Written by Taeyon Kim:
I have always regarded Korean schools with at best unease, at worst outright horror. It may be the stories I heard from my cousin (“I had no life, all I did was study study study, every waking moment”), or the descriptions of mind-numbing rote memorization, or soul-crushing conformity that seem to permeate the national imagination of school.
I envisioned hives of worker bees toiling in individual cells called koshiwon, memorizing all manner of minutiae in preparation for some exam or other (though this happens later, in college or afterwards). I shuddered at the images of macho bullies ganging up on isolated kids, boys who are new, boys who are quiet and shy and wear glasses and don’t speak Korean.
So you can imagine the apprehension with which I tottered forward and offered up my children to this beast of an institution, certain that they would be devoured instantly and mercilessly. I entered the school grounds with dread, one foot in and one foot ready to hightail it out of there. I had backup plans ready and in place in case it didn’t work out. So it has been one of the most delightful surprises and greatest reliefs that Rémi and Tristan’s schools have been such wonderful experiences so far.
Let me begin first with Rémi. My first impression was not good. Office staff weren’t particularly helpful or encouraging, and there was no playground, just a big dusty soccer field. But the first day of school changed everything. You already know how it went from the previous dispatch, and it was a good indicator of things to come. Rémi goes to school not just willingly but cheerfully. The kids are friendly and nice, and one of the girls in his class has taken Remi under her wing. She is so sweet and yamjeonhae, kind and gentle, and she really looks out for him and helps him whenever she can. Rémi told me today that she is his best friend.
Rémi is shy, so it’s really up to the other kids to make friends with him, and they do their best to draw him out. Every time I pick him up or drop him off, kids are saying “Hi Rémi” in Korean, and Rémi shyly waves his hand or says hi quietly under his breath.
I don’t know how true it is, but I’m told that it’s different in Seoul. The kids are more competitive, not as nice, big city kids. If that’s the case, then for that alone I’m glad we came to Chuncheon. The difficulty of being a single parent during the week is worth it if it means Rémi and Tristan have a good experience at school. If they were unhappy, then single parenting would be a lot harder. Their happiness is mine.
Tristan’s preschool I loved immediately. The first impression was great. The warm, wooden interior practically glowed with good feeling, and the administrator who helped me was SO helpful and friendly I wanted to cry. She had even translated their registration documents into English, just for me! Their philosophy is very child-centered and reminds me of Tristan’s preschool at home. So, in contrast to Rémi’s school, I couldn’t wait for Tristan to start.
He’s been going now for four days, and tomorrow will be his first full day from 9-1pm. His only complaint is that it’s long, but he loves the snacks and singing, and he reported to me today that he made 8 friends and they played superheroes and he was the captain of the superheroes. He also sang a song for us that he learned at the preschool. I couldn’t recognize any of the words, though they sounded vaguely Korean. So aside from the long bus ride in the morning (1 hour), he seems to be enjoying it.
One of the best things at the schools is the food. Rémi loves it, and Tristan will also get a hot lunch in addition to snack every day. All the lunches are cooked on the premises, nothing is packaged, and all of it is Korean, of course. Which means it usually consists of rice, soup, side dishes, and sometimes a main dish like bulgogi. When I visited once they were serving curry over rice, with side dishes and soup. It’s just a very full, well-rounded, home-cooked meal. And yummy, according to Rémi. He scarfs it all down. The teacher is impressed with how well he eats, and he’s proud that he even eats the spicy kimchi.
What’s more, everything is stainless steel. The trays, the utensils, the cups. The food is served on stainless steel trays that have individual compartments for each side dish, the kids can help themselves to water with stainless steel cups, and everything is put away and washed up, nothing is thrown away, except perhaps the milk cartons, which are recycled.
I have to say, while littering may still be more evident here, there is a lot less waste in Korea. I guess coming from North America, the most wasteful place in the world, I could make this observation about any country. But I’m impressed by how much stainless steel is in evidence everywhere. It’s like they had a heads up about the problems with plastic that we’re now coming to see, and skipped the whole plastic craze and went straight to stainless.
So now, in this, my fifth visit to Korea, I’m finding that there is a lot I can learn from Korea. A lot of my earlier visits were occupied with how “wrong” things were. Now I’m finding that actually, there is a lot that Koreans do better than us. Don’t get me started on the medical system…actually, do. That will be another dispatch.
