University of Ulsan

We are spending this final week in South Korea at the University of Ulsan taking classes mostly about Korean culture and a few field trips, including to an aquarium, whale museum, and an overnight stay at a Buddhist temple. Monday was our first day of classes, first of which was an introduction from the school chair (they're called a School of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering rather than a department since the freshman enrollment is over 50 students). Then we rounded out the morning with an interesting overview of the history of shipbuilding in Korea and a look at what the Korean shipbuilding industry needs to do in the future to maintain its competitive edge.

The afternoon was full of more cultural delights that I have been looking forward to the entire trip. We had a class called "Korean Folk Music" during which we learned to play the Jajinmory, a traditional Korean percussion beat. A group of University of Ulsan (UoU) students awaited our arrival to the classroom, which looked more like a small theater with an unspecified purpose in an engineering building. A series of percussion instruments adorned the side of the stage and we quickly knew this was not going to be the sort of lecture that you could sleep through and for that matter, not much of a lecture at all. The class started off with a demonstration of the Jajinmory beat by the Korean student group given the unfortunate task of teaching an assortment of mostly musically untalented Americans. For an in depth look at the Samulnori, the type of music we were playing, read about it here.

Following the musical demonstration by people who clearly know what they're doing, they handed the instruments over to people who clearly don't... the Americans. We were broken up into four groups and each given a specific instrument and part to learn. The four instruments were as follows: Kwaengwari, Jing, Buk, and Janggu. The Kwaengwari is a gong-esque metal dish that is very useful if ear splitting noise and migranes are your definition of fun. The Jing is also a gong, but it's deeper tone and infrequent use actually makes it less painful and relatively useful for the beat. The Buk carries a deep beat like a typical bass drum and the Janggu is the rhythmic heart and soul of the piece (I may be a bit biased as it's the instrument I tried to tackle). The Janggu requires more coordination than has been bestowed upon most of the naval architecture students present but the challenge didn't stop us from enjoying the activity. On the other hand, sitting Indian style (or would it be Korean style?) on the floor leaning over a drum for a half hour or more challenges my cultural appreciation. I suppose if that's the way you sit at the dinner table every night then your body is already malleable enough to endure the seated position.

The Jajinmory rhythm doesn't look particularly difficult once you figure out what the musical characters written on the board mean, but the beat isn't quite in any one time signature and proves challenging even for the few students who are rhythmically inclined. Somehow, we got a handle of the time signature ADD and as a collective group, at least one person was playing it correctly at any given time. Then they had us turn away from the board on which the Jajinmory was written for a real performance facing the audience of experienced Korean folk musicians. It no longer sounded quite as proficient, but our Korean audience applauded in appreciation of our efforts and still claimed that we sounded good (maybe they messed up the translation of the phrase 'tepid at best' into the word 'good'). Below you can see us actually performing the Jajinmory but I swear it looked and sounded better in person... honestly.

Today, we spent the morning with a lecture about Chung Ju Young, known to many under the name Asan, and recognized globally as the founder of the entire Hyundai family. The lecture not only focused on the founding and growth of the company, but of the entire Korean business culture which is void of much of the skepticism that makes American corporate culture so frustrating. The afternoon, however, proved to be much more exciting with our Taekwondo class.

We showed up at a gymnasium where a box of very non-breathable uniforms awaited us. I will say that these uniforms, which felt like we were canvassing ourselves in Tyvec, were probably not designed with a hairy American's chest in mind because, worn without a shirt, they show off much of the manly goodness that seems not to be bestowed on our Asian counterparts (a fancy way of saying we have chest hair and Koreans don't). We began with stretches which were counted in Korean and then learned some of the basics. I don't have the gift of flexibility required to touch my toes so our UoU liason thought he would give me a hand with some pushes on the back. Effective? Yes. Painful? Also a yes. The martial art came more naturally to others than me but that didn't stop me from enjoying it. After about an hour and a half of Taekwondo training, we watched the group of students teaching us break a lot of pieces of wood. At one point, a blue belt student jumped over 6 people curled over on the ground... well he sort of missed the first time and kicked the first person in line. As if the jump wasn't impressive enough, he kicked through a piece of wood on his way down. Then each of the naval architecture students got to choose their preferred method to break their own slice of wood. The range of methods included kicking, punching, and one bout of headbutting. I was unsure at first about what would break first, the wood or my hand, but after missing once, I broke through the piece of wood with ease. On the whole, the experience was definitely worthwhile and now I'm ready to defend myself with hand to hand combat (not really).

Until next time,

-David Rood