Taking the Subway

            Prior to coming to Korea, I had only used public transportation on rare occasions, and then only for their novelty (bear in mind that I grew up in a state that doesn’t even have one subway line).  In Seoul, however, public transportation was an integral part of my daily life.  I had no car, and while taxis are rather inexpensive in the city it’s prudent to exercise a bit of financial caution when one can.

            Every subway system has its fair share of crazy people, but what makes Seoul’s crazy commuters unique is that many of them sell things.  You know that you’re about to witness a hustle when you hear an obnoxious, generically Asian song emanating from a clearly outdated boom box.  A man in a brightly colored suit will then set up camp in the middle of the car, bow to his fellow passengers, and tell them about the great new CD/Cell Phone/MP3 player they can purchase, without the inconvenience of having to search for it in stores.  People will then proceed to actually purchase these items.

            My favorite crazy Korean subway passengers, however, are by far the angry “halmoni (할머니),” or grandmother, and “ajumma (아줌마),” or middle aged lady.  Because of the Confucian history of Korea these individuals are necessarily recorded a great deal of respect, whether willingly or begrudgingly.  Usually this privilege is understood to include a duty to treat those younger than oneself well, but occasionally it is abused.  An ajumma, I have heard it said, has four elbows (including their shoulder blades) that they employ while making room for themselves.

            In many ways it seems that the time period between tending rice paddies and paying cab drivers has been too short.  Many Korean quirks can, in my opinion, be attributed to treatment of one’s surroundings as one’s home and one’s countrymen as neighbors.  Often times this results in a great deal of kindness towards strangers (foreigners included), but perhaps just as often it results in a tendency to push one’s weight around the way one might do with a child or younger sibling

            While en route to meet a friend one afternoon, I had the misfortune to sit next to a particularly ornery “halmoni.”  She was yelling loudly at the people around her, but not at anyone in particular.  Trying to listen to my Ipod, my trustworthy and loyal friend throughout my first year in Korea, I was perturbed.  I was not sufficiently perturbed, however, to do anything other than roll my eyes.  Eventually a pretty girl of about twenty, unaware of the maelstrom into which she was entering, came and stood in front of her.  The halmoni, apparently unafraid of a personal injury lawsuit, kicked her!  She actually swung her stubby little leg out and kicked her.  The girl walked away, and still nobody said anything.

            As a foreigner I am able to somewhat circumvent the rules regarding respect for one’s elders, though I rarely exercise that ability.  A friend of mine ten years my senior, for example, allows me to address her more informally than she allows her boyfriend.  Sometimes when I address older Koreans informally they assume that it is because I have simply made an error, Korean not being my mother tongue.  Most often this is the case, but occasionally it is on purpose.  In some ways I consider this free reign to be a responsibility.  And so when the halmoni kicked the young girl and continued her verbal torrent I turned to her and said, in her language, “Halmoni, shut up (할머니, 정말 시끄럽네요).”  She did, if only out of pure shock.  The rest of the car seemed to have trouble holding in their laughter, and in an attempt to save face she gave her seat to someone standing, stating that she didn’t want to sit next to me.  Nor I you, ma’am.

            Korea is a country where bad behavior is acceptable, regardless of age, as long as it is the product of alcohol.  Perhaps living in a university district my view is a bit skewed, but I think that is reasonable to claim that Koreans drink a fair amount.  And although I have on occasion seen wives look on with exhaustion as their husbands play yet another drinking game, the general consensus seems to be that drinking is just another (occasionally humorous, occasionally less-than-humorous) part of life.

            The drunken ajosshi (아저씨, middle-aged man) on the subway is certainly a comical character, although one more comical in retrospect than in the present.  The distance of time is necessary to forget the rotten smell of soju on their breath.  Occasionally the distance of time is also necessary to forget the rotten smell that has obviously resulted from their failure to bathe with soap and shampoo.

            To pass the time and avoid staring at people on the subway, I would often bring along note cards with Korean words and their English definitions.  Admittedly, I would on occasion try to position my note cards such that a pretty girl might see them and be impressed that a foreigner was trying to learn her language.  Once, while coming back from Gangnam, the main entertainment district of the city, I noticed a cute girl staring intently at my note cards.  I turned and said to her, “Do you have to learn English too, miss? (아가씨는 영어 공부를 좀 하는 것 같네요)”  Caught, she laughed and struck up a conversation.

