Korea Might Kill You

Korea might kill you.

What will do it?

The food—of course. It’s dangerously abundant and cheap.

The spice. Sliced jalapeno hidden in hot miso soup already spicy and steaming; wasabi camouflaged with salad greens; deceptively cold kimchi that sets fire to your tongue. The more kimchi jigae you eat the hotter you get till your eyes are streaming to match your nose and it’s hard to see the way to the bottom of the bowl.

Whether it’s too spicy or not you’re warned by the wait staff and the chef. They know foreigners can’t handle spicy food. Only Koreans have the elusive capacity for the hot stuff. When you reassure them their faces take on that classically impressed expression: eyebrows lifted, eyes widened and mouth rounded. “Wah,” they say in that seemingly patronizing manner (the same expression occurs when you use the most basic of Korean phrases.)

The salt. All your favorites are soiled with it. Sam-gyup-sal is one of the most popular foods: three-layered fatty pork self-grilled with your choice of garlic, onions, kimchi, bean sprouts, topped with sauce and wrapped up in a lettuce leaf to pop into your mouth.

Ramyeon is a staple—and we all know the egregiously high sodium content in those flavor packets.

Meat buffets, sushi buffets, buffets of all kinds are abundant and inexpensive, so you can overindulge yourself economically.

Noodles, rice, meat and sauce-soused vegetables follow you. And they taste great.

The sugar. Oh, how we live for the salt and sugar of our lives! Koreans perhaps recently discovered baked goods, and now are saturated with sweets. Proper coffee shops are often also “dessert cafes” with a tantalizing glass case display of cake slices, muffins and cookie decadence. The big names of Paris Baguette and Tous les Jours dominate the city blocks with their vast array of oven-made goodness. The supermarkets boast impressive bakeries, too, so you can too easily procure your muffin, doughnut, sweet red-bean filled bread fix while grocery shopping for vegetables.

Bing-su is the signature Korean dessert. Made with shaved ice, more recently ice of condensed milk, it’s a cold bowlful topped and littered with anything from the traditional soy-bean powder and red-bean sauce to chocolate and oreos, frozen fruit and cheesecake chunks. Typically its served in large black bowls suitable to share among at least three persons. (Because in Korea, and most of Asia, everything is shared, from food to the non-existent “personal space.”)

Ice cream is also cheap and ubiquitous. Convenience stores always boast those sliding door freezers loaded with individually wrapped treats from familiar frozen cones of vanilla, chocolate, and nuts, to the distinctly Korean fish-shaped cones stuffed with red-bean. How can you say no to 500 or 1,000 won ice cream?

The caffeine. Cafes are on every corner. Often side by side, stacked up and tucked away in every building. Vending machines with hot-cup coffee or little metal cans of it fill in the spaces too small for a proper shop or stand. And convenience stores and supermarkets of course provide innumerable coffee influenced beverages. Oh, and the pharmacy, the phone shop, the hair salon, your hagwon, your church and every place in between so graciously offer cheap machines or hot water and instant packets. Because everyone’s got to have their coffee fix. How else could we maintain the schedules we do?

The alcohol. It’s cheap and ubiquitous as ice cream. One 3,000 won bottle of Soju mysteriously multiplies into six. Frothing pints of beer come easy at the innumerable hole in the wall chicken shops. Here you get the double heart-attack factor of beer and greasy fried chicken, served with appetizers of popcorn, silk worm pupae, or another salty finger-snack, but accompanied with a pile of “grass” to slightly balance the meal.

If you teach adults you’ll most likely encounter them hung-over more than once. You have to admire their stamina when they attend that early morning class after returning home a few hours previous following a night of carousing. Probably they’ve been drinking under unspoken obligation with colleagues or customers. Refusing to drink what your boss has poured is the equivalent of slapping his face, so I’ve heard.

“My boss expects me to drink.” I’ve heard that before, too.

“Alcohol is my best friend.” And heard that, too.

So they drink because they’re expected to. They certainly drink to forget also. Grinding away the same draining routine, paying bills for a family you see less and less, straining to keep up with a dwindling job market and ever more competitive applicants—that takes its toll. One more bottle of Soju blurs those unpleasant realities.

That brings us to the work schedule.

As an English teacher your hagwon hours are awkward and make your distant friends and current students wince on your behalf. But those students you teach at egregiously early 6 AM, well before sunrise in winter’s drear, their faithful attendance is the commencement of an endless day. After class some may return home for refreshment: breakfast and grooming. The women rouse their children from bed and prepare the family for their routine. The men enjoy their only quiet moments before the grind. Others commute directly to work where they spend their day and the beginning of their night. Forbidden to nap they doze at their desks, “uncontrollable,” as one student said, laughing in our 7 AM class. The previous night she’d worked until ten, her duties and wishes disregarded by her boss.

