I went to the New Technology expo first because Jennifer was still attending a seminar…and, I’m a huge nerd. It was interesting to say the least. I saw lots of cutting edge tech, but unfortunately, I saw a lot of blatant rip-offs as well.

An example of “future fashion”. This stuff has been around for so long, and so unsuccessfully, that I honestly just can’t get interested in it anymore. It does seem to be “getting” there, what with the invention of e-ink, paper thin displays, and nanotech, but, damn, when people have been talking about the same thing for 10 or 15 years, I really can’t shake the “been there done that” feeling.

Here are Haptic gloves. Yep…haptic gloves…touch feedback. And they’ve got it synced to videos, so, you feel what you see. They demoed a Lee Hyori video and Spiderman 3. This was the only invention in the whole expo that just made me say “Why?”, which I guess is a good thing. I mean, it’s neat, and they put a lot of work into choosing which parts of the vids give feedback, but, why my hands? Find a way to strap this to my wang and I’m sold (come on, you were thinking the same thing), but, until then…

A powersuit. Do I need to say anything else? It could not only *not* work, but shoot lasers into my eyes and give me herpes, and I’d still think it was awesome.

Here, a motion and gesture sensitive remote control system, a’la Minority Report. Cool idea, and needed, as his premise is based on the idea that remote controls today HAVE TOO MANY DAMNED BUTTONS, which they totally do. I don’t know if gesture control is the answer, but what I saw looked interesting.

Now *this* is the future. A touch sensitive table with pics and explanations of the menu items. This would be great for all of us clue-less waygookin.

AND ON TO THE CAFE-EXPO

This was great fun, and it ended up being only 5,000 won for entry. The theme of the expo was virtually any food and service that you could have in a cafe, so, it was primarily chocolate, wine, and coffee. The wine-tasting was had for a buy in of 3000 won, and even then you got to keep the glass.

I so want one of these. Instead of burning the shit out of your coffee, this Coffee Siphon uses physics to gently push the heated water into the grinds, then come back down into same tube. It made the most perfect coffee I’ve ever had.

Ahh, the wine tasting bar. 3000 won for unlimited tasting. ‘Nuff said. Sadly we only found 2 wines worth purchasing, the best being Vallformosa’s Tempranillo/Cabernet Sauvignon mix.

(Dinner and Dildoes with the owners of Azzil)

SOUTH Korea is a land undergoing massive change. In twenty years, the country has gone from dictatorship to Democracy; from virtually closed to the outside world, to a new haven for immigrant workers and English teachers; from culturally conservative to…well…that’s what this article is about. On any given day, one can see a virtual tsunami of mini-skirts, Starbucks so tightly packed together that you can walk past two before leaving the same city block, bars with more weed paraphernalia than the trippiest head-shops in L.A., and sex-for-sale under the flimsy guise of massage parlors.

However, with every step towards western “liberalism” that Korea takes, the country still seems to have one foot in the past. For every Starbucks full of housewives discussing the latest ‘Sex in the City’ episode, somewhere in Korea someone’s parents are forcing their son or daughter into a loveless marriage. Behind those massage parlors is a history of conservative Confucianism where men feel awkward experimenting sexually with their own wives.

In this shifting cultural climate, one has to wonder…where is that singular avatar of bodily freedom, that paragon of carnal desire and “openness”, the sex-toy store!? Well, it turns out that if you keep your eyes open, they aren’t too hard to find at all (the Hangeul for sex-toy store is 성인용품 ). If you’re a resident or frequent visitor to Itaewon, you probably already know about the sex toy shop located towards the Japanese district, but did you know that there’s a new kid on the block right down the street from the Hamilton hotel?

