Korea

I have been trying to come up with a name for this post for a while. My first thought was "Weird Korea", but I realized that it didn't fully encompass everything I was planning on writing about. My next that was "Odd Korea", but again, was limited. My final thought was "Life Crushing Korea" but that really only applies to one topic, one which I will reserve until the end so as to keep you tuned in. I've watched enough news to know how to keep people hooked.

First of all though, I thought I would offer a couple of corrections. I am trying to be as accurate as I can in these posts, but sometimes I get things wrong, or not fully right, due to my inexperience and all. The first point is on Kimchi, the national food of Korea. I believe I described Kimchi as tasting as if they took cabbage and cooked it for many hourse and then adding some not pleasent tasting seasonings, although I never actually made a claim as to how it was made. This is wrong on many counts. First of all Kimchi is not solely cabbage. Kimchi is more of a process than a certain food. It seems to be similar to pickles. You have the standard pickle, which is a cucumber that has gone through a pickling process, but you also can pickle a great veriety of foodstuff. Kimchi seems to be the same way. Cabbage Kimchi seems to be the main type of kimchi, but other types of kimchi are frequently served. As for the process, the cabbage, or other foodstuff, isn't actually cooked, it is just fermented, sometimes for years or decades. Also, even cabbage Kimchi isn't always as limp as I first thought, it depends on the part of the cabbage you are eating and how long it has been fermenting. I am told the older the Kimchi the more prized it is because the taste improves the more it ages, much like a fine red wine. Also, apparently it is hard to hold onto Kimchi for so long because people are always eating it, although I have heard reports of 15-20 year old Kimchi.

The second correction is about a TV channel. I mentioned this one channel that seemed to show nothing but Starcraft tournaments. This is not true, they do sometimes show other gaming tournaments, not solely Starcraft. It is mearly about 90% Starcraft.

While I am talking about TV I might as well mention the oddness of their channels. They have a handful of channels that play mainly English movies and TV shows (with Korean subtitles), and they are kind of nice because during the show they show very few commercials. A show that would take an hour to watch in the states takes about 45 mins. here. The annoying bit comes after the show though. The show you what is coming next, and then proceed to show 15-20 mins. of commercials. The same goes with movies, you can watch a large chunk of a movie, and then it will be inturrupted by 15 mins. of commercials. I don't understand why they do this. Do they seriously think people are going to sit there for that long watching nothing but commercials waiting for the show to come back? It is a nice system if you just want to watch the one episode, or only the first half of a movie, but very annoying otherwise. Also on commercials, there have been two that I have seen frequently that should be mentioned under the catagory of odd. The first show what appear to be the Lion, Scarecrow, the Tinman, and Dorothy (wearing a skirt far shorter than I recall from the movie) from the Wizard of Oz singing a song that continually says "Welcome". I realize that the writing and all are in Korean, but even after numerous viewings I still cannot fathom what the commercial is about, except that they are welcoming me somewhere, or to do something. The next commercial is much more clear and will lead me to my next topic. It is a commercial for a brand of Soju (as a quick reminder, Soju is the alcoholic drink of choice for Korea, and doubles as a cleaner). This commercial shows several situations of people being bored, like a group of friends sitting around a table, a man and woman meeting with the woman's father for the first time, a woman at work given a particularly boring assignment. It then shows bottles of Soju being opened and cartoon characters flooding out and making everyone happy, including the woman at work. The cartoon characters, representing Soju, dance around her computer and she is very happy. In short this commercial seems to be advocating drinking at work.

As mentioned, this brings me to my next topic: drinking. In particular drinking alcoholic beverages. Korea seems to fully enjoy this activity, and to support his I will cite some common examples that I see frequently. It is not uncommon to see older men drinking Soju (the bottle is distinctive, even from a distance) together, in the park, in restaurants, or on train terminals, before noon. Also, on the weekends, it's not that unusual to see at least a few middle-aged men stumbling down the street, often supporting a friend who can't quite make it under his own power. There's also the freedom to drink pretty much anywhere and everywhere, so long as you're not in a store. In America you can't go to a park or a beach and drink, at least so long as your beverage is obviously alcoholic, but in Korea you can drink such things openly at all times of the day.

Since I mentioned the beach I suppose that will be my next topic, and really the main reason I was tempted to name this post "Weird Korea". To be fair, it's not the beaches themselves that are weird, it's the people who occupy them, namely Koreans. First of all imagine a typical Western beach. You have people in bathing suits and bikinis lounging in the sun, maybe playing volley ball, each group trying to be as seperate as possible so as to enjoy some privacy. You might see some beach umbrellas, and of course you will see lots of people barefoot or in sandels, playing in the water. The first time I went to a beach populated by Koreans was the number and placement of umbrellas. They weren't scattered but all in a row three or four deep. It looked a little like a cartoon seeing so many umbrellas all proped up so close together. You might assume it was because the place was packed, but that wasn't the case, there was plenty of room, but they still insisted on being packed together. Then I noticed on the other end of the beach were the tents. I don't mean canopies or something, but full blown camping tents, even though most of them would not be camping. Indeed, they usually cycled out after a few hours to be replaced with another who would place their tent as close as they could to another tent. You see, unlike in the west, Koreans don't seem to enjoy getting tanned by lying on the beach. They actually seem to try to avoid the sun as much as possible. This is further attested to by their dress. As I mentioned, on Western beaches people are lounging around in swim suits and bikinis, in Korea, Koreans are lounging around in full dress and hooded shirts under the shade of hundreds of umbrellas and tents, while being packed like sardines. Also, you haven't had a full day at a Korean beach until you see at least one man in a suit (I don't mean swim suit, I mean the business kind) and several fully dressed young women attempting to walk through the surf in very high heels. This isn't to say Korean beaches are all bad though. Since the Koreans like packing closs together it's pretty easy to get a more isolated spot with your friends, and as mentioned drinking beer on the beach is perfectly fine. In fact sometimes they'll have people walking around with kegs on their backs selling beer. Also you can sleep on the beach with no worries. A few weekends ago I spent a full 18 hours on the beach, never going more than 30-40 feet from the water, and spent the night sleeping, my only worry being that the tide would sweep me away. It got within about 5' of my feet, but no closer. I must say there is nothing more refreshing than bathing in the ocean during the sunrise, although drinking a cold beer while enjoying the sun on a beach is close. Also, because of my friends here I get to go to the beach sorrounded by attractive females in bikinis. In short there is little better than laying in the sand, drinking a cold beer, and being escorted by attractive women in bikinis. It makes me feel like a rich tycoon.

