Dispatches from the Peninsula

by Chris Tharp

  What did surprise me at first was the lack of basic English proficiency. These kids had already been studying English since elementary and middle school, and many couldn’t even get a grip on “How are you?” and “I’m fine, thank you.” These kids had come up during the ESL boom. Apart from the mandatory study during their regular school time, many had spent long hours in English hagwons and had nothing to show for it. Sure, there were some students whose English was decent, and some whole groups of majors from the most competitive departments (i.e. Nursing, Oriental Medicine) could even claim excellence, but the vast majority were useless, as if they had learned the alphabet and quit right then and there.

  How could this happen? How could so much time and energy be put into educating a generation of students in English and still fail so miserably? The answer is complicated. Ineffective teaching methods that overemphasize grammar, combined with large classes, rote memorization, little emphasis on speaking, stressed-out students, and second-rate materials all serve to create a perfect storm of non-education. It’s also tough to really learn a language unless you take the initiative. Teachers can teach at you all they want. They can magically try to impart their knowledge into your empty head, but unless you try, unless you study, unless you throw yourself into the acid bath and speak the language on your own, nothing’s going to stick.

  Just like the hagwons, these freshmen English classes are a dog and pony show. I met with each group of students just one time each week for less than two hours. And despite the fact that I was teaching at a large, well-funded school, I was utterly untrained for the job. What methods did I have at my disposal to effectively instruct a class of forty students in English? Personal attention was out of the question. I could, and did, divide them into smaller groups where they’d work on the concepts I introduced–or instead, try for a nap. But the reality is that these classes were composed of too many people trying to learn a language in too little time. Actual acquisition was not the goal here. Woody Allen famously said that “80 percent of life is just showing up.” This has apparently been translated into Korean.

  I quickly found my feet during that first semester, though not through being an effective instructor. I did what had worked for me in the hagwon. I tried my best to be entertaining, to hold their attention, to be funny, to joke, to keep the energy up–in short, to put on a show. All my years training and working in the theater taught me how do that, and in the end I relied on it, which probably saved my ass that first year teaching university. Otherwise, I had no idea what I was doing.

  Teaching at the Korean university isn’t so different from teaching at the Korean hagwon. Whereas at the hagwon, your good graces are determined by the satisfaction of the kids’ mothers, at the university it’s the students themselves. Western academic careers live and die by the rule Publish or perish. In Korea, it’s Please or perish. Student evaluations are carried out at the end of each semester. The strict teachers, the ones who bust balls and are there on a mission to elevate and instruct, are always first on the chopping block when annual contract re-signing time comes along. The teachers with the highest evaluations stick around, get raises, and can enjoy the relatively carefree life of the university instructor… but this is never accomplished by lowering the boom. This is pretty much the sole criterion that the administrators use when they decide who stays and who goes each year. Student satisfaction and high enrollment are paramount. Again, entertainmentis the name of the game. Actual education comes in a distant, distant second. Unlike some of my colleagues over the years, this has never bothered me. Some may view this perspective as cynical, but it’s simply the reality of the gig.

  The actual disconnect between what I was trying to teach and the students’ real understanding of English became shockingly clear one day in class. As I was teaching a large group of students, I noticed a girl sitting in the front row. She was wearing a sweatshirt bearing English words. This is not rare, as most of the clothing worn by younger people here is branded with some kind of English. Sometimes it’s just cutesy, nonsensical phrases:

  Horsey Time.

  Fly to the Sky.

  Beautiful Rainbow Story Forever.

  Other times it’s not English at all, but just an amalgamation of letters stuck together by a desperate clothing designer trying to jump onto the English trend, reading like an eye chart:

  Howrk?

  Doeglintgg if a Vlimttrw!

  This girl’s was more insidious, however. When I asked her to stand up, I saw

  I FUCK ON THE FIRST DATE

  screaming out from the front of her shirt in bright white letters. When I pressed her about the phrase, it became quite apparent that she–an innocent 19-year old girl studying English–had NO idea what it meant.

