Changdeok palace and Jongmyo shrine

Here are a few pictures of the Changdeok Palance and one of the Jongmyo shrine - the shrine is the photo with the persimmon tree.

The buildings and grounds in both locations are at once elegant and ornate, yet spare.

Conference on conflicts of interest in medicine

A remarkable conference, held in Seoul and the reason for my visit. This shows several speakers for the conference at the entry to a side building of the Asan Medical Center.

Asan is a massive (~2,700 bed) hospital in Seoul, founded by the Hyundai corporation.

Korea is working through a number of very complicated issues related to funding medical care - as is the US - and the focus on the role of industry in education and practice is intense.

A new law, referred to as "dual-punishment" will make it possible to punish both physicians and companies for kickback arrangements. Yet many physicians (including those who believe kickbacks are unethical) say that insurance payments are less than the actual cost of delivering care and kickbacks have become an integral part of how care is financed...

The group organizing this conference - the Korean Society for Medical Ethics - is concerned that without public trust the profession cannot succeed in lobbying for increased payments, but that the profession can't bolster public trust while receiving kickbacks. If it's true that payments are less than the actual cost of care, then suddenly stopping kickbacks would cause physicians to go bankrupt, so a sudden cessation is not possible without first seeing an increase in payment rates.

This is what we in the U.S. call a Catch-22 (a term from Joseph Heller's book about WWII, which inspired both the movie and TV show MASH, about the Korean war, incidentally!).

Seoul's version of the Magic Kingdom

This is called Lotte World - which is attached to my hotel (this is a view from the elevator). Note that the Lotte World castle bears a remarkable resemblance to the Disney Castle. Of course, Disney's Cinderella Castle is, itself, reportedly modeled on the Neuschwanstein castle in Germany, though I always found that comparison a bit of a streatch.

Korean BBQ

This was an amazing small restaurant on the outskirts of Seoul, up on a hill, where they cook the meat outside on a wood-burning grill, then bring it inside to finish cooking right at your table, and then you wrap it in lettuce and add whatever other grilled and non-grilled stuff you want, and enjoy! Awesome flavors!

I am really sorry that I couldn't just load this as a single clip - someday I'll figure out how to load longer clips...

More clips of live small octopus - in sauce!

I consider myself to be pretty good with chopsticks, for a Westerner, but in these next clips, I ended up having to put my finger (using the hand holding the camera) on the plate, to hold it down as I struggled to pick this tentacle up.

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Incidentally, I was out to dinner later on this same day with a doctor from Seoul, who told me they've have at least one case of a person asphyxiating on a tentacle. If you don't chew well, AND if you get this thing down the wrong tube, apparently it can be dangerous.

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The sauce is a pretty basic cocktail-type sauce, with just a little more spice than might be usual. It really seems to perk up the tentacle, though.

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Eating live small octopus_part I

If you are at all squeamish, I advise not watching this one. From what I've heard, a few people were grossed out by the last set of clips I posted on this remarkable lunch. This clip was initially too long to post, so I had to figure out how to cut it into smaller pieces. I finally got my video editor working and I'll post this in segments. In this first section, you can see how tenacious these little critters can be.

(Note to self: check whether tenacious and tentacle come from the same root...)

Noryangjin Fish Market pictures

These are pictures from the Nrangjin Fish Market in Seoul. You can buy fish here and then have it taken straight upstairs where there are a bunch of small restaurants, and they'll cook it up for you. This is as fresh as it gets.

Cute, and delicious!

Slimy, sticky, fun!