On a recent…ahem…supply run, I had a chance to sit down with the owners of the Azzil adult shop, Am Ki-Seong and Kim-Gun.Ki-Seong and Gun (yes, that’s his name, even though it goes against Korea’s typical 3 name system) started the store because of what they saw as a “good investment” due to Korea’s rapidly changing sexual climate. They named the store “Azzil”, which means “giddy” in Korean–roughly the same feeling of excitement you get on a roller coaster. Inside, the store is no where near as “dirty” as its American counterparts. You won’t find long-haul truck drivers, “booths”, or intimidating rubber fists here. What you will find is soft purple lighting, anime-inspired vibrators, and latex vaginas disguised as beer cans (Hite and Cass, of course, their biggest sellers).

(I really wasn’t joking about the pussy in a can)

This image softening was done to attract the Koreans who are their main customers (despite their location, Itaewon, which is a traditional foreigner area). It’s all about presentation when it comes to sex in Korea, and a grimy store filled with weird clerks and foreign objects would scare away their customers, who are already fairly skittish about discussing sex. Kim Gun says that his main customers are actually 19-27 year old Korean women. Also, a surprising number of older Koreans visit the store, but usually just to look around. It’s all about the middle ground, and Azzil treads the line between subversive and cute in order to satisfy a growing need for Koreans to learn more about sex, and “save face” at the same time.

Don’t get the wrong idea though; Koreans are definitely not clueless about the subject. There’s 50 million people here, so, in the words of the famous comedian Bill Hicks, “somebody’s been fuckin’.” According to Kim Gun and Ki-Seong, sexual knowledge in Korea appears to be on the rise. “In our parents day, they would only tell them not to do it. For us in highschool, we were told about condoms and sex, but also not to do it”. The appeal to abstinence is in obvious contrast to real life, however, as Kim Gun and Ki Seong both lost their virginity at around age 15, as did a few of their counterparts.

(USB vibrators…this is how you know you’re in Asia, folks)

Where the wall is really starting to break down, according to Gun and Seong, is in information. Because of the internet, Korean teenagers are more likely to be knowledgeable about sex than those teaching it to them. So, it’s no surprise that their biggest demographic is young Korean women (the category that was, and still is, traditionally blocked from carnal knowledge), buying vibrators with direct clitoral stimulus. Apparently, where-as the Western women who visit tend to go for the 6 inch, rotating vibrators with prongs on top and the option to vacuum your floor, Korean girls go for the “rubber ducks” and smaller “rabbits” that are routinely recommended on websites as the best “beginners” devices.

As for being the owners of a sex store in such a conservative country? Kim Gun and Ki-Seong aren’t too shy about telling people what they do. Ki-Seong has a girlfriend, and their parents have visited the store. “My mother really liked the lighting”, says Ki-Seong.

(They were nice enough to buy us some tasty dinner, hit the link and support the little guys)

Azzil Adult Store

Ahh, the clatter of dice, the intoxicating aroma of corn chips, the haze of Cheeto dust, the verbatim spouting of arcane and complex game rules; these are the memories that came rushing back to me the moment I entered Orc Town, a store specializing in miniature gaming located in Hongdae, Seoul.

Korea and Koreans are known for their love of pc gaming. In fact, with its televised Starcraft and Sudden Attack competitions, it can easily be said that it’s an epicenter of competitive gaming.

But where are the “other” games; tabletop and card games, such as Magic: the Gathering, competitive Pokemon and Yu-gi-Oh, Dungeons and Dragons, and the like? Frankly, their silence is deafening; Koreans, well, let’s say Korean males, tend to be a fairly nerdy lot, unashamed to take their girlfriends to the PC bang for a session of Starcraft. At the same time, they tend to be an extremely *social* lot, to the point where most restaurants really only have a menu for groups of 2 or more people. As I walk into Orc Town, I see gaming as it should be; people together, in person, having fun. Today, I’m speaking with Jude Oh, owner of Orc Town, to talk about games, Warhammer, and how such a social, smart culture became enamored with internet gaming which is, by its nature, an isolating force.

J: So, when did orctown open?

JO: First of September, this year

J: I really like the design of the store, the paint stations, etc. Was the layout of the store your design or did you get a lot of help from Games Workshop?

JO: Well, Games Workshop sells those paint stations for the hobbyists, but I had ordered six and attached them on the table, and, using MDF boards, I created the detail tables

J: Are you affiliated heavily with Games Workshop, or do you just use them for distribution?

