The Call to Melons

Hey everyone! Jon here. This is my first official blog post.

When I first arrived in Korea everything was still new and a little foreign (okay, actually a lot foreign). I was in our apartment just relaxing when I heard a voice on the street coming through what sounded like a world war II speaker.

Not speaking Korean, I was worried it may have been a demand for all foreigners to immediately report outside the apartment building or a warning about a natural disaster or something like that. It also sounded remarkably like the call to prayer that you hear in Muslim nations.

It turns out that there are just a remarkable amount of people that sell things out of the back of trucks and they drive around using loudspeakers (not very good ones) to hock their wares. They normally sell food type things (melons, cases of little dried fish, onions, or garlic) and occasionally other things like knives or sunglasses.

The Muslims have their call to prayer, the Koreans their call to melons.