Uijeongbu Pension Nonsense

For posterity, allow me to document my experience with the Uijeongbu Pension Office.

It went about as smoothly as the Internet would indicate; however, either there's been a slight rules change or the official I talked to was a jerk. When I went, the clerk refused to take any of my bank information (SWFT code, address, account number) from me. She would only take it from a receipt from the bank...even though the bank receipt would be based on the same information she wouldn't accept from me. Uh, what?

She also refused to just let me cash it out; I could either wire it home, wire it to a Korean account, or set up a new bank account in the bank downstairs and transfer it there.

So I just sucked it up, went to the bank to send my money home, and came back with the bank receipt, and it was all good.

And icing on the bad service cake: despite working at the FOR FOREIGNERS desk, seeing my American passport, and hearing me fail miserably at Korean (stress + my crappy Korean = crappier Korean), she didn't use English with me at all until I broke down and gave a sad, "I don't know, I just need to send this money home," in English. And then perfectly fluent English. What.

It was not a pleasant experience at all, but I suspect it was mostly due to this particular government worker being kind of a bitch.

WHAT YOU NEED FOR THE UIJEONGBU PENSION OFFICE
(as of 11/2012)

• Passport
• ARC
• Proof of leaving (printed flight itinerary works just fine)
• Receipt from a wire transfer at your bank with: SWFT code, bank name, bank address, account number, and bank branch number

HOW TO FIND THE UIJEONGBU PENSION OFFICE

From the new Uijeongbu Station/Shinsegae department store, take exit 2, towards City Hall. Go past the building with the THC 9 theater. Cross the street; "Wedding Palace" will be on your left. The Uijeongbu Pension Office is in the next building, "Samseong Sang Myeong." (NB: The name is only in Hangul: 삼성생명 or something similar.) Don't make any turns at all once you leave the station, just make a beeline out of exit 2. The Pension Office is on the second floor; you can take the elevators dead ahead or take the curving staircase to your left.

Gochujang: Some Uses

I haven't been posting as much as I would like. I do have a lot on my mind (my day trip to Dongducheon and the "Special Foreigner Tourism Zone" in Bosan; introversion and Korea; the chicken delivery shop down the street) but I don't have the mental wherewithal to focus and write those pieces.

Part of that is because I've been stepping up my cooking game a notch. It's arguable whether or not that's a "poor skill" in Korea, where eating out is so cheap, but it's a useful skill and I like it. It also doesn't help that everyone in the world keeps posting delicious-looking recipes to Pinterest.

Of course, available ingredients in Korea are different than back home, so alterations must sometimes be made. You can experiment, too. My favorite thing to experiment with is the seminal Korean ingredient gochujang. Here are three non-Korean dishes that, I think, are vastly improved by red chili pepper paste.

1. Omelettes


Fry up your egg; before adding your stuffing, add some gochujang.

2. Shakshouksa

This was a Pinterest find: The Shiksa in the Kitchen's shakshuka recipe. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to try it. Lacking tomato paste, I used gochujang instead. Mmm, flavorful. 

3. Quesadillas

Same principle as the omelette: before you load up your tortilla with ingredients (mine were peppers, onions, and cheese), spread a dollop of gochujang on it. 

4. Bonus, Non-Culinary Use

It makes great fake blood!

A Korean Primer

Do you suck at Korean? Do you want to suck less at Korean? Me too.

1. 2000 Essential Words for Korean Beginners

It's not a textbook, it's a pure vocabulary book. I've finished three chapters so far, which hasn't necessarily worked miracles for my Korean, but it does give one that glow of satisfaction and accomplishment. You can find it at Kyobo books (about $10 cheaper than ordering it from that website). It has tables of irregular verb conjugations, it has an index in the back so you can easily look up words you don't know, each word has a sample sentence to demonstrate its usage as well as synonyms and antonyms, there are neat sections that teach Korean through Chinese characters (fascinating for a word nerd like me), and there's a comprehensive appendix with loads of useful tables and extras. My only complaint is that I wish the sample sentences were given English/Chinese/Japanese translations  as well, but I guess that's how you learn. Really worth the price.

2. Talk To Me In Korean

For the grammar and phrases to round out your vocabulary from the above book. Totally free, and available in either podcast form or PDF form.

