[Weekender] Surviving summer

The blazing sun, sticky air, sultry sleepless nights and mosquito bites -- yes, it’s summer again.

You know what it brings. Iced drinks and shaved ice desserts called “bingsu” will be selling like hot cakes on streets of Seoul. Women will pay extra attention to shield their skin from the sun, with layers and layers of sun block and sun visors with the widest possible brims. Popular beaches and swimming pools will crowd to a mixture that locals joke is “half people and half water.” 

And from the way things look now, a national power supply crisis will likely return smack in the middle of the heatwave, stopping many from fully enjoying the blessings of air-conditioning.

Yet, this is the season that most Koreans look forward to. 

In a country so overworked and overstressed, summer is the time of the hard-earned break. Life slows down. Or at least it feels more endurable because of the promise of the summer vacation. Summer holidays, although they tend to be short, lasting less than a week, are reason enough for many to put up with extra work, extra hours and extra everything, particularly because winter vacation is not common here yet. (We’ll look into the topic -- summer vacation -- in next week’s Weekender.)

Koreans have some peculiar ways of surviving the dog days of summer. 

For starters, there is the summer food: As much as ice is in demand, so is chicken. And they like it hot.

Summer is not complete without tucking in to a hot bowl of chicken soup called samgyetang. Traditionally, Koreans celebrate the hottest days of the season -- the three “bok” days on the lunar calendar -- with a hot bowl of broth made from chicken, dog or whatever it is that supposedly increases energy levels and boosts your immune system. The popularity of “chimaek,” the combination of fried chicken (“chi”) and beer (“maek” from “maekju,” the Korean word for beer), reaches its peak on summer nights.

Some seek out spine-chilling experiences to beat the heat.

Like on Halloween in the West, summer in Korea is the prime season for scary movies, horror-themed cafes and bars and special excursions to haunted houses. What does it have to do with the hot weather? The idea is that fear triggers the release of adrenaline and accelerates the heartbeat, which causes perspiration. As that sweat evaporates, your body temperature drops.

This week, we look into these and various other ways of getting through the summer in Korea, both the time-honored traditions and the newly emerging, Western-influenced trends.

By Lee Sun-young (milaya@heraldcorp.com)