TreX-Games, or My Three Minutes of Korean Fame

Busan has been working very hard over the last decade to become a player in international events. Every year they host the Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF), which displays new films from all over the world, especially Asia. The helped host the 2002 World Cup held in Korea, they hosted the fourteenth Asian Games in 2002 and the APEC summit held in 2005, and they have officially made a bid for the Olympic Games in 2020. The latest in this line of international events was the World Sport for All Games, or TreX-Games held here last weekend (the last weekend in September. Sorry I’m a little behind on the updating).

The TreX-Games is a combination of an X-Games-type sporting event and a huge international cultural festival. It’s sponsored by the International Olympic Committee as well as a ton of other organizations, and it’s only taken place three times before: twice in germany and once in Thailand. My friends and I had nothing better to do on Saturday, so we decided to make our way down to BEXCO (the convention center) and check it out.

They had a really nice exhibition room, where you could try out all kinds of fun things. They let me ride a Segway, which was a really good time, although the Korean guy demonstrating them didn’t really trust me. They had a couple of weird, fun roller vehicles. One of these vehicles was called “Xliders,” and I took it as my personal mission to succeed in at least being able to move without falling over. While it may not have been pretty, I did succeed in moving across the area they had set up. I must have looked like I was trying really hard, or the guys running it just felt sorry for me, because after I’d been at it for a while they gave me a free Korean soft drink. The other highlights in this room included weight machines that only went up to like thirty pounds (the women running the booth were a little embarrassed that I could lift it on the heaviest setting without exerting any effort), tons of hiking equipment, and a bunch of sweaty, greasy teenagers playing computer games (which was part of the Games).

We eventually bought tickets to go watch the X-Games portion of the festival. We got to see the tail end of the rollerblade park qualifiers and the entire BMX park qualifiers. It was very entertaining. You don’t realize how high those guys on their bikes are getting until you’re sitting three rows away. My friends and I have noticed that the larger the event, the higher our celebrity status at said event (for being white, obviously). The TreX-Games were no exception. They did the “fan cam” on the big screen twice while we were there, both times it was us: the only group of more than three non-Asians anywhere in the stands.

Outside the Convention Center, there were booths with traditional arts and cultural materials from every continent, especially Asia. There were traditional Taiwanese rug weavers, all kind of Korean crafts, and other cultural items from all over the world. ‘What did they have from the United States?’ you ask: Mickey and Minney Mouse plates, and cowboy boots. It made me sad.

They also had cultural demonstrations going on outside the convention center. There were a group of Bolivians who were experts at horse-whipping. They had long whips that were solid most of the way up with just a little tail on them. And they could get them to crack really loudly. They were letting other people try them too. It was pretty hilarious to watch a bunch of fifty year old Korean men trying to make these whips crack. So, being in a foreign country, surrounded by people I didn't know, I decided to make a fool of myself too. I stepped up and took the whip, and flung it around wildly for a while (I managed to only leave one mark on my neck). But eventually I was able to get it to crack. I was the only non-Bolivian (while we were there) who got it to crack, eliciting a round of applause from the surrounding Koreans. That's right. Round of applause.

The most exciting point of the day was when my friend David and I decided to try the neoltwiggi boards they had set up. Neoltwiggi is a Korean traditional seesaw which is only about a foot and a half off the ground. One person starts on the end of the board and the other person jumps on to their end. As that person hits the board, the person on the other side jumps. If you do it right, it will launch that person into the air. You then continue back and forth until someone loses their balance or someone gets launched off the seesaw and onto the pavement. As far as I can tell, it’s usually played by children, so as you can imagine it’s a little more dramatic when played by two 6’, 170 lb men. We were done making idiots of ourselves and were about to leave when a news team from KNN (Korean News Network) asked us if we would do it a little longer so that they could film us. So there is a fairly good chance that we were on Korean National Television, and may even be filed away under their stock “foreigner” clips.

It was, overall, one of the best days I’ve had in Korea so far, and definitely a day I will remember for a long time.