3. Start Liking K-Pop

One of my favorite things to do, in terms of language acquisition/practice, is to translate song lyrics. If K-Pop isn't your thing, find a K-something. Try out Busker Busker:



Or Neon Bunny (야광토끼):



Or (last one) No Brain:



4. Find A Good Online Dictionary

And bookmark it.

What else do you do to improve your Korean?

Creating Community

One of the local foreigners up here in the 'bu has managed to come in the way of some real estate, a hair salon turned Chinese delivery restaurant turned "community center" (for lack of better word): Don's Open Brain House. I think Don would use the term "hackerspace" himself, but I get the impression that the interest for the 'Bu Crew is much more about games, movies, and language exchanges than it is about techie stuff. At least for now.

This means the book exchanges can now move out of my apartment and into a more official, third-party public space. While I'm sad to see the books go, this change signals an increase of momentum and I'm excited about that. When you create events, you need to hit the Goldilocks zone of investment: enough to get it off the ground, but not so much that it becomes your thing and no one feels comfortable taking it over. I think moving it from my personal space into a neutral, public one is a step in the right direction. The next step will be to get someone else to start creating and running the event—again, much easier with an agreed-upon public location.

I'm really excited about the Open Brain House for a few reasons, not least of which is a chance to socialize and mix with people on a more cerebral level than dinner, drinks, and noraebang. I'm a big fan of those, don't get me wrong, but nights out like that can put a dent in your wallet as well as your life expectancy. Low-key movie and game nights are as essential for me as doing grave musical injustice to Bon Jovi.

This should be an interesting long-term experiment in expat socialization.

If you want to be a creeper, Don captured the whole day on webcam. It streamed live at the time, but you can still see the footage here:







Interesting not only because you get to SEE MY FAT ASS and HEAR MY OBNOXIOUS VOICE (I'm the only fat white girl in the whole thing), but for the two Korean ladies who wandered in and out periodically (I wish I could give you a time stamp to skip right to it). The best was a granny who stopped in not once but twice. The second time was many hours after the first one, and she was surprised that we were still sitting around and shooting the shit. "You're all going to get fat!" she told us in Korean, or maybe what she meant was, "This is why you're all fat!"

She also commented to me that one of the other women there—blonde and slim and very fair-skinned—was "so pretty." I agreed with her, but not without feeling a bit like a dried-up dog turd. Thanks, granny!

Bukhansan Walk Number Two

After I got my hair cut on Labor Day, I decided to enjoy the beautiful weather and go for another walk (not quite a hike) in Bukhansan National Park, which is within easy walking distance of my apartment.

Another view on my walk to work. Mountains make me happy.

Last time I went to Hoeryongsa; this time I chose another fork in the road and wandered to parts uncharted. I found some stairs on the side of the paved path and followed them up.

Much to my surprise, they led to a secluded, solitary grave site. I have no idea who's buried here. (Those fresh-looking flowers in the vases? Artificial.)

It's an incredible view. I felt like I was the only person alive.

Surrounded by flowers, to boot.

This wasn't the hermitage, though. After I had a reading-and-snack break, I continued up the side of the mountain. 

At this point it got buggy as hell. Gnats materialized out of nowhere to nag at me. No matter how many I killed, it seemed there were always four or five following me around. Someone driving a car down the path thought my futile attempts to swat the bugs away were me waving at him, and waved back.

It was a short walk—only half a kilometer—but it was steep, steeper than it looks like in this picture. But I persevered and made it to my destination!

The hermitage is a lot more impressive than Hoeryongsa. I felt supremely awkward, though: every step I took on the gravel seemed to echo throughout the entire mountain. I was sure the monks were going to come out of their meditation to yell at me in Korean and chase me away.

It was so serene. Part of me would love to run away and join a Buddhist monastery. Buddhist nunnery? Why wouldn't you want to live here?

I explored the grounds a bit, debated going into the tiny little shrine room to meditate (but decided against, for fear of the angry Korean monks), and ultimately contented myself with sitting on a large rock and enjoying the quiet. Eventually I noticed that the sun was getting low and began the walk back to my apartment.

Day well spent.

