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| Cheonjiyeon Falls, connecting the sky with land |
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| Dol hareubang: Stone Grandfather (protects from evil spirits) |
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| Sanbanggulsa Temple |
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| Sanbanggulsa Grotto |
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| People were drinking water which drops from the cave's ceiling. Korean Holy Water! |
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| Trick Art Museum: illusions and parody I know Mish, Pii and Xiu will like this one... |
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| 3D Panda |
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| ferry to Udo Island |
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| cliff shaped like a lion |
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| Dongan Gyeong-gul: the cave within a cave |
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| This dog kept following Math because he was snacking. |
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| famous artists who came to this shack |
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| Seobin-baeksa: coral beach |
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| Even on the ferry, there was a heated floor. No shoes allowed! |
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| 2 funny Koreans. We talked with body language. |
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| Another great bus driver. He stopped the engines to pick tangerines off a tree for us! (and to pee) |
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| lava cave |
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Is Korea Mecca of Cosmetic Surgery?
One of the strangest things observant foreigners notice in Korea is how beautiful the movie and TV actresses are. Indeed, the femme fatales in the movies and television dramas are so strikingly formed and celestially flawless in their features that one is easily convinced, just on the basis of what one sees in these media, that Korean women are the most beautifully blessed females on Earth.
Then the foreigner becomes somewhat puzzled by the fact that he almost never sees such heavenly beauties anywhere else in Korea. The females we encounter on the street, on the subway, or anywhere else in Korea, are so remarkably un-celestial, so ordinary looking, that we almost conclude that Korea has two completely different kinds of females: One incredibly beautiful and the other incredibly plain. The difference is so great that we almost wonder if Providence is involved in this unfair division among Korean females. Sooner or later, perhaps sooner than later, foreign visitors discover the Providence they are thinking about is really a human agent called plastic surgery.
A recent report in The Korea Times was headlined: ``30 Percent of College Students Seek Cosmetic Surgery.'' I am not sure what this percentage really means, as this beautification game is known to have spread to the lowly ranks of society, like waitresses and cashiers, and even to men. But aside from this scientific percentage issue, and perhaps more meaningfully, Korea is universally, and particularly among Asian females, regarded as the Mecca of cosmetic surgery. Korea is rightfully recognized worldwide as the most technically advanced in ``aesthetic'' medicine, as it is now called, and many females from other Asian nations flock to Korea for ``improvement.'' The beautification process, after all, is cosmetic and superficial, not genetic, and it does not positively affect the genetic make-up of their children. All the beautification is only skin deep and stops its goodness at the knife's edge and suture's stitch.
For this reason, it is not uncommon for foreigners to notice that beautiful mothers are often accompanied by their rather not-so-beautiful children. So, big-eyed mothers have small-eyed kids, and perfectly featured mothers are saddled with ugly-faced offspring. The latest is that Korean mothers begin the aesthetic process for their children at a young age so that their trauma is over with as soon as possible. Now, it is human nature to want to look beautiful and the desire of Koreans for beauty can be understood in this context of universal generality. The only problem is that the popularity for artificial beautification seems to be particularly, and one might say unnaturally, strong in Korea, adding to the already established reputation of Korea being a ``strange'' society. Who knows, in the not so distant future, the Korean winner of the Miss World crown might have to return the title when her eyelines or nose begin to unravel, just like the late Michael Jackson
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| octopus |
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| knives |
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| women bargaining |
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| the expert at work |
