ROOTS

  Daejeon, Korea Rep.
Monday, August 11, 2008

made our way down to daejeon about an hour south of seoul via KTX train. went down there with my dad for a family reunion and the one year memorial of my grandfather... it was actually an interesting time of rediscovering my roots.. the "oh" family line. apparently there are three major lines of "oh's" of which i am the second (and smallest or fewest). we visited the neighborhood where my dad grew up as a child; pretty rural -

rural korea

imagine in your head of what an asian countryside would look like, and you've pretty much got a fair picture of where i visited. eunice, my dad and i took a hike into the hills to visit my grandfathers burial site

trekking to the burial site

... learned something new... people of old here are buried standing up. they are embalmed and buried upright along with their spouse. if the spouse died earlier, they just open up the site and add a person. something new every day.

my grandparents burial mound

anyways, when we got to the site, it was over run with weeds and foliage so my dad and i spent the better part of an hour doing some gardening in 95 degree heat and 90 percent humidity. good times... haha... ok. moving on with the story.

tradition states that a dinner/ceremony be held the evening one year after the passing. the dinner is held late at night because the spirit comes when it is darkest and a full dinner is prepared with alcohol, rice and all the fixings. each plate of food is placed in a particular significant position on the table. a ritual is held with all the males in the family involving a series of bowing and a simulation of the spirit consuming parts of the meal.

ceremonial dinner table and bowing

finally the lights are turned off and everyone steps away to allow the spirit to comsume the meal and leave in peace. the ceremony itself is then over and the rest of the night is spend eating, drinking and playing games. fun times! we played a korean game called "go/stop" and i ended up winning $20 off dimes!

most of the time spend in daejeon was with family. we really didn't do anything overly exciting... but we did get to eat dog... yes... DOG... now don't jump to conclusions of animal cruelty and what not. view a dog as any other animal be it cow or chicken. we did not consume cute maltese puppies or loyal st bernards, these are farm raised animals for consumption purposes only. anyways, let me give you a bit of a background on this. first off, in korea, when its hot, you eat hot foods (temperature hot).

dog meat

people here believe that you overcome heat with heat. personally it doesn't make sense as i am sweating profusely all over my food. dog stew falls into this category. furthermore, dog meat is said to be extremely good for you.

prepared dog stew

so people depersonify these animals and eat them. anyways, it was delicious! even eunice, who is a die hard dog lover, rated it as "not bad".