Cycle 3 – Item 238
30 (Thu) August 2012
Fried Chicken
2.0
at Wow Chicken
-Geumho, Seongdong, Seoul, Republic of Korea-
with W and DJ
DJ is now participating in that most symbolically Korean yet practically useless of pastimes for boys his age: taekwondo. To be clear, I’m not talking about taekwondo per se, which I’m sure is a kickass martial art when done right, but rather the cheap kiddie version available at the neighborhood hagwon. While “hagwon” is often translated into English as “academy” or maybe “private learning institution,” it can refer to any kind of structure or office space of any size where the study of any subject at any level of difficulty or quality of instruction is attempted. DJ’s taekwondo hagwon, for example, is located in a commercial building on the 2nd floor between a beauty salon and a dry cleaner. The owner-teacher’s credentials, displayed prominently in the entryway, seemd to be that taekwondo was his college major. The kids seemed to spend most of the time running around and trying to take each other’s belts. In fact, we were there to support DJ in his bid to earn a white-yellow belt. Presumably for the sole purpose of providing students with incentive to keep coming back, these taekwondo hagwons have implemented an expanded hierarchy of belt colors that includes levels like “white-yellow” between the standard white and standard yellow. Whatever the case, he got it.
In celebration, we ate fried chicken at a pub on the first floor of the building. We’d heard from other parents, who sometimes meet up there after taekwondo, that the food was really good. It wasn’t.
(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)
(See also RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)
