Korea: How You Feel

SUMMER

GREAT, JUST GREAT...

Visibility is nonexistent as the tires thud against the tarmac. I look out the circular window and see nothing but gray. The runway is nowhere in sight, nor the airport. The hydraulic squeak of the landing gear spreads its way through the cabin. Tired, drunk and anxious, I am ready to undo the seat belt and grab my bag. All I know is maek-ju is beer and popo is kiss. Not that I want to kiss a beer, but I wouldn’t mind tearing the clothes off the cat-eyed, porcelain-faced stewardess who served me beer.

You’re here. You made it all the way across the Pacific Ocean. Welcome to fucking Asia.

I exit customs, dragging my bags, looking for a sign that says Michael. The school where I am going to work is supposed to pick me up at the airport and take me to Cheong Ju, where I am going to teach. Drunk and disoriented, I stand, panning across the throng of tan-faced, black-haired people, looking for that sign, but all I see are Korean families running to greet each other and businessmen meeting their Korean colleagues.

FUCK! WHERE THE FUCKING HELL ARE THEY?

The air, already humid, feels like I have just walked into a greenhouse. I can’t imagine what it's going to be like without the aid of the airport’s overtaxed air conditioner. I don’t know what to do. They told me that someone would be here holding a sign with my name on it.

I walk over to a pay phone and stand there like I am making a phone call. I have no Korean money, and I don't have anybody’s phone number.

GREAT, JUST GREAT, JUST FUCKING GREAT.

Here I am, with two heavy bags, no money, and the only words I know are maek-ju and popo. I guess I'll have to wait it out and see what happens, so I stand between the noisy crowd and the bank of pay phones.

SHIT! JUST MY FUCKING LUCK! COMING ALL THE WAY TO KOREA AND NOBODY IS HERE TO MEET ME!

Some twenty minutes later, a college-aged kid comes running frantically up to me with a sign the size of notebook paper with my name written on it in one-inch letters. Are you Michael? he asks.

OF COURSE I FUCKING AM! I HAVE BEEN STANDING IN YOUR COUNTRY FOR OVER HALF A FUCKING HOUR NOW! I’M FUCKING MICHAEL!

Reeking of alcohol from the night before, as if his night hadn't ended, he grabs one of my bags and stammers, Your bag is old, as if I wanted my luggage to be analyzed by a 22-year-old drunk college student.

My name is Min Ho, he says as we walk outside, carrying my bags into the downpour, while buses zoom in and out. The airport limousine bus, which Min Ho informs me that we are going to take, is waiting as we dodge to our right, avoiding a huge splash of water from an arriving bus.

I’m sorry I’m late. I didn’t know I had to meet you. The school told me this morning 6 a.m., Min Ho says.

Don’t worry, you’re here now, I say, trying to hide my agitation, throwing my bags into the storage compartment beneath the bus.

I am only student at the school. Now is busy time for the school. Many new students come today and sign for new class, Min Ho says, and we show the bus driver our tickets. No worker can leave school, too busy.

Now maybe I can relax, so I stretch out on the bus.

But, Min Ho wants a freaking English lesson. He wants to know where I am from. Can I speak Korean? What do I know about Korea? Is this my first time to Korea?

I answer the questions and look out the window. The rain is still coming down in torrents as thin, long-legged girls get wet, holding their umbrellas.

After nearly an hour of driving on large multi-lane boulevards that look like a blurred Technicolor montage of car lights, office buildings, and people at crosswalks holding umbrellas, the bus stops in front of some luxury hotel. Taxis are unloading their passengers with bags full of duty-free perfume, cosmetics and high tech gadgets. The highest-tech gadget that I have ever owned was an electric razor, but that didn’t work. It was a piece of shit.

Min Ho tells me that we are getting out here.

This can’t be where I am staying.

He says that we have to take another bus to Cheong Ju. We’re still in Seoul, and the weather has not changed. It’s dark, dreary and raining.

We grab my bags off the bus, and I stand under an awning next to the red uniformed bellhops and the line of taxis, while Min Ho goes off to make a phone call to see where we are supposed to go next. Min Ho is only a student at the hagwon (a private language institute) that I am going to work at, and I can’t really blame him for this fiasco. He didn’t know until this morning that he had to pick me up. I just hope the lines of communication don't get any worse.

Coming back from the pay phone, he says that we have to take a taxi to another bus. We scurry out into the downpour, throw my bags into the trunk of a cab and dart to get inside.

After a half-hour ride through Seoul, we arrive at the express bus terminal. The rain has not stopped at all. We grab my bags from the taxi and scamper over the wet brick pavement into the bus station.

The terminal, a big hulking monument to capitalist progress, looks more like a concrete neo-Bolshevik beehive. Buses go in and out, with no queen bee in sight as we wait for our bus to show up.

The rain slows while Min Ho and I lug my bags and push them into the storage compartment under the bus as he again tells me that I should buy some new bags.

It should only take about one and a half hours to Cheong Ju, Min Ho says. I push my seat back and recline.

On the back of the seat in front of me is an advertisement for Green Soju. Min Ho asks if I like soju. I’ve never had it before.

You should try it. It is good, he says, showing the bus driver our tickets.

I’ll definitely try it. I’ll be here for a year, and I want to try as many new things as I can, I reply, my vision blurring from tiredness.

Wake up Michael, wake up, Min Ho says as he shakes my shoulders and torso. We’re in Cheong Ju now.

Groggy, I look out the window, the rain has turned to a drizzle and there's a big white tooth the size of a compact car in front of an office building. The bus crosses what appears to be a mighty river, about 100 yards wide, close to overflowing its banks. It’s called the Mooshin Cheon, and Min Ho tells me it literally means a river with no name. Who knows, really. People have been asking that question for eternity. The river has no name. I have no idea where I am. I know I am in Korea, that I saw a big white tooth and that I need to get away from Min Ho.

