Eat Your Way to Suwon Immigration

More than four years ago I was standing between cars on the Mugunghwa train to Suwon. Unfamiliar scenes of rice fields and communities of concrete high-rises passed my view, and in my pocket was a torn piece of paper with Korean directions for the taxi driver when I arrived at the station. I had lived in Korea for a little over a month, and it was time for the Gyeongi-do ESL teacher's right of passage: a visit to Suwon Immigration Center to get an E2 visa card.

It was the first of countless trips to Suwon Immigration over the years. However, in retrospect they could have been much smoother and cheaper trips. An expat's life is full of expenses, namely alcohol and hangover food. To make things worse, many blogs and websites I've seen give confusing or inaccurate information on how to get to Suwon Immigration. Schools are not much better. Nobody needs the extra stress of trying to navigate confusing directions when you have to be back to teach in a few hours and you're still recovering from hoesik, the Korean company dinner-drinking-noraebang extravaganza. So here is the definitive guide on how to get to Suwon Immigration for newbies, along with the not so definitive guide on where to eat along the way.

1) Subvert the bus and cab drivers! Take the shiny new subway. It's cheap, convenient, and fast.

• From Suwon Station take the yellow Bundang line to Yeongtong (영통). 
• Distance: five stops away.
• Travel time: ~15 minutes 
• Cost: ~1,050 won.
• Take EXIT 1 out of Yongtong station. There will be a big HomePlus on your right and a large Lotte Shopping Plaza on your left across the street. Your view should look like this:

Yongtong Station, Exit 1

• Walk straight until you get to the end of HomePlus and turn right. This is what it will look like: 

  

  The end of HomePlus. Turn right here.

• Now here is the easy part. Walk straight for three blocks.

  

  One block down. Keep going straight!

  

  Second block behind you. Keep going! 

  

  Third block gone. The building behind the trees is Suwon Immigration.

Getting back to Suwon Station:

• Just retrace your steps and take the subway back towards Suwon.
• The first stop on your way back should be Mangpo.

Where to eat:

• There are hundreds of restaurants, cafes, and hofs in Yongtong making it a perfect area for a good night out. On a visa run, however, you probably won't have time for a long meal. But if you have 40 minutes to spare try the nearby Hakoya. I don't like to recommend large chains, but they have recognizably Japanese ramen, something I regularly crave having spent quality time in Japan. Their ramen is still a shadow of what you will find in the Dōtonbori district of Osaka, but worth it nonetheless. To get to Hakoya, turn left at the second intersection as you walk towards Suwon Immigration. The restaurant will be on your left. 
• If, on the other hand, you need good food in a pinch, try Nae Gohyang Wang Mandu (개고향 왕만두). You might recognize the brand if you watch a lot of Korean TV. It's a popular stop in the media, and for good reason. Their mandu and jjinbang are not only uncommonly delicious but cheap. Just one fist sized mandu will set you back a 1,000 won. They are across the street from Home Plus right after your first turn. 

Wang mandu (top) and jjin bang (bottom) from Nae Gohyang Wang Mandu in Yeongtong, Suwon

2) Take the Taxi. The drivers are characters.

• Exit Suwon Station from the front. The taxi stand will be on your right in front of Baskin Robins.
  
• You'll have to queue in line if there are a lot of people, but the line is usually small to nonexistent. 
• Tell the driver that you want to go to Suwon Immigration. It sounds like this, "Suwon Chool-ip-gook-gwan-lee-saw-moo-so-eh ga-seh-yo." And looks like this in Korean: "수원출입국관리사무소에 가세요." 
• Travel time: 10 to 15 minutes.
• Cost: 7,000 won and up depending on the driver. 
• If you are lucky you might find a cabbie like the one below who bombed the inside of his cab with a stadium's worth of Korean national pride during the 2014 World Cup. 

  

  Perhaps coincidentally, PSY's "Champion" was playing in the Taxi too. 

