For a
country that loves cafes as much as Korea, there is precious little coffee in
the country. In front of me as I write
this there are at least eight cafes in my line of vision, and I know that there
are many more just out of sight. I also
know that with the possible exception of Dunkin Donuts they will all charge a
minimum of what amounts to $4USD for their drinks. Yet despite this, none of them actually serve
coffee.
Years ago, somebody decided that it
would be prudent to place espresso in hot water and tell people that the
concoction constituted a beverage. This bastard of an individual was, I
believe, an Italian, and I imagine he was concerned about adding one more
inferior product to Italy’s already long list of the Fiat automobile, Serie A
football, and Fascism. Not wanting to
have such an atrocious beverage attributed to his own country, he called it the
“Americano.”
Admittedly,
the name has a nice ring; it sounds exotic, yet steeped in domestic
reliability. And America, for all the
pretense, still has an element of cool, much the same way that Henry Winkler
has remained “the Fonz” in our collective minds despite his receding hairline
and ever expanding gut. I suppose this
is what drove the Korean powers that be to choose the Americano as their
nation’s version of coffee.
However, Americano is not
coffee. It is espresso dropped in hot
water. I tried explaining this to the
Dunkin Donuts staff one day:
“I
only want coffee.”
“Um…this
is coffee?”
“No,
just coffee, no hot water.”
‘?”
“I
just want the black stuff.”
“You
want a double shot?”
Since I
tend to use Dunkin Donuts as a place to study and write, in addition to
“coffee” I usually buy some food to help justify my use of the facilities. In the U.S. I opt for a sesame-seed bagel
with egg and cheese. In Korea, however,
the sandwich selections are only slightly more appetizing than the “chitlins”
of my native American South. My favorite
of the items on display is one that looks to be a cross between macaroni and
cheese, maggots, and potato salad, served cold with mayonnaise on a sandwich. Usually the chocolate donut is the safest
option.
This
tendency to mark as American that which only slightly resembles the products
with which I grew up is perhaps best exemplified by the Korean t-shirt
industry. Foreigners traveling in China
seem to always come back home with spiffy shirts laden with perennially chic
Chinese characters; I assumed the same would be true in Korea. Yet the only t-shirt I own with any Korean
script on it was made by a Canadian company.
I have yet to see a Korean shirt
whose English phrasing makes sense either logically or grammatically. My personal favorite is one that states, “there are over 20,000 individual career
paths in the U.S. Do not go into a
career that is already jam-packed.”
Thank you for the sage advice, t-shirt manufacturer.
Pop music, sadly, is not immune to
the English virus either. From BoA’s
timeless line, “you still my number one
(no verb necessary),” to the Wonder Girls’
poetic realization that they are all “so
hot,” Korean artists have used English to express thoughts deemed too deep
for their own language.
I suppose I understand the
phenomenon. It’s neat to be able to
speak another language, and people who can tend to be demonstrative with their
abilities. That said, the only musicians
in America who regularly use another language in their songs are Latinos who
actually grew up speaking Spanish. Other
than Styx, few bands have looked to Asian languages when their lyrical prowess
ran out in their own. Somehow I doubt
the use of the greeting “Anyong” would noticeably improve Three 6 Mafia’s
discography.
In a way the obsession with the West
is endearing. It’s somewhat comforting
that middle-of-the-line fare such as that offered at Pizza Hut and Outback
Steakhouse has made its way into the upper-tier price range in a foreign
country. “Yes,” I want to say, “you
can thank me and my fellow countrymen for bread sticks and fried onions with
dipping sauce…just don’t blame us for the inevitable expansion of your
waistlines.”
On the other hand, traditional
Korean food is delicious. Koreans seem
to think it’s a special occasion when they treat a foreigner to his own
country’s food, but the majority of westerners in the country would, excepting
times of homesickness, prefer Korean barbeque to pepperoni pizza (at least,
anyone familiar with the ingredients used by Pizza Hut would). While I felt sorry for the convenience store
clerk who told me she couldn’t afford to take all her son’s friends to Pizza
Hut for his birthday, I couldn’t help but think that this was fortunate for the
respective digestive tracts of her child’s friends.
Koreans who have spent time abroad
don’t seem to feel the same desire for western food as their domestic
counterparts, having realized that foreign does not always equate to haute
couture. Don’t get me wrong; I love
America and much of what it has to offer.
TGI Friday’s, however, is not an offering for which I feel a particular
affinity.
I am, granted, proud of many of my
country’s offerings, among them our educational opportunities. There are a number of good secondary schools
and universities in the U.S., as clearly evidenced by their international
appeal. At the same time, the Korean
obsession with shipping children off to America is a bit ludicrous. Realistically, not all children are capable
of taking proper advantage of the opportunity to study abroad. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with
being unable to speak English, or with not having lived in America. Korea is a perfectly fine nation with a
stable, promising economy. There is no
dearth of high-paying positions available in the country, and frankly the
standard of living is comparable to that in the U.S. Technologically, the Koreans are, on a per
capita basis, significantly ahead of those stateside.
Yet many of the most desirable
occupations in the country require the ability to speak English. It’s not that in carrying out the duties of
said jobs one will actually use English, but rather that English ability is
seen as a barometer of intelligence. In
the U.S. the ability to speak Spanish might be necessary if you want to work in Miami, but you would
hardly expect a lumberjack in the Yukon to be adept at the spanish subjunctive case.
With some reserve though, I must
admit that it can be nice to be surrounded by my mother tongue and culture,
halfway across the world. The Korean
children forced in vain to attend countless night schools learning it are
pitiable, but I firmly believe that, in order to succeed, every country might
ask themselves, “How can we make an
eighteen year old American punk-ass kid’s transition to our country less
painful?” If only they had thought
of coffee...
Visiting: Most people go outside township for any year to arrive at close family also checkout doha . For some, the break year or so is a exclusively period people shell out utilizing their out-of-town kin. Likely out-of-town may perhaps be vital
ReplyDelete