Beings Clean

10-korean-customs-5     

Immaculate Living

A peculiar thought comes to mind on this morning at -19 degrees, where I sit in a small area lit by enough light to see the keyboard. Have you ever considered which restaurants are good places to eat? Well, I have a simple rule for determination. Upon entering a restaurant, simply go to the restroom. Once inside the restroom check it out closely and ask yourself, “Is it a clean sparkling restroom sanitized right down to the cracks around the toilet? If your answer to this is then you can be certain that the kitchen must be so much cleaner than you could imagine. Simply put, if the dirtiest place in a restaurant is super clean, then the rest of the facility can be trusted to be even cleaner and relied upon to be a safe healthy place to eat.

As I prepare to address a sensitive issue, I consider the children I came to help. An event recently happened that has removed from my hands the responsibility for actions that I saw coming but hoped to moderate. I had mentioned this earlier as a “leak in a retaining wall that held back a carnivorous tsunami well now what has began can't be stopped and I'm grateful it's out of my hands. I'm grateful that language has its built in safety mechanisms; by this I mean that vocabulary becomes a filter by which to write on a subject meant for adults without offending children. I want my site to remain safe for all families regardless of age, so if I write on sensitive issues (like in this article) I try and keep my vocabulary and concepts at a level only adults can put together and understand. My fairly recent return to the U.S. has revealed academic scores that place Americans so low on international academic scoring, that I'm fearful that many adults may not understand what I'm trying to communicate here.

It seems like it was only yesterday when I received my boarding pass at the flight ticket counter, grabbed my carry on bag and simply walked unimpeded to the boarding gate gave my boarding pass to the young lady and took my seat aboard the international flight from Alaska to Korea. At that time there were no security check points. My time in Korea was a time in a land that knew nothing of terror and my flights to and from the main land and my island home happened unimpeded without security checks for many years after the event in the U.S. associated with September 11, 2001 twin tower attacks; something I wasn't here for and don't understand and have no desire to understand.

I remember my dialogue with the teacher I was preparing to replace. She was located in the only relatively small city by the sea on the east coast of Korea that turned up on my Internet job search. I had so many questions for her in order to be sure I was completely ready for what lay ahead in this foreign world. Simple questions on matters regarding apartment amenities were spoken about. I wanted to be sure that the life I would be entering was not very different than the one I would leave behind in the U.S.; little did I know that the life I would enter in Korea was so much different, that my acquaintance who had lived in Korea before me had no idea of how different life was, as she had only been there for a year, which I now know is only a moment of time within a world formed over thousands of years. My check list reviewed with her by phone and e-mail seemed to reveal a world that was not much different than the U.S., except for one minor problem. When I asked her about washing machines, she said the school apartment had one along with a microwave, TV and VCR. When I pressed her about the availability of a clothe dryer, she admitted that all clothes from the washer were hung out on clothes lines and racks on the patio. Hearing this immediately set my mind in a prejudicial state which made me believe that Koreans must be poor and primitive compared to western standards. However, this initial misconception was soon to be altered by the world I would meet in Korea.

When my last security free flight landed in Korea, the first thing that immediately became apparent was the lack of toilet paper in public restrooms along with the practice of disposing of any toilet tissue in a receptacle next to the toilet; I was appalled and discussed at what appeared to my western eyes to be a shocking lack of personal hygiene. After a number of years past, I found I was spending an inordinate amount of time making fun of what I saw as Koreans barbaric bathroom habits. Before long, my desire to express my disgust for the filth perceived in a lack of toilet tissue motivated me to waste time modifying an old pop song by the title, “If You Come To San Francisco. I won't go into the modified lyrics which only express what I saw as a deplorable lack of hygiene; little did I know at that time, I was actually perceiving was my own deeply ingrained ignorance regarding hygiene.

For me trying to convey my western view of issues perceived as retrograde hygiene practices of Koreans will necessitate speaking first about factors that westerners are familiar with; for example, how simple tasks like washing dishes, hands or cooking utensils are dealt with. After review of what westerners understand as common cleaning practices, these western habits will be translated into their parallel expression as concepts related to Korean cultural hygiene practices.