Unfortunately, I had also attracted the attention of a drunk ajosshi.  While I was

flattered that he thought so highly of my physical appearance (“handsome boy!”), I could have done without his insistence on rubbing my face to prove this point.  All the soap in the world could not convince me that I was going to be properly rid of his smell at any point in the near future. 

            Thankfully the ajosshi did not know any English.  Usually when they have a fledgling knowledge of the language (anything past the ability to say “hello” is considered sufficient), they will say something to the effect of “U.S.A.?  Okay!”   I just nod and smile, knowing that they are just trying to extend a warm greeting to a foreigner, an act not to be taken for granted while living abroad.

            On occasion, however, it can be obnoxious when someone insists on having an English conversation.  They might want you to be their English teacher, or they might just want to show off their hard-won English speaking abilities in front of the hoi polloi.  My usual response is to say that I am from Spain (this approach can backfire, I might add.  I know of one individual who used to tell people on the subway that he spoke Russian, until one day the individual who approached him turned out to be fluent in that language).

            I’ve also encountered a great deal of kindness on the subway.  As in any country, the proper thing to do when sitting and an elderly lady is in the vicinity, is to offer her one’s seat.  In Korea, however, it is common courtesy for those women to then offer to hold one’s bag for the duration of their ride.  It’s not always helpful; most of the time I don’t carry around a heavy bag, and if it is truly heavy I don’t want to burden the lady with its weight.  But it is a nice gesture, and one that leaves me with a pleasant feeling.

            The subway is a place of extremes.  Some evenings, when it was particularly crowded and noisy, I would look around and see nothing but faces to hate and a culture to despise.  It is easy to pin frustrations on the people around oneself, and when living in Seoul, that includes some fifteen million individuals, about half of who seem to be riding the subway at any given time.  Thankfully there was Sindorim, the station at which everyone on line number two exited.  Late at night I would almost invariably have the car to myself and three or four other individuals for the remaining few stops.  Riding over the Han River at night, with the lights of the city ablaze and the dark water still and quiet, it was difficult to be but so angry at that old bitch.

Americans Don't Drink Americano

            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...

Oh it's okay, I'm an American!

            After returning to the United States I recall listening to a man interviewed on NPR talk about his immigrant father’s trouble with the English language.   After initially struggling to form even basic phrases, the father eventually acquired a level of English that his son termed “negative English.”  That is to say, he spoke just enough English to land himself in trouble, but not quite enough to find a way out.  Although I had not heard the term before, I was all too familiar with the concept.

            My rooming situation in Seoul was one not readily comparable to anything I’ve seen in the west, but could perhaps be best described as a pension.  In Korean it is called a “Hasook Jeep (하숙집).”  The boarders in a Hasook Jeep all have their own rooms, with television, internet, and in some rare instances, their own toilet or shower.  The majority of these rooms have trouble holding more than two individuals at a time, and many of them have rules explicitly stating that cohabitation of these closet-sized rooms is prohibited (partially to maximize rent profits, partially out of concern for those boarders living on the other side of those paper-thin walls).  The building is taken care of by a middle-aged woman called an “ajumma (아줌마),” the term by which all middle-aged women in the country are called.  They clean the building and cook some type of meal (often no more than rice and odd vegetables that, thankfully, do not exist in the west), and take care of (i.e. outsource) any maintenance issues.

            While room size is certainly not to be overlooked, in reality the most important detail in choosing a proper “hasook jeep” is finding a kind “ajumma.”  Unfortunately such a commodity is in short supply.  At best, most of them will suffer your presence silently.  They will put together a meal with some semblance of nutritional value, and only bother you for rent once a month.  There are, of course, exceptions.  One of my former ajumma, for example, used to take fellow boarders to the countryside to pick flowers.  I presume that there was also frolicking.  But it should be understood that most of these ladies simply don’t have the presence of mind to separate their anger towards scrubbing and cleaning from their anger towards their residents. 

            It is also important, if more difficult, to ensure that the other boarders are somewhat sane and cooperative.  There are many odd people in this world, as I am reminded on a daily basis, and naturally some of them find their way to Korea.  There are Japanese women who, unable to marry in their own country, come to the homeland of their favorite dramas in an effort to avert a complete meltdown.  There are also westerners who, driven by yellow fever, a failure to find gainful employment, or a mixture of the two, come to get laid and get paid (there were relatively few westerners who, like myself, were simply too shiftless to go to college).