Doing a Good Turn

I've mentioned before that I tutor North Korean defectors. I've been doing it for a few months now. The whole time I debated whether or not I should mention it here, but I figured there's nothing wrong with encouraging people to do a good thing.

Classes with the North Koreans aren't much different than with my kids, except their English is much more basic and they're much older. They're all rather good-natured and (as far as I can tell) happy to see me. I teach a basic class that has a core enrollment of three students, with two others who drift in and out as it suits them.

The three core students are two men (I'll call them Yunu and Guncheol) and one woman (I'll call her Soon-mi). Pseudonyms are because I'm not sure what their story is so far and I'd rather not inadvertently put them or their families in danger.

Out of all the students, Yunu is the moodiest. He gets frustrated easily, though out of all of them he probably has the highest level. He and Guncheol seem to be good friends, the kind that joke around and give each other shit.  At least, that's what it looks and sounds like, considering my Korean is not much better than their English. They might be actually fighting for all I can tell.

Unlike Yunu, Guncheol is almost always in a good mood. If he makes a mistake or doesn't understand something, he takes it in stride and laughs it off. He also applies himself more than Yunu; even if Yunu's current speaking and listening level might be higher than Guncheol's, Guncheol already understands phonics (yes, we are starting at phonics, that's how basic this is) better than Yunu.

Soon-mi is itty-bitty. I'm sure she's around my age—at most maybe a year or two younger. Yet she stands a full head shorter than me.

In case any of you forgot (or didn't know), I'm damn short. 5'1". Usually I stop towering over people by the time they hit the double digits. I actually have to be mindful of where I write on the board because Soon-mi might not be able to reach it at all. Photos of starving children in Africa are horrible and touching, yes, but something about a grown woman barely coming up to my shoulders is way more personal.

And while Soon-mi is an extreme (the other girls are taller than her), it's still not surprising. The typical North Korean is about six inches shorter than the typical South Korean. (As far as I can tell, Yunu and Guncheol seem average to me, but I am rotten at judging people's relative heights.)

Soon-mi is a sweetheart, though. Her disposition is as sunny as Guncheol's, and the both of them are the hardest workers in the class. The boys joke around with her much like they do with each other, though to a lesser extent.

The classes start at 10:10 in the morning, and while it means I have to get up and out of the house way earlier than normal, I love it. I think it's something every teacher should do, at least a few times. Most of the time, we English teachers have a good life here in the ROK and it treats us pretty well. It's only fair to give something back above and beyond what our jobs call for.

If you're interested in tutoring North Korean defectors, there's a few resources out there:

1. Ask a Korean! has some private connections and will always field inquiries from volunteers to match them with a school. There are also links in the comments.

2. Hana Center, which is affiliated with the official relocation centers for defectors, also accepts volunteers. I'm personally acquainted with Jordan Groh, who works with one of the four centers in Seoul. You can email him (username jordan.groh at the famous Google mail server) for more information.

3. Up here in Uijeongbu, Danny Chung is the guy to get in touch with. If you want to email him @naver.com, he's neukorea.

Take a Look, It's In a Book!

I like reading. A lot. Admittedly I read less now than I did as a kid (thanks to the prevalence of the Internet), but I still would say I read a lot. Long subway ride? Crack open a book. Desk warming? Knock off another chapter. Waiting to meet a friend? You can squeeze a few pages in!

Since I also have the lofty goal of reading all of the books on TIME magazine's "Top 100 Novels of the Twentieth Century" list, there is also a level of aggressive list-item-checking going on that drives me onward. The only problem is, accomplishing this goal in Korea means, by default, acquiring lots of books. At home, I'm a big fan of the library. Obviously in Korea, there's not really any English language libraries, and even if the Korean ones have English books, I don't know how I could go around finding a library or getting a library card or whatever else.

Acquiring lots of books isn't even necessarily a bad thing (aside from the inherent expense), but the problem is that most foreigners here in Korea (myself included, kind of unfortunately) are here only temporarily. What do you do with those books once you have to go home? Sell some back to What The Book, give them away, leave them for your replacement, and schlepping them back home are basically your only options. No matter how you slice it, having a thousand books to worry about while you're packing and getting your pension settled and whatever else is  a pain in the tuchas. The less you have to worry about, the better.

