Is this how I come off?

Came across this article at Three Wise Monkeys: Drunk and Stupid: How Debauched Foreigners Feed Korean Prejudices. (NB the original title was the much less sensational "A Korean Conservative's Perspective on MBC's Infamous Report." Great yellow journalism there, 3WM!)

Despite the author's call to action sounding incredibly similar to one I gave a while ago regarding men behaving badly, something about it doesn't have me nodding in agreement so much as wanting to punch him in the face. As the expression goes, 내 주먹이 운어요. ("My fists are crying.") (I just bought a book on Korean idiomatic expressions and I'm getting a kick out of using them whenever possible!)

Yeah, there are terrible foreigners here. I've complained about them before. The terrible ones need to grow up and realize that Korea isn't their playground. But despite how much I complain, I don't think most of us are terrible. Maybe it's because I have a self-selecting sort of group (I don't hang out with people who suck), but it seems to me most of us are pretty okay. I'd argue that most of us are pretty awesome, or at least tolerable.*

The other thing that bugs me is that it isn't only drunk and stupid foreigners feeding Korean prejudices. Even if it's dying out, there's a streak of racism feeding Korean prejudices as well. I'm not going to cry about being victimized by it, because that's a whole bunch of horseshit; rather I mean to say that there's a small-but-vocal minority that would gladly lob mud at white Anglophone foreigners even if every last weiguk saram was utterly blameless.

And never mind the hate and barbs slung at Filippinos and other Southeast Asians. If you're arguing that they also somehow perpetuate the stereotypes or bring the hate they get upon themselves, you're an asshole. Like every country ever, Korea still has race relations issues to work out. There's no way they're not a factor when it comes to Anglophone foreigner-Korean relations. Granted, white Anglophone foreigners definitely inhabit a certain level of privilege and advantage in Korea. It's a delicate line to toe when you're one of that privileged class pointing out that another, less-privileged class can be racist, but still. It's there.

Also, Mr. Smith, I don't know what kind of drinking culture in which your alcohol testicles descended, but mine was totally different from what you described:

In the revelrous corner of Western culture, if you can vomit over someone, have a fight, have a one-night stand, spend the night in a police cell, pick up an injury by doing something dangerous, offend a vulnerable minority, and/or lose control of your bowels or bladder, it has been a successful night and you will be rewarded for it with the fame and popularity your story of the evening will bring (though you may regret it later).

Fame? Popularity? Successful? That's a pretty nice way to spin "notoriety" and "public humiliation." Any time I've done something stupid while drunk (happily, nothing nearly as stupid as mentioned here), I don't think: "Hey, that was awesome!" I think: "Oh my God, I'm an idiot." I have to retire from the world for a day, receding into a cocoon of Star Trek and Mystery Science Theater 3000 to take the edge off.

Likewise for most people I drink with: blacking out and shitting your pants isn't a point of a pride, it's a point never to be talked about ever again. It's something to be avoided if at all possible; it's why I sometimes leave parties early because I can sense that things will get way too crazy way too quickly. In the same vein, I don't give my friends high-fives when they're drunk idiots. I don't encourage what I know they'll regret later. And after the fact, I never mention it because they're guaranteed to be absolutely mortified at their own behavior. They don't need reminding or reprimanding.

There's a great Swedish word, for which I don't know if there's a Korean equivalent: salongsberusad.  "Salong" is "salon," as in the intellectual Parisian kind. "Berusad" is drunk. (Though, not anything like "hammered" or "wasted." That would be full  in Swedish.) Salon-drunk, then, is the nice kind of more-than-tipsy, less-than-schmasted drunk you get with your friends. You don't want to paint the town red, you just want to take the edge off. That's my goal when I drink, though obviously I can't speak for anyone else but myself.

Coming from someone who's told other foreigners to shape up, quit whinging, and go eat a dick: get off your high horse, Mr. Smith.


*Except that most of the time, unless I'm out with someone on a short list of three people, out of all the foreigners sitting at the table I'm the one with the most passable Korean. This is a travesty. My Korean is terrible. I love you guys, but step up your game!

