Dispatches from the Peninsula

by Chris Tharp

  What the hell did I know about Korea?

  Well, I knew it was a rocky peninsula sandwiched between two often-hostile neighbors who had seen fit to invade and subjugate it much of the time. I knew something about the Korean War through some reading and films (along with MASH; Hawkeye was a sage)–but only from the American perspective. I knew that they made crappy cars that weren’t considered so crappy anymore. I also knew that their national dish was kimchee, but only had a vague idea that this was some sort of pickled vegetable that was considered either the height of flavor or something that tasted as if it had been strained through a homeless man’s underpants, depending on who you talked to. And, other than the name, I knew nothing about Samsung. I actually thought the company was Japanese, something I’ve still never admitted to a Korean, out of fear for my personal safety.

  What about the people? Surely I could have gleaned something from them. Growing up, I had come into contact with many Koreans, but I really had no understanding of their culture, traditions, or thinking, aside from the fact that they usually worked harder than three of us and universally hated Japan. They consisted of a handful of quiet and studious kids I had gone to school with–none of whom was my friend–along with countless convenience store owners who had sold me candy bars, and later beer and smokes. I had also known some American army brats who had spent time in the country with their families, but most of these had always been confined to the cocoon of the base, and knew next to nothing of the world outside of the protective walls of the compound. They weren’t so different from me, in this regard.

  So, yes, with the exception of a few general things, I didn’t know shit about this country I had impulsively decided to move to. I didn’t even bother to learn a single word of the language, despite the fact that I had always enjoyed studying languages and managed to become nearly-fluent in Spanish. Granted, I didn’t have much time to study, since I left in a whirlwind, but this blindness was intentional, as–arguably out of laziness–I convinced myself that I wanted to hit the ground as green as possible. And in this, I succeeded.

  Jimmy left me back at my apartment, where I stood, looking at the lights of the neighborhood below. Again, more crosses. I opened the window and poked my head out, gazing down at the activity on the sidewalk below. It was humming. People sat at plastic tables outside of a convenience store. They drank from cans of beer, ate from a communal tray in the middle, laughed loudly, and talked. The timbre of their voices echoed up from the streets, intermingling with the sounds of car engines and delivery scooters. It was early August and hot, even well into the night. The humidity stuck to my skin; I began to sweat and closed the window. Jimmy had shown me the air-conditioning unit, bolted to the wall above the television. He had even given me a brief tutorial on how to work it with the white remote. I picked up the remote, which had only slightly fewer buttons than a controller for a DVD player. I fumbled over the buttons with my big white clumsy hands, attempting to decipher the alien characters inscribed upon it, suddenly self-conscious about my lack of grace and understanding–a crystal-ball vision for my future in this country. Finally, the machine hummed and the long mechanical lip of the thing’s mouth opened up, pouring out cool, cool air. As I felt it blow over my damp torso, I was interrupted by the jarring, computerized tones of Beethoven’s “Für Elise”:

  Duh-Dee duh-Dee duh-Dee duh-Dee-duh-Dee! duh-Dee duh-Dee! duh-Dee duh-Dee! duh-Dee-duh-Dee duh-Dee duh-Dee-duh-Dee!

  Repeat.

  I frantically searched for its origin, then realized that it was coming from the direction of my door. Ah, yes, the doorbell! As I approached, I noticed that the screen next to it was lit up bright grey. I could make out the figures of several people standing. I had visitors.

  When I opened the door, I stood face-to-face with three white foreigners.

  “You must be Chris. We’ll be working with you. Wanna get a bite and a drink?”

  Laura was a blonde girl from the hinterlands of Saskatchewan, and looked the part. She was strong and sturdy and could probably buck the hell out of a bale of hay. Rick was from Georgia, and Jillian was from Toronto. They all taught at the hagwon where I had been hired, which was called the Bayridge Language School–or as the Koreans pronounced it, “Bae-ree-juh.”