  Only then, I realized how much work still has to be done.

  CHAPTER 8: TRAIL UPSEOYO

  He was Sam’s friend, not mine. In fact, I don’t even think he even liked me. We both liked Sam and Sam liked us, so in the interest of not alienating our mutual connection, we did our best to be nice and not punch each other in the face. He wasn’t in Korea to teach English. He wasn’t in Korea to do anything, really. He was one of the handful of Westerners that I’ve met here that could actually qualify as a tourist, though Josh’s idea of tourism was to rarely leave the confines of Sam’s tiny one-room apartment, save a night or two a week to join us for a drink at the Crown.

  “Dude, you gotta take him somewhere. Anywhere,” Sam begged me over a quiet Sunday night pint. “He’s my friend, but he’s driving me fucking nuts.”

  “Where’s Josh tonight?” asked Aussie Andrew, the black-haired bartender and proprietor.

  “At my house. Where else?” Sam replied.

  “How long is he gonna to stay for?” Andrew pressed.

  “He’s been here two weeks and has three more to go. I like the guy, I really do, but that’s long fuckin’ time.”

  “Getting on your tits, is he?” Andrew let loose a small smile.

  “Yeah, you could say that.” Sam took a drag off a Marlboro Light and glanced up at the TV screen in the corner, which showed a soccer game featuring Liverpool and Blackburn.

  “Well, I do have this week off,” I said. “I could take him with me… I guess.”

  “Please, dude. Get him out of my hair. I need some space.”

  * * * *

  Since starting at the university, I was shocked at how easy the schedule was. I only had to teach twelve hours of classes a week. It was the same lesson each time and very little prep was required. There was also the one month of paid vacation I would receive each semester. On top of that, I got even more time off for special school events such as the school’s foundation day and festivals, as well as the whole midterm and finals week. It was school policy to have us administer our midterm and final exams one week earlier than the Korean professors. This was to spare the poor students the stress of worrying about their English tests at the same time they had to take exams in their Korean subjects. They got their English exams out of the way the week before, which granted all of the foreign instructors two more weeks of holiday a semester. I was not told this when I was hired and was, of course, stoked to learn about it. It was almost mid-October and time for my school’s midterms. I had given my tests and now had a week in which I could go somewhere. So I agreed to take Josh off of Sam’s hands, at least for a few days.

  “You like hiking, Josh?”

  “Sure.”

  “I want to go hiking for a couple days. Are you in?”

  “Okay.”

  Josh was a big guy–a mule of a man. His nickname–Donk–was short for donkey. He looked like a combination professional wrestler, barbarian, and crab fisherman. He came from a family of Pacific Northwest backwoods eccentrics that was legendary for its exploits. Just before coming to Korea, he had evidently beaten up his own father in a drunken brawl. His brother had lived on the peninsula for a year–I had actually replaced him at the Bayridge Language School–and was now ba
ck in the US getting his Ph.D. Josh, for all his bearded, flannel-jacket burliness, also had the mind of a professor, though his eloquence only came out in isolated bursts. The rest of the time, he was content to respond with one-word answers, or grunts.

  I had decided that we would go to Jirisan National Park, which is about five hours away from Busan by bus. Jirisan, at 1,915 meters (6,283 ft), is the second-largest mountain in South Korea. Like many of the peninsula’s mountains, it is more of an extended ridge, with several peaks popping up along the top. The park itself is crisscrossed with hiking trails, the most famous of which follows the ridgeline and takes about three days to complete. Along this ridge trail are several communal shelters where you can spend the night. I planned on somehow hiking up to the main ridge and staying for at least a night in one of the shelters. I did a lot of backpacking in America and was anxious to try it out in Korea.