Hanging Out at the 편의점: A Defense

The weather is finally warm enough for my favorite Korean past time: drinks and 안주 in front of the local 편의점. In my case, it's a FamilyMart.

Arguably, it's not the classiest of past times, but I think patronizing the 편의점 gets an unnecessarily bad rap. Perhaps I am too much of an apologist, as Jong-min insists I enjoy it more than Koreans do. If that's the case, my rebuttal is that obviously Koreans don't enjoy it enough, because there are plenty of reasons to loiter in front of the GS25 instead of throwing your money into the shadowy recesses of a bar!

1. Economics


It's just cheaper. I can go to a bar and pay six thousand won for one cocktail, or I can go the FamilyMart and use that six thousand won to get two bottles of soju and a bag of chips. One drink? Or fourteen drinks plus snacks?

2. Why waste the weather?


So many Korean bars are either basement affairs, or up on the third, fourth, etc floors without so much as a good view, never mind a balcony or outdoor dining and drinking area, it seems a waste to spend mild evening boxed inside after you've been cooped up in school or work for the better part of eight hours.

3. Save your lungs.


Korean smoking laws are not as strict as American ones. Any time I go to a bar, I have to be prepared to spend it around clouds of cigarette smoke. Nothing against my smoker friends (I have been known to indulge), but it seems as I age my asthma only gets worse. My lungs will not quickly forget a night in a smoky bar (though my liver certainly will!).

Of course, points 2 and 3 are irrelevant if you're patronizing the rare drinking establishment that's either rooftop or first floor. They do exist.

4. Narrow your focus.


At a bar, there's a lot going on: there's loud music, there's other patrons, there's dart games, there's the bartenders, and so on. It's a really overstimulating atmosphere. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and sometimes you need to be overstimulated. If I don't have a drinking buddy lined up but I still want to have a few beers, I head straight to the bar to get that need for stimulation out of my system.

But more often than not I'm with a friend or two. When that's the case, it's not stimulation (or a near-fatal BAC level) that I want, it's meaningful exchange. Drinking at the 편의점 has all the essentials (drinks, snacks) at a good price, without any frills that might detract from the experience.

5. Zoom out.


Granted, this is kind of the opposite of the above point, but in a nutshell: the people-watching is better outside the MiniStop than it is in the bar, most of the time. Instead of just the bartenders and the bar patrons, you can spy on anyone who happens to be walking by. Maybe this isn't important to everybody, but I guess I'm too much of a writer to pass up a good people-watching opportunity.

There are downsides, of course. Going for an all-out bender at a 편의점 is just in poor taste. They're often in residential areas; if you act like a hooligan in a bar, you're not really bothering anyone who hasn't, to some extent, agreed that they don't mind being bothered. If they are bothered, they can leave. But act like a hooligan outside the MiniStop? Best case scenario: you reinforce all of the negative stereotypes about foreign English teachers in Korea. Worst case: someone calls the police.

After all, the 편의점 is not for your "trying to recapture my college years" bender, it's for a quiet night out with friends.

Which do you prefer? A bar? A restaurant? A 편의점?

Noraebangin' Hits, Volume 2

In no particular order:

• I Am Woman (Helen Reddy)
• Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)
• Rehab (Amy Winehouse)
• Don't Stop Me Now (Queen)
• Take This Job And Shove It (Johnny Paycheck)

To be edited as I see fit.

Visit Seoul With Yorae

I managed to stumble upon promotional material from the Seoul Metropolitan Government, presumably to entice foreigners to come to Korea (for vacation?) or to try to educate the foreigners that already live here. It's...interesting. Yorae learns about makgeolli, for example, which she says is the liquor most representative of Korea.

Really? Makgeolli, and not the little green bottle?

That aside, take a look at how the Seoul Metro Government goes about trying to sell makgeolli:

The healthy, traditional Korean alcohol, makgeolli! A variety of factors make makgeolli popular, but its nutritional value is one of the main factors. The health benefits of this drink give it an advantage over many other alcoholic beverages.

