Gobchang Kui – The Beauty of Grilled Intestines
I grew up in the South. Part of Southern soul food culture is chitterlings, more commonly known as chitlins. I honestly had never tried this delicacy before coming to Korea. Then again, I hadn’t even heard of fried green tomatoes until the movie came out.
In the summer of 2004, Brant and I were sitting outside at a samgyeopsal place. We observed this restaurant next to us, which would flame something in a pan with soju. We decided to check this out.
Back then, my Korean was even worse than it is now. We had no idea what we were ordering on the menu. The waiter made sure that what we ordered was what we wanted. He then came out with this pan of vegetables and what looked like elbow macaroni. He proceeded to heat up the pan and flambéed it with soju.
I took one of the macaroni pieces and examined it.
“Brant, um, I think these are intestines.”
“Really? Try it. How is it?”
“Mmm. Pretty damn good.”
It was then that we were hooked. Grilled intestines, to us, taste like good old fashioned breakfast bacon. The restaurant mixed it with liver and onions and stuff. Made it the ultimate man food.
Six months later, I moved to the Sillim neighborhood in southern Seoul. Sillim is a pretty rundown area and is famous for one thing: sundae gobchang bokkum. This is blood sausage and intestine stir fry. The first time I went to one of these places, I had to beg my girlfriend Eun Jeong to come along. Even though she had already eaten dinner before meeting me, she ate a lot of the SGB in our sitting at the famous pink restaurant. I later introduced Brant to it, and Brant introduced everyone else to it. I have a video of one night there.
When I moved to Anyang, we found a branch of the famous pink restaurant there. We also found a basic gobchang restaurant in the area, which was fairly expensive.
Recently, we went back to the original place in Ansan, where I first tried this delicacy. It is still the best place I have had gobchang. Lars had instantly become a fan of it early in his stay in Korea, thanks to Injoo and me. He agrees with us that this place in Ansan is the best place for gobchang.
While we were waiting for our order, the waitress asked if we wanted any “gan.” I knew gan meant liver. I said, “Sure.”
She came out with a bowl of cubed RAW liver. We tried it, and despite the gelatinous texture, we liked it. Especially when it w
as dipped in one of the sauces.
The pan of gobchang came out, and the waitress flamed it with soju. We had to order extra, it was so good. Crispy on the outside, salty, bacony goodness.
As with any good grilled dinner, we had the option of taking the leftovers in the pan and making a fried rice with them. Rice was added with more vegetables and dried seaweed to make a heavenly send off to a great meal.
Forget sashimi. This is our new special treat for a night out.
Google is already being investigated by the Korean Trade authorities because some Koreans have complained that the fact they don’t have to provide evidence before cancelling a contract is unfair.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200702/200702270013.html
But then again, I bet every scammer is out there trying to ring out some cash from them… but that’s the business model they chose, good luck policing it without pissing off legitimate sites.
Hey Joe, that’s crazy stuff. I have also received an email from Google regarding “click fraud” but I never clicked on my own links. It could have been someone clicking on your ads repeatedly, enough to make Google notice.
I would sign up for Text Link Ads (visit my blog for the link if you’re interested; I get a referral ;)) as other advertisers will find your blog easily.
Side note: Did you notice in your comment box is wider than the main colum?
I can’t see what I’m typing when I reach the far right side!
Hmm… that is weird about the comment box. Add that to the list of things I need to fix.
I’ll check into Text Link and give you a referral. Thanks.
Not sure if my last comment got posted or not, but the Korean Trade office is forcing Google to change their terms after some Koreans complained about the contract which doesn’t require Google to provide any evidence of fraud etc. to cancel the contract.
I didn’t know that. That’s good news.
I had the same experience. As soon as my “income” from Google hit the $100 threshold
where they would have had to pay out, I got the same email as you did, accusing me of
illegal and invalid clicks. And then they wiped out my entire account (PS — it took 9
months to reach $100 — if I were perpetrating a fraud, I surely would have done better
than that!) and all appeals went unanswered. I never received one cent from running
Google ads. I was very happy to get rid of them, even to the extent of not offering Google
search on my site.
I would say you should all get together and file a class action suit. The suit handled by the right person could be done fairly effectively and quickly when you get to discovery. And I suspect some conumer rights group would love to take you on as a cause to whack Google
I don’t practice that sort of law, but seems to me that you could at least have some fun discovery and press mischief. It’s a big step, but seems there is a large community and boiler plate like their agreement is terrificlly hard to fight.
Let me clarify my earlier comment. I meant that boiler plate is NOT hard to fight. My appologies for not reading over my comment before posting.
Thank you, Husband. If there is a suit in the works somewhere, I may jump on board. It’s kind of hard to start something while I’m in Korea. All I want is some transparency and some assurance that Google’s procedures are on the level.
I never looked into adsense for two reasons: 1) I thought it was ugly and cluttered the page and 2) I didn’t want to have ads on my page for products that I didn’t necessarily know or believe in. I have turned down advertising from schlocky Moroccan export stores for the same reason.