  Josh and I left in the evening, silently boarding a Hyundai-built bus bound for the town of Jinju, which is about two hours from Busan. The bus crept down the car-packed highway toward the town, inching along in the river of brake lights. Josh sat next to me but said nothing, lost in the ridiculous fantasy paperback–Berserker Prime–he had stolen from the lonely bookshelf of the Crown. I tried to read too, but was distracted, periodically looking out the bus’s window into the drizzly night. My mind was on Anna–the English girl I had fallen hopelessly for the year before. We had split up at the end of the summer, but my heart was still boiling, and on the weekend I saw her with a new guy; in my rice-wine-fueled rage I threatened to ram my fist down his throat. I now felt gut-shamed and sticky with regret that I had so publicly lost my cool, once and for all earning my new nickname of Showbiz, which some of my fellow expats had taken to calling me. Whatever the case, I had stepped over the line; I knew I had to get out of town to let myself cool down, and to try and shed the dead skin of my self-loathing.

  Up to this point, I had done little Korean traveling outside of Busan, so this trip was a chance for me to take in some of the surrounding countryside. But what I saw from the bus was the bland uniformity one finds along any highway–blue signs announcing town names and kilometers; rest areas, gas stations, and toll booths. And though my eyes scanned the rainy night for any exotic sights or anything uniquely Korean, I was really looking inside for much of the ride.

  Jinju means pearl in Korean, and like its namesake it is lovely, located on the Nam River, which winds down from the mountain range where Jirisan is located. It is famous for its fortress, which was sacked by the Japanese during the Imjin Wars in 1592 and 1593. The fortress has been rebuilt; overlooking the town and river, it is open to visitors both during the day and night. Inside the fortress is a shrine to the Korean martyr Nongae, who was a gisaeng (the Korean version of a geisha) during the Imjin Wars, when the Japanese leader Hideyoshi invaded Korea in an attempt to conquer Ming China and other parts of Asia. Nongaeis revered throughout Korea for her legendary assassination of a drunken Japanese general, whom she grabbed before leaping from a cliff overlooking the river, killing both him and herself in the process.

  Josh and I were lucky to roll into Jinju during its famous Namgang Lantern Festival, which takes place for ten days every October. As we crossed the bridge on our way to the bus station, we saw scores of colorful lanterns floating on the river below. They gave the whole place a magical and even psychedelic feel. We had known nothing about this festival and were fortunate to stumble right into it.

  We got a cheap room at a yeogwon, a small, bare-bones hotel near the bus station. The place smelled of sex and cigarettes, and was located in a two-block district full of shitty love motels and small brothels. After checking in, we decided to explore the area, walking down the dark streets, lit up only by the red lights in the prostitutes’ windows. As we approached each of the windows, the hopeful girls–in short shorts and micro minis–scurried to the front, presenting themselves for us to see, like fresh meat laid out in a case. However, once the light shone upon us enough to reveal the fact that we were foreigners, the girls turned away, obviously shocked, and disappeared from sight like terrified street cats. This bothered me. Neither of us was looking to score that night, but to be denied without even asking–solely because we were Westerners–felt like a slap. This righteous indignation quickly abated, though. To get upset about being denied sex with someone who you had no intention of soliciting is just silly, ethics be damned. And what sucks worse? Being turned away by a prostitute or being a prostitute? Perspective, perspective…

  Eventually, Josh and I made it out of the seedy bus station neighborhood and walked down to the river, where the festival was in full swing. We made our way to the tents on the shore. Inside, people sat at portable tables, eating steamed pigs’ feet, pajeon (a kind of pancake with veggies and squid), dubu kimchee (warm tofu with kimchee), andthe Korean blood sausageknown as sundae. They washed it down with beige plastic bowls filled with the Korean rice wine known as makeoli, or with green bottles of soju. The din was massive, an assault of loud, drunk Koreans in rapt conversation. The place was thick with people, many smiling and waving to these two foreigners as we passed. Faces were red with drink and eyes followed us everywhere. At six feet, I’m reasonably tall, but Josh had me by a couple of inches. With a long, thick beard hanging from his chin, he looked exotic and scary, and people got out of his way as he lumbered along.