Getting back to Suwon Station:

• Taxis wait in front of Suwon Immigration up until around five or six pm, after which time you'll need to find the main road and flag down a taxi or take the bus or subway.
• To get back to the station tell the driver, "Suwon yeok-eh ga-seh-yo." In Korean it looks like this: "수원역에 가세요."

Where to Eat:

• There is actually a lot of great international food near Suwon Station. One of my favorites is a dark, strangely empty Russian restaurant in a basement. What it lacks in atmosphere it totally makes up for in rich, flavorful, hearty fare good for bolstering public school comrades and gulag hagwon laborers through the cold, long Korean winter. To get there cross the foot bridge at Suwon Station that goes over the taxi stand. When you get to the end look down from the top. You should see an alley below you leading away from the station. Take the stairs on your right and follow the alley to its end. Immediately in front of you should be Damunhwa Food Land (다문화 푸드랜드). Damunhwa takes up the basement level of the building with several different international restaurants like Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Mongolian, and, of course, Russian. 

A bowl of borscht. Not at all fancy to look at,
 but would you expect from Russians?

3) Take the not so bali-bali bus. It's a good way to see the south-central side of the city.

• Exiting Suwon Station, the bus stop for Suwon Immigration is on your right. It is past the taxi stand and pretty hard to miss with all the city busses traveling through it. 

  

  Suwon Station bus stop heading towards Suwon Immigration

• There are two main bus lanes. It doesn't matter which one you are in.
• There are six busses you can take: 5, 7, 7-2, 9, 310, 900
• Take the bus to Yeongil Junghakyo (영일중학교) Yongil Middle School in English.
• Distance: 29 stops away
• Travel time: 15 - 20 minutes, but 45 minutes during evening rush hour. 
• Cost: 1, 200 won without a transit card, but 1,100 won with a transit card like CashBee or T-Money — the same cards used on the subway.
• When you get off the bus turn to your left and walk down the street. You should be walking downhill and the school should be on your right. Take your first right by the 7-11. The school should still be on your right. Walk past the school, and then keep on going straight for a block until you reach Suwon Immigration.

Yongil Junhakyo bus stop. The school is behind the trees.

Suwon Immigration coming from Yongil Junhakyo

Getting back to Suwon Station:

• Walk the back to Yeongil Junghakyo
• Take the 5, 7, 7-2, 9, 9-1, 310 or 900 back to the train station. 
• Now, some observant subway takers might notice the bus stop in front of Lotte Plaza at the Yongtong subway stop. However, it is three blocks away from Suwon Immigration as opposed to just one. Moreover, there is only one bus on that stop that goes to Suwon Station, the 51 bus. And that bus runs every 17-20 minutes, so I do not recommend it.

Where to eat:

• Across the street from Yongil Junghakyo is Pizza Heaven, home to some of the best pizza in Korea. I worked as a pizza chef for seven years from high school through college, so I am very picky about my pizza. And in a land full of Pizza Schools, Mr. Pizza, and even pizza from Lotte Mart, Pizza Heaven is truly a pice-a-heaven fallen from the table of the gods. In other words, it looks, tastes and smells like typical American pizza. This isn't anything to talk about in the USA, but in South Korea that's BIG. To put it in perspective, while on the way home to Pyeongtaek from Seoul one day I hopped off the train in Suwon to bring home a pie from Pizza Heaven. This was during rush hour no less, and I stupidly took the bus. I'd do it again too, bus and all. Now, how many Americans would drive 45 minutes out of their way for take-out pizza? 

(Edited Jan 29, 2015: Added information and photos for Nae Gohyang Wang Mandu) 

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Blog: Are Mirang Oats Gluten Free?

Oatmeal is hard to find in Korea. Koreans have their own hot cereal. It's a rice mush called jook (죽). So when I saw oatmeal at Costco, I thought it would be perfect for my new gluten free diet. Oats, after all, don't contain the same kind of gluten as wheat, but then Mayo Clinic had to spoil everything.

