Dispatches from the Peninsula

by Chris Tharp

  CHAPTER 6: YELLOW FEVER

  It is no secret that many of the Western men who move to East Asia quickly end up falling for the locals. Look at any of the countries and you will see the same: legions of expat men hooking up with beautiful Asian women. Sometimes they marry, and other times the relationships have much shorter lifespans–based more on curiosity than any kind of deep love–but you don’t have to be on the ground to long to witness the phenomenon.

  This is especially true in Korea, where, despite its Confucianism and somewhat prudish mores, mixed couples can be seen anywhere. Sometimes you will see Western women with Korean men, but nine out of ten times it's the other way around, and once the Western guy goes east, he seldom returns across the dateline–at least for a while, anyway. He gets bitten with a bug that is far more prevalent than SARS, avian, or swine flu will ever be: Yellow Fever. Before moving to Korea, most of my girlfriends had been white. That wasn’t necessarily because I preferred girls of any one race–I just happened to be around mostly Caucasians. I knew that Asian women could be stunningly beautiful, but my experience with any was limited to a couple of brief flings. Certainly they would grab my eye from time to time, but I never sought them out. I never favored them. I was indifferent, really. I in no way possessed an Asian fetish. As for Korean girls, they almost never entered into my estimation. Like many Asians that I worked or studied with, they left little tangible impression. Most of the Asian kids I went to school with were somehow invisible to my friends and me, the result of their own shyness, nose-to-the-grindstone study ethic, and our innate racism, to be sure. If you were to have asked my opinion of Korean girls specifically, I would have probably given you a negative one. My brother had a beautiful Japanese-American sweetheart during high school, but when it came to Korean girls, I somehow remember them being hopelessly bland and frumpy. At least that’s what I thought at the time, but once I actually set foot in South Korea, this old prejudice evaporated like water in a steam bath. Once in the country, I was flabbergasted by the sheer number of gorgeous women. I had the added benefit of arriving in the summer, so the short shorts were out and skin was bared mightily. The streets of Busan–like many in Asia–are packed with people; some shopping areas are frequented exclusively by young women, a great majority of whom are stunning. Literally, everywhere you look, you see viciously pretty girls. It can actually be annoying–a kind of sensory overload.

  But why is this? Why does the ratio of really attractive women seem to be much greater in Seoul, than, say, St. Louis? Genes surely play a large part, along with the relatively low-carb diet and non-sedentary lifestyle younger Koreans enjoy. These girls are fit. They’re eating soup, veggies, and fish every day, and not jumping in an SUV every time they need to run to the store. They can be tall or short, skinny and curvy, but you don't see large numbers of really overweight women.

  Korean women also take great pride in–or are obsessed with–their looks. The cosmetic industry alone is a multi-billion dollar business. They take skin care seriously here, with shops of pricey creams popping up on street corners and in subway stations. They’re everywhere. Just turn on the TV and it's an endless parade of skin care commercials.

  Plastic surgery is also big business, with Korea having one of the highest rates of surgery on the planet, perhaps second only to Venezuela in per-capita work done. A stroll around the area surrounding the Lotte Hotel and Department Store in Busan reveals countless "beauty clinics.” Patients can be seen streaming out, eye and face patches concealing fresh double-eyelid and nose jobs. According to a recent article in the New York Times, over 30 percent of all Korean women between ages 20 and 50 have undergone some type of cosmetic surgery. Korean women are known throughout Asia for their looks and the meticulous effort they put forth to preserve them. Many times, when I’m in another Asian country and tell a woman that I’m from Korea, I get this response: "Oh… Korean women are so beautiful. They are the most beautiful in Asia."

  I'm not sure if this is really true, since I've encountered plenty of hot women in all of my Asian travels. No country has a monopoly on beauty, but Korea certainly has gotten good at marketing it. This is mainly to do to what's known as hallyu, or the Korean Wave, which refers to the massive popularity that Korean movies, pop music, and (most importantly) TV dramas have achieved throughout East Asia. These entertainment exports have been gobbled up in countries such as Japan, China, Thailand, and the Philippines, and with that, a Korean beauty ideal as well. Suddenly Korean women have become alpha-females, the torchbearers of the new Asian beauty standard. This is being emulated–for better or for worse–by hundreds of millions of other women in Asia, who go as far as bleaching their own skin in a desperate attempt to possess just a fraction of the beauty displayed by their Korean idols.