There are also cultural differences that, in many cases, cannot be overcome by peace and understanding.  For example, unbeknownst to me prior to entering my first hasook jeep, Japanese people apparently love indoor heating.  In fact, I think they may like it more than sex, Pokemon and Sailor Moon combined.  For this reason I humbly beg the reader to never live with a large number of Japanese people in either the fall or winter.  In light of the high volume of Japanese in my hasook, the ajumma thought that 30 degree Celsius, or 86 degree Fahrenheit, was a suitable temperature for our lovely boarding house.  Yes, that’s right, they wanted to heat their rooms up to a temperature that would have caused any sane individual to turn on AC.

            Unable to sleep, I asked the Ajumma to turn down the heat.  She complied, but then later, once again unable to sleep, I found that the heat had been turned back to its original temperature.  This process repeated for a few days, with me asking the ajumma to turn the heat down, her doing so, and then moving it back up.  Finally when I asked why she kept increasing the heat she said the other boarders liked it.  “Well,” I replied, searching through my limited lexicon of three or four insults, “the other residents are idiots.”  I then switched to English for a few heated swear words which, thankfully, no one appeared to understand.

            Perhaps her failure to comply with the basic living standards set forth by the U.N. was due to her long-festering anger at my existence.  I had managed to incur the wrath of my ajumma early on by failing to wear shoes in the stairwell.  Living on the third floor, I thought it was a bit of a waste to put on shoes so that I could go down to the second floor for dinner, and so I often went barefoot.  The ajumma asked me why I wasn’t wearing shoes, and thinking that she was concerned my bare feet might lead to a cold I responded, “Oh it’s okay!  I’m an American!  We do this all the time!”  I was a bit confused at her cold, silent stare, but having never seen her smile during my time at the boarding house, I chalked it up to a cultural inability to express emotion.

            Perhaps my most salient failure involved use of the communal toilet.  Feeling a bit queasy late one evening I went to go relieve myself in the bathroom.  Having already managed to clog the toilet once by flushing toilet paper (a major no-no when using the low-pressure toilets of Korea), I was careful to avoid doing so again.  However, as I discovered all too late, whoever had used the toilet before me had already clogged the toilet.  Had it been a small shit, I might have just gone to bed and worried about it in the morning.  Sadly, it was not small, and its odor was not insignificant.  I grabbed the plunger and shoved it in without result for the better part of an hour.  At the end of the ordeal the toilet bowl was sprinkled with specks of shit, and there was a bit stagnating in a pool at the bottom that simply would not flush.

            At this point my language abilities could still be classified as “Negative Korean.”  Although I felt confident that I could tell the ajumma that I had clogged the toilet, I was less confident that I could explain, to her satisfaction, that it wasn’t my fault.  Like any rational being, in an effort to avoid confrontation I placed a fragrant sachet (meant to be a gift for my friend’s mother) on top of the toilet seat and crept back into my room.

            The next day when I entered the bathroom there was a sign written in the men’s stall.  Although I knew it dealt with the toilet I had to grab my dictionary to understand all the words.  Translating, I was surprised to learn that “Whoever did this has no conscience.”  I was also somewhat perturbed upon learning that they should “please move quickly!”

            Some time later I called a high school classmate mate of mine, Andrew, who was on vacation and back in Seoul.  I told him about the problems I was having with my living situation.  “Man…the ajumma here is such a bitch.” 

He responded, “Dude about that…you have to move.”

            What?  Apparently, the ajumma, fearing direct confrontation with me, had called Andrew’s mother to tell her that I needed to move.  I’m not sure if she knew that I was the culprit in the toilet incident, but I imagine she suspected such a thing could only be the result of housing a troublesome American like myself.  Truthfully I couldn’t blame her.  The general cleanliness of the Japanese residents had left me wondering if they were capable of producing something as vile as shit. 

Not really having much say in the matter, I packed up my bags and moved to another boarding house a few meters away.  This second one was located on top of a bar, and I must say that there were many days when I longed to be in my old residence, which was located on top of a piano studio.  Even the poorly struck f-notes of elementary students were preferable to the incessant banter of drunk college girls calling out for their equally drunk and substantially more obnoxious boyfriends. 