"Certain grains, such as oats, can be contaminated with wheat during growing and processing stages of production. For this reason, doctors and dietitians generally recommend avoiding oats unless they are specifically labeled gluten-free." - Mayo Clinic, 2011

Well, that's terrific. Time to read the whole box looking for "gluten-free."

Many items at Korean Costoco stores are American brands. These oats, though, are not. They were made by Mirang (미이랑), a Korean company. So the box is completely covered with Korean except for the product title, "Oatmeal." It took me seven and a half minutes to scan the box top to bottom and back to front looking for "글루텐 프리" or something similar, but there wasn't a sign of it.

Clearly this doesn't mean these oats are gluten free. Yet one heartening fact is that the oats were grown in Korea. By and far, Korea grows considerably more rice than wheat. A report by the International Grain Council showed Korea's 2011-12 rice production at 4.3 million tones. In comparison, the country produced a mere 51,000 tones of wheat the same year. While the government is pushing to achieve the production goal of 200,000 tones of wheat by 2015, this is still small in comparison to the amount of rice produced. As a result, I'm not terribly worried about it being cross contaminated with wheat gluten.
Moreover, I have yet to be convinced that gluten free labels are commonly used in Korea. Since Koreans generally do not have gluten related health issues, there is no gluten free market among mainstream Koreans. Thus, if the oats are truly gluten free the company has no incentive to label it.

Unfortunately, a lack of conclusive information doesn't make these oats any more positively gluten free. For all I know there could be a central grain processing super-conglomerate that processes all kinds of grain on the same machinery, polluting everything with wheat gluten. So if I genuinely had a problem with gluten and it excluded avenin, an oat protein that a small percentage of celiac patients are sensitive to, I should contact Mirang to be certain their oats are gluten free. If I was as lazy I could just eat them and then check how my stomach feels, but I can't do that. My tummy likes gluten. And depending on how badly my system would react if I did have a problem, that second alternative might not be feasible.

Time to call Mirang! ...as soon as I can get a translator.

But in the meantime, I'm still going to eat those oats.

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Blog: Is This Gluten Free?

It has been three weeks since I started eating gluten free. So far I've eliminated all the obvious sources of gluten in my diet. You know, all those delicious things at the bottom of the food pyramid: pasta, bread, crackers, and heavenly things like cinnamon buns. But what about those sneaky foods that aren't at the bottom of the food pyramid?

For obvious reasons, trying to determine if a food is gluten free in Korea is not simple if you can't understand Korean. You can find English food labels on imported foods. However, even then many foods are processed on shared equipment with gluten products or they include gluten as an additive or there are other ingredients mixed in that contain gluten. And this doesn't make reading labels for gluten any easier. For instance, I recently purchased some salami and prosciutto at Costco. A lot of their inventory is just the exact same thing that you find at an American Costco but with a Korean nutrition information sticker slapped on the back, so virtually everything on the packaging is in English. Looking at the ingredients, the salami states in tiny print at the bottom of the English nutrition label that it is indeed, "gluten free." The prosciutto, however, does not. But neither meat mentions any ingredients that would even hint at gluten. They are both produced by the same company, Daniele Foods in Rhode Island, and they have identical ingredients but for one thing — the prosciutto has garlic. Last time I knew, garlic was naturally gluten free. The only other option would be the unspecified "spices" that both meats contain. Presumably, the proscutto's spices include gluten — terrific. But I don't know for sure, and being a good, cheap Yankee who doesn't waste food and isn't allergic to gluten, I'm still going to eat it.

This process is annoying enough in English. Now, try standing in the refridgerated isle at Lotte Mart with your smart phone in one hand and a sausage in the other trying to translate the ingredient label. Even if you study Korean, without the aid of a fluent native, this is a chore and a half. I can read and write well enough, but my vocabulary is deplorable, and like any language, Korean words have multiple meanings, slang uses and abbreviations unknown to the best translation apps. And I certainly don't want to stand around in the isle for five minutes per label, translating everything I want to eat. I have far better things to do with my time, like walk home and eat.

Western stickers, though, at least have "gluten free" labels to help. Korean foods, on the other hand, from what I have seen, do not. "Gluten free" in Korean is "글루텐 프리." It is basically a Korean spelling that sounds like one of my students trying to pronounce English. I've lived in Korea for nearly four years, and in that time I have never seen those words on Korean packaging. It can be argued that, in not needing to eat gluten free, I just never looked for it. This is true. However, when I first started talking to my Korean friends about eating gluten free they did not know what it was. Plus, for dietary and genetic reasons Koreans rarely develop gluten related health issues. As a result, they have no need to label things "gluten free." The gluten free diet is largely a Western trend. However, that doesn't mean I'm going to stop looking for 글루텐 프리. I could be wrong. We'll see.

Given these difficulties, as I enter this diet I'm a bit paranoid. Many people who are sensitive to gluten do not need to worry about things like cross contamination. Others, who are affected more severely by gluten, really have to watch out. I have heard about people who are so sensitive that they can't even kiss someone who has eaten wheat. A casual gluten-free diet is easy enough in Korea. One expat teacher I interviewed, Kelsey Riordan, does not have celiac disease but needs to avoid eating gluten for other health reasons, and she manages just fine by eating like a Korean minus wheat noodles and dumplings. But let's suppose that I took on the role of that person who can't even kiss bready lips without risking stomach aches or worse. Just what can I eat? If the smallest amount of gluten is harmful to me am I munching my way across a minefield of glutenated doom? With this mindset, and mindful of the fact that many processed foods contain gluten, a number of foods from my daily life are making me think twice about whether they are gluten free or not.

- Gummy vitamins. A bunch of nutrients are sourced from different places and compressed in a squishy, fruit-flavored teddy-bear-shaped substrate. Can you get more processed than a muli-vitamin?

- Soy. Soy is everywhere in Korean cuisine. It is an essential part of so many soups, stews, sauces, side dishes, and main courses. In additon to rice and red pepper, Korean food wouldn't be Korean without soy. Soy itself doesn't have gluten. It only gains it through processing. So do Korean soy processing plants also process wheat on the same equipment?

- Rice bread. Rice bread is fairly popular in Korea. Though, having grown up on wheat, I was never much impressed with rice breads. Rice breads tend to be bland and dry and simply do not have the same texture and bounce of wheat bread. There are some exceptions, but nothing a Frenchman would feel uncomfortable tossing in the bin. But are they gluten free? Given the amount that raw ingredients are processed and rice bread's marginal attempt at being decent bread, who is to say those breads don't have gluten in them? They need all the help they can get.

- Bubble tea. My girlfriend and I have been on a big bubble tea kick lately. Bubble tea pearls are made from tapioca, but is that all that is in there?

- Packaged nuts. I bought a large bag of mixed nuts to munch on at school. It was meant to save money spent daily on chips and to reduce the calories collected daily above my belt. At the same time, it's a snack with enough energy to push me through six hours of playing with elementary and middle-school kids. There is more to those nuts, and lots of nuts mixes in Korea, than just nuts. These ones in particular have an unadvertised dusting of mystery dusty dust on them. It's tasty, but is it gluten free?

- Coffee. Right now I'm drinking a vanilla latte. Straight coffee is fine. My brother, a celiac suffering Starbucks barista extraordinaire, lives on coffee. But are mixed coffee drinks okay?

- Street food. Korea has terrific street food. Some, like tuigim (튀김 - deep fried food), are obviously not gluten free. However, others like tteok-bokki (떡볶이 - chewy, penne pasta sized rice cakes in spicy sauce) are not so clear. Rice cake itself may be gluten free, but what if the rice was cross-contaminated by wheat in processing? Plus, I have no idea what is in the sauce besides red pepper.

- Chocolate and candies. This is another one of those cases where the primary ingredient is naturally gluten free, but you don't know if that ingredient was cross contaminated, or if gluten or a gluten containing ingredient was added into the mix at some point.

- Drinks. Basically my entire diet is geared around keeping me energized enough to put on the equivalent of a lively and interactive Ted Talk with overworked children during the hours when, in America, kids are eating dinner, playing, or finishing their homework. Water just doesn't cut it. Normally I brew my own black or green tea at home and bring it to class honey-sweetened. There is nothing unusual about my tea except sometimes some bergamot, but that's gluten free. Sometimes, however, I forget to brew my tea or my energies are such that I need a big boost that day, and I buy a Cola or more often a Gatorade or a Nature Tea. Are these gluten free? And what about that glass of OJ in the morning? Could that have gluten in it too? Is it purely orange juice?

- Cheese. When I started eating gluten free the first food that came to mind was cheese. Real cheese, which is most likely gluten free, is depressingly expensive in Korea. Three cheese omelettes worth of cheddar will set you back ₩8,000. This is around $7.50. Affordable cheese is out there, but it is so processed that at least one brand boasts of containing a jaw dropping 83.5 percent "natural" cheese. How much of that remaining percent may be gluten? (Or, for that matter, food?)

- Beer and soju. I don't drink as much as I used to, so this is less of an issue for me. But living in a country that, as a nation, drinks enough every day to crown Jinro soju as the most consumed alcohol in the world, drinking now and then is hard to avoid. Beer is clearly not gluten free. However, in Korea, where the local mass produced beers taste more like a certain human excretion than even American industrial beers, it is often claimed that Korean beer is disgusting because it is made with rice. Is it really? And is soju, the rice spirit of choice, pure enough to be free of any cross contaminants?

- Is communion gluten free? I heard it wasn't. But I also heard about a group of nuns somewhere in the US that make a 99.9% gluten free wafer. But that is in the USA. This is Korea. Is there a similar option here? Can you just take the wine instead? And would the church be kind enough to let you take the first sip or use a different challace to prevent cross-contamination?
I have a lot of translating and research to do.

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Dear Stomachs,

Consider the opportunity to contemplate a table of uniquely bizarre foods while gazing upon the Yellow Sea. On one dish is a pile of squirming octopus tentacles. On another plate you see something that was once alive and may still be, but now it resembles a Cadbury cream orange goo. On yet another plate you discover sometimes writhing strips cut from a disturbingly phallic sea worm. Nearby is a bucket of enormous, live shrimp on ice. The man next to you casually snatches one out of the pail, snaps off its head off and peels it in one motion before dipping it in a red sauce and eats it. If seafood is not to your liking, on another day you might find yourself in town with Western friends eating grilled sheep or cow intestines while cautioning your dinner-mates about the intact "cream-filled" ones. This is the life of the writer of Eat Korea.

Eat Korea strives to be a guide to the amazing and sometimes bizarre world of Korean and expat food. In this land I found useable blankets, ear-muffs and coffee mugs taped to cereal boxes at Lotte Mart. I picked boiled silk-worm pupae out of a dixie-cup at a green-tea festival nestled in the verdant slopes of a tea plantation. I enjoyed the most amazing noodle soup on the planet under the grime dripping tarp of an outdoor restaurant hidden under an overpass. Heads and all, I ate dried, tiny fishies dipped in ketchup while standing on a mountain top. I was invigorated by the flesh of "man's best friend." And I even tasted a fresh apple and seaweed salad during an unexpected stay in a Korean hospital.

Eating in South Korea is always an adventure. But you do not have to explore blindly. Whether you are thinking of visiting the country, moving here or even if you already live here, Eat Korea is your guide to the adventure of Korean cuisine (But primarily in Pyeongtaek).

Yes, sometimes it is moving. But go ahead. Meok-aw 먹어 (Eat!) !

Sincerely,
Michael T.S. Farrell

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