Into the sunset

My life in South Korea is done, and my sister's wedding is fast approaching in South Africa. My last few days at English Village are a whirlwind of final dinners and goodbyes, and relief that I'm going to miss the latest directive from the "management": African accents are to be replaced in the future with American ones. My American accent is so poor I'm embarrassed to even try in front of my friends for fear of angering them with the imitation. And anyway, which of the thousands of US accents would I choose? Oh, mad Korea.

In my last week, it snows. Yes, in mid-March, it snows. Poor Korea lucked out on the weather front...


Also in my last week, Shabu Lady discovers that I'm leaving and suddenly realises that she loves me! She really does! (Or maybe she's just thankful that she no longer needs to put me on my own table at big Shabu dinners...)

So. Korea. I won't miss people peering into my shopping bags, picking things out so as to have a better look at my groceries. Or the nightmare of having to deal with social and administrative hierarchy. Or the staring on the subway as I stand swaying in my foreign skin. The smell of silkworm pupae sizzling on the street. Having to explain for the hundredth time to an offended Korean just why I don't like the wonderfood that is Kimchi. The food and the wholesale worship of meat, no matter where it comes from. My tiny box they call an apartment. Sharing space with a million other people. Being met at the door of a shop by an assistant shaking her head at me and shouting "No big size! No for you!"

I'm going to miss shabu shabu and the local Indian restaurant, where curry comes with a side of pickles, and the friends that I've made from, truly, all corners of the English-speaking world - at least I now have a place to stay in a thousand different cities. The elderly lady in the shop who holds my hand when she babbles in Korean as if that will help me understand - and her wide smile. Couples' shirts! Someone going 3 blocks out of their way to show me where I need to go. Living two doors down from a cousin, and 4 doors away from my closest friend. Shopping in Seoul!

Korea has been an amazing ride; I can't see myself back here again, but then I have many friends at EV who said exactly the same thing right before they started looking into visas for another year. It's the first place I've ever truly experienced culture shock and that's a good thing. Without culture shock, the world is just one endless high street of McDonalds and Starbucks. In Seoul, the first Starbucks was met with such fierce animosity that it was the first Starbucks ever to translate its sign into another alphabet, Hangeul, as a compromise (it reads Seu-ta-bug-seu Ko-bi, and I love it!)


The other day I found myself thinking of the way that I get upset when people aren't nice to me on my travels; I write in my diary that "people in [insert town name] aren't as friendly as in [other town name]" and feel sad that I haven't had as good a time as I might have. But travel involves meeting people who are going about their lives, having a good day, having a bad day, trying to come to terms with the influx of people from other places, tourists who spend the equivalent of a month's local wages on a room for the night and then demand smiles all the time. The shock of having to adapt to Korea has left me smiling: if Korea, who looks to America as an adoring child looks up to a heroic baseball player, can still be so different to the McDonaldised West, then perhaps there's hope for the rest of the world.

When Relationships Go Bad

In Korea, the done thing when dating is to publicly announce your love for each other not with rings or hand-holding or sonnets in restaurants, but by wearing the same clothes.

No, not them! Did I say similar? I said the same.

Like this:

Yes, that's right, lads - Korean women dress their men. Not so attractive now, eh?





















The alltime rock n' roll favourite at English Village was a new family - mum dad and baby - all kitted out in white from head to toe. The baby even had a cap to match the parents', although his had to be tied to his chin with a ribbon!

I was recently confirmed in my growing suspicions by Cait's discovery of, yes, a Couples Store in Seoul, where everything comes in both women's and men's sizes, and often toddler size too... My day was just made so much better...

Plastic Koreans Ltd.

Korea is the first place I've lived where I feel unusually fat. My curves, which in the UK are considered pretty normal, go unappreciated here, where curvy Koreans are talked about in the staffroom in whispers. I walk into clothes shops and try to anticipate the shopkeeper's sharp intake of breath with a pleading "Foreign size?"

None of my colleagues are overweight - not a single woman out of 30-odd Korean teachers - and many are so tiny I can encircle their upper arms with my thumb and middle finger. It's a reflection of the attitudes of and towards women in Korean society. Apparently, 50% of women have some kind of serious eating disorder, and 78% of women in their 20s and 30s have had plastic surgery - although this includes the relatively minor double eyelid surgery. It's so popular, plastic surgeons operate out of malls in small outlying suburbs of Seoul.

After I found out about the double eyelid procedure (which gives the eye a fold in it), I started looking more closely at all the women I met - and I'm pretty certain that 78% is a fair figure! It's kind of understandable though, once you discover that job application forms include a space for photos (face and full body) and a section where you give details about your weight, blood type and personal home situation.