Thankfully though, this new hasook jeep was run by a kinder ajumma, who I eventually came to call “emo (이모),” or “auntie.”  The only real misunderstanding was that she imagined I loved Cornflakes.  When I would come to breakfast in the morning and halfheartedly attempt to swallow rice and seaweed soup, she could tell that there was some sort of cultural food barrier.  The solution?  Cornflakes.

“William, we have cornflakes!” she would excitedly say as I stared blankly into the adjoining hallway, trying to conjure images of steak, eggs, and country biscuits.  While I am certainly a fan of several cereals currently on the market, I dislike Cornflakes.  They are bland, but still manage to lack the nutritional value of other bland cereals.  Eventually, tired of inventing excuses for why today was not a good day for cornflakes or fish, I quit going to breakfast at the boarding house, and began frequenting the nearest McDonalds for a “HohtKayKuh (hotcake) and Soshijee (sausage) Sehtuh (set).”

My first experience with Korean McDonald’s had been about two weeks after arriving in the country.  It was an experience for which, I must pathetically admit, I spent time preparing.  In my mind, I practiced saying what it was I wanted over and over, and wrote and rewrote the vocabulary I would need in an effort to memorize the material.  I had decided that I would order a cheeseburger with onions.

When my turn to order came I nervously said that I would like a hamburger with cheese and onions.  The server responded, “cheeseburger?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Ketchup?”

“No,” I said.   Please give me only cheese and onions.”

At least, that was how I imagined the conversation unfolded.  In reality I think it went along the lines of:

“Hamburger?”

“Please give me cheese onions.”

I believe the latter is more accurate because upon unfolding the hamburger wrapper I found a bun with cheese and diced onions.  The meat was nowhere to be found.

But while I understand what went wrong in the aforementioned situations, there are several situations about which I am still, to this day, utterly confused.  Once, while walking by the Hyundai Department store in Sinchon, the district of Seoul in which I lived, I ran into a girl I had met at a Mexican restaurant aptly named “Choi’s Tacos.  I recalled thinking that she was a bit odd the first time I met her, as she seemed to be unconcerned with wiping off the massive amounts of sour cream that had accumulated on her lips.  Regardless, I stopped and talked with her.  Perhaps I missed something, lacking much ability in the language, but it seemed to me that she was asking for subway directions.  Odd, considering that of the two of us it was clearly I who should be asking for directions, but I went with her into the subway station and pointed on the map to where she needed to go.

She then told me that she didn’t have money for the subway, and that we should go get tea.  I had been complaining of late about not having anything to do after school, and so I agreed.  To make friends, I rationalized, perhaps one has to spend time with women who forget to shave their legs or wipe their mouths.  The path to the tea-shop, however, seemed unnecessarily convoluted.  Why did we have to take so many back alleys?

Eventually we arrived at a private institute where one could learn Latin.  The girl informed me that as a Catholic she had been trying to learn the ancient language.  I wasn’t quite sure what being Catholic and reading Latin had to do with drinking tea, or why we couldn’t have gone one of the innumerable tea shops around the subway station.  Apparently, sour cream girl informed me, one could obtain a cup of green tea from the school’s main office. 

Surely I missed something when conversing with this girl, but I wasn’t particularly concerned with finding out what exactly I had misunderstood.  She seemed very odd, and having recently watched the “Davinci Code,” I was wondering if I hadn’t encountered a member of Korea’s Opus Dei.  I walked back home and lay on my bed so that I could reconsider the day’s rather strange events.  I vowed to keep my mouth shut in the future.  

PC방

PC Bang

I dislike video games.  Well, truthfully, I dislike World of Warcraft, Starcraft, or any game that resembles them.  The narration behind the games is too fantastical, and among its players there are a disproportionately large number of social outliers.  At least addicts to the various titles released by EA Sports have some semblance of interest in athletics. 

            In Korea those who need a daily fix of role-playing head to what is known as a “PC Bang,” or “PC Room.”  As one might expect, these places consist of nothing more than row after row of computers, equipped with quick broadband connections and the latest video-game technology.  Admittedly, they are in a league of their own when compared with the computer game lairs one might find stateside.