  After the tents we approached a floating pedestrian bridge. After paying the gatekeeper our 1000 won, we made our way onto the bridge, walking single file with the stream of Koreans also making the crossing. The bridge offered us the best view of the lanterns–which were illuminated sculptures, really–many depicting animals such as river carp, frogs, horses, dogs, and large birds. Some were of men carrying swords or shooting bows, a nod to the great battle of Jinju Castle, which the festival memorializes. I, along with thousands of other people there, snapped photos on my digital camera in a ridiculous attempt to capture what could only be appreciated in person. The lanterns were beautiful and arresting, Asian in their essence. They managed to transport me for that short time. I forgot about Anna, about threatening her boyfriend, about acting like a fool. In the river were also thousands of little floating candles that had been cast adrift. I saw the spot upstream where people were putting the candles in and watched the slow-moving river take them. I imagined that these candles represented the wishes or dreams of the people who lit them. For a moment I wanted them all to come true.

  After crossing the river we walked by more tents. It was getting later now and they were beginning to empty out. At one point we were waved over by an ajosshi seated at a table with three of his friends. From the overflowing ashtray, the look on their faces, and the six empty soju bottles in front of them, it was obvious that they were savagely drunk. The ajosshigreeted us in English:

  “Hey! Come. Come. Come. You drink-ee?” He held out an empty white paper cup.

  “Sounds good to me,” Josh said.

  “Twist my arm,” I shrugged.

  We sat down and accepted the shots of soju, politely if sloppily poured by the inviting ajosshi.

  “Gonbae!”

  “Gonbae!”

  The drinks disappeared down our gullets.

  “You… you… uh… [mumbling in Korean] whay… whay puh-rom?”

  His slurring accent was thick as jam and it took a moment to register.

  “We’re from Busan.”

  “Busan? No no no no no no no. No Busan! [more mumbly Korean] Uhh… you… uh… coun-tuh-ry! Which-ee coun-tuh-ry?”

  “Which country?”

  “Yes! Coun-tuh-ry!”

  “USA,” Josh replied.

  “Waaaaaa!” Thumbs up. “Okay buddy! Very good! Okay okay okay! USA very good! Very pow-uh!” Backs slapped. “Me. Mr. Son!” The English-speaking ajosshidug his thumb into his chest.

  “Pangapsumnida,” I replied, Korean for Nice to meet you. Handshake. His was limp and sweaty.

  “Oohhhhhhhhhhhh! Korea speaking ver
y good!” More shots poured. “Gonbae!”

  Toasts. “Gonbae!” Drinking.

  “How much-ee… you… age-y… How… uh… how much-ee age-y?”

  “Me? I’m thirty-four.” Mr. Son looked alarmed. He translated my answer to his two friends, who looked on in disbelief.

  “Whaaaaa… Sirty poh? Sirty poh? Whaaaaa…” Head shake. Hawk and spit. “Me? I pip-uh-ty pibe-uh! Pip-uh-ty pibe-uh! I big brother! Hyung nim.” We shook hands. Again. More shots were poured.

  His tone then became more serious: “You… you marry?”

  “No, I’m not married.”

  Pause.

  “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa????” His eyes bulged from his sockets and spittle formed in the corners of his mouth. “No marry? Why? Why you… no marry?”

  “I don’t know. Just haven’t met the right girl, I guess.”

  “But you must! You must marry!”

  “One shot-uh!” says his friend. More soju downed, after which the lighting in the tent took on a crystalline quality.

  “Okay okay okay okay. You… you have girl-puh-riend-uh?”

  “Yes,” I lied, not wanting to alarm him any more than necessary. To be thirty-four and single in Korea is known to cause aneurisms among concerned ajosshis.

  He stared at me intently and licked his lips. “Korean girlfriend?”

  “Uh, no. Actually she’s English.” Again a lie, but she was on my mind at the time.

  “Okay okay very good very good very good! You Korean girl no! Korean girl NO!”

  He made a large X sign with his arms, which is how a Korean tells you no when just saying “no” is not enough. We downed one more cup of soju, thanked them, got up, and slithered back to our smelly room, falling into a deep, boozy sleep.