This is all a long-winded rambly way to say that I am a lazy cheapskate who likes to read, and these three factors combined led to a brilliant insight on my part: book exchange! Though to be fair, I really kind of stole the idea from the great people at TheYeogiyo, who host one at the expat bar in Bundang, but I probably would have thought of it anyway.

I hosted one last Saturday (advertised entirely through the Uijeongbu Crew Facebook group) and though it was small, it went over quite well and everyone went home happy. My friend Yousef unloaded a huge number of books to make his move from Dobongsan to Uijeongbu easier and most everyone else went home with some new reading material. Plus, because I hosted it, all the surplus books are still in my apartment! Mwuahaha.

And while for me there's always something magical and therapeutic about going proper book-shopping, sometimes I really just need something (anything) new to read and I need it now. There was a nice (and unexpected) social perk too, as half of the people who showed up were people I hadn't met before. Despite being an introverted and somewhat asocial weirdo, it was a lot of fun for me and really one of the best circumstances under which I could imagine meeting new people. We had snacks, we chatted about the books and other things, it was nice. I hope to soon move it out of my apartment into a converted retail space that one of the foreigners here recently purchased with the aim to make it a workshop/learning/social space, if only to make more room for people.

It seems like a patently obvious thing to do, but in all the years I've spent in the Uijeongbu Crew Facebook group I had never seen anyone suggest such a thing before. If there's not a book exchange in your neighborhood, set one up! It's a fun, no-pressure social event that declutters your apartment space and gets you new reading material on the cheap. The only catch is, you need a quick and easy way to advertise to people in your neighborhood: you might have to set up a Facebook group for your particular locale first, before you can get to book-swapping.

Now, to close out with some tips! Not to be condescending, but I guess because it feels like a post like this should have tips?

1. Use the hell out of Facebook! Make the event a month in advance and regularly post reminders in the relevant group and on your wall to remind people, especially for the first few times. I posted a reminder once a week, and then in the week right before once every few days. Make the event open and allow other people to invite people.
2. Use a central, easy-to-find location. My first apartment in Uijeongbu would have been a terrible place, requiring a change to a bus and convoluted directions about which stop to get off on and which way to go. Fortunately, I now live very close to Uijeongbu downtown so my apartment was pretty easy for people to find. If you're off the beaten track, see if someone else could host, or maybe ask at the favorite Western watering hole (if there is one), or wait for nice weather and have it somewhere outside!
3. Have a fair amount of books yourself. While you should always be optimistic, of course, it really helps a lot if you have at least a modest sampling to start out with. If your library is pretty scanty, then enlist the help of a friend or co-worker to either definitely show up, or to at least donate their books beforehand.
4. Be organized. I had a "give away forever" pile and a "loan/borrow only" pile. Either keep the books very separate, or encourage people to take their books back home with them at the end if they're "loan/borrow only" to avoid miscategorization.
5. Have some snacks. Not really essential, but chatting and socializing is easier when there's food involved. I just ran out to the local market and got some apples, strawberries, and Pringles for people to nibble on, and people sure did nibble!

I think that about covers it. Anyway, back to reading!

Packing List

As my return to the ROK draws near, I've begun to reflect on what I'll pack this time around. Now that I'm older and wiser, I'm beginning to think what I could have done differently. My first round took two large checked bags; I want to see if this time I can use just one. (I am obsessed with packing light and I embrace the "one bag" philosophy whenever possible; as a result, customs people sometimes give me strange looks.)

Apparel

• 4 pairs work pants (solid color/understated pattern/non-jean)
• 2 pairs casual pants
• 4 pairs bermuda shorts/capris
• 1-2 blazers
• 1-2 nice hoodies
• 3 "warm weather" blouses
• 3 "cold weather" blouses
• 5 pairs of leggings
• 2 casual-to-dressy dresses
• 1-2 dusters
• My t-shirt collection's "greatest hits" (maybe 6? 8?)
• 1 pair nice shoes
• 1 pair sneakers
• 1 pair sandals
• Scarf collection's "greatest hits" (about 3)
• 1 winter hat
• 1 "aesthetic"/bad-hair-day hat
• 1 heavy winter coat
• 1 medium fall/spring coat
• 1 light jacket
• 2 pairs pajama bottoms
• 1 fuzzy bathrobe
• My jewelry collection's "greatest hits" (2+ necklaces, 3+ rings, 3+ bracelets)
• 2 bras
• 1 sports bra
• 5 pairs underwear
• 1 pair mittens

