeonpo rose to be among the trendiest spots in Busan in just a decade, with some 40 cafes among its 170 outlets which are mostly eateries and accessory shops.
Prior to that, Jeonpo was like any backstreet with sunset businesses like hardware stores .
Young people moved in to transform the area – renovated the empty stores into chic cafes and eateries, and the rest is history.