            Yet while the technology is pristine, its users are, as one might expect, not quite so hygienic.  They aren’t obese and smelly in the way that American computer addicts usually are, but they certainly aren’t the most well bathed elements of society.  A large portion of the clientele consists of middle and high school boys who have not yet come to appreciate shampoo, deodorant, and shaving.  Their female counterparts appear to be better dressed and groomed, but clearly they haven’t attended any etiquette classes.  They smoke and curse enough to make a pirate blush.

            Knowing this, one might reasonably ask, ‘why did I ever go to PC Bang’s?’  The main reason was that I didn’t have internet access in my boarding house, and the second was that going to these places gave me a much-needed opportunity to leave my room.  It is better to be surrounded by nerdy, acned strangers than nobody at all. 

However, there is one PC Bang, which shall go unnamed, that I have sworn to never enter again.  While working on a paper there one afternoon I began to feel the after effects of my lunch, and headed to the men’s bathroom.  I sat down in one of the stalls, which seemed relatively clean for a place frequented by computer nerds.

            One of the disadvantages of having a penis is that it moves around, often seemingly of its own volition.  In particular, while sitting on a toilet the penis has a terrible habit of smacking up against the edge of the bowl.  It does not matter how much care one takes to avoid this; the penis does as it pleases.

            This instance was not unique in this respect; my penis smacked up against the bowl.  But whereas usually the penis merely taps the bowl, this time it stayed attached to the bowl for a second.  “Odd,” I thought, “I didn’t realize that my penis was adhesive.”

            Looking at the tip of my penis there certainly did appear to be some sort of adhesive material present.  Reaching my hand down I stuck my index finger out to probe the area of the bowl to my penis had grazed.  Sadly, it became clear that while the adhesive material had come from somebody’s penis, it had not been mine.  As a friend eloquently remarked, “Dude got wazoo on your wazoo maker!”  I ran home and took a shower, followed by another shower, and yet another shower.  I still feel dirty.

            I wonder what type of person would jerk off in a PC Bang.  But even more, I wonder what kind of weirdo would have to presence of mind to aim with such precision for the rim of the toilet while doing so.  Couldn’t they have at least finished up in toilet tissue and disposed of it?  On the one hand I’m impressed that their aim was so accurate, but on the other hand I would like to wring their neck mercilessly.

            Bathrooms in general seem to be an area where the cultural divide between the western world and the Korean one cannot be overcome.  I always have to be careful when pulling my pants down that I don’t drop the cuffs in a pile of spit left by an ajosshi who, astonishingly, did not realize that the toilet bowl would have been an appropriate place for his drool.  My favorite bathroom behavior of Koreans, though, is what I like to call the “smoke and shit.”  In an effort to increase efficiency, many ajosshi have combined the bathroom break and the smoke break.  Once, while opening the stall door in the bathroom at my gym I came across a little man, about five feet tall, squatting over the hole in the ground that passes for a toilet.  A cigarette trailing out the side his mouth, he looked up at me, smiled, and gave a nodding grunt as I quickly tried to erase from my memory what I had just seen.

            I’m not sure that there’s a satisfactory explanation for this behavior; people tend to act in inexplicable ways.  I do wonder, however, if some of this can’t be explained by Korea’s tendency to view their world as their neighborhood and their fellow citizens as their relatives.  Really until half of a century ago most Koreans spent the majority of their lives living in a small village with their family, doing whatever their family had done for generations, and doing so with the understanding that their families would probably continue in such an existence for the foreseeable future.  I suppose that if one wants to they should be more than welcome to take a “smoke and shit” break on their own rice paddy (though as a rice consumer I might have to take issue with the practice).

            Much like visiting the washroom, walking on the crowded streets of Seoul is inherently dangerous.  Delivery boys on motorcycles, couples blissfully unaware of their surroundings, and ajumma on a mission to get somewhere before everyone else are just a few of the numerous hazards that await Korean pedestrians.  Try as one might, these obstacles cannot be avoided.  An ajumma will at some point push you out of the way, a couple will at some point obstruct your path for what seems to be an eternity, and a delivery boy’s weaving motorcycle will at some point cause you to reexamine your life insurance policy.  

