Tourism in war's shadow

SEOUL – Here’s the best way to find and eat a baby octopus:

Wait for low tide and look for bubbles rising to the surface on the exposed seabed. Plunge your hand into the mud, and you’re likely to come up with a wriggling, protesting octopus. If it strikes back and wraps around your face, don’t worry; live octopus is good for the skin.

Pull the creature off your face, plop it on a plate and start slicing it even as it writhes. Pop a piece in your mouth, starting with the head. The tentacles will continue moving. Yum yum.

This is according to a Korean tour guide here. She didn’t take me hunting for baby octopus in the mudflats of Seoul so I can’t vouch for the succulence of first-grade raw octopus. But her skin is flawless so octopus facial mask probably works.

Or maybe her smooth skin is due to one particular facial cream, a big hit in Asian countries, which is made in Korea. Make that South Korea; women in the North can’t afford the pricey concoction and all the baby octopi in the North are likely reserved for their batty leader Kim Jong-il.

This is assuming that nuclear waste from the not-so-clandestine facilities Kim has set up around his country has not leached into the seabed of North Korea and turned all the octopi blue.

The safety of those nuclear facilities is as much a concern for Pyongyang’s neighbors as the possibility that Kim now has centrifuges for enriching uranium to build powerful nukes.

For all the danger posed by the reclusive, unpredictable Kim to his neighbor, South Korea has managed to prosper. Many South Koreans have relatives stuck in the North, and Seoul is still hoping for reunification on the peninsula one day.

The pursuit of rapprochement has sometimes opened Seoul to criticism from its people for bending over too far backwards in the face of Kim’s provocation.

Last Tuesday’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island by North Korea was one such instance, which led to the resignation of the South’s defense minister.

But so far the post-armistice peace has been less fragile than it looks, enduring for 57 years now. That peace has allowed the South to focus on industrialization and economic development, and on strengthening democratic institutions following the end of authoritarian rule.

Today South Korea is one of the 20 biggest economies in the world. It has raised its global profile with its successful hosting of the recent G20 summit in this city. And it is aggressively promoting the country as a tourist destination, unique in its own right in Northeast Asia.

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Apart from the experience of digging for baby octopus, tourists can savor distinctive Korean cuisine, whose most famous offering is kimchi.

With the onset of winter, Koreans are stockpiling kimchi as the vegetables used for it, most commonly cabbage and radish, become scarce and expensive. After proper fermentation, the spicy dish can last forever, according to a Korean guide. She said kimchi provides 10 times the healthy benefits of lactobacilli in yogurt. I don’t know if this is true; kimchi is an acquired taste, as far as I’m concerned. All I know is that kimchi can clear your sinus in an instant.

Modern Korea is exporting not just Hyundai and Kia SUVs and Samsung TV sets but also its culture. My mother is an avid fan of Korean soap operas, my nieces love Korean pop groups, and there was a time when everyone in the Philippines must have been singing “nobody, nobody but you” by Korea’s Wonder Girls.

Korea now wants to be known for top-quality products. Samsung’s 3D LED TV – the world’s first – is now commercially available and does not strain the eye like similar products. The company’s Android-based Galaxy tablet computer is also a phone, unlike Apple’s iPad.

Apart from consumer electronics, automotives and heavy industries, the country is prepared to export its phonemic Hangul alphabet and language. Hangul was created by the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty, Sejong the Great, between 1443 and 1444 to bring literacy to the Korean masses. With its 24 letters, Hangul has helped bring down illiteracy in the country to less than one percent. The Korean guide told me she could teach me Hangul quickly and I could use it to write my name in just five minutes. After one teaching session, she said, I could read Korean street signs.

South Korea is also selling nuclear technology. Last week marked the groundbreaking for a 10-megawatt nuclear reactor in Jordan to be constructed by South Koreans.

Twenty nuclear power plants generate about 40 percent of South Korea’s energy needs. Eight more plants are under construction and 19 are in the planning stage.

A visit to the 30-megawatt nuclear research reactor in Taejon, two hours’ drive from Seoul, almost made me a believer, until I saw the light water used to cool the reactor. Radiation has turned a submerged portion of the structure blue. The Koreans, for all their innovation, have not yet discovered how to recycle or get rid permanently of nuclear waste. Spent fuel rods were piled in a water-cooled pit, also with a blue glow, within the pressurized reactor chamber.

Seoul once offered to build a reactor for peaceful uses for the North, but Pyongyang refused, probably because South Koreans would operate it. Kim might also not have liked the idea of installing CCTV cameras in the reactor chamber, as in the Taejon power plant, allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the facility in real time, any time. South Korea cannot tinker with the IAEA cameras in the Taejon plant.

The conflict with its dysfunctional northern neighbor is one of the biggest deterrents to South Korea’s travel industry. But leave it to the South Koreans to make the best of a bad situation. They’ve turned the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas into a must-see tourist site.

After discovering tunnels bored deep across the border by North Korean forces, the South plugged the northern end. They built rails and installed mine cars and bright lights all the way down. Then they turned the dank tunnels into major tourist attractions.

Uniquely South Korean, like eating a wriggling baby octopus.