  * * * *

  I had just been in the country three days when I met my first Korean girlfriend, who I'll refer to as Miss Kwon. My workmates at the Bayridge Language School had taken me to the Vinyl Underground, a club in the Kyungsung University area of the city, a district popular with college students and young expats looking to blow off some weekend steam. We hit the club after midnight, having spent the earlier portion of the evening downing pitchers of Cass beer at the Join Bar in Haeundae. After catching the end of a set by an expat rock band (I was pleasantly shocked to learn that playing loud music was both an acceptable and possible pastime), the DJs came on, and before you know it, I was getting down on the floor.

  I met Miss Kwon outside, while escaping the sauna-like heat of the club and sucking down a cigarette. She was tall, with straight black hair, broad shoulders, and small eyes accentuated with blue eyeliner. She spoke passable English, but informed me that she had recently spent two years in Mexico City, working, studying, and learning Spanish. When I found this out, we quickly switched to the latter, which she spoke much better than English, it turned out. I had learned Spanish in school and had honed my skills over the years in a string of jobs where I worked with many Mexicans. Now that I was in Korea I wasn't sure when the opportunity to speak Spanish would again arise, so I was keen to practice. It also turned out to be our default tongue, providing the easiest way for us to communicate.

  Miss Kwon was rare in that she was in her later 20s, unmarried, and didn't live with her parents. She instead inhabited a small one-room apartment near Pusan National University, from which she had graduated. This is unusual in Korea, where most children stay at their parents’ homes until marriage, even if this lasts into their 30s… which is increasingly common these days. Miss Kwon shared her tiny apartment with an even tinier Dachshund puppy named Apo, whom she would tie to a line when she was away. Apo was the neediest, whiniest puppy I'd ever come across–absolutely desperate for any whiff of human attention. When I ever I came over, the little guy would get so excited that he would invariably lose bladder control and pee all over the place, squirting out urine with each frenetic wag of the tail.

  It turns out that Miss Kwon had dated foreigners before, which neither surprised nor bothered me. She was one of a breed of modern Korean girls who is not just curious about foreigners, but is confident enough to go after them. She smoked cigarettes (still a taboo for women in Korea), drank cocktails, and liked to dance to hip-hop music. She spoke enough English to make foreign friends and meet Western men. Miss Kwon was both forward and assertive, displaying a chutzpah that I've come to expect in some Korean women who socialize with foreigners.

  If Western men easily succumb to Yellow Fever, does it work the other way around? I would be lying if I were to state that a lot of Korean girls don't enjoy flirting with foreigners, but few have the confidence to do more than shoot demure glances followed by "Hello! Oh! Very handsome!” I suspect that pop culture is at play here, that a lifetime of watching Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise onscreen turns many of us into movie star facsimiles when they see us in person. It gets ridiculous at times. Korean women are notorious for telling even the most homely of Western men that they are the spitting image of some H
ollywood hunk.

  "You Brad Pitt. You Russell Crowe. You Johnny Depp!"

