IKAA Gathering 2010, Part 2

After the opening ceremony and associated pleasantries, the IKAA Gathering gained altitude and seamlessly switched to supercruise mode, which consisted of a meticulously pre-organised program of events. I was unable to attend for most of the week because I had cell cultures to attend to, but I made it out for the adoptee literature session.

Here's our old friend, SK Chae, giving a prepared speech about his book, Remembering Koryo. For a man who is more well-known for eating dinner using only a knife rather than for his penmanship, he summed up the purpose of his book with surprising clarity.

The warm summer nights of the gathering were mostly spent drinking beer. In the photo above are some well-known faces in the KAD community.

In this photo there are two Danes, a Frenchman, an Australian and an American. Can you tell who's who?

It's all about the hair.

And in this photo, every single customer is a Korean adoptee. We reserved a local bar for the night and filled it with raucous chatter from a smorgasbord of languages.

Fun was had, and tall tales told, respectively.

The sessions during the week that I attended were mostly helpful workshops, in which I feigned sobriety.

For this gathering and the last one, there was a mini adoptee World Cup tournament held, with the various organisations putting together teams. This year, the Danish team were victorious. Upon going with them to celebrate, I learned that Danes enjoy drinking and singing/chanting Danish victory choruses. We Australians celebrate victory in a similar manner, but without the singing and chanting.

The night started off slowly because nobody knew of a bar in the Myeong-dong area that would accommodate thirty adoptees in a celebratory mood. After forty minutes of walking through unrelenting torrential precipitation, we decided to seek shelter next to an inadequately-verandahed department store. Half an hour later, utterly drenched, but spirits undampened, we found a bar with enough space. If we were in Spain, I would have quipped "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the Danes. "

But we were in Seoul.

Samsung have supported IKAA considerably over the past, and this year was no different. They usually pay for the final dinner, which is a flashy set course menu with free-flowing wine.

Just like last time, we were treated to professional performances with Ahn Jung-hyun as MC, the lady who used to host the Arirang talk show Heart to Heart.

More than 500 Korean adoptees from across the world converged in formal dress attire.

Here's Liselotte Haejin Birkmose, whose ice-sculpture-melting daughter we saw in the previous post. I've only said hello to her once or twice, but she seems very friendly and nice.

The menu was enjoyable, although I had no idea what Bearnaise sauce was. Tasted good on Aussie steak though. Back home, we'd just slap that kind of meat on the barbie and eat it with tomart'oh sawce.

And there was some good old Korean drumming to bring out the warrior in all of us. When I hear Korean wooden drums, I guess I should be reflecting on the vibrance of Korean traditional music, but all I ever think about are orcs.

Facing to the right in this photo are Daniel Moore and Sarah Kim Randolph. Sarah used to blog well, but I think she got busy. Maybe Daniel has something to do with that. He also reads this blog, apparently, and told me he likes my 'one-liners'.

Possibly like this one.

And here's me and Tae-Yang, a Dane and a good friend. Tae-Yang comes back to Korea almost every year and it's always the same beautiful story. 

Hug. Talk. Eat. Drink. Laugh. Drink. Hangover.

Adoptees in Korea are funny. We set up a drinking station outside Family Mart and spent the hot summer night getting better acquainted with Cass, soju and makkeoli. There were a few Korean passers-by who gave us second glances due to our sprawled roadside gathering, and we simply returned those glances with a friendly air of aloofness.

If we were in Japan or China however, we probably wouldn't feel as entitled to 'make ourselves at home' in public.

It wasn't long before the cheap alcohol began weaving its confusing magic, and we soon felt like eating ice-cream. That's another reason why Family Marts are good places to drink. In the photo above is Jes Eriksen, a Dane whose first name is pronounced 'Yes'.

The old rule of thumb is that an adoptee gathering is a good one 'if it ends with some guy called Jes enjoying an ice-cream by the side of the road. ' 

And by that standard alone, I'd say that the 2010 IKAA Gathering was a successful one.

IKAA Gathering 2010, Part 1

IKAA is a collaborative umbrella for Korean adoptee organisations around the world. Every three years since 2004, gatherings have been held in Korea to bring everyone together under one roof. This year, that one roof was the Lotte Hotel Seoul, a nice venue with a lot of chandeliers.

