::A Geek in Korea::

Today was going to be a trip to the countryside for my wife and I. We wanted to go to the nearest mountain to check out the newly sprouting spring cherry blossoms. While cherry blossoms are a wonderful thing that ushers in spring each year, there is also something that mark’s it’s arrival. It’s the phenomenon of Hwangsa (황사), or Yellow Dust.

I’ve written about this issue before. We were woken by a safety text message that stated “The yellow dust will be very bad today. Be careful outside.” When I went to check the window, the sky was a nasty yellow gray color. It was 20-30 times worse than normal today. Yellow skies are entirely the wrong color, so I decided to spend a lazy day inside. Since it was Sunday, that wasn’t a very big deal. Napping. Gaming. Not grading the papers I need to do for work tomorrow. The usual.

Eventually I had to go out. Yoshi needs his walk, and I needed to return a DVD rental to the local corner store. We used to own respiratory masks for traveling outside during the yellow dust storms to prevent that burning “Did someone spray something toxic out here?” feeling at the back of your throat.

We only wear dust masks in spring, but our old masks got misplaced. The pharmacy at the local corner store only sells smaller mask styles, and my wife wants to purchase larger ones for this storm season. Thus I had to walk the dog outside without a mask until we go to the store (after this post) and buy new masks.

I was outside for about twenty minutes, “breathing as little as possible” through my mouth and by the time I got inside my throat was raspy as if I had been yelling at students for hours. Nasty.

I’ll pass on a rumor I’ve recently heard: Koreans love sharing the health benefits of traditional Korean food. Food as medicine is a very popular idea. It seems that “Miyuk-guk” (미역국), or Seaweed soup, is supposed to help clear out the heavy toxic metals from your body that you get from breathing in the yellow dust. I’m not sure where this meme is coming from, but my wife is repeating it often enough. I don’t eat much miyuk-guk, health benefits or not.  I’ll probably get Snope’d again on this.