  Yeah, maybe a half-bald, splotchy-skinned Johnny Depp after four years of Big Mac sets and binge drinking. I guess we just all look alike. This does go to some of our heads, though. It's not that women throw themselves at foreigners here. They don't. But they, along with Koreans of all ages and sexes, shoot attention our way where ever we go. Any given subway journey subjects us to stares. Any walk down a crowded street is an excuse for groups of kids and teenagers to try out their best Hello!s, How are you?s, and Where are you from?s as we pass by. It is sometimes flattering, often annoying, but a reality of living in Korea. This sort of foreigners-as-zoo-animals mentality has lessened in recent years, as Korea has become more worldly and gotten more used to the fact that many non-Koreans do indeed live among these most homogenous of people. But the constant and unasked-for attention does still exist, and makes us often feel like some sort of freakish celebrities. My first Korean relationship was a short one. Miss Kwon and I called it quits after only about two months. It was a fun time but the proverbial spark was never really there. We both realized this and broke it off amicably, over cold beer and a sausage plate at the White House, a palatial Korean-style drinking establishment, complete with blue lights, gothic pillars, and a five-piece Filipino cover band. We finished our drinks, shook hands, and walked out of each other’s lives. However, it didn't take long for me to meet a new girl. I was drinking one Saturday night at a dingy little bar aptly named the Box, run by a long-haired Korean hipster named Sang-ook. As I staggered out into the now-frigid November night air, two pretty Korean girls–one tall, one short–stood in front of me. The tall one spoke up:

  “My friend think you handsome.”

  She gestured to the short girl, who stood there beaming a lippy smile and blinking her rather large, darkly made-up eyes. She wore a black coat, checkered skirt, and furry boots. She was adorable–painfully cute, really. There was no way I could resist such concentrated sweetness. So, I responded: “Well, I think she's very beautiful.”

  Her tall friend translated. The short girl smiled and blinked some more.

  “Handsome,” she said.

  “Pretty,” I replied.

  I bent down and gave her peck on the lips. And so I acquired my second Korean girlfriend. Her name was Bo-ra, and in the several months we spent together, I learned very little about her. I knew that she lived with her sister near the university, and that she really liked dogs. She liked them so much that she once insisted on going to a dog café. This was an actual café that also doubled as a kennel. These are found throughout the country. You go there, admire and pet the pooches, and drink coffee and eat pizza, all the while taking in the sour aroma of dog shit. Not my idea of an appetizing time, but Bo-ra loved it. She was cute and she adored anything else that was cute. I was reasonably happy at first with her, but there was just one little problem: she spoke no English. She knew a bit–some basic words and phrases–but actually carrying on a conversation was totally out of the question. This was only a few months into my first year and I was incapable of anything but the most rudimentary Korean, so it seemed I was in a pickle. I had gotten myself into a relationship with someone I couldn't talk to. All of that lying in bed with your girl and talking about your fears, your loves, your hopes, your dreams? That was all off the table, along with everything but physical contact.

  This situation is not so rare with mixed relationships in Korea. Many times I hear guys on the phone with their Korean girls, bellowing at them in condescending baby talk: "You where? Home? You home? Go sleep now? I with friends. Drinky-drinky. I go home soon. Taxi. TA-XI. Brrrrrrm Brrrrrrrrm Brrrrrrrm. I GO. SOON."

  Brian Aylward, a Canadian standup comedian who spent three years in Seoul, describes it like this: "It's kind of like dating a hot retard." And he is right. (No doubt they feel the same way about us.)

  I had nothing in common with this girl. She would come to my apartment and watch Korean TV programs, or spend the whole night exchanging text messages with her friends. Mostly she would just sleep, though. The only thing she liked more than dogs was sleeping. Like many Korean girls, Bo-ra was a master of the text message. When tapping out a message, her fingers were the very model of dexterity. They would drum and whir over the touchpad, reminding me of Clark Kent typing at the speed of light in the original Superman film. She sent dozens to me a day. It was only after our first day that I received this one:

  chris! i love you (heart heart heart heart heart heart)

  I've been in relationships for nine months without ever uttering or writing those deadly three words, but that didn't stop me from reciprocating her message two minutes later. I was lying, yes, but I suspected that she was as well. Her text messages were usually part English, part Korean, and part symbols, more often than not that strange mix of eyes and mouths known as emoticons. Korean girls are experts at employing the various symbols on a cell phone keyboard to create an amalgamation of moods and emotions.

  chris, i miss you! (heart heart heart spiral double triangle sad eyes)

  chris! (happy-faced winking rabbit) How are you today? (Swirly cloud star star star heart star)

  i so sad not see u… (crying U eyes and upside down hedgehog)

  Her messages employed more of these bizarre symbols as they went on. I began to get lost in them. It was like trying to decipher some strange Korean girl hieroglyphics without the text-message Rosetta stone. The last message I got from her contained no symbols at all. It came in at five a.m. and contained just the following six words.

  chris i sorry we have breakup

  I tried calling for a whole week afterward, but she never picked up. She was ending it and that was that, my persistence be damned. Even if she chose to respond, I wouldn’t have understood anyway, so perhaps it was for the best. Live by the text message, die by the text message, I guess.

