Korea, the land of one-up-manship.

Some of you may remember my first article on oh-gyup-sal (five layers of fat pork). Oh-gyup-sal is a one-up on sam-gyup-sal (three layers of fat porl), so it only makes sense that this land of hyperbole would come up with chun-gyup-sal (1,000 layers of fat pork)--and it did. As amazing as it may seem, someone got the great idea of leap-frogging all of the competition and calling what is basically pork chop a name that denotes something a little more superlative. Why not trillion layers of fat pork (jo-gyup-sal)? I have no idea.


The sign says "1,000 layers of fat pork"...mmmmmmm.

Well, Korea isn't the only place where things get blown out of proportion sometimes, it's just that they do it so well here and we're not used to it. Who can forget the launch of the Gilette Mach 3? Yes, that's what I need! Three blades on my face! (Of course they had 'Excel' versions of their Sensor, Mach 3 and ladies' razors, too, as if we needed that little white strip to save from cutting our faces open.) Recently the Schick Quattro came out (for those of you who failed Latin, Italian, Audi or whatever language this is in: quattro means expensive). Now Gillette has a 'power' version of its razor. Now this is getting ridiculous! Here in Korea I get 10 good razors for 2,000 won (USD 1.75). (Yes, 17.5c each!) They're so cheap I only use them twice then throw them away. (Please no Greenpeace/eco-friendly group flamings.) And you know what? I get a pretty good shave out of it, too...similarly I only buy plain ol' pork chops at home.