Seoul Summer

Here, I interview Céline Dogsé about her time with Emma in Seoul in the summer of 2018. The two went to UCL in the same program (BASC) and they were friends of friends in Paris, but it was a happy coincidence that found themselves both going to the prestigious Seoul National University for summer studies. Now Emma could have taken Machine Learning or Macroeconomics, but she told me in no uncertain terms that "I want to take some art classes. I don't want to do anything academic." Once there, she mentioned that the atmosphere was serious. This was no summer camp! Indeed, teachers assigned grades that counted toward the daughter's UCL graduation requirements. As the transcript shows, Emma nevertheless earned high marks that were carefully transcribed into English equivalents--a 90% average for three classes, pottery, painting and architecture. UCL then registered these simply as a "P" for pass! In the mix, these grades did not matter. Emma still graduated with first-class honors in Science and Engineering. More importantly, Emma and Céline became good friends and would go on more adventures together, like several days hiking the Compostelle in 2022. They had planned to cover more ground on the Camino in 2023 ...  

Read on for Céline's reflections about Seoul summer and go here for Emma's and Céline's photos. There are many photos from that trip, but I've featured mostly ones from the classes.  

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The five weeks I spent in Korea (June and July 2018) were some of the happiest of my life. We had so much fun and learnt so much, and I am so very grateful I got to live all of it with Emma. It really was a very special time. 

How did you or Emma find out about the summer study in Seoul?
Summer school at Seoul National University (SNU) was organised as part of a UCL program called "Short-Term Global Opportunities." I believe we just received an email one day which outlined the program: every summer, a few UCL students got grants to attend summer school at a partner university. The tuition was free and travel and living costs were covered. Any first- or second-year student could apply, and grants were given out based on academic merit and strength of application.

Did you both apply without each other knowing about it?
Both of us applied without telling each other, and, if I remember correctly, Seoul wasn't the first choice for either of us. We randomly discovered that we were going to be in the same place over spring break, while strolling in Paris and talking about our summer plans. We were obviously very excited (and for my part a little relieved) to know that we would have a friend along on the journey.

Did you both take the same classes? Painting, ceramics and urban studies/architecture? Did Emma express any opinions or feelings about these classes one way or another?

Emma studied urban studies/architecture in the mornings, which I remember her really enjoying. (It might have been her first urban studies/architecture class ever, but I am really not sure. She was always very excited about it. I also remember her being very interested in the city's architecture, and she would regularly take out her sketch pad and draw façades on our walks). See Emma's sketch pad here, with drawings South Korea starting at about the middle: https://photos.app.goo.gl/9pqsPHWU31VhbGV6A.

After our first class we would usually have lunch at a cafeteria, which was always a source of great enjoyment because the food was delicious, always very new to us, and we loved analyzing the cultural differences that showed up concerning meal-time habits.

After lunch, Emma had pottery. I also took pottery but in the mornings, so we had different teachers and groups but the curriculum was the same, and we both took our classes in the gorgeous pottery studio, a room which was surrounded by a bamboo forest, and in which hundreds of perfectly shaped vases were neatly stored on shelves. I remember both of us loving our classes, but sometimes feeling judged by the teachers who were used to teaching Korean students who had done many hours of ceramics classes and were very skilled. The summer school was a bit peculiar in that way: SNU students are used to doing summer classes to get extra credit, so classes were shared, with a majority of SNU students and a minority of summer school students. Some students in our pottery classes were studying pottery in university and were therefore very good compared to us, who were struggling to learn the basics.

Our last class of the day was painting, which we both loved, even though the first week consisted in only drawing straight lines. The class was given by a very skilled and kind professor who didn't speak any English (other students translated), and he was very encouraging and interested in our work, as we were the only foreign students in his class (and only a handful of us had never tried Korean ink painting on rice paper before). The course was organised as follows: week one: learning to draw straight lines, week two: learning to draw circles, week three: learning to mix straight lines and circles (with a particularly fun lesson in which we spent several hours painting a foldable bike), week three: working with water and ink, week four: colour, week five: free painting and backing of our work.