  They took me to an area of restaurants very near my apartment, which is redundant, really, since everywhere in the city seemed to be an area of restaurants. I had never seen so many places to eat in my life. Everywhere you looked, people were serving up food. These particular eateries were located in a square of sorts–a place blocked off from the city’s ubiquitous cars–a rarity in this pedestrian-beware town, as I was to find out later. We took a seat at an outdoor table with a grill in the middle and checked out the one menu, which, of course, was written in Korean.

  Rick opened it up and Jillian leaned in, poring over the entries and scrunching her nose. “Do you eat meat? I thought that I’d ask, because I’m a vegetarian, and I hate it when people just assume I eat meat. This is a fucked-up country to be vegetarian in. They do eat a lot of vegetables, but they tend to put meat in everything. It’s disgusting.” She took out of pack of Dunhill Lights and lit up.

  “Yeah… I eat meat… these days.” I didn’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.

  The owner came out, wiping sweat from his forehead. It was obvious that he knew my three companions from before.

  “Hello hello hello!”

  Rick replied with the standard Korean greeting, “Annyeong hasseyo?”

  “CHRIS–IS–A–NEW–TEA–CHER–AT–OUR–SCHOOL.” Laura bawled at the guy as if he was a retarded four-year-old.

  “Okay okay okay okay okay.” He nodded enthusiastically and attempted a smile. Whether he understood or just wanted to get our order is debatable. Rick rattled out our order in nimble Korean, and before long the owner’s smiling wife brought out a large silver tray, on which were some small dishes containing unidentifiable vegetables, a basket of lettuce leaves, garlic cloves, sliced mushrooms, and a plate of thick pork slices that resembled cuts of bacon. Also included were two large bottles of cold beer, with glasses.

  Soon the beer was opened and the pork strips thrown on the grill. The cold lager cooled me down in the night heat, and the smell of the pork awakened my stomach, which was still full of salty airline food.

  “What is this?” I asked, pointing to the meat.

  “It’s called sam gyeop sal,” Rick chimed in. “It’s pretty much the same as bacon, only uncured. The Koreans eat the shit out of it. So do I.”

  Jillian shook her head and put some mushrooms on, far out of range of the growing pool of pork grease.

  “Ya ever had kimchee?” Laura gestured to one of the mystery dishes filled with what looked like sliced cabbage, covered in a glistening red sauce.

  I had been to a lot of Asian restaurants, but mainly Thai, Japanese, Indian, and Chinese. Only one time could I remember eating proper Korean fare, and even then I don’t recall trying kimchee. So I gripped my unwieldy metal chopsticks and dove in: pungent, salty, sour, and a bit spicy. The texture was firm and slightly crunchy: strange, but also compelling. My mouth was alive and electric–I could feel my taste buds firing at full capacity. This really was a new taste, and quickly I hit the dish again, trying to figure out just what it was I was eating. After that I hit it again. And again.

  I was already hooked.

  “Fermented cabbage and gochujang, which is Korea’s red pepper paste. They use it in everything. Traditional Korean cuisine uses a lot of fermented stuff–it’s how they’d preserve it for the winter before refrigeration came around.” Rick was obviously the expert on all things Korean at the table.

  Jillian raised her eyebrows. “I can’t eat it, because they also use anchovy paste.”

  The grilled pork was succulent and delicious, especially when wrapped in leaves and topped with a bit of dwoenjang, a brown bean-paste common in Korean cooking. We also cooked the garlic in the pork grease, which like much of the meal, was a
first for me. After we finished the food, my three compatriots lit cigarettes.

  “Do you smoke?”

  I didn’t at the time. I had quit four months earlier and had enjoyed the self-congratulatory state of being a non-smoker. But as I took in my surroundings–brightly-lit restaurant signs, scores of people eating, drinking, and conversing–I was overcome with a desire to embrace this new situation for all it was worth.

  “How much are cigarettes here?”

  “Less than two bucks a pack.”

  “At that price, it’s too cheap not to smoke.” With that, I bummed one, lit up, and inhaled, immediately feeling relaxed, if not just a bit groggy from the flight.