Now, don't get me wrong. It's not like large Koreans are ostracised from society (I mean, come on, it's not like they're disabled! Now there's a situation I'd hate to be in). You even see them on TV sometimes! Of course, both of them are comedians, but hey - the only disabled person I've ever seen on TV was in an advert for basic human rights.

The desire to be thin and beautiful reaches its withered bulimic tentacles right down into middle school, where my 13 year old female students count calories and carry around pocket mirrors to check their faces during class. Teachers reinforce this, calling up boys to demonstrate "Handsome. More Handsome. Most Handsome." and allowing kids to choose "Sexy Boys" and "Small Faced Girls" as team names. A class I have to teach over this summer pokes fun at people with freckles, buck teeth and moles, and teachers congratulate students on being beautiful. A teacher's comment on a class sheet (usually full of notes on behavioural issues and clinic visits) once read "Pretty girls!" I couldn't resist writing beneath it "Thanks for this helpful piece of information" before returning it to their homeroom teacher. Giving children a sense of self esteem is, of course, important. Basing that self esteem on external beauty (itself based on a damaging perception of what is beautiful) is child abuse.

It's questionable whether Westerners are any better - we're just not as good at reaching the ideal - but on the whole, I think I prefer people pretending they like my sizeable thighs, as opposed to pointing and laughing.

I'll end with a comment from a colleague I luckily found more amusing than offensive. Talking of the differences between Korean and western women, she stepped back and, critically looking me up and down, said "it's because you have such a small face, Emily, that your body looks so big."

Gee. Thanks.

Drinking makgeolli, meeting popstars... a day in the life....

The entrance to the festival

On Saturday we were invited to the Paju Flower Festival in nearby Paju Book City, a village of super-modern eco buildings, similar to Heyri Art Village, but with bookstores and publishers. Preparations have been going on for the Festival for the past 6 weeks, and when our bus drew up to the Village, the green hills that we usually see from the windows of the bus to Seoul drew gasps of admiration - they were blanketed with splashes of yellow, orange, red, blue, white... The gardeners had been hard at work.

There were 7 of us representing English Village, plus a few Korean administrators, and we all donned flags from various countries - I was given the Union Jack, which I at least have a connection to - Cait got Australia! Then we gathered behind the EV flag, borne aloft by one of our cartoon mascots (a poor Korean part-timer squeezed into a large-headed and very hot furry costume), and followed the brass band in front of us down the street. We were cheered on by people sitting under canvas tents along the sidewalk - mostly dignitaries in suits - as we waved our hands regally, and gave the peace sign to cameras and film crews. The route was short - we walked for around 10 minutes - then we were able to stand on the sidewalk and cheer on the other groups taking part. One attraction was the float carrying three gorgeous girls playing strings.

Schoolgirl floats

They were more than matched in attire, if not in talent, by the girls wandering around in teeny ladybird outfits and knee-high stiletto boots. The sexualisation of innocent storytime creatures... I read a great piece recently on Korean women and their strong need to be beautiful - "Korean Psychiatrists Discover Shocking New Mental Disorder" - which would have been funnier had it not been so true to life, I thought it was a real report for the first few paragraphs... One of the pop songs at the moment has a girl telling her boyfriend "I don't want you to tell me you like me because I'm nice... let's be honest... you like my legs... you like my butt..." and is, unfortunately, not ironic, as a Western equivalent might be.

After the parade was over, we were taken out for lunch. We chose a bibimbap stall where we sat down with our CEO. First up was the makgeolli - a milky rice wine. Tasted a little like a sour apple juice - mmm! Makgeolli is traditionally served with pajeon - traditional pancakes, stuffed with various fillings - a little like the Korean version of a pizza. Ours came with seafood - although I wasn't a huge fan of the tiny suckered legs poking out from some slices, I knew I loved pajeon from previous encounters, so just became very selective when choosing my slices!

However, lunch is never just lunch for us in Korea. Soon, our CEO, who had gone off to a nearby table in the VIP section, came back with a small unassuming gentleman: the mayor of Paju, wanting to buy us a few bowls of makgeolli. We were, of course, obliging. He was very sweet and welcoming and told us we were good for his province. Then, from the table next to us, a pretty young girl got up and came over to talk to Rick (our Korean administrator). He translated for us: she was a popstar, and she wanted us to pose for a picture with her. Now, to my mind, this was slightly topsy turvy to the way we would have done it in the west, but never mind. To the gasps of a group of boys who'd noticed her in the dark tent, we posed for a few photos with Bae Seul-gi - she of the "don't say you like me for my personality" video.

Strange times! We laugh in the teachers' room that it's going to be tough readjusting when we leave Korea - we're going to cry at strangers "But why don't you love me? Don't I have a small face? Adore me! Adore me!"