The Day Seoul Buses Stopped
Intro of a proletarian revolution
안녕, it’s Ari, your talkative Korean friend and weekend reminder. 🎉 Today’s newsletter covers the second bestselling side dish, a letter from Seoul bus drivers, and an English vocabulary lesson. Let’s dive in!
😷 I still cough and have a sore throat, so there won’t be a podcast this week. Sorry 😢
Soy Sauce Braised Quail Eggs
Following last week's theme, I'd like to share one of the bestselling side dishes in Korea. Recently, a Korean food company announced the top five best-selling side dishes, with "메추리알간장조림" or soy sauce-braised quail eggs ranking second. Just as its ranking suggests, it's an immensely popular side dish that pairs perfectly with rice. I have fond memories of enjoying this dish, especially during my childhood. Because quail eggs are small, they're ideal for kids with small mouths. It was always disheartening to see the eggs disappear from my plate one by one because they were so delicious. While searching for its recipe online, I discovered that this dish was featured in the K-Drama series "It's Okay Not to Be Okay." If you've watched the series, you may find this dish familiar.
To prepare this dish, you'll need to peel all the small eggs, which can be quite time-consuming. If you prefer not to do so or can't find quail eggs, consider trying another dish that uses chicken eggs instead but is still quite similar to this second bestselling dish. If you don’t mind peeling the small eggs, watch the recipe video and give it a try yourself to experience what I felt during childhood. 😋
The Day Seoul Buses Stopped
On March 28th, 7,200 buses in Seoul, comprising 97% of all buses in the capital city, stopped. The roads that used to be filled with buses during morning rush hours were empty. Some people used their cars instead, causing immense traffic jams, and subway stations became overcrowded.
It was the first strike of Seoul city bus drivers in 12 years. They demanded a 12.7% increase in hourly wage, while bus companies insisted on a 2.5% increase. The drivers’ wages hadn’t increased since 2021, following a 2.8% increase in 2020. Their monthly base salary is just 1,530 USD. Due to the steep increase in the cost of living (a 5.1% increase in the last year alone), their net income has been decreasing.
After eleven hours of negotiation between the companies and the union failed, the union issued a letter urging the drivers to participate in a quiet strike by not driving their buses for a day. The letter went viral in Korea and moved people’s hearts. Let me share some parts of the letter below.
“…At the last negotiation meeting, what we clearly heard from the company was not about wage increase rates, but criticism and contempt towards our fellow union members.
Dear fellow union members,
The representatives of the company said to our union, "You guys with a few bucks in your pockets, you think you can strike? Go ahead and try if you can." They ridicule us, saying that since more than half of the union members follow the company's instructions and cannot even start a strike, they won't bother negotiating wages.…
Why should we, who bear the weight of supporting a household, be subject to such humiliation from them, who were born with a silver spoon and know nothing about the realities of the world? (Many Korean bus companies are inherited by the owners' children.)
Why should we, who protect the lives and safety of Seoul citizens and engage in noble labor that sustains their lives, receive such treatment from those who know nothing about the burden of life?…”
If it were a movie, this would have been the speech of a brave worker signaling a proletarian revolution. However, in reality, there was no revolution, and the strike didn’t even last a day, with both parties agreeing on a 4.48% hourly wage increase. In Korea, it’s really hard for any union to go on strike for a long time due to many reasons, including severe government crackdowns and the law that allows companies to require compensation for damages caused by the strike.
About two weeks have passed since the strike, and yesterday, the Seoul City Council decided to suggest to the National Assembly to pass a bill that makes bus driving an essential service, forcing the drivers to work even during strikes. Tlqkf
Mini Korean Lesson: Tlqkf
Thanks to popular K-dramas including Squid Game, Korean curses are not really foreign to many people around the world anymore. The most famous curse of all should be “씨발 (ssibal),” which means similar to the F word in English. Just like English speakers try to avoid using the F word as it is, Koreans try to censor the word in many different ways. In the past, I talked about how Koreans censor curses using “X.”
Today, I want to share a fun and trending way to censor the S word which I think English speakers would find interesting: to type the S word on an English keyboard. If you type the S word on an English keyboard, it’s written as “Tlqkf.” If you search this T word on the Korean internet, you’ll get a ton of examples such as the above image. 👆 A YouTuber used “Tlqkf” when he complained about a misleading headline of a news article that covered his recent video. Many young Koreans use the T word when they want to use the S word in a somewhat indirect tone. A curse written in a foreign language sounds more indirect than in the native language and thus feels more comforting to use. In case you need, the F word in Korean can be written as “뻐킹 (fxxxing).”
Thanks for reading! If you liked my newsletter, ☕️ buy me a coffee ☕️ to support my work. It’ll help me keep writing! I will be back next week. 안녕!
P.S. The parliamentary election covered in the previous newsletter has concluded, with the liberal opposition party securing a landslide victory. The candidate who detained foreigners failed to win, receiving only 285 votes. 😊
Hello Ari, always look forward to your posts. And another catchy title.
And more strikes, though in this case I am probably more on the side of the bus drivers. Your doctors seem to earn a fair wage in general, but the drivers by Australian standards do not by a long shot.
Australia has an interesting history with regards unionization and strikes and our Labor Party said to founded under a big tree in Blackall, Central Queensland about 130 yrs ago during The Great Shearer's Strike when the Army (quite small) was called in even. This is near a place where my family lived for about 100 yrs.
And forgot to comment on the use of seaweed in cooking. My Euro Heritage is Irish, Scottish and Cornish, and NO English. All three of these Celtic cultures have long history of using seaweed in their diet and it has come back into fashion ie by chefs like Jamie Oliver.
And the quail egg recipe is great. When young our next door neighbours had a lot of quail and chickens. Suburban blocks in Brisbane ran to about average of 900 sq metres, and it was common to have vegetable patch and various fruit trees like citrus and mango and we had a native Macadamia tree even; one of the nicest and flavoursome nuts there are, and quite large. And our street lined by majestic 40 metre tall pine trees, called Bunya Pines, also native, which have a huge pine cone weghing up to 9 kg when green and the pine kernals can be 3 inches long. A bit north of here was an area where these trees were prolific, and a source of First Nation's peoples diet.
We usually got a few when the city council would come to harvest them as they were a bit dangerous when they ripened and fell. A bit like coconut risk in a lot of places.
So we had a lot of quail eggs, partly due to the activity of our dog who was very protective of the birds against local cats and foxes and a big monitor type lizard called Goanas, which were quite sneaky.
And the reminder about It's OK to Be Not OK KDrama, which I really liked, is cool. Must rewatch.
At the other end of eggs, we also raised ostriches and had native emus (similar large flightless bird). Very large eggs; one of my great grandmother's Xmas pudding recipes started with take 4 large emu or ostrich eggs. And the meat of both birds is is very lean. The egg shells themselves
also carved like scrimshaw as ornaments by workmen in the remote outback at night.
Glad to learn that the Ironbar Redneck only got 285 votes. And hats off to the policeman who faced him off. This term is a bit old but a signature of respect from the days when we wore a lot of hats. You would momentarily take your hat of and give a slight bow.
And still deciphering Tlqfk but have got the general idea.
Last, re The Proletariat. Two must read and perhaps you and your readers have already; Animal Farm by George Orwell ( who has a nice website and free newsletter) and 1984 by Aldous Huxley, which has possibly one of the best book to movie translations ever with Sir Richard Burton as main protagonist, Winston, and fabulous soundtrack by The Eurythmics with the great voice of Annie Lennox (do chase these up) .
Both on my English Lit reading list at school in UK and here, well before 1984 had even occured!
Thanks for sending me all these rabbitholes to journey down. Cristoffa.
We send support from France to all the Korean workers who had to go on a strike for their rights. 🙏