Grabbed by the Bulls

The Beat April 2003

by M.R. Bradie Photos by Andrew Cranston

THWONK! The hollow sound of bone crashing into bone; two massive blunt skulls impacting upon each other like speeding locomotives in head-on collision. Sounds like international politics, eh?

It's Springtime in Korea, which brings with it the annual Bullfighting festival. Taking place in Iso, just outside the county seat of Ch'eongdo this clash of beast-on-beast has been designated one of Koreas ten most important annual events by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The festival is big enough to draw international participation from Japanese, North American, Chinese and Australian bulls who are well behaved enough to fly on an airplane or sail on a ship with their owners. The tradition of drinking while watching two bulls fight has been an annual springtime event since the days of the Shilla Dynasty, a thousand years back.

When I first heard someone say that there's 'bullfighting' in Korea I became excited. It conjured up images of deadly battles between flamboyant men in tight sequined pants and fearsome beastst with mitilated neck muscles and spears sticking out of their hemorrhaging backs -- a socially permitted ballet of torture and cruelty, to climax in a final dance of death.

But then I talked to someone in the know and found out that Korean bullfighting (seo ssaum) is different. Unlike the European style of man-to-animal sadism, the Far East Asian version pits beast against beast. Itù a much more tidy and less violent battle of the wills, which climaxes with submission and loss of face when one of the combatants runs away or refuses to fight. The only threat of death for the bulls is that they'll be butchered up for kalbi ribs after they're no longer competitive.

Many say it's a bestial version of sumo wrestling, but with weight classes of under 640kg; between 640kg and 730kg; and over 730kg; it leaves Japan's famous fat boys looking like flabby little babies.

On the bus
THE bus ride from Ch'eongdo to the Bull fighting arena in Iso was a scenic twenty-five minute cruise through an arid Korean countryscape. Mostly farmland, the area hadn't yet shed the barren veil of winter. Inside the bus, Andy and I found ourselves surrounded by a mob of dwarfish halmonies and harabogies, their gold and gunmetal teeth gleaming out from between smiling wrinkled lips.

Rolling out of the station in Ch'eongdo, we were approached by a friendly younger fellow who seemed to be the village idiot. After babbling to the rows of seated old people and being ignored, he turned to us. With disheveled hair and a faint scent of soju, he compulsively grabbed his mouth in a nervous sort of twitch, stuttering and launching volleys of spittle my way.
This cheerful fellow seemed intent on talking to us about kickboxing and taekwondo in Korean. With my limited Korean language skills, I tried to humor him and go along with it but soon became frustrated with his insistence of topic:
Me: Ok, what's your name? Are you from Ch'eongdo?
VI: Taekwondo...the gloves!
M: (frustrated and increasingly belligerent): Do you like black women? I really like overweight black women!
VI: No! Kickboxing! Taekwondo!

At this point, he was looking at me like I was the global village idiot and returned to his seat in the back to mumble at the guy sitting next to him about taekwondo.

We arrived at the arena and stepped off the bus. Over the embankment was a huge steaming village of tents, booths and street carts bustling around the central arena. Fine brown dirt covered everything. Standing in the mud were tall thin girls taking tickets, dressed like airline stewardesses, wearing pillbox hats.

In the arena
HERDS of humans filed through the mud, under a gray canopy of sky, towards the center arena; a pit of loose moist dirt and surrounded by a log fence. Fleeing from the stench of the porta-potty bank we entered the arena. On the way in we passed a foreboding white trailer; a mobile butcher shop offering choice cuts of locally grown beef.
The arena looked like it could hold about 5,000 closely packed spectators. But on opening day, between excited locals and squads of day-tripping foreigners, the initial crowd was closer to 2000. For the opening ceremony, the 'Master' of Ch'eongdo addressed the crowd, telling everyone about the new World-Cup style bullfighting stadium that will be ready by next year, complete with legal pari-mutuel betting.
Then the warriors and their trainers filed out into the muddy center stage, the performing beasts held in tow by the rings and ropes strung through their noses; groaning as if to say, "Awww...not this time of year again!" Steam rose from the nostrils and backs of these behemoths. It was almost as if they were burning from the inside out.
We passed the grandstand seating, wove our way through the cloth-covered ground seating and made our way into the concrete trench surrounding the ring. There we joined the inner circle of photographers, television camera people and hardcore soju adventurers who were mostly ajossis of the down-home-country variety. Andy and I attempted to find out about gambling, as we hoped to place some random bets, but there were no takers.

