Getting to know: Korea

Don’t believe what people say about Korea.

The chances are, your experience is going to be quite different, better or worse, and there’s no way to predict which it will be. So don’t believe what you’re about to read as though it’s gospel.

I can still vividly remember the day I arrived. The airport, huge caverns of glass and white steel beams, seemed like stepping through the arrival hall to Heaven. Except that it was subdued. No harps. And the people manning the information and other kiosks were somewhat smaller, and had quaint mannerisms from another age. Bowing, smiling and if caught off guard, chopping their hands across their chests in a defensive gesture that meant “I don’t understand you/I can’t help you/I don’t speak English.” On the other side of the glass door is Korea. Here’s what I found.

The metaphor of the airport extended across a countryside that I was, seriously, struggling to see through a haze of smoke. That smoke is what I saw the day I arrived, and the day I left. Pollution is Korea’s worst attribute. It’s chronic.

Under the heavy grey bags in the sky was the biggest city I had ever seen. It went on and on, skyscrapers sprawling over hillsides like unfallen dominoes on a rippled carpet. Wow. Did all this happen without my even knowing about it? It was a knock to my western sensibilities, especially my arrogance and vanity, that a great city could build itself and emerge anonymously in a supposedly connected, globalised world. How is it possible, I wondered, that all this happened, and we don’t even know about it? The size of the city impressed me, and the first inklings of the cold, impenetrable, unfriendly thing that capitalism is – in a foreign country – clawed at me.

I arrived in Korea on the 2nd of January, and the jolt from South Africa’s seemingly endless summer to Korea’s icebox is severe.
I stayed in a comfortable villa provided by my school in a street that remained covered in ice for days on end.

It’s not uncommon to feel completely lost in the beginning. Not only are your options for two-way communication limited (Koreans have their own script, and most don’t understand English), but everything pretty much feels different, starting with food. My first meal in Korea was a pizza, and a damn expensive one at that (about R90 for a small pizza that didn’t taste that great). I soon experimented with their staple food – Kimchi – which is a reddish (sometimes greenish) mish of rotten cabbage soaked in salty water and spices. Yuck, and it didn’t smell too good either.

But very soon, all these impulses began to change. You can buy English newspapers, you’ve got a wide variety of English television and movies to watch, and there are massive bookstores (with English sections) and art galleries all over Seoul. The people are friendly and polite, and often the former. But Koreans have been isolated from the world, and after getting to know them, this naivety soon emerges in their tendency to stereotype. They see white people on television, movies and music videos, and not often, walking around their cities or parks in real life, so there’s a fanciful perception that all white people are celebrities, and in the beginning, its easy to feel like one.

Like all things in Korea, sticking to a first impression (of something or someone) is never wise. Soon it turns out, western men are admired (especially if they are Americans), and white women are generally perceived to be Russian prostitutes. I once had a drunk Korean man proposition an Afrikaans girl I was having dinner with.

Kimchi grew on me, so that within a week or two I was unselfconsciously chomping the stuff, even developing a preference for crisp and crunchy gerkin-like side dishes.
Korea is also a fascinating mixture of the ancient (not just old) and modern. You can see this in Seoul where some of the original gates to the city (like Dongdaemun) squat under tall skyscrapers that drip with liquid crystal screens. That’s another thing. The Koreans see the outside of their buildings as advertising space. Since everything is covered in script and lights, nighttime in the city is bright and festive, if slightly overdone, and then, perhaps after a year or more, it becomes a gaudy monotony of brilliance.

I don’t have enough space here to mention all the idiosyncrasies.

If you haven’t sensed it yet, Korea is essentially a dichotomy. The fact that this also manifests as a poor, paranoid North Korea and the rich and calm South Korea is no accident. The separation of the peninsula probably explains the schizophrenia that the population is imbued with. While coming across as calm and reserved, they can become – especially after a few bottles of Soju (Koreas version of Saki) – extremely belligerent or kind, aggressive or friendly. I once stepped into a shoe shop and got thrown with a shoe – by the store owner – who was annoyed with a customer who had returned a pair. I think these are symptoms of years and years of repressing the emotions, and suddenly, the society has become much freer. There’s always a whimsical flip side to anything unpleasant in Korea: it’s not unusual to see girls, even young women, holding hands.

Outwardly, the Koreans seem to be very conservative, yet there are massage parlors (identifiable through the spinning red and blue candy poles) all over the place, even adjacent to church and school buildings. PC Rooms are just as common. Because young girls live with their families (including grandparents), the urge to experiment with the opposite sex has led to vast amounts of ‘Love Hotels’ sprouting in cities to cater specifically to lovelorn impulses (that cannot be entertained in the confines of the home).

Being a paternal society, and since Korean men are somewhat chauvinistic (all men in paternal, hierarchical societies probably are), Korean women tend to find the alternative fairly appealing, in foreign men. These are mostly American GI’s and the thousands of expat English teachers and corporate visitors to Korea. Alliances develop either as a result of Korean women seeking to better themselves (by learning English), or by finding that the rules, such as they know them, don’t apply to their foreign friends, who seem to treat them better. Or it is a combination of these. For every Korean man – western women marriage, there are at least three times as many marriages that are the other way round: Korean woman – western man. Korean men may pretend not to be disturbed by this trend, but on Saturday night’s, when the beer is flowing, the fists do sometimes emerge.

Korea, above all, is a fascinating country. As soon as you feel you know the country, something happens to spoil that theory. It is the 11th biggest economy in the world, and has some of the world’s best internet connectivity and electronics. You’ll get the first new generation notebooks and cellphones here, and they’ll be cheaper than most other countries.

Horrors: eating dog, trend to abort female fetuses (now outlawed), spitting

Pleasures: Pretty, bashful girls, spicy food, the 24 hour markets, hiking Bukhansan mountain near Seoul

Bargains: cellphones, laptops, iPods

Avoid: Itaewon (although one person’s sleaze is another’s spice),
skiing on weekends, silkworm pupae and beef blood soup

Places to see: Sorak mountains

Verdict: Every westerner ought to spend some time – keeping an open mind – in the East (and vice versa).

Advice: Know when to leave. If you’re there to work, 3 years is a good average.