Could you tell the story again about one of the professors inviting you for tea?
One day after class, our painting teacher asked one of our Korean friends to ask Emma and I if we were free to stay a few minutes and talk with him after class. We agreed, and it turned out he had actually planned on inviting us for tea. He had brought a teapot and prepared tea in the traditional Korean way, and pulled out many handkerchief parcels of carefully packed teas. He explained (thanks to the translation of our Korean friend), the importance of tea ceremonies in Korea, where to get good tea, and how to prepare and drink it. We also discussed his paintings, and he talked enthusiastically about why he enjoyed teaching the Summer School painting classes every year. We drank small delicious cups of tea, and at the end of our tasting he gave us a small satchel of tea, and a tea shop address.

A few days later, we went to this small tea shop, which was hidden away in a neighboring district. The place was packed with tea connoisseurs and students enjoying a variety of tea. Upon presenting the tea parcel to the shop owner, and after explaining that our professor had sent us, the owner treated us to two excellent cups of tea.

Did the program offer extracurricular experiences? If so, which ones did you both or yourself or Emma join? Is this where Emma’s trip to the DMZ came in? Did you go as well?
The SNU Summer School program did offer a few extra-curricular experiences. The ones I remember include a visit to the DMZ, which both Emma and I found quite strange if I remember correctly. The atmosphere around the border was quite tense, and the viewpoint looking out towards North Korea felt like it shouldn't be a tourist spot. We were also invited to watch an informational video at the visitor's center, which was evidently politically skewed, and visited some underground tunnels which had been used for military purposes.

Other experiences included a riverboat dinner cruise, during which we ate delicious food and had a lot of fun joking with our course friends, and a Kpop concert during which we witnessed firsthand the passion of Kpop fans.

Outside the experiences organized by SNU, we made sure to visit most of the museums and temples in Seoul, and were out exploring new neighborhoods whenever we had a free day or evening. We also visited the city with our course friends: notable memories include visiting a traditional bath house, having a picnic by the river, and singing karaoke in Seoul's famous party district.

How would you describe the courses? I wonder if intense comes to mind considering the three courses ran for 15 sessions over 5 weeks?
I would say the course load was well-balanced. We had three 2.5 hour classes a day for three days a week. That means the days spent at SNU were long and intense, but the campus was set in the hills neighboring the city, and felt like a calm and beautiful green bubble, which eased the intensity of those days. Despite the loveliness of the campus, it also felt great to be able to escape into the city or out of Seoul on our many free days. What did make this time period intense was, in my view, not the courses themselves, but rather our enthusiasm to experience as much as we could, and discover the city and country as best possible during that short time span.

Did Emma talk about the designs she chose for her ceramics?
Since I didn't take the same ceramics class as Emma, we unfortunately didn't discuss her ceramics much. I only remember her being very excited to try to make a tea pot, and very proud of how it turned out. I also remember our stress about getting all our pieces home. On our last day, we ran frantically around the campus trying to find empty cardboard boxes to put our ceramics in so we could send them off at the post office. (Read at the end of this article about the fate of Emma's creations.)

Are there any humorous stories about Emma that summer? Did you go on any day trips or walks?

There are so many humorous and lovely stories of our adventures that summer, it is very hard to pick just a few. One of my strongest memories would be Emma's arrival in Seoul. We were there during monsoon season, and Emma's flight arrived in the middle of a thunderstorm. I was waiting for her at the campus dorms, as she was arriving quite late at night and there would be no staff available to welcome her at that time. Only Emma didn't have phone coverage when she arrived, and so I wasn't sure she would arrive safely, and was quite worried given the heavy downpour, darkness, thunder, and general tricky location of the campus dorms. We were both so relieved when Emma finally arrived, and I will always remember what she looked like when she stepped out of the darkness, soaking wet in the monsoon rain, with her huge backpack on and the biggest grin on her face! 

We were continually surprised by the kindness and welcoming nature of Koreans. To our great joy, we discovered that the Koreans we met were most excited about helping us discover their culinary culture. We were continually given recommendations for new dishes or restaurants to try, and we were gifted so much food, from fellow hikers giving sweets or cakes, to strangers inviting us to their table as we passed them on the streets, or other clients discreetly paying for our meals as a way to welcome us to Korea. We were proud to have tried the vast majority of all dishes that we were recommended, but I have to confess we purposefully left out a famous dish from our to-eat list : eating live octopus was too adventurous for us. 

We went on two self-organized weekend trips during our time in Korea, one hiking the port town of Sokcho, and the other to the southern capital of the country, Busan. Funnily enough, both trips include quite alot of luck with transportation and orientation.

Our trip to Sokcho started off on the wrong foot when Emma missed our morning bus. She insisted, by text (on the metro's wifi system), that I get on the bus by myself and that she would get a later bus and meet me in Sokcho. Only our eternal communication problem arose when I arrived in Sokcho: Neither of us had Korean sim cards, so we couldn't communicate about a meetup spot unless both of us had wifi. In Seoul, this wasn't much of a problem, as public wifi was available in and around all metro stations, but the hunt for wifi was more difficult in Sokcho. I found a nearby corner store and sat down to eat our favorite snack: a fish-shaped ice cream sandwich with tamarind paste (this had become a slight addiction and daily must), preparing myself for an hours-long wait and struggle to find Emma at an unknown time in an unknown location. You can imagine my suprise when, no more than half an hour later, I see Emma waltzing into the store! She had managed to get on a bus which left just a few dozen minutes after mine, and walked into the store on the hunt for wifi to contact me. This strike of luck continued throughout our weekend in Sokchu, as we hiked through beautiful lush green mountains, climbing up and down hundreds of flights of stairs (without exageration!), and felt regularly embarassed when groups of elderly Korean grandmas and grandpas out-walked us on the trails without breaking a sweat. 

Our trip to Busan was less sporty, and included watching unexpected fireworks break over the city skyline from the sandy shore of a bay, eating fantastic dumplings, and wallking up the city's famed hill of colourful houses. That day was particularly hot, easily over 40C, and we had foolishly decided to set out to walk up the hill in the middle of the day, under a blazing sun, thinking we would, as we usually did, conveniently find a cool café to hide in when we would inevitably overheat. But this neighborhood was purely residential, and the more we climbed, the more we realized that our dream café was only getting further and further away. When we reached the top of the hill, we were both on the verge of a heatstroke, and no shade was in sight. There was no porch to hide under, no bench to rest on, no vendor selling water or hats, and absolutely no way we could walk down the hill in the heat. Crisis mode was activated, and when Emma spotted a bus turning around the curb of the nearest road, she did not hesitate to reach her arm out to make it stop, despite the fact that we didn't know where the bus was going, and had no way to learn where it was headed to as neither of us could read or speak Korean. In that moment, none of that mattered, and we were so relieved to enter the cool and air-conditioned bus that we immediately fell asleep in the last row. About an hour later, both of us woke up dazed and disoriented. Here our luck struck again: before we even had the chance to get anxious about being in an unknown city in an unspecified bus with no ability to know where we were heading, we recognized a landmark the bus was passing by and realized that the bus had been taking us exactly where we had hoped to go: the city center which we still had to discover.

I left Emma in Busan to head back to Seoul and fly home, but Emma still had exciting plans to take the ferry to Japan from Busan, and spend a few weeks there. Unfortunately, our luck with public transport had run out with our last bus adventure, as Emma never managed to get on that ferry. Somehow, she missed the daily ferry twice, and then decided to change her plans. She signed up to Workaway and went to a small rural Korean town to babysit a child for a few weeks. She later said that although she had been disappointed not to get to go to Japan, she believed that trip would have felt too rushed, and she was happy to have had more time in Korea. We promised each other that on our next big adventure would be taking the Transsiberian accross Russia to Vladivostock, where we wuld cross by ferry to Sakaiminato, so she could finally visit Japan. 

Postscript from Rose:

The box came from Korea after several weeks, and only one piece in my memory was broken: The handle of the lovely teapot. We have most of Emma's creations here in France. Unfortunately, we do not know the whereabouts of the soup bowls or the conical cover for the folded-clay cup. Please tell us if you know! And most of the rice-paper paintings crumbled as Emma didn't have time to glue them to a stiffer paper. Only one painting that was back exists to our knowledge. That is framed and hung in our apartment. A framed copy hangs in Céline's place. Seven of the finished precious "calling cards" exist (eight were unfinished). They look like miniature Korean landscapes and feature Emma's name in her hand.