Last time I was in Korea, I didn't quite have a good sense of Korean hagwon attire: how to dress without being a) really boring or b) a slob. Hopefully, between nice blouses and nice blazers over t-shirts with interesting graphic prints/text I can navigate that better. Also, obvious protip: keep your separates mix and match and you'll go far. Fortunately my life in the states pretty much revolves around the color burgundy, as pictured here:




so most of my wardrobe kind of matches itself.

Layering was really important at Sherlock, as the building could fluctuate in temperature easily—never mind that work started in the middle of the hottest part of the day, but let out after the sun went down. I often took only a light jacket in the afternoon, and ended up freezing on my walk home in the evening. Having more "throw-on-top" options is important.

You'll notice there's no socks in that list. Packing socks (unless you have specialty hiking socks, huge feet, or the like) to go to Korea is dumb. Buy them there. They're cheap, they're cute (cuter than what's usually available in the US and also kneesocks!), and it's that much more space you save. Were I not a fat chick, I'd also forego packing underwear and just buy it there. But I'm a fat chick and I'm not about to pay whatever dumb markup it is on fat people clothes imported from other countries, so I'm bringing my own.

I could even nix all of the winter items (since I'll be arriving in May) and have them shipped to me later, or buy some of my own once I'm there. If I wanted to really be a minimalist about it. I don't know if I'm willing to go that far, though.


Toiletries

• 5 sticks deodorant
• Dr. Bronner's Soap
• Lotion (Burt's Bees)

If you bring anything more than deodorant to Korea, you are a chump. That is the only thing in here that I would list as a necessity.

Antiperspirant deodorant is simply not the standard in Korea that it is in the US and you're going to pay stupid markup on it if you don't bring your own. What do the Koreans do to not sweat? They just don't sweat as much, and you can find what I call "armpit spray," but it's not going to keep you from sweating it out when the summer rolls around. Maybe antiperspirant deodorant and fear of sweating is just silly, meaningless Western convention? Probably, but that's a convention I'll cow to, since I'll be working with other foreigners. Also, my preferred brand I simply couldn't find at the foreign market, anyway.

I could even forego the Dr. Bronner's, if necessary—if that was all that stood between me and one checked bag. But I like to maintain a hippie lifestyle whenever possible and I use it for washing things besides myself: clothes, dishes, floors, etc. Likewise the Burt's Bees lotion: I like it a lot for multiple reasons, but I could junk it. I'm convinced that if your toiletries section is anything more than like four items you CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT, you should reconsider a traveling/ESL-teaching career. (I am sympathetic to foreigners who bring their own big fluffy towels, though; they don't exist in Korea and the luxury of a big fluffy towel after a shower is priceless. Also, you should always know where your towel is.)

Razors, toothbrushes, aftershave, shampoo, toothpaste, towels, conditioner: you can buy it there. So why not? Most of it you would use up anyway, and things like towels you can wash and give to your replacement (or a homeless shelter, etc).

Make-up is a strange subcategory of toiletries, in that it's not physically necessary, but is nonetheless an expectation as far as women are concerned, both here and in Korea. A lot of times I wore makeup to work just so I wouldn't feel as young and as much like a little kid as I did. (I did wear it when I went out, sometimes, too, but not that often.) I don't think I'll bring any this time. The only cosmetics I'd consider would be my nail polish (the one girly indulgence that doesn't send me spinning into an awful feminist rage).


Entertainment

• Laptop
• X books
• Jewelry supplies

When I pack, I spend more time fussing over books than I do over clothing. And if I were really a hardcore type, I wouldn't bring any and just depend on the kindness of hostel-based bookswaps and used bookstores to tide me over. I haven't transcended to that stage of One Bag-ism yet, though, so I bring my own. Also with the exploding popularity of e-book readers, you might very neatly sidestep this issue with something like a Kindle. Tons of space saved. Of course, I don't believe in the Kindle so I'm taking my dead tree editions with me.