1. Nutrient-rich ingredients
You’ll find at least 10 amino acids and an abundance of proteins in makgeolli. It also contains 1.9% protein content, compared to 3% in milk, as well as vitamin B.

2. Helps in cancer prevention and menopause
Makgeolli has been found to be effective in preventing liver damage, cancer and helps with menopausal disorders. It’s recommended that you shake well before you drink so that you get the nutrients found in the chunks that settle to the bottom of the makgeolli.

3. Excellent skin care
Makgeolli promotes healthy blood circulation. Also, organic acids found in the drink, such as lactic acid, malic acid, tartaric acid, and others, help revitalize your metabolism and clean out wastes that accumulate in your body. In addition, the yeast found in makgeolli helps relieve constipation.

Health benefits? Really now? That's why people drink? Imagine if Sam Adams tried to bill itself on relieving constipation and "promoting healthy blood circulation."

The Korean currency one is kind of cute and interesting, but some of the others are a bit more surreal and scattershot. You can find them all here. They're way too long (and big) for me to post even a selection here (each entire "episode" is one giant image instead of a few smaller ones), but here's a sample of the art style:



If nothing else, it's reading material for down time.

Lord bless Charlie Mops, the man who invented beer.

Song lyric #3 in the title post, courtesy of Bard's Tale.

Today I and a few coworkers and some non-coworker friends hopped in a van and drove out to Pocheon, a city even further north than Uijeongbu, to check out a little Korean brewery that was supposed to be amazing. And it was.


Note the "mood" setting on the light. If this van's a-rockin'...

The drive was upwards of forty minutes, during which we mostly thought about how damn good some freshly not-Cass or not-Hite would be. We also stopped at McDonald's on the way. I had a Flurry and a large fry, a decision I would later regret on the ride back home. Six months away from the US and I had forgotten why I stopped eating fast food.



The ride was also absolutely scenic, as I-dong brewery is set more or less in the mountains outside of Pocheon. The view was spectacular.







You have to call ahead and make a reservation; I assume that if no one calls they just don't open it up. We were the only ones there today.


What a motley crew.




And here it is: a 5,000 won beer, fresh and dark. Totally worth it.

We spent a while afterwards milling about, talking, and taking pictures. You could hear the yelping of dogs in the distance—no doubt being raised for food nearby. Just in case we forgot that we were in Korea.

Walls and the Holes in Them

I have a long overdue post about my trek out to the N Seoul Tower with Aaron, but since he has all the pictures from the trip with him (I didn't have my camera), I'll have to make do with a filler post.

Thanks to the miracle of the Internet and assorted "social networking" sites, I've managed to make the acquaintance of a Korean fellow (Jong-min) who speaks fluent English and who doesn't live unreasonably far from me out here in Minlak-dong. We spend most of our time in the neighborhoods surrounding Korea University (mostly Anam), where he knows the places to go to eat and drink.

Something that seems to be popular in the more casual places is store-sanctioned graffiti. Nice restaurants will keep their walls prim and pristine, but the ones more equivalent to your college town pizzeria have walls covered in scribbles, cartoons, declarations of love, etc. Last night we had dinner at one of these places: a kim chi sort of pizza deal (I forget the name but pictures will be forthcoming as soon as I remember), sausages, and giant plate of french fries, and one "Dragon Shot" each to drink. (More on the Dragon Shot in another post.) This particular eatery boasts, in addition to wall-mounted TVs and a boisterous atmosphere, a giant LED marquee, to which you can text some message or other, where it will scroll by (with the last digits of your phone number) until someone sends in their own. So while we ate dinner, Jong-min's:

"I work on Saturday. FML."

rolled by. Prior to that, a line in Korean about a girl wanting to find a guy to take her to a noraebong scrolled by for about twenty minutes or so.

Another one of these places—smaller quieter, and without the technology, but with the same floor-to-ceiling graffiti—served soju cocktails (read as: soju mixed with fruit juice) in little ceramic pots. The food there was also delicious, and the price was nice: drinks and food for the two of us came to 13,000 won. Google tells me that's $10.43 American. Win.

