Dumpster Diving And The Responsibilties That Follow.

I have in the past discussed in these pages, all manners of garbage as they pertain to Korea. From the strange assortments of trash, to the musical six a.m. garbage trucks. I have left out one aspect of trash and it's collection, that being recycling. Korea recycles a lot more materials than America chooses to recycle. Candy bar wrapper? Recycleable. Light Bulbs? Yup. Ramen packaging? Well, that too is recycleable. Anyhow in order to recycle, all a resident in Korea needs to do, is put the items to be recycled outside their home, and a recycling man or woman (though they tend to be men) will come and pick it up in their ramshackle little carts. These men are not garbagemen per-say. They are not on city payrolls...it's more like they are freelance trash collectors. Apparently here in Korea, there's a big demand for old pizza boxes, used bubble wrap, and empty bean (or beer) cans. So anyhow these trash collectors wander around with their little carts and pick up trash, old appliances, ect. and take them to depots where they sell this junk for cold hard cash.


The recycling man's cart.

Anyhow since Koreans think that second hand items are unlucky and no one in their right mind would buy or sell such things, they toss a lot of stuff out for the recycling men to collect and make some loot off of. Dishes, plants, electronics, clothes, and books and magazines. (Wow...that was the longest set up ever).
As a student of the Korean language, I need a lot of reading materials to help me study. Books and magazines usually cost money, but since I'm not a Korean, I'm not above picking trash. I figure I can learn just as much from some used books as I can from a new one, so why not save the money for some useful...like alcohol. Usually the books and magazines that are tossed out in my hood, are a lot of Christian textbooks, fashion magazines, and technically manuals, but once and awhile you'll run into something out of the ordinary. Recently while rummaging through a bag of discarded fashion magazines, I came across a Korean rock magazine entitled "HOTmusic." Arbitrary capitalization, and redankulous title aside, the magazine is pretty bizarre.
The magazine was a really odd mix of Spin (or Rolling Stone), RIP (or any of those other trashy metal magazines), and a magazine for guitar players. The cover photo has the American band Jimmy Eat World, inside you will find articles about Green Day, Morrissey, and other artists one would find in the pages of Spin. This being a Korean publication, they also have Korean and Japanese artists (akin to the western artists mention above). Now here are where things get weird.
Aside from these mainstream, commerical rock outfits, there were numerous interviews, reviews, and write-ups of all manners of metal bands. You got your death metal, your doom metal, your gothic metal, your metalcore, your gothic doom metal (not to be confused with doom metal or gothic metal), your black metal, your power metal, your speed metal, your melodic speed metal, and last but not least, your melodic speed doom gothic death metal. So in this one issue of some random Korean rock magazine, I learned more about the different genres of metal than I had learned in my entire life.
Additionally for the guitar geeks, the magazine had a little section of gear. Talking about various guitars, and effects, and what-not, but that's not the weird part. In the middle of the magazine, in a totally irony and sarcasm free setting, there was a review of a fuckin' DIO album! DIO?! This particular magazine was the Oct. 2004 issue, and fucking DIO was in it....what the hell is that?!
Now if you'll excuse me I have to get back to downloading some Korean metal. Check out 니플하임 (Niflheim) which is a Korean black metal band, and 에버스피릿 (Everspirt) which is allegedly a Korean style 80's heavy metal band (they have just released their debut album...this year...not 1987). Anyhow keep rockin' and rollin' and be sure to check out your neighbor's garbage, because you never know when the girl throwing out a stack of Elle and Vogue is a closet metal head and will be chucking out some outstanding metal mags!