Some may not see their families at all during the week. One dear man who glows when speaking of his daughter shares time with her on weekends only. His departure for our 6 AM class was before his wife and daughter’s arousal, and his nightly arrival after his daughter’s return to bed. She is seven years old.

When I ask my junior (children) students if they often eat with their families, the affirmatives are sparse. Not usually. Perhaps on weekends the family goes out to a restaurant and shares a delicious meal. During the week the kids sit on stools at the convenience store and chow down on Ramen heated in the store’s microwave. They bring their disposable cups of tokppokki from the shop behind the institute to class. The older ones show up late to grab a rapid “dinner” before committing to their two-hour English class.

They’ve got to get ahead somehow.

The competition.

The workers have it bad. The students have it bad, also. Perhaps they’ve got more freedom in what hours are spent on the grind, perhaps they can sleep until noon, but then it’s study until you collapse, drink to revive until you collapse again.

Entering university requires a year or two of hard study, of preparation for applications that may reject you because you’re just not good enough to grace that campus. You’d better have attended the right hagwons, the best academies and institutes, better have practiced and memorized until your high school days were just solitary confinement behind books.

The education system.

Rote and memorization.

“School is like a prison for them,” a recent high school graduate said to me. “They just go and sit and listen. Students should participate more.”

They should, I agree. But they don’t.

I told her that rote is the old fashioned style. That at one time most schools adhered to this dreary routine. But that now we have learned it’s not the most effective, pleasant or interesting method. Many schools have progressed to interactive programs with group work, projects, presentations, experiments, field trips, and encouragement.

Not Korea.

Students should be seen and not heard.

Teachers should be rigid.

Questions are rhetorical.

The blank walls.

It’s a transitory place, Korea. Most foreigners come here for a year or two, wishing to experience foreign life, taste new culture and post enviable pictures. Few people stay.

Even the Koreans are always trying to leave. “Hell Korea,” some say, and try to “GTFO.” (You can look that one up.)

Apartments are done in wallpaper and frames are uncommon.

At institutes the walls are often bare. Blue and white and beige walls enclose some uniform desks and chairs and students.

There are no bold alphabets, number charts or posters to learn shapes, colors, or fruit. There are no maps to point out where you come from, to wonder at the size of the world or the places you can roam. There is a white board on which you shouldn’t write their names in red, and a Smart TV, a screen they love to doodle on.

What you really want is for them to doodle on the walls. To get paint on their hands and clothes and cover those bland, claustrophobic walls with the scribbles and masterpieces they hide with their embarrassed hands.

I’d love to showcase their unique styles and prove to them art is not taught by a book.

The shame.

Not every child deserves a medal just for showing up. Not every losing contestant should be awarded a prize. We must accept that sometimes there are clear winners and clear losers. Try again next time.

But let’s also remember always to encourage. Everyone has something to offer and effort should be recognized, if only with brief words of praise.

Recently in a higher level adult class we discussed beauty standards, the merit of physical appearance and first impressions, the preferential treatment of attractive people, and the impact of childhood conditioning of confidence and compliments.

My students didn’t seem to see the importance in assuring children they are beautiful or handsome. I hope they will do so with their own, however, to prevent the epidemic of shame and the monstrosity of the cosmetic industry.

In the States the most common commercials I recall were for cars, car insurance, credit cards and department stores. In Korea, the majority of advertisements are for alcohol and cosmetics and coffee. Well, doesn’t that sum up the culture most tidily?

Like most females, I appreciate the emphasis of mascara, the brightening of shadow and liner about the eyes, lip tint and the occasional foundation to ease blemishes. Every morning I applied at least a smidge to my face before standing in front of my students.

But makeup is not necessary for beauty. It should accentuate the natural features, not alter them.

That’s not the Korean thinking.

Moon-pale faces often contrast with darker-tinted necks. Girls await surgery because without the coveted Western double-eyelids they’ll never be beautiful. Small faces are treasured. And masks of more products than I can name are applied daily before she leaves the house. I don’t know what some of the women’s faces really look like. I’ve only ever seen the mask.

Their hair also must be dark. Although many Koreans go gray early on, perhaps the stress?, you rarely see a silver-crown. They faithfully dye their hair every month to prevent the world from seeing what they know.

It also ought to be properly styled. Perms are common enough, although not usually effective. A student may come to class with hair slightly crimped, proudly announcing they’ve just had a perm. Men wax their short hair into soft spikes or their long hair in the suave miniature pompadour, and present smoothly shaven chins.

They look good. Oh, Koreans are beautiful.

