The Republic of South Korea is a land with little
threat from homicidal
citizenry or police authority. Its culture is marked by
incredibly
profound and frequent bouts of hospitality sometimes so far beyond
the
norm that they’re creepy. In the metropolitan Arizona suburbs
where I
now live, none of this exists.
To the chicks in South Korea, you’re an exotic and
masculine mystery
with whom they can practice English for free in a nation that
fantasizes of fluency. Their culture is barely beyond the
days when
women weren’t allowed to drink in public. What better way
for a local
woman to rebel against the obnoxious, drunken, womanizing, patriarchal,
Korean men? With 45 million people living, breathing, and
puking on an
island-like peninsula war-locked by soldiers to the north, what
better
place to spend a Sunday afternoon than lounging carefree in the
futon
of a foreign man, away from the bickering and drama that come
with
family and general population density. Picture the total
population of
the American West Coast—-California, Oregon, Washington and even
Nevada-—all residing on what amounts to an island the size of
Indiana!
Proud of their homogeneity, most South Koreans have confusingly
similar
physical and facial features. Most inhabitants either farm
by hand in
rural areas or ride elevators up and down in 25-story apartment
buildings in smog-choked metropolises. You’d give it up,
too. I
remember a trip I took as a kid with aunts, uncles, cousins, and
one
grandmother. We drove a van from Chicago to Key West and
personalities
flared like hemorrhoids. Korean families usually LIVE like
that. Many
locals just rest or hang out in their cars to get away from it
all.
Korean men often pout or crow with the futility of a feathery
display
at a cockfight. They frequently address their local women
with
condescension and chauvinism. And they live at home.
Western men,
often ugly and crazy as jaybirds, can live like playboys.
And guys
who’ve polished their grooming and perfected their game can chase
chickens like foghorn leghorn with a basket of Spanish flies.
Korean
girls are generally unaware of the risks associated with ‘meeting’
western men. Often in Korea, the social castaways, women
who have for
various reasons already lost their marital desirability, find
comfort
in the accepting ideals and complimentary appreciation that western
men
usually have.
To the mothers and kids, you’re an exotic expert
on the mysteries of
the west. “How do you call it,” they inquire, “telephone
box or
telephone booth?”
“Well actually, we say ‘payphone’.” Ugh.
Some parents and local educators simply want their children to
feel
comfortable with foreigners, to not be intimidated by the language
and
mannerisms of westerners. If any English accidentally gets
learned by
game-playing osmosis, then it’s all the better. Some ambitious
mothers
have pleaded with me before I left their private employ for good,
“Other teacher, please, another anyone!”
I would think to myself, “a-joo-ma, if you could timely transport
your
kids to Anylosertown, USA, I would find dozens, probably hundreds
of
people willing to play Uno and Go Fish with your kids for $30/hr.
But
nobody will come all the way here to Pusan just for petite virginal
women, unsanitary seafood, polluted beaches—-Americans already
have
enough—-or 24-hour alcohol sales and public consumption.”
If only those losers knew.
To the men, both young and old, you’re an exotic
fellow patriarch,
possibly like those Hollywood heroes and famed ladies’ men.
They want
to sit with you, treat you like their long-lost friend and see
what
happens when you drink their drinks. You end up accepting
invitations
to party for free with local 150-pound men who watch in disbelief
as
you put down copious amounts of their respected and revered—-but
weak-—contribution to the alcohol-consuming world, Korean soju.
It’s
funny to see a group of young and drunk Korean men shout hellos
across
the bar with circus mentality, then invite a western man to sit
at
their table, share their fare, and giggle with their women.
The
laughing and hospitality disappear as the westerner exchanges
phone
numbers or ends up holding hands with a Korean girl in their party.
To the government, you’re a respectable guest with
some secrets to
attaining first-world status in a competitive global market.
The road
to a future of Korean national prosperity is paved with idiomatic
English expressions like “paint the town red” and “raining cats
and
dogs.” As far as crime and punishment go, if you figure
out which
Korean laws were made to NOT be broken and when and how to bend
the
others, you’ll get away with more freedoms than Americans and
other
westerners could imagine.
To the common, local Korean people and random taxi
drivers, you are an
exotic, perhaps generously labeled as handsome, diplomat who ventured
inside their walls as either a fighter or teacher. You can
imagine the
smiling receptions heaped upon the latter.
To the hagwon directors (most of them, anyway),
YOU are the bitch.
It’s an uncomfortably strange twist when the exotic foreigners
are
subjected to adverse working conditions. It’s a sadly, mutually
dependant yet resentful relationship between the western English
teachers and their indentured employers. Without you they
will surely
go under in such an economically fragile climate. But with
you come
new challenges, strange rudeness and disrespect, selfishness and
greed,
emotional baggage and unreal expectations to go along smugly with
the
often-occurring inability to teach competently and actually do
your
job. The hagwon directors will sacrifice everything for
professional
success while you will sacrifice almost nothing to sleep late.
