Looking Back at South Korea

One of the first days I was in Korea, I took time off to visit a friend of mine who is a fellow Oregonian and who is teaching at an international school in Seoul. I had told her I would be willing to bring her some things from home and that is what I did. When I arrived at her place I was surprised when she showed me a gift she had received from her school a few weeks earlier. It was a care package full of SPAM. That’s right, the same stuff I had run into in Japan. It seems the SPAM epidemic in Asia is worse than I thought. Anyway, despite the temptation to eat it all that night, we decided to head out into Seoul and get something a little less SPAMY.

Downtown Seoul is divided into different shopping districts. In one area, you can buy all types of fabric. Another section of town is the electronics section where you can find all the coolest in electronic gadgets. I wasn’t fortunate enough to find this section. The sections I did find, however, were the flower section, the fabric section, and the mannequin section. That’s right, I found stores full of mannequin parts for sale.


The remainder of my time in Korea was spent visiting churches and doing some photography work. Dave preached in two different churches and we visited several others for shorter periods of time. It was great to have times of fellowship with these churches and to hear the burden and passion of their pastors and members. In one church we visited, the pastor has a strong burden to get youth involved and to start sending missionaries from his church. To this I can only say AMEN!

My final thought on Korea has to do with food once again; or the way in which you eat it. Many Asian countries use chopsticks…Korea has decided that isn’t good enough so they use metal chopsticks. Skinny, thin, metal chopsticks. The kind you can’t grip if your hands are the least bit greasy or wet. I like to think of them as Korea’s joke on the rest of the world, or objects of torture. Anyway, the highlight of the trip for me was that in our final Korean meal, I was told that I use my chopsticks very well. I couldn’t think of a more flattering complement, especially after all the times I’ve been offered forks in Korean restaurants.