  Just then, at an outdoor table at the restaurant directly across from us, I heard an explosion of machine-gun Korean. This was met with a return volley of shouting, and immediately two men at neighboring tables stood up and faced off. They bellowed at each other, each verbal assault punctuated by loud “Ya!”s. The first man wore a black suit, and his friend grabbed him and attempted to drag him back into his chair, which served only to pour gas onto the fire. Now both parties–four sets of couples–were on their feet, lunging at one another in a drunk, enraged dance. The women joined in, screeching, raving, and pointing. At one point a metal ashtray was hurled, followed by more yelling. Despite all of this high drama, no one was actually throwing punches.

  “Welcome to Busan,” Rick joked. “The people here are notoriously hot-tempered. They’re known throughout the country for it. And the guy in the black suit may be a gangster.”

  “They have them here.” Jillian took a long drag from her cigarette.

  Soon, tempers slightly cooled, and the guy in the black suit’s party paid their bill to the mitigating owner and staggered off, as he shouted parting shots over his back into the dark.

  “This is what soju does to people.”

  Sojuis the green-bottled vodka-like alcohol found everywhere in Korea. It is cheap and strong and gets people psychotically wasted.

  We laughed at Laura’s remark and decided to order one more round of beer before calling it a night. They asked me about Seattle and my pre-Korean life, which I filled them in on as honestly as I could. Just when Rick was refilling my glass, I saw the man in the black suit running back out of the dark, toward the offending table. He carried a metal rod and was followed by his friends, who were shouting after him. The other table noticed him just in time to stand up before he turned his rod on their table, smashing the bottles, plates, and glasses and then kicking it over. At this point a few punches were thrown, but again the two main combatants were held back by their more sensible friends.

  “Holy fuck.”

  Soon a police car drove up and two very young-looking cops emerged, placing themselves between the warring groups. They did their best to defuse the situation, coolly talking to both sides, trying to calm everyone down. I was amazed at their show of diplomacy. In America, they would likely rush in and tackle whomever they perceived as guilty to the ground. But my shock was amplified when the man in the black suit turned on the young cops, spat out a litany of abuse, and proceeded to shove them. Incredibly, the cops didn’t push back. They didn’t bust out their clubs and split his head. They didn’t Taser him. They just gently tried to talk him down.

  “I can’t believe what I’m seeing…”

  “The police are younger than this guy,” Rick explained. “In this culture, respect for elders is the most important thing.”

  “Even if your elders are total assholes,” Jillian snorted.

  “Yeah, but they still have to show him some respect.” Laura shrugged and sipped while Jillian shook her head.

  Eventually, with the insistence of the restaurant owner, the cops managed to convince the man in the black suit to get into their car and drove off. The rest of the people involved walked away, the only thing lost being face, which is everything in East Asia. We finished our beers and split up our more peaceful meeting, knowing that we’d see each other in the morning, at the hagwon.

  * * * *

  I awoke to a three-second panic: Where am I? We’ve all experienced this when coming to in strange environs, but this time it hit me with an extra-strength wallop, especially when my toxic-steamed head sorted out the answer: Oh, yeah. Korea.

  I looked at the clock: it was just a bit past 6 a.m. Jet lag. I had done some traveling in Europe before and had known the effect, but this was my first time experiencing it going in the opposite direction. After all, I had gained a day. The only time I was ever awake at six was when I was going fishing or had neglected to sleep the night before–not unheard-of in my amphetamine-fueled earlier days. But sleep was now out of the question, so I got up, stretched, and looked out my window.

  So this is what Korea looks like.

  Brand-new buildings mixed with traditional-looking red brick houses; church steeples loomed, the cross lights now turned off. Despite the homogeneity of colors and shapes, there was an incongruity to the surroundings. Unlike back home, stringent zoning codes have yet to make their way to the peninsula. A dark wood Japanese restaurant might exist next door to a sleek modern medical center, across from which is a preschool in the shape of a pink and blue mushroom. But turn the corner and there may be a group of nearly identical, featureless industrial workshops. The dense city ran for several blocks and then stopped at the base of a mountain–Jangsan, as it’s known locally. The top of the mountain was enveloped in low-lying cloud that growled with summertime thunder.

