Panyeon, Korea
Sunday 17 November 2019
Panyeon is a suburb of Seoul about forty minutes away on the subway, the Silicon Valley of Korea, a brand new city, a forest of high-rise condos and office buildings clustered in discrete groups, the smallest condo costing about one million dollars, the buildings themselves certainly more attractive than the similar clusters of high-rise condos I saw in China. But then what else do you do with all the people? You have to stack them up. And up. And up. I wish I had asked how many stories In each of these tall, tall buildings and how many units in each. On the ground floor is a community area for exercise and ping pong and weights (I did not see a swimming pool) and a garden and park with real trees and bushes and such things as are scarcely possible forty or more stories in the air. Every speck of the infrastructure of Panyeon, including the subway, is spanking new and shiny and stainless steel and glass and spacious and organized.
I was in Panyeon to visit an English-speaking service of their Presbyterian Church. A small group meets in the beautiful basement room of the Presbyterian Church of Panyeon. The pastor is Iranian (unusual) but speaks good English. The music is both guitar and electric piano, and hymnals are not needed because the words of the hymns, along with the group prayers, are projected on a large video screen. 
After the service, we had lunch at the church, then what is usually a Bible Study hour, only because I was there, I was asked about my work, which, of course, I can talk about at length, espousing all my philosophy on Margaret Sanger, which I wedged in after talking about what I love equally, the Presbyterian missionary activity of the nineteenth-century in Korea.
Then we went to a Thanksgiving Dinner at a member’s home. Sunday was the Day of Thanksgiving in Korea. You may be sure there was no turkey and no vegetables, but lots of rice and, oh yes, one dish of onion, celery, and tomatoes dressed with lemon, olive oil and garlic salt. This diet of rice, rice, rice, seaweed, kimchi and well-cooked meat (I do not recommend Korea as a destination for Vegans) seems to work for the Koreans, for they all look healthy, the young look beautiful, and as I have a mentioned before, everyone is well dressed. Very well dressed. Everyone has new shoes. Apparently, they wear them once and then throw them away, for how else could you keep white tennis shoes always sparkling white? Jasmine says there is a second-hand clothes store in Seoul, but my gut feeling is that somewhere just outside of Seoul is a mountain of jackets, dresses, skinny leg pants, and shoes all worn only once. 
Since we were in Panyeon, everyone there, except the pastor and his wife, was a techie and developing AI and so smart and doing such amazing things that I was glad I could not speak Korean, for I would have understood nothing under the best of circumstances. Watch out for Korea. They are very very smart.
The pastor, who is part Kurd, mentioned something quite curious. According to him, the US is building the LARGEST US Embassy in the world in Kurdistan. Really?