That's all I know.

We get out of the bus into the drizzle, grab my bags, and walk over to a white sedan. A middle-aged Korean man introduces himself as Sam, and tells me that he is the office manager of the hagwon. I introduce myself and help Sam guide my bags into the trunk of his car.

FREDA FELCHER

After a half-hour drive, past box-shaped office buildings, lit-up storefronts, restaurants and huge construction sites, we arrive at Hyosung apartments, where I am going to live for the next year. Getting out of the car, I count ten 15-story buildings, all painted green.

Shit. If each building has about thirty apartments, then that’s about 5,000 people or more living in this apartment complex.

Too jet-lagged to notice anything else or do heavy arithmetic, Sam and I grab my bags from his car and carry them around a couple of parked cars, up a small flight of stairs and onto the elevator, where we go up to the fourteenth floor. Then it’s down a narrow windowed corridor to apartment 1408. I ring the doorbell.

One of my new flatmates named Dave opens the door and grabs one of my bags as he shows me my room, right next to the front door. Dave is about six-foot-four and has a crew cut. He probably weighs about 300 pounds, and he’s wearing a New England Patriots jersey and pair of cut-off shorts made from a pair of old sweatpants.

After a brief introduction, Dave tells me that Tony, my other new flatmate, is in the kitchen cooking lunch.

When you get unpacked and situated a bit, come hang out with us, he says.

Damn, this bedroom is small. Seven feet by seven feet. Just enough space for the twin bed, clothes rack and chest of drawers that are in it.

The journey to get here has ended. Now, I'll have to figure out how to live and work here.

Unpacking my things is pretty easy. All I brought were some clothes, books, toiletries, film and both my 16mm film camera and my 35mm photo camera. I have never lived abroad. I want to document it all.

The smell of cooked garlic seeps through the apartment as I finish unpacking my books and stack them on the floor. The last book that I finished reading was a biography of Marcel Duchamp, and if it weren’t for that book and randomly answering an advert in the newspaper about teaching English in Korea, I wouldn't be here.

In the living room, which is decked out with posters of famous football and basketball players and an eight-by-ten autographed glossy photo of Bill Clinton, I meet Tony, a heavyset guy with closely cropped blonde hair that almost makes him look like an albino. Sitting on a blue beanbag eating a bowl of fried rice, he’s wearing a pair of pleated khaki shorts and a T-shirt that says No Fear.

After a little small talk, in between spoonfuls of rice, Tony asks me if I smoke.

Not cigarettes, but I smoke other things.

Good, he says. We got a hash deal coming in today, and we need to borrow fifty bucks.

He gets up and walks into the kitchen, and drops his bowl into the sink.

When is it coming?

Tonight. Don’t worry, we’ll get you high, too, and we’ll pay you back on payday, he says, sitting back down on the beanbag.

No worries. I reach into my wallet and hand Tony the fifty dollars.

So much for my attempt at cleaning up. Before I came here, I was a mess back home. No job, no money, living in an attic apartment, drinking a twelve-pack of Budweiser cans every day and getting high every night.

After hearing that I smoke weed, Dave comes and sits down on the floor next to me.

We need to tell you something, he says.

What? I ask, puzzled by this sudden seriousness.

Dave looks at Tony as if some coded signal has been relayed.

I came over here a year ago because of my brother and my sister-in-law, he says. They were teaching here at the same school and living with Tom, who was the head teacher, over in the old Sajick apartments near the school.

Dave pauses for a moment and shoots another quick glance over at Tony. They had a friend from Washington State send them over an ounce of weed under the name ‘Freda Felcher,' he says.

They got the gak no problem, and they were smoking it only at home in the apartment, he says. Nobody knew. None of the other teachers knew. But the package was intercepted by the Korean FBI, and they had an agent dressed like a delivery person deliver the box to Bob and Terry.

They even had undercover agents enroll at the hagwon as new students, and watch the behavior of Bob, Tom and Terry, Tony says, taking over for Dave as if this story has been rehearsed for some small-town theatre company.

The agents acted like students in their classes. Nobody knew at all, and they even hid video cameras in their backpacks to record evidence.

And you guys just hit me up for $50 to buy some hash...

After rubbing his hand on his forehead, Dave looks at me.

It was nuts! They even had a surveillance van out in the parking lot of the apartment complex spying on them, just like in the movies. They filmed them smoking pot in the apartment, and they watched their behavior for two weeks. Then after that they busted them.

Damn, all that just for smoking some weed.

Not expecting to hear about escapades like this, I ask Dave if he was in Korea when all of this happened.

No, I was in the States. I was managing a restaurant, going to university part time and trying to get my bachelors degree.

So, he probably came here to help his brother and sister-in-law out, and now he’s here smoking hash. What a fucking rocket scientist.

Not sure if I even want to hear the rest of the story or smoke any hash when it arrives, I ask Dave what happened after they got busted.

They put them in jail with nothing to eat but kimchi and rice, he replies, rubbing his hand across forehead again. That’s when I found out. Bob called my Dad, and then my dad told me.

Shit, that’s definitely not something you want to hear about your brother, I say.

Tony takes over the story again. The cops held the two guys in jail for two months and then let them out.

They held Terry an extra month just to fuck with my brother, Dave says, as his face begins to flush.

I guess he is still pissed about this. I would be, too.

So, when did you come over here? I ask Dave, trying to get to the end of the story.

I came over here just before Terry was released from jail. My brother was a fucking mess and the cops were playing head games with him.

Sensing that Dave needs a break from telling the story, Tony takes over again. "The police thought it was some big drug smuggling