Naturally so. They needn’t make such an effort to appear so perfect. But when the beauty standard is one obtained through genetics, cosmetics, hard dieting and plastic surgery, what choice is there but to try so hard? Especially when there are ever more attractive applicants at your job, or fetching candidates for blind dates?

The relationships.

Korean dramas are ludicrous. In the West we call them “soap operas”: rife with betrayals, affairs, love triangles, copious tears, reunions and heartache. The actors are gorgeous and the stories ridiculous. The general population loves them.

Perhaps they are not as absurd as they seem. Somewhere, a writer was inspired by reality. Later, someone was inspired by the writer’s script. Now, the line between reality and drama is blurred.

Going out with someone of the opposite gender one on one means you are dating. Dating means you are in a relationship. That guy you were casually interested in is now your boyfriend. Going to the movies with him committed you. He expects to hold your hand and show you off as his special possession. He also will treat you in a most queenly manner, paying for meals and bringing you presents and demonstrating his willingness to give you the moon.

Good luck shaking him off.

A frightening number of times now I’ve heard the same story.

“I wasn’t really interested in my husband, but he kept chasing me, so we got married.”

Women are pursued most aggressively and persistently, and whether the attraction is mutual, the couple more often than not ends up married. He chases, and she settles.

After the marriage, she’s no longer queen. She’s housewife, and she ought to take care of the home and the on-coming babies. He works, she manages.

“Affection is stronger than romance. She is like my sister,” said one male student who’s been married ten years to a woman he’s never been in love with.

“Affections is stronger than romance.”

They’re comfortable, these couples. They lead good lives together. They are good partners and give their best to their children. They are amicable roommates.

But those late morning ajumma housewife students, they tell you with misty eyes about their first love, the boys who still make their eyes light up. The ones for whom they didn’t settle and of whom they still daydream.

You have to admire the tenacity of those persistent men. Their efforts are admirable, perhaps begrudgingly so. When a Korean man cares for you, he will continuously demonstrate that affection.

But that seemingly besotted boy lacing his fingers with his girlfriend in matching cap, shirt and sneakers, coordinating couple-wear is hugely popular, that same charming boy may very well be spending his nights with his arm around another girl.

That man who splits his time between cities, one for home and one for work, he may be one of the visitors to the clandestine hotels set up for meetings between unmarried husbands and wives.

Diligence is a Korean trait, certainly. But faithfulness—that definition may have been lost in translation.

All these tragedies might kill you.

Depression and suicide are astoundingly common in Korea.

But there are many wonderful aspects to slay you just as acutely.

Devastating beauty.

Breath-taking cherry blossoms. They are really more spectacular than people say. Springtime in Korea is magical in its abundance. There are the usual welcome purple and gold forsythia, violets, hyacinth and daffodils. But the splendor is in the cherry blossoms: those avenues of winter wonderland in warm sunshine when you walk down a sidewalk lined with trees. Petals loosened by breezes dance in the air like snowflakes, and the gentlest walls of celestial white and pale pink enclose you. Earthbound petals gather at your feet, the most gracious kind of litter, and everyone and their mother is taking selfies. If you’re like me you cannot stop repeating “Wow,” with a silly smile on your face, taking too many photographs to try to capture some sense of this heavenly display for folks far away.

But all those adjectives you once thought powerful fall short. Korea is worth visiting if only for a few days under the cherry blossoms.

They grow everywhere, those sakurah, the Japanese cherry trees. Korea is a land of mountains, and if you get close in the springtime you can see the patchwork of uniquely spring greens and pinks. The mountainsides are checkered with the budding foliage and the thriving blossoms. And just when the cherry trees expunge themselves, finally shedding all their glory, the peach trees sweep in with their remarkable blush to continue this parade of pink and green that provides balm to the eyes well into Spring.

At the onset of summer the roses burst out. They reach past their walls to dangle tantalizing before your nose as you walk, inviting you to take literally that famed adage to stop and smell. Wild they abound, clambering over walls and up trellises, but pruned they show-off; a visit to a local park boasts all the shades and all the scents, from the velvety soft blackened crimson to the lemony-scented brassily orange to the stately lavender melding with the twilight to the heart-warming coral with blooms as big as your head.

After summer’s green glory, autumn enflames the world. Maple trees aggressively flash yellow and scarlet, intermittent with the perfect orange persimmons weighing down branches at every step.

As in Spring, walks in Autumn involve forays down tunnels of solidarity, enclosed by gold foliage and dancing errant leaves gallivanting about on the breeze.

When the snow falls it’s likely to land on some remnant maple leaves, and you can admire the stark contrast of pristine wintry whiteness with those brilliant primary hues.

Some things are constantly glorious through all the seasons.

Those mountain vistas. Blue beyond blue they layer the horizon, eventually merging sky and peak into one mysterious yonder.