Now please bear with me as reviewing what we take for granted with regards to hygiene with its associated sensitive word and concepts. To begin with it is easiest to explore how western people clean things. For example, when a woman is cooking a cake and gets batter on her hands, she has choices with how to clean off the batter. For this baking example, many will recognize that wiping one's hands on a paper towel will suffice if the following step is related to baking. So it is a common practice for westerners to use paper towels with quick hand cleaning or other quick cleaning needs.

Now let's deal with this same practice to bathroom hygiene. Naturally, this issue is more detailed and complex for women than men, involving elements that can quickly clarify and explain why Koreans hygienic practices are so different than westerners. To establish a base line, it is essential to understand and agree upon how we deal with hygiene for things we put into our bodies and things that come out of our bodies. For men and women the issue with hygiene governing food consumption are not different, yet there are differences to be cited for the ways that Koreans deal food consumption hygiene.

For the process of elimination of waste from the human body, women have three matters of elimination and man only two. With regards to the uniquely feminine third element related to women's monthly menstrual cycle, it is common knowledge that the maintenance of hygiene involves rather bulky accouterments that can't be handled by the pipes and septic system associated with hygiene. Since these bulky cotton / tissue items commonly jam septic lines, women are very familiar with a metal waste receptacle installed and maintained just for the purpose of proper disposal of hygiene and sanitary practices associated with their everyday life. The question remains regarding the disposal process of these feminine hygiene products, “After disposal, does the woman feel clean and sanitary? Now, hold that thought and question as we jump to include men in this equation.

After men and women finish the process of cleaning up after elimination of bodily solid waste, what do they use? Well I was taught to use toilet tissue. After using the tissue where do you put it? Do you put it in an adjacent metal waste receptacle for solid cotton / tissue waste products like women do with their sanitary accouterments? If not, why not and what is the difference? Women know that it is proper sanitary practice to put all non-bodily waste like paper, tissue and cotton items in the metal waste receptacle adjacent to the toilet. To complete this remedial discussion of sanitary hygiene, it is essential to address the sanitary practice associated with elimination of liquid body waste. It seems that nature leaves women unable to take a stand on this issue. (There must be some humor in truth at this point.) Men naturally don't need to use toilet tissue for obvious reasons and women do.

In the overall equation, women use much more paper / cotton products on a daily basis than do men. Since paper / cotton products for the bathroom are meant to facilitate proper hygiene, what can be concluded about women's efforts to stay clean in comparison to men? Are women more hygienically challenged than men? Besides toilet tissue and monthly supply demands there is the supermarket aisle with shelf upon shelf, box upon box of a number of other daily disposable products to make women's laundry day a one time wash rather than having to use the industrial cycle two or three times to get “delicate" items clean. It's just a “fact of life."

So in review, women show superior hygienic habits compared to men. Why? Because women are already familiar with solid waste disposal in an adjacent metal waste receptacle instead of stressing the bathroom related paper and cotton which negatively impact the environment at the point of the city waste water treatment plant. Now let's consider this “environmental impact. By removing all manufactured solid waste products like paper, tissue or cotton from the waste water treatment flow, only naturally produced human waste reaches the facility making for easier water filtering and lower over all impact on the natural environment. Women have learned this lesson from decades of having to speak with frustrated, irate, angry plumbers who appear at their door with a big dripping stinking bag filled with pounds of festering sludge created by women who try to launch these monthly packets like secret torpedoes down the swirling black hole leading to the abyss.

Now, I believe that all bases have been covered on this issue, which allows me to deal with the question at hand which is, “Are Koreans less hygienically sanitary than westerners? As mentioned at the start, upon my arrival in Korea I was immediately shocked by the lack of toilet tissue in public restrooms and the presence of a large adjacent metal waste receptacle many times quite full of tissue soiled with human waste. From this point, (which is basically all that westerners ever see about Koreans sanitary practices) I will jump over eleven years of learning about differences between hygiene practices of a nation 200 years old and a nation with an unbroken documented history and genealogy that extends back in time 10,000 years. Do you think that people who knew how to get along well enough for 10,000 years and meticulously document their efforts might just have something to learn from? The first shocking thing I discovered was an arrogance and pride bolstered by a thinking made more pedantic when considering that the arrogance and pride were erroneously justified by reasoning supported by such flamboyant scientific achievements as the “first man on the moon and first reusable space craft so humankind could go places they were never designed to go. The pedantic pride and arrogance, yes they were mine and discovered in a crushing embarrassment that humbled me to the point of groveling for forgiveness. After eleven years of laughing at Koreans and spending inordinate amounts of time trying to fabricate songs to humiliate the people of an ancient society, i discovered how terribly wrong my perceptions were. I must confess that I didn't really know who they were until the final few years before I left them bearing the burden of my sickness which they took on themselves and selflessly conveyed upon me the purity of a life human kind was meant to have.

To try and finish this as succinctly as possible. If a restaurant lets people know that it made a great effort to clean its dishes by wiping them clean with tissue before serving food to new customers, would you eat there? If you saw your wife or mother cleaning the dishes with tissues or paper towels and stacking them in the cupboards, how would you feel about eating off your own dishes? Is there something wrong with this picture of cleaning dishes? Most people would say, “Yeah sure there is something wrong because people should wash and dry dishes before using them. In this simple example is the solution to my misperception of Korean hygiene.

Koreans are so clean that they would never appear in public if after using the restroom they hadn't washed and dried after elimination of solid or liquid waste without using their hands. For women, they go even further to include the third matter that likewise is dealt with by using warm water washing and drying by a warm air blower dryer.“Say what!!?? People in Korea have a way to clean themselves without using their hands and it leaves them far cleaner than just smearing ones bottom with waste using toilet tissue regardless of how “Charming and Squeezably Soft" it might be.

I feel a little embarrassed explaining this to the most advanced nation on earth; a nation that can put a man on the moon, secretly turn the unborn into hamburger, monitor your every action from womb to tomb yet doesn't even know who to clean their bottom without raping a rain-forest.

Judging from the name “Bidet" (1620s, from Fr. bidet) found in the English dictionary; though the word is defined accurately I have never seen one used in the United States, Canada, England, Mexico or Iceland which are places where I've had a chance to use a restroom, I do know that Koreans are extremely well educated but the collective nature of society impedes creativity. I've included links so people can view this device and buy one as soon as possible. I have no connection with the guy and business selling this item and expect no remuneration for posting his business here...just a little shocked to actually find one available. After years of study, the people of the three major Asian countries of Japan, Korea and China have no need for individual separation from the social collective to garner creative ideas. The West generates a wealth of creative ideas but with the American family unit in a state of decomposition, whatever creativity there may be is warped, bent and twisted by a society who treats children as toys to be played with or abused if not at home by a misguided education system disabled by its own incompetence (check the international scores to even see if the U.S. shows up let alone scores high. Western nations unfortunately lack the collective industry to capitalize on and develop such ideas and thus fall miserably short. This is the reason Japan's market utilizing the large screen LCD display has been such an economic benefit to them; discovered in 1888 and tinkered with by white man until 1970 when Koreans and Japanese took the idea and generated a large stable industry for their people.

 

bedae

Korean Bedit

Regarding the Bidet (which appears initially as a piece of equipment meant for veterinary medical efforts) was developed by Koreans to augment their original propensity to use the washroom (a place where all cloths, body, and food cleaning was carried out) and simply extended what was a normal home practice of washing with soap and water after using the bathroom, to a device made as an adjunct to the common indoor toilet system. Toilet tissue is used mostly for make-up maintenance and covering ones face. In the odd cases and mention at the on set, in an emergency the tissue can be used if a bidet is not found in a restroom.

Tissue in Korea is not the primary means of cleaning after using the restroom. The primary reason for this is related to effectiveness; Koreans find it very disgusting to take excrement and actually use one's hands in an effort that doesn't truly clean a person but finally smears it all over one bottom. However, the key issue is being conscious of what it means to be clean not just personally but collectively. For Koreans, what one does anywhere affects the whole of the collective. If one is in a bathroom, they clean themselves in a way that would leave them totally inoffensive to others in any situation. What goes into a toilet affects the collective so everywhere there is a toilet there is an adjacent metal waste receptacle and if there ever was a toilet with out an adjacent metal waste receptacle, people would discretely wrap what tissue they had to use in an emergency then dispose of it where a trash container could be found.

In Korea it is preferable to carry wet tissue at all time for any personal cleaning that needs to be dealt with in emergency situations. It has been noted that Koreans know how to live close to nature and by that I mean if anyone happens to be in the woods, it is totally natural for them to go off into the woods to relieve themselves, common for men in the world but noted with women in Korea who deal with the issue without discomfort or embarrassment.

In final review of the comparative look at east West hygiene, when men or women use the restroom in Korea for elimination of solid waste, the bidet attached to the toilet first filters incoming water before heating it to body temperature. Once a person is finished and ready to clean themselves (the point where western people reach for toilet tissue) the person on the bidet reaches to the right where there is a small electronic control panel with touch sensitive switches for setting water temperature and activating the bidet. There is a group of setting just for women and a setting that is common to men and women. After one is finished with solid waste elimination, they press the button to activate the bidet. Once activated, the bidet has a group of retractable arms which move spigots forward and back. Upon activation, the bidet spigot arm is extended to the exact position and a jet of warm water is sprayed at the exact spot it needs to hit; the intensity of the water jet can be increased or decreased, made to move forward and back or left and right in gyrating motion to insure thorough cleaning. Upon activation the bidet has a timed cycle which can be extended or terminated at any time. It is interesting to note that the force of the water shooting out of the spigot can be made so gentle as to only get your bottom wet but the system does have the capacity to increase the pressure; without exaggeration the force of the water spraying from the spigot can be made so intense that the bidet will proceed to actually begin cleaning inside your body. When this intensity is reached it is not comfortable and if not reduced will leave the person filling with water from below where they have to sit and drain; it possible but most people don't let the pressure get that high.

Bedae_inside

Korean Bedit Internal Elements

As mentioned there are setting for men and women and setting just for women. Out of confusion from trying to read the Korean printed around the little red woman icon, I pressed the button meant just for women and found myself rocketing out of the toilet seat like a submarine launched missile. I was hit by a jet of warm water in a part of my body that was never meant to experience an assault by a squirt gun in my frontal area. However shocking the accident was, it did enlighten me to the extent of cleansing women can experience, complete with warm air drying without the touch of a hand. The cleaning can be as deep as you can stand it and it's very thorough in the process.

After the water cleaning cycle is finished, the spigot arm is retracted out of sight and the next arm is extended that has a hollow tube to channel a flow of warm air for drying the washed area. Once again this part of the cycle has a timed segment that can be manipulated for longer or shorter times as well as warmer or cooler flows of air. Once the cycle is finished the arm retracts and the person can stand up totally cleaned without having used tissues or their hands. The toilet can be flushed without negatively impacting the local water treatment plant, which is an essential consideration for people who live in dense population regions yet should be practiced by a humanity that has a care for the planet that supports them. Hand cleaning afterwards is optional but commonly done out of sense of completion.

 

Conclusion

My initial ignorance and prejudice regarding Korean hygiene just went to expose a major flaw in my thinking as a person from the “most advanced, most powerful, most civilized nation to ever walk through the dust of the moon while millions on earth died of hunger. I went to Korea thinking “I am an American from the country that dropped two nuclear weapons on your neighboring Japanese foes and you Koreans should tremble and grovel at my honorable American feet because if you don't, my all powerful country will come to your ancient nation and blow you all to kingdom come in one blinding flash. Yep, I am an American so line up if you want my shadow to fall across your heathen paths,

I guess the final point in the review of potty training has to do with its relationship to the restaurant mentioned in the beginning; which is "The cleanliness of a restaurant can tell a lot about the more essential workings of the business. How does this analogy relate to present reality? Well if the people of the most advanced nation have no knowledge or experience with the most basic of human cleanliness, what can be said for higher service providers like the U.S. military which depends on poor street urchins who fall from battered homes and find the military a great place to vent their aggressions. Or perhaps closer to home is the deplorable state of education in American where teachers can be canned for "seeming" like they may be doing something wrong in a world where everyone who is employed by school must be trained in how to deal with "lock-downs." When I head of this after leaving the nation of Korea where children walked the streets alone at night without fear, a nation where children are venerated and loved by all, I knew I had descended into the very bowels of hell itself. I have seen children abused in the schools and what do you think was the response when I went to help them? I was told not to come back. Can you believe it?

Yes, I believe you can tell a lot about the working of peoples minds by the most basic of human processes. I still can't believe that I must go through a lot of strange actions to get as clean as I used to. I will never take for granted the beauty of the nation that I became a citizen of just in the nick of time. My vacation here in the United States has proved to me that all I taught the children in Korea about America was very real and very accurate.


 

 

 


   

 

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