The jewelry supplies there is where this begins to really depart from my minimalist packing scheme. Do I really need my bead collection? My wire? My metals supplies, if I break down before I leave and invest in a whole bunch of stuff? Not to survive in Korea, no. But for my own, outside-of-Korea interests, yes. I may end up compromising by taking only the most essential of hardware and buying the rest of my supplies at places like Dongdaemun.

Homelife

• Afghan
• 1 large box baking soda

I see people packing things like sheets and bedsets and that makes no sense to me. Why would you pack those before you even know what your bed will look like? Mine ended up being a king-sized beast (two people lived in my apartment before I got there), which I would have never predicted.

People also put "pillow" as an essential on their packing list but I think that's silly. Whoever tells you that "Koreans don't really use pillows" or "Korean pillows are hard and uncomfortable" is mostly talking nonsense. At a yogwan, or at the jjimjilbang, yes, they're firm to the point of not-as-comfortable. But otherwise I found bringing my own pillow to be quite unnecessary.

My afghan I bring out of sentimental value as well as function: it's warm but it's also a nice piece of home to have with me. I could drop it, if necessary. This is the bulkiest thing I ever take with me, and if I want to make it to one checked bag I'll probably have to drop it. This is the point where I'll probably cave and simply pack two bags again.

Baking soda, though, is hard to find in the quantities I use it in. At LotteMart, it came in little spice-sized plastic containers. I go through a large box in a year (medicating my stomach, washing my hair, occasional household cleaning). Better to bring my own and bring enough of it. One bag travel bonus for using baking soda to wash your hair: no dumb liquids rule for carry-ons.

Recruiters often recommend bringing difficult-to-find spices for anyone who likes to cook. Not my thing, personally—my palate is not that sophisticated—but I wouldn't fault anyone who did.

There's a whole other list I have, of "things to buy with my first paycheck," but that's just tangentially related to this, so I'll save it for another time. As far as packing, I think this pretty much covers it.

Dear Year-Ago, Pre-Korea Self,

Don't worry, Korea will be awesome, but do bear these things in mind:

1. Don't worry about the food. In fact, worry about the food when you come back. You will miss it.
2. In fact, you'll probably like Korean food a little too much for your own good: JOIN A GYM RIGHT AWAY.
3. The clothes you got were acceptable, but they weren't quite in step with Korean style. Or any style. You dress kind of terribly. Just invest lots of good pants and buy the tops in Korea.
4. And just pack fewer clothes, goofball.
5. Don't waste so much time in Shinchon/Hongdae.
6. Be pro-active. Get off your duff and go do more stuff: Jeju, Busan, caves, templestays, etc.
7. Buy a toaster oven.
8. You should have started hitting the jjimjilbangs earlier. Much, much earlier.
9. There's plenty of cool stuff in Uijeongbu, you don't need to go to Seoul every weekend.
10. SPAM is really, really good. Yes, really.

This will much better prepare you for your year abroad, Self. Take this advice to heart.

Love,

Your Older, Post-Korea Self

Open Letter to Foreigners Teaching English in Korea,

Congratulations on accepting your new post, be it at a hagwon or public school or corporate training center or whatever else. Before you jet-set all the way over here, consider this list of items to bear in mind:

1. You are a foreigner in a foreign country. Remember this. The same rules do not always apply. Things will be inconvenient for you at times; you will not be able to do some things as easily (or even at all). It's not because you're a foreigner, it's because you're not a citizen. There's a subtle difference. Bitching about racism in Korea has its time and place, but not because you don't always get your way all of the time.
2. Learn to read Hangul before you get here. Your life will be that much easier.
3. If you're feeling really ambitious, you can even learn some token phrases and keywords so you're not entirely screwed on your own. Numbers, too. I'd rather a clerk assume that I understand Korean numbers (correct assumption) and give me an accurate price than try to muddle through English and tell me fifteen thousand won instead of fifty thousand. Every bumbling foreigner he encounters just further reinforces the stereotype that we are fat hairy numbnuts without two braincells to rub together.
4. Go places besides Itaewon.
5. Give Korean food half a chance.

If you keep these suggestions at the front of your mind, your time (and mine!) in Korea will be a lot easier.

Love,
Katherine 코바