Health care in Korea
Written by Taeyon Kim:
On the day when Congress finally passes the long awaited Healthcare Reform Bill, I just have to speak on this issue from this side of the Pacific.
You can probably relate: You’re in a foreign country, either travelling or living, and you get sick. Oh no! the last thing you want to do is go see a doctor. You don’t know how clean the hospitals are. There might be foreign bugs there that you’re not immune to. Will they use proper sterilization methods? Will they use anesthetics? Will your insurance cover it? Will the doctor even see you? Will you understand each other? Are they up-to-date in methods and technology? Can you trust the drugs? And on and on.
I’ve always been wary of seeking medical care in Korea. It’s difficult enough to negotiate your way in a foreign country, but I reserve a special sense of foreboding when it comes to handing over the care of my body. And it’s not just me. The Koreans I know in Canada don’t trust the Canadian medical system, and my own uncle who has lived in the US for more than twenty years still sees his Korean dentist on his regular visits to Korea.
So when we first arrived in Korea two months ago, I was reluctant to go see a doctor even though Lucien was obviously sick. He had a cold. He was coughing. His breathing was phlegmy, his eyes were goopy and his nose was running. Plus he was running a fever. I kept hoping he would get better on his own. It was just a cold, right? But the landlady insisted, and practically dragged me by the hand to a nearby clinic.
So we went, without an appointment and without insurance. I grabbed a wad of cash on the way out. After all, I had spent $200 on one visit to the pediatrician in Los Angeles when I took Lucien to see Dr. Fleiss (yes, THE Dr. Fleiss of Heidi Fleiss fame – you LA folks will know who I mean – and also of Mothering’s “People We Love” fame). I took about the same amount with me this time.
We walked a few blocks and up a flight of dirty stairs to a reassuringly clean office. I explained to the receptionist/nurse that I didn’t have insurance or even an id. number (everyone has this, it’s like a social security number), so she took down Lucien’s name and told me to take a seat. I waited all of … five minutes, at most ten.
The doctor was sitting in front of her computer. She asked some questions, checked Lucien’s breathing and heartbeat, looked in his throat, cleared his nose with a huge suction machine, asked some more questions, then typed in a prescription. That was it. The whole visit took about ten minutes.
Then back out to the receptionist who printed out the prescription and — here’s the big important part — charged me about $10 for the visit. I couldn’t believe it. That’s it? I thought I heard wrong. I pulled out a fraction of the cash I had on me and handed it to her, waiting for her to correct me. No. That was correct.
Ok, you might argue, sure it’s $10, Korea’s a third world country and the doctor was using rusty instruments and machines that were 30 years old. But no. The machines were really impressive and … kind of comic, to be honest. This big honking machine sitting behind the doctor, with all these tubes and metal parts poking out of it, and a powerful humming whenever she turned it on…never seen one in North America. Not sure what it was for, other than suctioning snot out of Lucien’s nose. And of course, Korea is not a third world country but one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world.
So then I was left wondering, why is it so cheap? Or maybe I should rephrase the question: why is it so formidably expensive in America? And, why is it so cumbersome in America and Canada? It was just so easy to see the doctor in Korea.
While I was there, a few people came stumbling in, an old lady complaining of a pain in her leg, and a man with a child who had – he believed – swallowed a toy. His wife insisted the child had swallowed something, could they just take a quick x-ray and check? Now can you imagine someone just stopping in at the doctor’s because her leg was bothering her? No appointment, just stopping by on her way somewhere else. Or someone rushing over for a “quick x-ray” to check, just in case, because their child might have swallowed something. It just seemed so effortless and efficient.
It’s not all rosy and golden, though. My only complaint is that it is very perfunctory (though I’m used to that from my visits in Canada), and they love to prescribe drugs drugs and more drugs. For Lucien we picked up three different vials of pink medicine, as well as five sachets of powder, to be administered three times a day in different quantities for five days. None of them were labelled so I didn’t know what any of them were (now I know to ask). One of them was an antibiotic, and it must have been a pretty powerful one because it did quite a number on his poor digestive system. I never saw such terrible diaper rash, for which the doctor prescribed a whole new cocktail of drugs.
There is a hospital right next door to us, and I went for a few visits to specialists. Cost? $16. Less than $20. Crowded, but the wait was never long.
Hopefully, as the U.S. reshapes the way it takes care of its people’s health, some streamlining of costs will occur. Surely, if Korea can do it….?