            The best course of action is to simply remain nonplussed by the various forms of misbehavior in the street.  Pushing the ajumma back might break her ankle, but it probably won’t change her attitude.  Yelling at the couple will only convince those around you that you are an asshole bent on ruining the mood set by their matching outfits.  And as for the delivery boy, do keep in mind that the big boat rule applies:  when motorcycle fights pedestrian, pedestrian tends to lose.  Should one’s attempts to remain calm fail, remember that there are far worse fates than bearing the brunt of rudeness in the streets.  You could be shot.  You could be hit by a bus.  Or perhaps worst of all, you could find your penis in someone else’s adhesive material.

Airport

My first thought upon leaving the airport at Incheon was that I had made a large, rather intractable error.  While I had previously been aware that Koreans spoke Korean, I had somehow managed to convince myself that this would present only a minor problem.  Literally millions of Koreans had already managed to learn the language by 2007, and though I recognized their superiority in mathematics and sartorial splendor, I was fairly certain that, if some of my acquaintances ability to speak “Enguhlishee” was any barometer, their capacity for language acquisition was somewhat lower than my own.

            But riding in the back of a taxi and trying, unsuccessfully, to memorize the Korean name for the adjacent Han River (“is it the ‘ganhang’ or the ‘hangang?’”), I was wondering if I hadn’t made one too many decisions in the haze of late night dorm-room conversations. The script on all the road signs looked to be a series of pagodas, circles, and top hats, and the preferred form of communication appeared to be guttural caterwauling.  I was surrounded by towering, indistinct apartment buildings.  My first thought upon arriving in Seoul was that I would do well to leave a trail of breadcrumbs if I ever wanted to take a walk.

            My close friend and boarding school dorm-mate Paul, who had been busy studying for the SAT, asked his mother to come and meet me at the airport.  I’m still not sure how she found me, as I had never met her.  Somehow though, the girl with whom I had been sitting on the plane ride introduced us, having ascertained that the two confused individuals at the gate were likely looking for each other.

            My friend’s mother, fortunately, had done part of her mathematics dissertation (as previously implied, the stereotype is not unfounded) at Purdue, and as such spoke relatively clear English.  Fortunately her English wasn’t any better than it was; otherwise I might have conveyed my paranoia to her (“I’m going to have to learn how to read that!?”).  There were, after all, confusing pictograms in place of proper road signs, and an ever-increasing number of Asian individuals surrounding me.  For some reason this did not appear to faze the Koreans, but I wasn’t sure that the fourteen-hour plane ride did justice to the real distance between my home and this country.

            Paul’s apartment, where I would be staying for my first few nights in the country, was located in Sindorim(신도림), a section of Seoul which, in my opinion, has remained more Korean than many other neighborhoods, if only by virtue of lacking a clubbing scene for foreigners to enjoy.  It isn’t far from the social center of the city, but is sufficiently distant to allow for a bit of autonomy from surrounding districts.

            Among the many things I had underestimated, the effects of jetlag were beginning to set in as we reached the apartment.  I lay down on the floor mattress that had been laid out for me and promptly fell asleep.  Jet-lag sleep, for those who have not experienced it, is somewhere between a nightmare and a godsend, strangely vivid and surreal.  One’s surroundings become confusingly intense, and one wonders, sometimes aloud, when it will all be over.

            I awoke to Paul standing over me, who, under the inebriating effects of travel, appeared to be a Korean version of the Jolly Green Giant.  Paul is, unlike his family members (and frankly, unlike his fellow countrymen), a big boy.  I was happy to see him, though it might have been better if he had crouched down to say hello.  Hoping to get a better idea of what awaited me in this country, Paul took me on a walk (I thought a leash might be appropriate under the circumstances but he assured me, after much threatening on my part, that he wouldn’t lose me).  Turning right onto the main road by his apartment complex I expressed concern that I would never be able to learn Korean.  In an effort to assuage my fears, Paul told me about an American Catholic priest who had come to Korea, and become somewhat proficient in the language.  Having been somewhat relieved, he then added that the priest, confusing the Korean words for “egg” and “marriage (“kye-rahn” and “kyol-hohn”),” had once mistakenly told several members of his congregation that one of the things he enjoyed most was “marriage.”  Although at the time I didn’t know enough Korean, I too would one day make such mistakes, including, but not limited to, accidentally asking a waitress on a date, and telling a grandmother that I had learned a new Korean word: “fucking (I had thought the word meant “large meeting of youth”).”