I am now thinking about getting sponsors for my blog. Maybe that is the direction you should be moving?
Wow. Thanks for the warning about Adsense. I agree with Maryam that seeking sponsorship might be the best way for you to go. You’ve already demonstrated that the blog has readability and the coverage in the New York Times should speak volumes.
It sounds very suspicious that they don’t have to justify/explain why the click counts were deemed fraudulent. If it is indeed that one IP address was repeatedly clicking the ad, then they should have to explain that and provide evidence before terminating your account and taking your money.
I also think their ads are ugly.;-)
Same thing happened to us. We got listed on some CSS design sites and the traffic
quadrupled overnight. A week later they shut us down and kept the money. All $4 of it.
I switched to AdBrite and I’m checking out Yahoo’s answer to Adsense, but it’s still in beta.
Well, I’m experimenting with a few: Commission Junction, LinkShare, and specific affiliate programs. I like CJ and LS so far. I can pick and choose the advertisers (after they approve my applications). CJ lets me do easy banner rotations. LS has a lot of major advertisers. As of now, I’m having trouble with them detecting the ads on the sites, and I’m talking to them about it.
Yup, Here it is. I knew this kind of thing had to be happening to others. My account was cancelled and every hard earned dine was taken by google. I was NEW to Adsence and only had my site running for 3-4 weeks when I was told “invalid clicks or fraud” caused the cancellation. They have not responded to my pleads to re-enable my account. After exshaustive hours and hours and hours of building pages with Adsence it was all taken away.
The reason (I think) it was cancelled was one question they ask…They ask if you “refresh or check your own web site often”…. WHAT??? OF COURSE !!!
GET THIS… when you are BUILDING your page, you refresh to see how it looks RIGHT? – Well, there you go, thats all it takes to get cancelled. Thats whan happened to me. I have HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of google pages so, as one would think, you have to LOOK AT THE SITE to be sure its right…
CAN’T DO THAT!!!!
CAN’T EVEN LOOK AT YOUR OWN SITE as that will give FALSE CLICKS and therefore YOU are a FRAUD and you account will be closed.
We have no recourse, no way to FIGHT BACK, no way to get our money and there is NO ONE TO TALK TO ABOUT IT!!!
They will NOT return my messages and my hours and hours and hours spent putting together google pages in now LOST and IN THE TOILET.
So much time in my lift LOST to GOOGLE that I cannot get back.
Way to STICK IT IN DEEP GOOGLE !!!!
CLASS ACTION SUITE?? !! I want in on that!!
Google ripped me off too! I have a great webstore and ebay business, I drive alot of traffic to my webstore with op-in repeat customer email, so after 18 months building my google income, almost $500.00 monthly I get banned, just the same canned email everyone else gets for invalid clicks, they
got me for over $700.00 total earnings that where cancelled.
I already have a good income from my online sales, glad I didnt have to have the money, the F@@kers at google can keep the Money, legit online marketers beware of adsense,dont waste your time!
May/2007
Class action suit? Count me in! Thanks for this excellent post, Joe. My tale of woe here: http://michaelbelfiore.com/blog/2007/08/bamboozled-by-google.html
This is not exactly the same, but about a year ago, Google closed down two of my Gmail accounts, giving me a generic “you violated the terms of service” email. When I inquired as to what happened, I received a “we can’t help you because we can’t identify you” email. Since then, I’ve been extremely wary of all Google-related things, including adsense. If you come across a better advertiser than Adsense, let us all know!
Hi,
Unfortuanately, your story is not a new one. Good people all over the net are getting bent over by google as soon as they achieve a little bit of success.
If you want to help make a difference, please reproduce your article at my new site http://www.googlehorrorstories.net. This site is dedicated to providing people like you a place where you can share your story, in a venue that I hope will get big enough to get google’s attention and maybe spur some changes. If nothing else, the site will become a repository of stories that will educate others as to Google’s dark side.
thanks
My AdSense was disabled as well.
Why? I have NO idea — they say “Invalid Clicks”, but offer no proof, nor do they even mention which of my sites they have imagined in their minds are generating these “invalids”.
I have requested to be reinstated, so hopefully I will be. However, I am immediately going to be searching for an alternative to Google. Someone mentioned Yahoo, but I will not do business with them either — not after they outed the identity of those Chinese dissidents to protect their revenue from Chinese ad sales.
Its funny in a pathetic kind of way — all these companies like Google & Yahoo with their “Hipster Geek” leadership are just as corrupt as executives like Kenneth Lay, from the more mainstream companies…
I am an Adsense publisher.I know google people disables the account if frauds are identified. But one thing is sure.Be polite and wait. Never speak more more about your page and adsense account with your friends and dont try to check the revenue collected after clicking yourself during initialising.
wait for some time.Build yourself a web by many other sites so that it will be atleast in the first page in google search.
Never rule out the policies……..
I have already received ~$102 and even building around $22