There
are more prima donnas and retards at hagwons than at a Miss America
telethon for disabled children. And many directors lie and
negotiate
like starved injury lawyers.
The euphoric buzz created by this social hierarchy
can be
psychologically addictive, not to mention the boozing. This
life less
ordinary can become as habitual and intoxicating as trips to the
all-night beer marts and the search for the coyly demure smiles
of
Korean lolitas who ought to know better but don’t.
But to many of your own native countrymen when you
finally return home,
you’re just a freak with an abnormal professional propensity to
work a
kind of job which regular people have never even dreamed of in
their
pre-fabricated little lives. “How can you teach English
in Korea if
you don’t speak Korean?” they ask.
These Americans think that not owning or driving
around in an imported,
motorized vehicle with socio-economically-tinted windows would
be
disempowering and wholly inconvenient. How could taxis be
better than
cruising around in your own set of wheels? Korean taxis
don’t break
down—-all of them at the same time, anyway—-they don’t raise suspicion
at DUI checkpoints, don’t cost much, don’t have to be parked or
warmed
up, and they never get totally lost. Korean taxi drivers
will usually
play your cassettes while you drink and smoke in the back seat.
But
for a very cheap, convenient, and autonomous form of non-intoxicated
travel, try an ‘autobike’ when working in Korea.
Near my present home in Scottsdale, Arizona, an
Asian-flavored bar and
restaurant called “Rah” is renowned among the local socialites
for its
atmosphere and sake bombers. A mug of cold Japanese beer
three
quarters full, with a dirty shot glass of cheap, low proof, hot,
rice
wine plopped in. Splash. Foamy overflow. Stinky,
wet fingers. Do it
again? Hite! There’s always an odd amount of either
sake or beer
leftover. Then, light-headed laughter, and everybody thinks,
“Those
crazy Japs! These drinks are potent but impractical and
they taste
like a freshly removed shoe. Isn’t it cool to be so multiculturally
appreciative while getting drunk?”
I think about the fact that neither the Japanese, nor any Asian
people
for that matter, actually drink rice-wine mixed with beer.
I think, as
I do often, just how stupid and anti-cultural the American,
yuppie-sheep really are. Then I think that I’ll have another
one of
those dirty drinks. Surprise of the evening: the quality
of
Asian-american female talent brandishing their buttery, soft skin
at
the trendy hangout made it all worthwhile.
But my biggest problem, other than buttering my
bread, has been getting
adapted to this ridiculously shallow and time-limited form of
socializing and recreation. We all partied and drank so
hard, so very
hard in Pusan. You finish “game-day”—-cuz you were too hungover
to put
together a lesson—-and speed home on a small-bore motorcycle running
red lights and cheating traffic jams. If you fall off the
bike, you
get back on it and continue. If some ass pulls out in front
of you,
you deliver a carefully balanced boot-to-the-fender of his sedan.
Up
the stairs and off with the shoes. Drink in hand before
the bag of
books and games is off of your back. A cigarette to foul
the flavor
and mask the stink of the city streets. Friends. Close
friends who
share their imported goodies and empathetic ears. The party
starts at
so-and-so’s place around midnight and is lucky to move to a bar
or club
by 2am. It will likely go until sunrise when the city buses
start
running again. Some tough guys even bring their shades out
with them
in anticipation of warding off the dirty-bright day. The
combination
of alcohol and nicotine, formaldehyde preservatives, semi-sanitary
distillation processes, and spicy snacks is overpowering.
If there are
any additional party favors, you’re sent over the edge.
Television
athletes talk about a second wind. But English teachers
in Korea
define the idea of losing one’s capacity to function, and then
coming
back around for another drink and another hit. Where does
that
never-say-die, pass-out-in-the-taxi type of dedication come from?
Maybe it’s peer support, “C’mon, dude! Take off your skirt and
buy
another round.”
Maybe it’s insanity, “Where the fuck am I?” Gulp, gulp…
Maybe it’s the never-ending search for sexual conquest, “That
one’s
mine!”
Maybe it’s the desire to avoid drowning in some crazy culture
by
drowning oneself, “Which one of these drinks is mine?”
Maybe it’s the contagious nature of a neon metropolis littered
with
drunks stumbling in and out of secret doors where the travel agent
packages never take you, “Are we going to T, D, or the C?”
Maybe it’s the realization that, once it’s over, this lifestyle
will
never again be embraced so tightly or loathed so intently, “I
need a
vacation, but I’ll settle for a sandwich.”
Whatever the case may be, these Arizonans are lame.
“I got something to say. It’s better to burn
out than fade away!” ---Victor ‘there can be only one’ Kurgen
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