            It appeared that, in addition to treading the proverbial waters a bit carefully, I would also do well to take care while walking on the streets and sidewalks.  Watching a delivery-boy run a red light at a four-way intersection, I began to suspect (as I would later confirm) that traffic laws in Korea are more guidelines than rules. 

            While I wanted a guide of some sort, given my inability to communicate anything other than “hello” and “you have lovely eyes,” on my second day in the country I was forced to navigate the city on my own.  Paul was studying for the SAT in a cram school on the other side of the city, and both his parents were working, so it was determined that I would take the subway into the heart of the city and meet with another boarding-school friend, who would then join Paul and me for lunch after the cram school session.

            This particular friend, a cartoonishly tiny guy, who we’ll call J, was in retrospect not the safest choice of guide.  We walked around the Han river for awhile, and then decided to rent bikes so that we could go see “Seoul Forest,” a park which I had previously assumed would be comparable to New York’s Central Park, but which in reality is an overblown petting zoo.  Unfortunately the kiosk from which we rented bikes was out of regular bicycles, and so we had to settle for a tandem.

            Returning from Seoul Forest J offered to show me a part of the city, popular with the college set, called “Rodeo.”  Naturally I agreed that it would be nice to see an area in which I might later socialize.  And it would have been a good idea, had we not been riding a tandem bike, had the social district not been located across one of the busiest intersections in Seoul, and had J, who was navigating, noticed that the pedestrian crossing light was blinking red and that there was in fact no such thing as a “diagonal” pedestrian crossing. 

            After reuniting with Paul for a lunch of “kimbap,” the Korean version of sushi that substitutes land animals for creatures of the sea, J left and Paul and I embarked on a trip to “Namsan,” a mountain located in the financial district of the city.  I thought it odd that such a large city could be so mountainous, but Paul explained to me that there really wasn’t any better option on the peninsula for an urban environment:  “Korea is seventy percent mountains, and thirty percent apartment complexes!”

            The mountain was at one point a fortress used to defend the city from the constant invasion to which Korea was subjected, but is currently a radio tower and tourist attraction.  The area immediately flanking the mountain is one of the few areas in the city that lacks modern plumbing, which explains the smell that comes from what Paul called “the shit truck,” which collects, well, the inhabitants’ shit.  I assume that it was a bit of a slight to the Chinese when they were given a consulate in the area.

            One can reach the summit of the mountain on a tram for around seven dollars, but I wanted to hike.  Paul, not one for what he deemed unnecessary exercise, pushed heavily for the tram, but as stairs had been constructed on the mountain, his complaints fell on deaf ears.  The hike is a short one, interrupted by frequent vistas and, to my surprise, workout stations.  These workout stations are ubiquitous in Seoul, and while much of the equipment is standard gym fare, there are always several items that must work some part of the body that only Koreans have.  My personal favorite is a round disk that one stands on and rotates; this particular machine is frequented by middle-aged Korean women wearing sun-visors and fanny packs.

            The hike was pleasant enough, although the peak view of Seoul was clouded from pollution (most likely the result of fumes from “shit trucks” across the city).  Truthfully, I had been generally disappointed with the lack of nice visuals in Seoul in the day since I had arrived.  I suppose I expected to see beautiful temples, pagodas, perhaps some kung-fu-practicing sword-wielding Buddhist Monks mingling with commoners wearing various impractical forms of traditional clothing.  Up to that point though I had mostly seen bland apartment buildings and traffic. 

            The food, at least, seemed decent.  I had a brief love affair with the aforementioned “kimbap,” shortened by an unfortunate encounter with the food the morning I left for Yonsei University, where I would begin my Korean language studies.  I was later told that one shouldn’t trust the quality of what basically amounts to “beef sushi” during the sweltering summer months, but as a high-school graduate that should have been sufficiently obvious. 

            Yet that mistake would hardly prove to be the worst of my mishaps, misunderstandings, and failures throughout my first year in the country.  In many ways though, I’m glad things turned out as poorly as they often did.  The unhappy results of many of my actions were often opportunities to learn, and when not, still opportunities to regale my friends with stories.  It is my hope that through some of these stories one might gain some understanding, albeit an increasingly biased one, of what Korea looks like through the eyes of a twenty-some year old Caucasian college student/recent grad from North Carolina.  Korea is in many ways an odd nation, but it is also one that I have come to love since my first visit to the country, and I hope this blog properly conveys that.