JO: Well, I’m an independent dealer. I don’t deal with Games Workshop exclusively, that’s why I can deal in products from other companies.

J: How did you get into this type of gaming?

JO: It was my hobby for like 5 years now, and I thought, maybe I can set up a shop here in Korea. Before that, not many people had been playing, before the launch of [the computer game] Warhammer.

J: Speaking of which, miniature gaming, CCG’s, and RPG’s are not very popular in Korea, but as I look around, there are a lot of people here. What have you been doing to get people into the store?

JO: As you know, in Korea, there are lots of internet communities and internet groups–the “café’s” like Daum and Naver–so, there are a few people in Korea, I think less than 500 nationwide here, and they have gathered around in those communities and I’ve been a member of all of those communities, and did heavy advertising in those internet cafes.

J: Ah, so, in America we’d call it something like a “Grassroots campaign”

JO: Yeah, that’s true.

J: And have you seen the communities growing, or shrinking, or staying the same?

JO: Well, if you asked me 5 years ago, I’d say that we only really had quite older people who had their first taste of miniature gaming when they traveled abroad to the States or the UK. But, after the launch of the [Warhammer] computer game, a lot of kids got interested in Miniature games because they know that they were originally miniatures.

J: Speaking of online gaming, what’s your opinion of its effects on the miniature scene? Does it help the scene? Did it take away from what could have been a very good scene…?

JO: Well, I can say that my costumers definitely play online games and the miniatures also; it’s separate, like you can drink coke and also drink water, it’s different. But the young kids are more familiar [with] those computer games because, well, it’s a universal thing now, but people aren’t as familiar with having actual transactions with people.

J: Right, and as far as having those actual transactions with people, why hasn’t the tabletop and miniature gaming scene caught on in Korea? Koreans strike me as very social, very smart, and table top gaming is, by nature, social and “brainy”. Yet, Koreans seem to have passed table top gaming by whereas at the same time, in America, it was becoming very popular and spreading to other parts of the world. What happened in Korea?

JO: I think Korea has developed too fast. After liberation from Japan it has only been 50 years, and in those 50 years Korea has developed as much as 200 years compared to Western countries, so their mental world cannot catch up to their material world—they have skipped the process of going step-by-step. So, right now they are in their information age and have no experience with analog [gaming] really.

(Here, some of Orc Town’s customers playing the WW2 themed “Flames of War)

J: Yeah, that’s interesting. In that case, what are your plans to bring in the younger generation?

JO: I hope to because without the younger generation this kind of business cannot go on. You can’t just have old blood, you need the new blood. But I have hope because, as the economy grows and the society stabilizes I hope they [the younger generation] will become more informed about these older cultures like table top gaming, like how older people today buy the food of their childhood—there is actually a market now for those childhood foods. So, it’s like that, older people and kids have a memory of what they did 10 or 20 years ago.

J: That’s actually what brought me in here. I saw the Orctown sign while I was wandering around Hongdae and I went “Come on, you have to be kidding me, I hope that’s a game store.” And I come up here and people are rolling dice and playing miniature games. I was much more into Magic the Gathering when I was back home, but at every gaming store or comic book store you could find at least one table set up for Warhammer, so, I was really happy to come back in here. Do you have any plans to introduce other types of games?

JO: Yeah I do, because there’s not only Games Workshop, there are other miniature games makers, but, in terms of market portion they are rather small. Even with Games Workshop in Korea, people tend to prefer Warhammer 40k over the fantasy games, but I will promote games like Warhammer and Lord of the Rings because they have cool miniatures and very nice [game] rules. Also, as you can see, there are people starting to play Flames of War because there’s a lot of media about World War 2.

J: So, just miniatures then?

JO: Yeah.

J: Are you ever going to branch out and open a separate store?

JO: Well, if the business goes well –it has only been two months now, so it remains to be seen.

J: It looks like you’re doing well, so I wish you well, thanks for the interview.

JO: Thank you.