In September 2004, I arrived in Seoul, South Korea to begin teaching English in a hogwan (after school institute). I recently found hard copies of the first two email I sent home describing my earliest experiences.

A lot has changed since then. Korea was my first experience living in a foreign country (I’d traveled a bit around Europe and the South Pacific, but S. Korea was my first experience living by myself in a foreign land.)

Here’s what those first two emails from autumn 2004 caught of my experience.

Subject: Where the streets have no name

Hey all,
So I’m in Korea, possibly firmly entrenched for a year or two, and there’s a lot to tell (so this is long).

I’m living in a city called Bundang (pronounced poon-dong, slight emphasis on “dong”) about 20 km
 south of Seoul (two mountain ridges south) and it is beautiful in a very modern way.

The city is clean, and designed for a much higher population density than it has. The major streets, the only ones that have names, are 8 and 10 lanes wide, making a grid of rectangles about 1 km x 0.5 km.

Instead of street names, these grids are numbered. My apartment, for example, is 44-10. Only large or famous buildings have names, and they are often used as reference points for deliveries and for directions.

Somehow they managed to deliver mail here, but from what other teachers have said, they don’t do it well (except for bills, which arrive alright somehow).

These large residential blocks have their own wide pedestrian concourses and green spaces. The blocks are filled, for the most part, with high rise apartment buildings — each block’s buildings painted a distinct pattern. This painting makes it much easier to navigate around the city on foot, as you simply have to know the pattern of where you started and where you want to end up.

There is very little crime here (or anywhere in Korea) with the exception of break and enter, which is apparently common. The lower floors of my building have bars on the windows. There’s some problems with alcohol abuse also, moreso than we’re used to seeing.

My apartment is small, but clean and modern. When I moved in, the school (who found and are paying for the apartment) had a number of additions waiting for me – toilet paper, bottled water, new kitchen pots and utensils among others. I had to wait almost a week for my dresser and dining table to arrive, but that’s fine. Nothing here happens fast.

Bundang is an affluent neighbourhood, a place where families who are on their way up live. These are also the people who are the most enamoured with all things American. So, this means that I am continually surrounded by many American icons. I live two blocks from Pizza Hut in one direction, and two blocks from a 7/11 the other way, and there’s a Domino’s Pizza around the corner from the 7/11. On the way to work I pass a Subway, McDonald’s, Baskin Robbins, Paris Baguette, Haagen-Daz and another 7/11.

Oh, and across from my school is a “Canadian Coffee House” an imitation Tim Horton’s without the donuts. Interestingly, the Koreans are crazy for Italian-American food – with pizzerias and New York-style Italian eateries dominating the landscape. The Korean word for an Italian restaurant is “eatery”. There’s a “Tex-Mex” restaurant near the school, one of it’s specialty is Calzone. I have no idea if they think that that’s Tex or Mex, but when I really crave cheese or tomato sauce, that’s where I go (I’m overdue).

There is a major American presence in South Korea, as both countries are still technically at war with North Korea (in spite of the fact that there hasn’t been combat in 50 years). We went to one of the inner neighbourhoods of Seoul, Itaewan, and it was just crawling with U.S. soldiers.

We have many American TV programs here. Law & Order, CSI, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Survivor, Alias and many American movies appear daily, usually with Korean subtitles. Unfortunately there is very little news, and until I get the internet in my apartment, I’ll feel completely out of touch (I have discovered that BBC World News does show here daily, but very early in the morning).

The TV ads here are interesting. They do have regular TV ads, but often commercial breaks become 10 minute home shopping channel segments. What’s more interesting are the ads on the American Armed Forces Network. Many of these ads are about how to vote, and while they don’t endorse any one candidate, they do talk about how you have to make an effort to make a change…

I’ve only actually eaten Korean food a couple of times, the first on a school luncheon. As much as I tried it before I left, it is much spicier here. I think the Korean school staff got worried when they saw my face go red over the Kimchi, but now that they know that I cook for myself (something that most Koreans — and most teachers — do not do), they’re less worried.

Grocery shopping is interesting. Every Korean who passes you feels that they have the right to examine the contents of your shopping cart. If you stop and compare two products, by the time you move on, there are three or four people behind you watching to see which one you chose. It gets to be annoying at times. In some stores, the staff will try to remove items from your cart and replace them with others  (they do this to Koreans as well as to foreigners, but it’s still shocking the first time, especially since the Korean shoppers passively allow this to happen. I just walk away and pull my basket with me.).

Even within grocery stores, there are competitors trying to get your attention. As all of the seafood is
fresh daily, there are (blood covered) butchers walking around shouting out about what they have in stock and trying to get you to buy from them. Even though I don’t eat seafood, I did watch fascinated as a butcher carved up a massive fish (possibly a tuna? It was bigger than me) and sold various cuts.