Those about to lock (horns), WE SALUTE YOU!
THE first match of the tournament was between Pakut'do and Sado, two big brown Korean bulls in the 640-730kg weight class. These massive beasts of burden must have felt the collective psychic weight of the audience's anticipation, because as their trainers lined them up eye to eye, they began butting before the ropes were pulled out of their noses, causing the coaches to leap back in a shower of brown dirt. BAM! It was on!
p in the air. Constant flows of body steam stream from the bulls, their noses, their rectums, whirling up off their backs like vaporous tsunami.
From the concrete trench, watching from beneath the lowest wooden fence post, there was nothing between my eyes and the battling bulls. It was at this point in the first half hour of this epic match that I realized the subtle intensity of these raging beasts. Huge black eyes beaming at each other as they ignore their trainers' cries, repeatedly backing up and charging one another. Pakut'do pins Sado's head into the dirt with leverage of the horns, Sado's neck wrenched at an agonizing ninety-degree angle. It's becoming clear that while the sport is non-fatal, it is absolutely violent.
use, the match now nearing an hour, the beasts are backing off one another and resting. Sado's trainer is tugging him back towards Pakut'do, who manages to sneak around and charge the other bull's flank.
Every time they clash the crowd explodes in cheers. Sado stops to take a dump in the middle of the ring. Pakut'do stands in a daze, his pulpy head dripping blood. Even the trainers look tired and water is brought to them, which they swish around in their mouths and spit out like marathoners. And indeed their eyes looked dead, withdrawn, empty and resigned. The trainers allowed them moments to recuperate and then pushed them back into battle. Each collision moistening the dirt with sprays of blood and saliva. Standing back, Pakut'do is drooling like a brain-dead vegetable.
After an hour and a half, the exhausted crowd is cheering for a conclusion. Sado's trainer rallies him for one last charge, but he falls on Pakut'do's horn and wails. Pakut'do lands a blow to the side of his head, the tip of his horn jabbing his eye, and Sado submits, running away and circling the ring before charging into the corral. Almost as if he knew of his victory, Pakut'do runs victory laps around the ring with his trainer who has his arms outstretched in a victorious V; the crowd releases a cathartic roar, thrilled to see the rise and fall of these bovine titans!

Kimchi County Fair
Although bulfighting was the focal point of this festival, it was by no means the only attraction. And plenty of the people there, children running amok, screaming, "Hello!" and young women hunched over cell phones as they punch in text messages to secret lovers, seemed uninterested in the bullfights. There was an entire village of attractions: carnival rides, cheap plastic toy venders, old ladies hunched over boiling cauldrons of silkworm snacks and doughy red bean pastries.
Surrounding tents offered everything from laptop computers to boxes of locally grown persimmons. And around back, the fair opened up into a world of restaurant stalls with charred pig corpses on rotating spits, seafood sitting out in the open too long to be called fresh and thousands of bowls of beef fatty gristle and rice soup. There was a lonely Bangladeshi fellow in a white chef's suit and hat selling roasted lamb meat covered in ketchup and wrapped in flour tortillas and calling it 'gyro wrap.'
To the left of the food stalls was a travelling caravan of flea market salesmen and a tent of antiques from South East Asia. Walking canes with sword handles, brass figurines of Buddhist sex gods and goddesses with interlocking genitals, graphic traditional Korean hardcore porno paintings on rice cloth, a gang of giggling ajossis gathered round the colorful illustrations of an unnaturally well hung yangban (aristocrat) of old, and each page a different position as he penetrates an innocent looking gisaeng (hostess) in every orifice. Incense and the bodies of scorpions and seahorses encased in plastic key chains forever. People were drinking Ch'am (pure) Soju and screaming at the silly transvestite beggars who make yeot candy and blare crazy pongchak music from their carts.
At the very back of the fair was a tent-covered shopping mall filled with every strange product that Koreans love. The entire catacomb of bargains is filled with frantically throbbing techno music, inciting a shopping rave. The shoppers are crazed like drunken small game hunters prowling for good prices on low quality goods: body-health suction cup kits, motorized nose hair trimmers, cheap hats and sun glasses, cheap leather shoes, bored men demonstrating kitchen devices for gangs of ajummas, fake Nike and Adidas dehydrated fruit, vegetables, seafood; three piece business suites for 39,000 won!

Round 2!

The crowd gathers for the second round of combat. This time the bulls are from the upper weight division. The red trainerù bull is wild from the start, tugging and at one point charging the fence where we watched from underneath. But when they put the two face to face, they just stood there, seemingly uninterested in fighting. Finally the trainers push their heads together and scream and they begin butting. The crazy red bull backs up a little and the blue walks behind him and rams his ass and he runs, charging the blue bulls trainer who dives out of the way into the dirt and the charger takes off the corral door; the fight over in lest than five minutes.
Laughing at the unpredictability of the whole game we walked from the arena to the holding pens where the bulls are kept in open tent compartments, yoked to the ground through heavy ropes run through their noses. There stood the bulls peacfully. We saw Pakut'do and Sado next to each other, the tops of their heads still mashed and raw with blood-matted fur. There were all the different bulls, snorting, whipping their tails, eating, shitting, digging holes in the soft dirt piled up underneath them. Waiting, controlled and patient for their masters to come and lead them to battle.


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