High up the crags are steep, and vertical rocks jut out from the green mountainside, impassable and unforgiving like arrowheads sunk into the earth.

Out of breath you can stand with feet apart on a rocky top and see the world just a little like God must see it when He leans in close.

In the city there’s beauty, too. Down by the river growth and birds abound. Herons glide overhead to arc down smoothly into the water, where they tread stately on their long thin legs.

At sunset the sun teases the mountains, slowly bleeding red before ducking out of sight behind the mountains, spreading salmon and gold into the sky, shining off the river.

The turquoise waters around Jeju Island where foaming green meets deeper blue and washes against queerly porous charcoal rocks, rocks fraught with shells, sea glass and remnants of visitors.

Like the morning mist that blurs the mountains at sunrise, melding gold and blue in an ever admirable vista.

The people are beautiful, as I’ve said.

They are naturally blessed with fine, thick hair, delicate noses, finely sculpted hands and cheeks. And they are slim and easy in their movements. They dress well: Korean women can manage short skirts and high heels without a missed step or nervous pull-down.

The children smile so wide their eyes crease up into the delightful “eye-smile,” that makes you warm and fuzzy inside no matter how impish they might be.

And the cheeks. I can’t say enough about Korean baby cheeks. They’re round, they’re chunky, and they’re utterly squeezable. The temptation to touch strangers’ babies is powerful.

They’re hospitable, Koreans, and polite.

You greet with a bow and don’t let the other person pay. (But forget about lines—you must use your elbows or lose your place.)

There are a lot of problems in Korea. It’s a country with innumerable complications, a lengthy, sad history of occupation, internment, abuse, war and unfulfilled justice.

Alcoholism and depression are rampant and not often discussed. Pressure to be successful, to get a good job, marry well and make babies is still high.

Despite the female president, women’s rights are still not up to par, and in some neighborhoods you’d best not wander alone, ladies.

But overall, the country is incredibly safe, clean and convenient. The public transportation will certainly not kill you, but impress you with its inexpensive efficiency. The facilities will impress, too, clean and well-maintained, as are the public parks.

You’ll be impressed by the people: their intelligence, diligence, and seemingly boundless energy. You’ll wonder how they maintain such impossible schedules and still worry about you and your “dark circles.”

You’ll cry from laughing, at the unique ESL conversations, at the strange “Konglish” phrases. In some you see the logic: “sports dance” = Zumba, “skin-ship” = physical touch in a relationship, “camping car” = an RV or attachable camper. At others you raise your eyebrows: “one-piece” = dress.

You’ll double over at the ludicrous printing on t-shirts, hats and bags. “Pervert” is a popular hat slogan. “Swagalicious,” too. On one memorable canvas tote was the phrase “I watch you creepily in the dark with my mustache.” And t-shirts provide all manner of educational reading.

 My purchased tee reads: “Creamy Butter. Keep it in the icebox.”

My favorites I saw included: “I am a white color,” “Black America,” “American Black,” “I got involved in my neighbor’s personal life.”

The Koreans wonder why you’re laughing but attempts to explain fall short.

You’ll be bemused, confused and indignant over certain things. You’ll shake your heads at the ads for alcohol and ageism where two years makes you inferior.

You’ll applaud the healthcare system and hospital treatment and lack of tipping.

You’ll either love or hate kimchi, removing your shoes at the door, and K-dramas. (I appreciate the first two and cannot understand the third.)

Korea might kill you with its myriad tragedies and triumphs. You might die of alcohol poisoning or be hit by a mad driver while crossing the street. (The driving test is notoriously easy and traffic violations are not often noted.) Your Korean friends or students tell you drinking the tap water at your apartment will do you in, as will sleeping with the fan on and not wearing a mask during Yellow Dust season.

Or you could overindulge on sushi, savory beef, sweet bread, Baskin Robbins, or tokkpokki. Or be devastated by the scenery, the cuteness, the unfailing traditions.

You could be amazed by how comfortable you feel in a place so far from your origins. How welcome you are made and how easily you can settle in.

You can impress the locals by using chopsticks or introducing yourself in Korean.

There are so many things to kill you, slay you physically or intellectually, obliterate your preconceived notions and introduce you to wonders unprecedented.

I have left Korea and may never return (although I hope this is not the case.) I survived, through the hazardous traffic, tap water, spices, sweets, and salt, depression and unexpected.

I certainly ate well.

I loved and was loved on.

I lost my breath every time I saw that avenue of cherry trees.

Korea might kill you. Or it might make you stronger, wiser, and humbler as you recognize the similarity of humanity everywhere, and your own minuteness in the world.

And you might find a new haven that will ever feel like home.