KOREA DAY ONE

I had been asked to teach and preach in Korea by Reformed Theological Seminary of Seoul, with whom Knox enjoys a partnership.  I was to go to Korea for eight or nine days and teach a class, speak to local churches, and meet the professors from our sister school.  We arrived in Korea on Saturday night after leaving W. Palm at seven A.M. on Friday.  The flight from Atlanta to Inchon airport (about an hour from Seoul) was fourteen hours straight.  That is the longest flight that I have ever taken.

Upon arriving, before Charity, Josiah, and I could get out of the airport a passport was misplaced by one of us (who shall remain nameless).  By the time we realized it, we were a train ride away from the area where the passport had been laid down on a bench a forgotten (not that hard to do when you have been on the road for over 25 hours).  A Korean policeman, complete with gun, was not happy to have three Americans standing around looking through their luggage for a lost passport.  The passport had been left lying on a bench at the last stop of the train.  Unfortunately, we were not allowed to get back on the train.  After some serious attempts to communicate, and English speaking helper was called, others were sent to the bench and the passport was given back to us.  A breath of a sigh of relief and a reminder that the passport had to be guided more carefully than money.

We were picked up by my friend and translator, Professor Kim from RTS Korea where I would be teaching.  Kim speaks perfect English and was a wonderful host and tour guide during the week.  The seminary driver took us to our hotel room where we were given a half an hour to shower before being taken out to dinner by our hosts.

The bath/shower in this particular hotel was very different.  To start with it was made for someone the size of Frodo Baggins.  You can see the picture below, with Josiah sitting in the tub.  Notice that there is no shower curtain.

At supper we ordered and began to see that the size portions in Korea are very different from those in the US.  I was not very hungry, because of being so tired, so I only had a bowl of soup.  The rest ordered some sort of cooked beef.  When the plate came, I thought that it would be for the whole table to share.  Turns out that this was just Charity’s portion.  People eat in Korea, yet none of them seem to be overweight.  I don’t know if this is because of the type of food they eat, the fact that they walk a great deal more, or just good genetics.  Whatever it was, I was constantly amazed at how much food was served.  At this dinner we were joined by Dr. Sohn, the president of the seminary and Dr. Cho (called “Old Cho” to distinguish him from his son “little Cho”).  Considering that it was four o’clock in the morning US time, we did pretty well eating supper.

The next morning I started realizing that the AC did not seem to be working.  We opened the windows and put a fan on so things were not quite so bad.  We took a walk to a small family mart store and bought a few snacks, including dried squid, Korean soda, and some local cookies and chips.

In a couple of hours we were picked up for my first official duty.  I was to preach at a large Korean church (through my interpreter of course).  The message seemed to go OK; though speaking through an interpreter is very, very difficult.  It is impossible to get any kind of a rhythm of speech going, and none of my humor translated which left me at a decided disadvantage.

An interesting thing about preaching was that as one steps onto the preaching platform, you take your shoes off.  This is a reminder that the preacher stands on “holy ground” as he delivers the word of God.  There are slippers to wear, as there are in many places.  The picture below shows the slippers in the hotel room.

After church we went on a tour of the church which had several tall buildings with rooms used for prayer, youth group, a cafeteria, and even a driving range cage (golf is very big in Korea for the upper level economic people).  All of these things were free to church members.

After the tour of the church we sat down in a small, excusive “restaurant” where we ate lunch.  After traveling and preaching, I was not very hungry but ate a little.  It was then that I had my first experience with “Old Cho” telling me that I needed to each much more. Cho also has an interesting philosophy about eating sugar.  He puts about ten spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee, not to mention sugar on virtually everything else he eats.  He believes that “sugar makes you live longer.” It seems to be working for him.  He is over 70 years old and in great health.

After the meal, we were offered some special “Korean Ice Cream.” I thought, “finally something that I can really enjoy.” When the ice cream came, it looked really good.  It was ice chips with whipped cream, some sort of ice cream type substance and lots of fruit.  I took my first bite and tasted something unusual.  Black beans.  Yes black beans in the ice cream.  Needless to say, I ate what I could without eating any of the black beans, but it was not what we think of as ice cream.

After lunch we were taken back to the pastor’s office, who was a graduate of Knox’s Korean D.Min program.  He proudly showed us a photo of him receiving his diploma from Dr. Kennedy (who is loved and revered among evangelicals in Korea).  We were given a gift of some very, very nice Korean skin soap as well as an exceptionally gracious honorarium.  Here is a picture of all of us after the service.  Charity, Josiah and I are in the front, just in case you can’t tell.

After church, we learned that we would be taken to “Lotte World” the premier Korean amusement park.  The only strange thing was that we were going straight there in what my mother would call our “Sunday go-to-meetin” clothes.  So we walked around Lotte world, a sort of scaled down Disney world, in our good clothes.  One of the funniest moments was the list of rules for one ride.  Look carefully at the rules toward the bottom and see if you spot what might be some sort of a mis-translation.

Here is a picture of us at Lotte World.  Does it remind you of anything?

Finally at about four in the morning our time we had seen enough.  Our host, the ever gracious and kind Professor Kim, allowed us to get a cab back to the hotel which took about an hour or so and cost less than twenty dollars US.

We all slept like the dead until about three o’clock in the morning when we woke up and had trouble going back to sleep.  The fact that the AC did not seem to be working may have had something to do with this.  Professor Kim spoke to the desk about the AC but to no avail and so we decided to move to a hotel that was in downtown Seoul for better AC. More about that move and the AC in Korea tomorrow.

That is the end of day one, day two coming soon.  Don’t miss the stories of the many strange things that we ate (including dog) and experienced the rest of the week.

Glad to be back in the USA,

DSL