  * * * *

  Though Confucianism began in China, it is the Koreans who have most strongly embraced its teachings in the modern age. Respect for authority, filial piety, and a certain social conservatism are all hallmarks of this philosophy. When it comes to sex and relationships, we see can see its imprint everywhere in contemporary Korea.

  Though a stroll on Haeundae beach in the summer will reveal a handful of young Korean women sporting bikinis, it is still much more common to see both men and women, young and old, to go into the water fully clothed. Modesty is the rule, though it gets bent more and more as each year passes. Up until recently, Korea had a national law mandating a minimum skirt length for women. I’ve seen grandmothers publically dress down young women–strangers–whom they considered to be too scantily clad. For a young woman, just baring shoulders can earn her scowls and death glares from older folks. And public displays of affection are not only frowned upon, but sometimes met with vehement indignation. I’ve had adult students tell me how the sight of young people kissing in public fills them with rage, as if these punk kids are disrespecting generations that came before them. One time I was strolling on the beach with an English girl I was dating at the time. It was very warm, almost summer, and the day’s last light was reflecting off the waves. I pulled her close and we kissed, caught up in the romance and seeming perfection of the moment. Just then I heard a loud screeching, a concentrated volley of angry Korean. When I looked down, I saw an elderly woman seated on a stool, selling coffee and fireworks to beachgoers. She hissed an endless stream of vitriol our way, wagging her finger and letting us know–in no uncertain terms–that we had just crossed the line.

  Even seemingly liberated young Koreans are not free of Confucius’s yoke. I’ve been out with women well into their thirties–educated women who have spent time abroad and speak English–who still must field interrogative phone calls from Mom at 12:30 a.m.

  “Where are you?”

  “Who are you with?”

  “When are you coming home?”

  They almost always lie, telling their mothers that they are
just out with their Korean girlfriends, that they’ve had a bit to drink and will likely be staying at the aforementioned friend’s family’s home. Mother grumbles and hangs up, probably not believing her daughter, but fulfilling her duty nonetheless. Sometimes it seems that these exchanges are more ritualistic than anything else, that in a culture such as Korea, people are expected to play certain roles, and just going through these motions is enough.

  But Korea is a schizophrenic place, where polar extremes exist together. Yes, Confucian morality is hard-wired into the culture, but capitalism and Western influence have transformed the country profoundly. Sex is everywhere. Look no further than the K-pop girl bands that are one of the nation’s hottest commodities. Groups such as Wondergirls and Girls’ Generation feature dead-hot young women in very revealing outfits, strutting and posing and grinding and doing all they can to turn you on. Overt sexual imagery is used in all advertising–from beer commercials to billboards for jeans. Celebrities such as Lee Hyo-ri are one-woman industries, built entirely on male fantasy. With her twinkling eyes, tiny waist, and ample breasts, Lee Hyo-ri uses raw sex appeal to sell movies, music, and those little green bottles of soju, suggesting that rather than a pounding headache and the dry heaves, a night drinking soju offers you the possibility of banging grade-A girls.

  And what of the young people? Are they having sex? Marrying a virgin is still considered optimally important for many traditional-minded Korean men, but hymen-intact brides are become harder and harder to find. Some women have found a way around this, though: they elect to undergo the cosmetic surgery operation known as hymenoplastythat promises to restore their “innocence,” or at least give the appearance thereof to the concerned husband on the wedding night. This is only drives home the point that young folks are indeed getting busy. If purity weren’t a rarity, there would be no demand for such procedures. And though most of them still live with Mom and Dad, there are venues where they can go and do it: