Potty gods and penis rocks

While I hate to admit that I had resorted back to level one in Malow’s hierarchy of needs, my body ached with the need for sleep and music and it was hard for me to focus on the fading sights of Seoul passing by in the window. Luckily the drive into the “folk village” outside of Seoul was an hour long, and hanging on with the soft flicker of battery remaining, my iPod held through and my music replaced the tired, apathetic nikki.

The folk village itself is not an actual folk village, but a reconstruction of one. It is as “folk” as Death Cab for Cutie is indie rock. When we arrived, we seemed to be the only guests so the village was eerily empty and deserted. Slowly, more and more Korean tourists equipped with hipster glasses, letterman’s jackets and tights emerged from nowhere. During our tour, our guide explained that the floor heating system typical in Korea was a feature that every family, regardless of economic status, had. They all had bathrooms, too. She explained that if people had to go to the bathroom at night, they would pray to the bathroom god that they wouldn’t fall in—especially the children, who were the most prone to falling in. Along with praying to potty gods, villages often had phallic rocks that they prayed to for fertility and vitality. Potty gods and penis rocks? Sounds like my kind of village…

We headed to the mini-amphitheater where the “villagers” performed a traditional musical number with 4 different percussion instruments. Along with the song, they had very particular outfits suited for this song and dance. Some wore hats with a long ribbon attached to a small pole that, when they moved their heads properly, swirled in a gyrating motion so the ribbon choreographed the music. It takes a lot of skill to play a drum, dance along and move your head perfectly.

Next there was a cute old man tightrope walker. He spoke paragraphs of Korean to explain how he needed more applause as each trick was more difficult than the last. The photos of his tricks give a much better idea of what he did versus my trying to explain it, but essentially there was a lot of bouncing on the rope (did they make cups in the olden villages?!) and bouncing on one foot, etc. I don’t know what was better—his tricks or his seemingly silly explanations of them in Korean, completely disregarding the fact that none of us could understand Korean.

As a complete juxtaposition to the tour of the folk village, our next feat was a tour of the Hyundai factory in Asan. Welcomed by a very extravagant and overbearing PR video (apparently driving a Hyundai saves the environment and ends cancer), we started off the tour in a factory where the components of the body were cut, welded and finished. As we got deeper and deeper into the building, there were more and more robots, whose movement was fluid, yet discontinuous and I found this mechanical movement almost frightening because at times, they moved like a human, but then they became robotic again. It was like Wall-e on steroids. The mechanical components were all contained behind metal encasements, with odd warning signs plastered all over. Leave it to Asians to make electrocution posters cute. All the while, echoing throughout the factory is a eerie rendition of Fur Elise in several different keys, blaringly chiming at every moment. Sparks were flying out on to the floor and I started to feel like the whole building was going to collapse, my hair would light on fire, the robots would start a revolution and throw me into the maelstrom of electrocurrents. Maybe it was a mini panic attack? I’m more of a Toyota girl, anyway.