Things that are hard to find would include chicken (but not duck. I thought I was buying a roasted chicken, [takgawgee], but I ended up buying a roasted duck [awreegawgee]), vinegar, (real) teriyaki sauce, bar-b-cue sauce, white bread (but not whole wheat or peanut butter, which is everywhere), salt and vinegar chips (but not sour cream or bar-b-cue), junior mints (but not M&Ms – they’re everywhere too), or almost any cheese except cheddar or kraft slices. I’ve heard rumours of a store that sells goat cheese.

But then again, we hear a lot of rumours here. More on that another time.

Steve

p.s. Even though I’ll miss the Run for the Cure this year, I am doing the Seoul edition of the Terry Fox run this Sunday.

Subject: Rumours of Glory

The thing about being here is that I feel like I’m out of touch with the world. Slowly but surely I’m changing that, but it is taking longer than I’d like. I’ve discovered the International Herald Tribune (published daily by the New York Times) which is very informative. But you can’t buy it in Bundang, only Seoul, and subscribing for home delivery is expensive (about $75 per month). There’s no point in reading the Korea English language papers unless you’re playing a game of “find a real fact” as they appear to be rather rare. the papers are no more than press release for the government and larger corporations.

At some point I’ll get my own internet here (maybe next week – I live in hope) and then maybe I’ll feel like I can keep up on what’s going on around me. In the mean time, I get sporadic access to the internet, and tons of rumours of news from those around me.

Some examples:

1) There was an explosion in North Korea last month. We heard rumours about it for along time, then it finally hit the news. It was a nuclear test – no it wasn’t – yes it was – no it wasn’t. It was an accident – it was on purpose. They blew up a mountain, They made a hole for a dam. Who knows. Then there were photos, and denials and somehow the British are involved in explaining it all, but we still don’t know what it was. Or even if this is something that we should be worried about.

2) This past weekend was a holiday weekend here – Chu-seock. On the US Armed Forces TV channel, there were all these notices that a) US troops are to avoid public transit and b) all US troops have a curfew – 9 p.m. I have no idea why, but it sounds like there’s been a threat to their (and through association – my) safety. I wish I knew for sure. the weekend passed uneventfully, and the curfew has been lifted, so who knows.

3) Apparently the Canadian embassy is sponsoring a thanksgiving dinner next weekend in one of the larger hotels in Seoul. Turkey! My favourite food, and you can’t find it here (except as processed deli slices at Subway). No one seems to have the exact details… just rumours.

4) Kim Jong-il’s (possibly first or possibly only) wife may or may not have died. He’s the leader of North Korea and generally seen as an unstable wingnut. If his wife has died, he might be more unstable. I’d like to know these things.

Add onto all of this is the fact that every day we have any number of military helicopters (Apaches) flying over (usually in 2s and 3s) and you definitely get the desire to keep yourself informed.

Of course, the students are too young to be really news-oriented, although all the older kids know who Bush is and dislike him (they call him “bushie”). But you can’t ask them about news because they don’t follow it.

But not everything is about the news.

A couple of us went hiking this past holiday weekend. There are trails all around in the mountains, you just need to find the access points. the trails themselves are quite crowded. The mountain that we climbed was 344 metres tall, and tree covered the whole way around. It had a well-worn trail. It was quite pretty and relaxing.

I work directly with a “counsellor” who filters parental feedback to me and passes on information about the students to their parents. How old is this counsellor? Well, that depends. She was born December 19, 1979 and as such, according to our ways is 24 going on 25. But that’s not how Koreans do it. The day you are born, you are 1 year old. The following January 1st, you become 2, and every January 1st you gain a year in age no matter when your birthday is. So, she was never less than one year old, and become two years old thirteen days after she was born. According to the Korean method, she is 26 going on 27.

The kids can be fun, although I don’t have a lot of stories about them. With my junior class, I read a story called “Simon and the Spy” as part of the book, I taught my kids how to write coded messages (ROT 13 and a simple swapping of numbers for letters). After finishing the book, each student who had written me a coded message got a “certificate” from my spy school. Three students refused to take it. I asked one of my
older classes what they thought of this and half of them said they wouldn’t take something that said that they had been studying spying.

So now with my seniors, I’ll often call one or another of them a spy. It usually gets a laugh. They’ve caught on and will sometimes call each other that when one gives a wrong answer.

I had a bit of a laugh with that same class earlier in the week. One of their stories had a bit about a science experience where plants were exposed to various types of music to see if it would impact their growth. So we got talking about classical music. Many of them study piano. I asked for a list of their favourite composers. They mentioned most of the usual ones – Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and one that I had
never heard of, “Poe.”

I finally had to get one of the students to write it on the board, figuring it must be an oriental composer I hadn’t heard of. So she got up and wrote it on the board and sat back down and triumphantly said “Poe” – On the board it said “B A C H”

As Radar O’Reilly once said on MASH, “Ah… Poe!”

Until next time,

Steve