The organisations that form IKAA are all run by Korean adoptees, rather than adoptive parents or adoption-related agencies. Amongst the adoptee community, there's a broad spectrum of views on transcultural adoption, with some vehemently opposed to it, and others who think that it's the best solution to an unfortunate social problem. Korea has some strong cultural elements that put pressure on single mothers to relinquish their babies, while various social taboos here discourage domestic adoption. Although I wouldn't say that I regret being adopted, I do wish that the issues involved were more openly discussed in Korea. And I think acknowledgment is well overdue for those who are doing something about it.

The last time I saw a bunch of adoptees in a hotel lobby was three years ago, at the 2007 Gathering. It brought back distant memories of my bemusement while walking through a group of Korean-looking people speaking fluent Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish, and feeling like a foreigner amongst them.

The whole gathering was put together with the sweat of hard-working volunteers from across the world. At SRTM, we had to send about seventy emails back and forth, just to organise a wine party for one night. 

My estimate for the number of emails that were needed to organise the 2010 IKAA Gathering is between 6,000 and 8,000.

We occupied a few floors of the Lotte Hotel for various meet-and-greets, as well as symposiums and workshops. I was on a panel for advice about working in Korea, which seemed to go fairly well. The summary of what I had to say was along the lines of 'proceed with caution.'

This country is a nice place to live for a variety of reasons, but like any place with a lot of Koreans, it can occasionally drive you nuts.

At the first meet-and-greet, I saw a few familiar faces from some of my earlier adventures in the motherland. Most of those adventures involved fruit-flavoured soju cocktails.

The food at IKAA gatherings is always amongst the best that a cash-starved Korean adoptee graduate student can hope to consume. If I wasn't an adoptee, I'd pretend to be one just so that I could eat the food.

On that podium is Tim Holm, the president of IKAA and a man who can make the logistical mess of a gathering on such a grand scale coagulate pleasantly. The feat could be likened to gathering billions of tangled computer power cords and combining them all to form the perfect image of a daffodil.

The opening ceremony went off without a hitch. You can spot adoptees in the audience who are first-timers to Korea, because they watch the samul-nori performances with wide eyes, open mouths and an excessive use of digital cameras. 

And you can spot the old-timers because they're the ones scanning the audience looking for the first-timers.

I've optimised by buffet strategy over many years of buffeting. On a side note, I think the letter 't' is pronounced in the word 'buffeting'. What do you think? Anyway, my buffet strategy involves the following guidelines:

1) Avoid rice, bread and anything that looks like it has flour. Break this rule if every other option looks terrible.

2) Use lettuce sparsely, as it is very demanding on plate real-estate. Lettuce leaves can be placed on top of other items, to make it look like you've made healthy choices.

3) Arrange any items with sauce or gravy on your plate so that they are separated from each other, with no possibility of cross-saucing. Explain to your new table friends about your accomplishment.

Here's an ice sculpture that was made for the occasion.

And in the picture above is Liselotte's impossibly cute little daughter, who enjoyed melting what she could of the sculpture, using the heat of tiny palms.
I was tempted to explain to her about the thermodynamics at play when she puts a palm on ice, but I had a feeling that it would have been a waste of time. Especially seeing as she can only understand Danish.

Part 2 coming soon!

2007 IKAA Gathering Part 2

The next gathering is going to be in Vegas in January. Due to the intensive period at work during that time I doubt I'll be able to get time off. But that's not going to stop me trying. Ha.

This is the 3 storey high banner that was attached to the wall of the Sofitel throughout our stay. It looked really pretty, but I always wonder what they do with the material after such an event. I reckon it would be good to cut up and make into t-shirts for everybody.

Here are 5 of the 6 Australians in the lobby of the hotel. Another one, Stephanie, was with us at the beginning but had to leave early. I'm in my typical photo posture as usual.

I'd never actually been to a horse race before so I took the opportunity when it arose. On the last Sunday arrangements were made to head down to the racepark as a group, but most people were tired. Only 6 of us ended up making the trek down to the track but it was a good time.

I know very little about horse racing in general, other than that it's an excuse to flog a helpless animal towards a finish line. But that didn't stop me wagering a bet. I picked the best looking horse, which ended up losing. Then I picked the ugliest looking one and that lost as well. Evidently beauty or a lack thereof is not a factor in racing. After that I went back to the hotel.

Here we are in Club Air, a place that ended up getting so full of adoptees that the locals ended up leaving and we had it to ourselves. I took this photo early on in the night. I guess some people are just very happy to have their photo taken.

A view from the VIP area looking down on the dancefloor. Pretty much everyone you can see is a friend of a friend. The level of adoptee networking promoted by the various organizations has been very successful.

My fellow panelist Robyn, with Dae-won having a good time. I left the place pretty late, and they were still dancing it up.

The closing ceremony was held in the Shilla Hotel, probably the most classy venue in Seoul. We dressed up nicely and were pleasantly surprised by the err... classiness of the place.

We all took our seats and heard speeches. The vice-president of Samsung, Kwang Sup-Han, was eating with us and footed the bill. At our table we took a few guesses at the price and generally agreed that it would run into the high tens of thousands. It was a very impressive setup.

The service was amazing. Wine was unlimited and all the plates were warm at the right time. Most impressively, they had a workforce of about 50 waiters who would stream out quickly and quietly carrying all the dishes at the right time, so nobody was left waiting for their food. Here's one of the waiters that was looking after our table. They came out so quickly they looked like a swarm of bees.

This was the appetizer. It was a seafood salad with wine dressing, but the prawns were some special kind of super tasty prawn that I'd never eaten before. This came after soup and was followed by steak and dessert. Man it was good.

Pia, Steve, Gennai and me. I hadn't worn a tie in so long I'd forgotten how to make the knot.

Some of the old characters from Koroot, the lodging house I stayed in last year. I still can't believe it's been a year already. Then again it seems like ages since I left Australia.

More happy faces. I have no idea when I'll meet up with these people again. Probably at some gathering way in the distant future.

The microphone host for the night was Ahn Jung-hyun, a television personality on Korean TV. She's a managing director of a media firm and hosts a talk show that I watch sometimes. So this was my small brush with fame.


Here's a video of one of the entertainment acts for the night, traditional Korean drummers. There was also other Korean traditional music and a b-boy performance, all of which were top quality.

The entertainment was interactive too, with the audience invited to play small drums that were handed out to everyone. In this photo we're singing 'Arirang' together, a traditional Korean folk song. Photo: Courtesy of Her Royal Loveliness, Pia Claire Meehan.

For the final night in Seoul, we had a club booked out for a while. Club circle is one of the more prominent and upmarket watering holes available. This is their animated LED front door sign, a couple of stories tall.

The interior design was original and aesthetically pleasing. White couches lined the outside, with a lot of mingling areas and televisions everywhere. On the couches were monitors displaying slideshows from other events.

In the middle of Club Circle is the bar area which is a large circle, would you believe. But the coolest thing about it is that the whole outer rim, with tables and all, rotates slowly like a revolving restaurant. So if you sit there, you eventually get to see the whole place from the comfort of your couch.

Later that night Mayda came back and gave us another performance. She's a very friendly and down to earth person. I bought one of her CDs afterwards, but it got lost somewhere in the blurry haze that was the rest of the night.

The drinks were a little bit pricey, as could be expected. We all pitched in at our table and those three bottles of JW set us back a mere KW600,000. But it was the last night, after all. Go hard and go home, as we used to say back in Australia.

The dress code of the event was all white, to match with the decor of the interior. Halfway through the night one of my very good friends in Korea and an organiser of the gathering, Tae-yang, showed up. He was wearing one of the bedsheets from the hotel, wrapped up into a toga. Awesome.



In the photos above are some old friends I caught up with and some friends I have since made. All good people.
The night was a perfect way to wrap up the gathering and I ended up meandering back to my apartment with a glow and a belly full of imported spirits.

The next day I woke up, checked out and took the KTX train back to good ol' Busan. At Seoul station I found a diner selling this hangover soup, which I promptly ordered. It had some sort of brown jelly stuff in it and tasted alright. On the day I arrived back, I had to teach that afternoon and it went pretty well.

Well that was the gathering! If you're adopted and thinking of coming back to Korea, I would highly recommend it. A shout-out to all the people who have. And if you're not adopted and thinking of coming to Korea, I would recommend it anyway.

Seeya!