  I decided to kill the time before work by wandering around the neighborhood and hunting down some breakfast. Bacon and eggs sounded ideal, but I’d settle for the local version, whatever that was. Soon I was dressed and out the door, walking into the misty, humid morning. Even at this early hour, there was a lot of activity on the street. Outside of my apartment was a short, tough looking middle-aged woman, known throughout the peninsula as an ajumma. She wore white gloves, a yellow vest, and a matching visor over her tight perm, and stood sentry alongside an ice-chest on wheels containing nothing but small cartons of milk and even smaller packets of liquid-yogurt. A few other permed and visored ajummas approached her and purchased the said products. This was my first introduction to the micro-specialty that is small business in Korea.

  Across the way I saw a market. I crossed and entered, seduced by the colors and smells. The edge of the market was dominated by ajummas selling fruits and vegetables–watermelon seemed especially prominent–which came as a surprise to me. I had always associated watermelon with the long, hot American summers. It was entirely steeped in our tradition–at least in my eyes. To see these hardened-looking Korean women hawking fat watermelons was a seismic incongruity. I passed further into the market, past stalls stacked with pots and pans, towels and linens, colorful traditional Korean clothing known as hanbok, meat, live seafood, dead seafood, and ready-to-eat street cuisine. All this food made me hungry, but I was ignorant of what anything was. Eventually I passed a one-room restaurant, in which were seated several grizzled locals. They sipped soup from bowls, along with side dishes of kimchee, bean sprouts, and fried, whole fish. There was a menu on the wall which I couldn’t read. But I could identify the food from at least three of the other customers’ plates, so I grabbed a table and waited to be served.

  A beaming ajummaapproached me. She was dark-skinned, and deep lines cut into her dried-fruit face. She addressed me in raw Korean. I shrugged, looked to the older guy sitting next to me, and just pointed at his half-consumed food.

  Within minutes I was served the same and went at it with vigor. I was used to wooden chopsticks back home, but the Koreans use much heavier, metal chopsticks, and this took some adapting to. After a minute I managed to get the hang of it, albeit clumsily. What I did notice was that all the other patrons were eating the rice with spoons. I had known of the Japanese custom of lifting the rice bowl to your mouth and shoveling in the rice with chopsticks, but the Koreans were having none of it: the bowls stayed on the table, and
spoons were employed. It seemed very sensible to me, so I aped them accordingly. At one point the ajumma approached me and rattled off what seemed to be a barrage of questions. She motioned toward my chopsticks, perhaps congratulating me on my skills, and growled more Korean my way. I just laughed and shook my head, which was contagious. She laughed, and then seemingly made a joke at my expense, and suddenly all the other patrons in the place (about six or seven people) were laughing as well–hearty, deep laughter, the laughter of the poor. I joined in, somewhat reveling in the attention, and then pointed to my rice bowl:

  “This. What is this? How… do…. you… say…. this?”

  She looked confused. I pointed once again.

  “Bap,” she replied.

  “Bap?”

  “Nae, bap.”

  “Bap,” I confirmed. “Bap.”

  I had just learned my first Korean word. My education had begun, and I had yet to teach a single class.

  CHAPTER 2: GORILLA TEACHER

  Most everyone who comes to Korea to teach English starts at a hagwon. This is where the entry-level positions are: they have the greatest demand for teachers, and are, as a result, less selective than other institutions. Hagwonsare study factories, short on long-term vision and obsessed with immediate results. They are also desperate for foreigners. Hagwons go so far as to fly people across the world on the basis of visa qualification, a photo (very important), and a very brief phone interview, with almost no further vetting. This tells us something: having at least one foreigner on staff is essential for business. Contact with native speakers is considered to be the quickest path to English mastery by the legions of fickle Korean moms planning and paying for their children’s extracurricular education. Never mind if the foreigner in question has a P.E. degree from a third-tier school, no teaching experience, and a chronic drinking problem. Fliers with a few nice photos featuring attractive Western teachers translate into more students. More students mean more money, and money is what it’s all about.