While my leasure time is spent on the beach, avoiding Kimchi, and watching TV, much of my time is still at work, so I might as well mention what is going on there. There has actually been a lot of drama recently, and I will attempt to summarize as best I can. First a little history (as I understand it). The school I work for was first formed, along with a few others, by some guy (I don't know his name) who sold the schools to a large corporation not too long before I arrived. The director of the school was called Moon, and Moon was well respected among the parents of many of the students due to the program she built in this particular school. Unfortunately Moon did not agree with the way the corporation ran things and then left a few months after I arrived. Due to Moon's way of doing things she had a loyal following among the staff, and in short during a 3 month period every Korean worker will have changed (the last remaining Korean teachers will be leaving by the end of the month, most of whom will be following Moon to the school she is starting). Along with the entire Korean staff leaving, many students are leaving as well. Also, we are going to be changing the books from which we teach starting to September. Part of me is sad because I've made friends with many of the Korean teachers and will be sad to see them go, but this drama has been going on for a while so I'll be happy to have a fresh start in September with new books, maybe some new students, and new Korean teachers. While there has been a lot of drama (the drama mainly is a he said/she said, or we don't like the new director of the school, etc.), I want to assure those who may be worrying (mainly my Mom), that there is little chance that they will shut down the school before the end of my contract. It is a large corporation that owns the school and they are just now implementing cirriculum changes, so they will see it through until the end of the school year, which is March, which is when my contract ends. Also, while there is a segment of the current school who is loyal to Moon, there are many students and parents who don't care about her, or who don't know who she is. Also, the corporation that I work for has many hagwans so I would assume there will be some people who come to the school due to the reputation of the corporation. In short, don't worry about my job here. If the worst happens I could always get another job. There are a rediculous number of jobs for native English speakers here and they all pay well. Also, depsite all the drama my working life here is good. I go into work 5 days a week and I don't dread it. I've never had a job where I didn't hate going into work after 6 months, and here I don't. The foreign teachers I work with are all great people and I really enjoy being with them. The job itself can be annoying, but at no point is it really stressful. In nearly 6 months the two things I have been told regarding my work is that I need to be sure to mark the homework, and that I am at times too nice to the kids. Short of actually abusing the kids or something, there isn't a lot I can do to screw up. I was once told by a more experienced person that if you at least care a little that puts you in the top 90% of English teachers. I don't know if I fall that high, but I certainly enjoy the stress free work environment (despite the drama). I also enjoy the freedom I have. I don't know how it will work with the new books, but at least for now I am given a set of books and am told to finish in 3 months. On a day to day basis what I do is up to me. There are no people checking to make sure I'm on track to finish, there are no people questioning why I'm doing this instead of that on a particular day. So long as the parents are content I have an extreme amount of freedom on a daily basis. It's what I liked about trucking, being given a goal (deliver at this time) but no set schedule I had to follow. This just doesn't have the stress of trucking. If you do something wrong on a given day, or just phone it in because you are tired, there aren't really any consequences, whereas in trucking that could mean your company having to pay thousands of dollars, or you having to pay thousands or going to jail due to braking some law, or at the worst someone ending up dead. Here it just means a student might have to wait a day to learn that the "gh" in "rough" sounds like an "f" instead of the "g" that it should be. While I might be mainly enjoying my time here I will end on a more somber note.

I will finally reveal the life crushing part of Korea. Really there is only one part that I have found life crushing, but I suppose you only need one thing to be life crushing. I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but if not, I will now. Koreans seem to love The Simpsons. I can catch episodes of the Simpsons most nights, and as with most English programming, it is in English with Korean subtitles. However recently they have started to do something very disturbing, they have started dubbing some episodes with Korean voice actors. They attempt to make the Korean actors sound as much like the real Simpsons as possible, but it is still in Korean, even though all of the animation is the same. You may question my labeling this as life crushing, but allow me to explain. I grew up watching the Simpsons, despite my parents trying to prevent it. I know all of the episodes, I can pick up even subtle references, I know these characters forward and backwards, including their voices. Thus to hear a foreign speech come from their lips is crushing. Allow me to explain with an example. Suppose you had a friend growing up who you loved and cherised. You played with this friend every chance you got, shared all your secrets with him/her, and she/he was as close as family, if not closer. Then one day when you were an adult, you heard this person speaking Russian into a radio, obviously transmitting secrets to Soviet Russia (yes, I know there is no longer a Soviet Russia, just work with me here). In that moment you realized your cherished friend was no friend, but was instead a secret commie spy. In all those years you never even suspected, but you were faced with this cold reality. This person who you loved and trusted for as long as you could remember wasn't who you thought. After experiencing this you aren't sure if you can trust or love again. That is how I feel after watching an episode of the Simpsons in Korean. These people who I knew and trusted aren't who I thought. I don't know if I can trust or love again.

In short my days in Korea are working at a stressless workplace, spending weekends on the beach, and questioning whether I can trust or love again.