Signs of Spring

The weather is warming up, and with the forsythia and cherry blossoms in bloom and the trees beginning to bud, it's really starting to feel like spring. But even without the buds and blossoms, another, rather unusual, sign would let you know that it's spring in Korea: surgical masks.

Actually, random Koreans can be seen wearing them year-round. Some students in the academy where I used to teach wore them when they had colds to prevent the spread of germs - a nice idea, though the purpose seemed to be soundly defeated when they'd peel back the masks to drink from the one cup that all the kids shared at the water cooler. But when you see masses of people walking around with masks on, as I did on my way to church last Sunday, you know that spring has arrived, and with it the yellow dust that blows across the West Sea (a.k.a. Yellow Sea) from the Gobi Desert aroud this time each year. The dust picks up pollutants emitted from the industrial centers of northeastern China as it makes its way east, so apparently inhaling it once it reaches the Korean peninsula is bad for the lungs.

Last Sunday I went for an early morning hike on one of the trails behind campus, and when I reached a rocky outpost I was thinking that if it weren't for the haze, I'd have a great view of campus and of southern Seoul. It was only later in the day, when I saw all the people with their masks on, that I connected that morning haze with the yellow dust; during the week I looked it up online and discovered that was probably the worst day for yellow dust that we'd have this spring. I wonder: do the health benefits of a hike outweigh the damage of any pollutants I inhaled along the way?