nanoomi

One of the places where it has been easiest to observe the PR campaigns leading up to the G20 has been the in places connected with subways, as the police presence in subway stations has been growing for some time now (I first wrote about this in June, when I posted the photo below):

Changing trains at Gimpo Airport Station, I’m likely to see around ten police officers there a day, but nothing quite like these guys, who are likely more armed due to the fact that they are at Coex, the G20 venue:
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The world leaders visiting Seoul likely will be tied up by state dinners. But what about everyone else that is coming? Government personnel. Journalists. Protesters*.

Y’all gotta eat. From my experience, foreign VIPs tend to get swept into meal after meal of hanjeongsik–extensive elaborate dinners that Koreans believe display Korean cuisine’s sophistication. And also from my experience, the VIPs get very bored with these meals. That’s because Korea has preceded itself with a reputation for fiery foods and barbecues. So if you’re a VIP looking for a place to escape another hanjeongsik table, here are a few suggestions–not just from me but from chefs and food experts.

First off, I highly recommend checking out our restaurant site, ZenKimchi Dining. It lists the restaurants conveniently according to cuisine and location. Each entry has a map with phone number. The ratings are crowd sourced. And it’s optimized for use on smartphones. For restaurants I have here that aren’t in ZK Dining, I have listed the address and phone number. The taxi driver should know what to do with it.

Barbecue

The Mapo neighborhood is my favorite stop for barbecue. The street behind the Best Western has winding alleys of grill joints. Most of the ones in this area specialize in Sogeum Gui and Galmaeggisal. Sogeum Gui means “Salt Grill,” and it’s fresh pork belly slathered in salt. I like to balance that with some Galmaeggisal, which is some mystery cut near the diaphragm. It’s lean and tender. Most all these places serve galbi, too.

Mapo Jeong Depo (Mapo Station)

A lively barbecue house that pours an egg mixture in the ring that usually collects the pork fat renderings. Yes, eggs cooked in rendered pork fat!

Really, you can find good barbecue most anywhere. A good sign is a lively atmosphere, and a bonus is a butcher cutting the meat fresh inside the restaurant. But I’ve learned to avoid restaurants that try to make this fancy. They kind of miss the point about what’s appealing about Korean barbecue, and they just jack up the price while reducing the side dishes and the quality, all in the name of pretension.

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Foreigner Joy asked the intriguing question, “Is Seoul Ready for the G20 Summit”? over on her blog.  Have you heard that the G20 is coming to Korea?  Well, it is.

Living downtown, I’m starting to see flags, placards and signs all over the place that the G20 is coming.  Seems some of the higher-ups, or at least the people who hang flags on light posts, are pretty excited about this.

Joy looks at the cleanliness and safety of some parts of the city, and the efficiency of the transportation system, then she references The Metropolitician’s post about Koreans who are being trained by their own media to suspect, and maybe hate, foreigners, and concludes that because of the provincial, nationalist mentality of people in Korea, the country’s not truly ready to host the G20 Summit yet.

Along that vein, Chris in South Korea chimes in, agreeing that while the hardware is there – infrastructure, facilities, etc., Korean people’s mindset is not really global, and that Koreans will treat foreigners as if invisible, until it is revealed that they are associated with the G20 summit, at which point the special treatment will come out: he cites incidents where Koreans were more ready to apologize when their bad service led to upset people, than just to give good service in the first place.
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Back in May, the government launched an incentive program aimed at encouraging foreign workers who overstayed their visa to leave the country “voluntarily”:

Under the program, those who exit will be exempt from fines and will not be regulated on a possible revisit to the country. The authorities are aiming to reduce the number of illegal sojourners here ― estimated at 180,000 ― before the G-20 Summit slated for November. The program will run from May 6 to September 31.

Employers who come clean with such workers will also be granted exemptions from fines and be given priority in recruiting substitute workers.

There was an amusing comment left by ‘ninjalo’ below the article:

Wow, they consider this to be so important that they even added an extra day to September! Way to maintain your constant level of quality, Korea Times!

I digress. Last week it was announced

South Korea will extend a temporary grace period during which foreigners staying in the country illegally can leave and return with a visa without getting punished, the Justice Ministry said Tuesday. The grace period, which began on May 6, was to expire Tuesday, but the ministry has decided to extend it to the end of October to handle a growing number of illegal aliens who were leaving to be exempted from fines and a ban on future reentry.

A total of 8,958 illegal immigrants have left the country as of Aug. 25, showing a 12 percent increase compared to the same period last year, according to the ministry. As the deadline neared, an average of 113 people left the country daily in August, it said.[...]

By nationality, 3,169 ethnic Koreans from China, 780 Mongolians and 682 Thais went back to their home countries, the ministry said. About 180,000 were estimated to be residing in South Korea illegally before the grace period began in May.

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