Mia Kang, owner of Hana’s Restaurant, has cooked for the Korean Student Association’s annual Korea Night for four years. She helps prepare the recipes, gather the ingredients, cook the food and serve it, and each year she swears it’s her last.
But each year she comes back to serve the hundreds of University students and community members who show up for dinner before entertainment because she believes that “all those kids are my kids.” Besides, she believes she’s been blessed by God and should give to others, she said.
“My heart tells me that I should help them,” Kang said. “My body is tired. In two days I couldn’t do anything with my family, but it’s worth it.”
Sunday night, Kang and volunteers with the KSA served 450 meals for the approximately 350 people who attended the annual celebration in the EMU Ballroom.
Before a show that included music and performances mixing modern and traditional culture, students and community members ate Korean seaweed salad with a sesame and garlic sauce, lettuce-wrapped rice with Korean beef, Kim Chi, bean sprout salad and a tea made of roasted barley and corn. All of it was made from scratch, Kang said. This year, extra time and expense were taken to package the foods separately so diners could taste the flavor of each individual dish, Kang said.
FAST FACTS: KOREA Location: Korean Peninsula in eastern Asia, bordered by the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan Population: North Korea – 22,697,553 (July 2004 est.); South Korea 48,598,175 (July 2004 est.) Capital: North Korea – Pyongyang; South Korea – Seoul Government type: North Korea – Communism, one-man dictatorship; South Korea – Republic Ethnic groups: North Korea – small Chinese community and a few ethnic Japanese; South Korea – small Chinese community Religions: North Korea – traditionally Buddhist and Confucianist, some Christian and syncretic Chondogyo, note: autonomous religious activities now almost nonexistent; government-sponsored religious groups exist to provide illusion of religious freedom; South Korea – no affiliation 46 percent, Christian 26 percent, Buddhist 26 percent, Confucianist 1 percent, other 1 percent Agricultural products: North Korea – rice, corn, potatoes, soybeans, pulses, cattle, pigs, pork, eggs; South Korea – rice, root crops, barley, vegetables, fruit, cattle, pigs, chickens, milk, eggs, fish Source: www.cia.gov |
The entertainment segment of the evening included Korean harp, yoga, short bamboo flute, skits and tae kwon do performances, among others. The theme of this year’s Korea Night was “Master Ahn’s Birthday Party.” The skits were about Master Ahn, the richest
person in a small city called Ulsan during the 17th-century
Chosun era.
Between 30 and 40 volunteers showed up to help out at the event, which KSA members had been planning since the fall, KSA Co-Director Yoo Suk Doh said.
“This is our biggest event,” he said. “So we’ve been working on this all year, and we have about 15 members working on it.”
Doh said members were
concerned before the event that people weren’t going to show up for the event, but they were relieved when people started lining up in the EMU.
“I didn’t expect this many people,” he said as people left the dining room and worked their way up the hall to the EMU Ballroom for the show. “Our main purpose is to spread Korean culture, and if a lot of people don’t come here, there’s less chance of showing our culture. So we were stressed, seriously.”
University freshman Sungmin Cho – who is studying business and Japanese and played the part of Dol-Sae, a servant, in the play segment of the show – said he was thankful that so many people showed up, despite the bad
weather.
Cho said the display of traditional Korean culture is hard to get across, so KSA members decided to use humor in the show to draw the
audience in.
University junior business major Jung Hee Shin, who played the Jing, a traditional Korean drum, said the drum performers practiced three times a week since fall term for the segment. The drum performers, who didn’t know how to play their instruments before the fall, performed well and produced what she said was the audience’s favorite segment of the program.
Shin didn’t even like Korean music before she began practicing the traditional Korean rhythms. Now, she appreciates the power of the music and the teamwork required to make it, she said.
“I didn’t really like Korean music. I thought it was really just noisy,” she said. “But now it’s harmony.”
Eugene resident Vincent Kwon, who donated to Korea Night, said the drum segment and the fan dance were his favorite segments of the evening. He said he understands the difficulty of drumming at a constant rate for that long.
“It’s a strong effort by a lot of college students who don’t have much time,” Kwon said. “So you’ve really got to take your hat off to that.”
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