Or last Wednesday, we enjoyed a giant plate of kim-chi and tofu at a Korean "tea house" that specialized both in Korean teas and Korean spirits—so naturally we indulged in some of the latter (Chrysanthemum wine, to be exact).

Departing from Korean staples, there's also an Uzbekistan restaurant in Anam that serves traditional Uzbek(i?) and Russian food. No pirogies, but yes to pirozhki, borscht, and imported Russian beer. Never would I have guessed that I'd need to be able to read Cyrillic while I was in Korea.

Billiards halls are inexplicably popular here. You can't walk for ten minutes without seeing a sign for a pool hall, all of which stick to some (un)officially agreed-upon standard in symbols:


Which sign do you think is for the pool hall? Go on, guess.

Billiards seems to be just as popular as eight-ball here; you can find both kinds of tables in pool halls. I shot my first game in over four months last night, and did rather well—though it's a bit intimidating when your table is right next to a billiards table with very serious-looking Korean ajosshis who obviously don't mess around when it comes to billiards, pool, or any variant thereof.

If it sounds like I'm drinking a tremendous amount, the fact is that's what you do in Korea. It's rare for me to have more than three or four drinks on a weekday, though, which is hardly even a buzz.

I plan on getting a cheap little point-and-shoot while I'm here (my Kodak EasyShare is too nice a camera to take out when there's alcohol involved), so with any luck, pictures of these places will be forthcoming.

And now you find yourself in eighty-two...

...the disco hot-spots hold no charm for you.

Yesterday I went to a language exchange I found online. I ended up being partnered with a very eloquent Korean fellow who spoke with a British accent and who had studied music in college in the US. At first it was a bit awkward, since there was no English I could really teach him, but then we got on the subject of numbers and how I had found them confusing in Rosetta Stone, so we worked on that. Korean has two sets of cardinal numbers, one that's basically Chinese with a Korean pronunciation, and one that's actually Korean, and whichever one you use for what you're counting is just totally random. With money, you use the Chinese set, but with years and age, you use the Korean set. He (and all of the Koreans) kept on going on about how hard Korean is to learn.

"Well, it's really different, but you guys have an alphabet. That's one up on Chinese," I pointed out. They laughed and agreed on that point.

We also talked about religion, traveling, living abroad, being a citizen of the world, North Korea, classical music, and the West's perception of South Korea. It was nice to finally talk to a Korean with really, really good English—I could use sarcasm and everything.

Then the leaders of the exchange announced that we'd be going to dinner if anyone wanted to. Since by now it was six o'clock, I was pretty hungry, and also eager to meet some people who weren't my coworkers. We schlepped over to a Korean barbecue, which seems to be the de facto type of place you go for "nice" food, though good Western-style restaurants still exist. Since there was only bibimbap (and not dolsot bibimbap, an important distinction!) I had pork, rice, and some kind of egg souffle/cakey omelette thing in a small dolsot. And probably half a bottle of soju.

When talking with my language exchange partner, he mentioned that one way of describing Korea is "the Ireland of the East." I agreed that it's a pretty apt description, both in terms of history and also, at least partially, culture. And by culture, I mean "drinking culture." There's an undercurrent of borderline alcoholism in both countries. Any meal at a nice restaurant would be incomplete with multiple rounds of soju for everyone. Koreans drink often and drink enthusiastically—it's very reminiscent of college, actually. Tidbit: you never pour your own drink in Korea. Which occasionally makes refilling your glass a bit tricky.

Also, during dinner, I ended up sitting next to a girl from freakin' Coopersburg. After we both made a mess in our pants over sharing the same stomping grounds, we talked a bit about Lehigh Valley traditions (Musikfest, the New Year's Peep drop, Royal Noise Brigade, etc). It was very therapeutic.

Once dinner was over, we continued drinking, dancing, and bar-hopping for the rest of the night. I caught a cab back to Uijeongbu and got to my apartment at about six in the morning(!).

So overall, good times. I don't think I'll need a night out like that for a while, though.