DARK NIGHT OF THE SEOUL: MY SECOND JOB
March, 1996.
I was thoroughly sick of Bangkok. The constant grinning of the locals was getting on my nerves. Land of a Thousand Smiles, my ass -- Thai people were just as dishonest, aggressive and greedy as any people on the planet. But they smiled constantly. You quickly learned it had little to do with happiness. It could as easily mean, “I’m about to kill you” or “Change the subject at once.”
We’d had many interesting adventures over the past year, my colleagues and I, and many laughs. But I was frazzled from too much alcohol and not enough sleep, and tired of backpackers and whores. Our students seemed vacant and bovine, my job such a bore that I’d started ending my classes five minutes early. . . then ten. . .then maybe fifteen. . .
I knew it was time to move.
I considered my options. Russia interested me, but information about it was nearly impossible to get at that time. The Internet was but a sprout in those days. I perused the brightly-colored stacks of Lonely Planet guides in the bookstores. Prague? Tempting. But my thoughts turned towards MONEY.
It would be nice to have some spot of financial independence. I’d saved nearly a thousand bucks in the past year, not bad considering, but that wasn’t much between me and oblivion.
So I joined the Korean gold rush.
Japan was burnt-out, fucked over – everyone told me to stay away. Korea and Taiwan were where all the bucks were in the mid-nineties.
Taiwan had been my original plan. I’d spent 5 days in Taipei on a layover on the way to Bangkok, and hadn’t been too impressed – it was filthy, loud, and not especially attractive. Then, of course, the Taiwanese embassy refused to give me a two-month tourist visa to return there, which pretty much put the kibosh on that idea. Story was the government had started cracking down on illegal schools anyway.
Now Korea, on the other hand. Everybody was talking about it. I met several people who had taught there – they were fat with cash and said the work was easy, though Koreans could be unpleasant.
I made the long trek to the South Korean embassy in Bangkok and filled out the visa application. The embassy was out on the outskirts of Bangkok, practically in the country. I had to walk a long way down a dusty road, I recall. I was braced for a snitty interview, but they gave me the visa without comment.
I bought a round trip ticket from Bangkok to Seoul via the Phillipines – round trip, valid for one year. I bought a used copy of “Lonely Planet Guide To Northeast Asia” that was 2 years out of date. I bought a dark blue suit for $100 in a cheap tailoring shop on Khao-San Road. I gathered as much helpful specific information as I could – which was little. “Just go to schools and ask for a job,” was the general advice.
So on April 16th,. exactly one year after I’d started teaching in Bangkok, I took off into the great unknown.
How spoiled we are now because of the Internet, we of the English teaching profession! How soft! What ever happened to the adventure of turning up in a strange country with no job, no friends, no place to stay and no clue, and hoping for the best? Huh? Whatever the hell happened to it, you pussies?
I managed to make it through Korean immigration, though the man seemed somewhat suspicious of my intentions. I told him I was a freelance writer, but that I had money from my family. He seemed to buy that, and even seemed a little embarrassed and apologetic.
It was a hell of a lot cleaner than Bangkok, and a hell of a lot chillier. And greyer. All the men were wearing dark gray or blue suits. No roaring motorbikes or rickety old buses spewing fumes – just lots of Korean cars and a general efficiency and modernity, with the odd centuries-old traditional palace.
I got a bus to the center and spent several hours dragging my heavy backpack and my other bag around looking for the cheap hotels recommended by the Lonely Planet. Children stared at me. Adults tried not to. It was raining a bit.
After a few days of moving around, I ended up settling in a cheap hotel behind the YMCA in central Seoul, in an area known as Chongak. It was one of the few traditional old Korean “yagwons” left in the area – it had the traditional tiled roof, and paper windows. It was run by an elderly Korean man and his wife and their retarded adult son. They were the soul of kindness. I think it cost about $100 a week.
The room was on the second floor -- about 2 1/2 meters by 3 meters, and it came with a small ancient TV on which I could watch the American Armed Forces Korea Network, which had all the American sitcoms interspersed with informative commercials about military regulations. (“Exceeding your liquor ration can cost you your stripes!”) There was no furniture beyond a sleeping mat and a pillow and blanket, a stand for the television, and a shelf and a bar to hang clothes on.
I had a view of the work yard of some kind of sign-making business. About once a month they would begin bandsawing apart something made of metal, making a hideous piercing screech. They often did this on Saturday morning, for some reason.
The shower facility was down the hall, in an area where holes in the wall had been patched with plastic sheeting. The shower very rarely had warm water, and the toilet was of the squat variety.
The place held about a half-dozen or so English teachers, mostly young Candians and English. I made some initial attempts to be friendly and asked about job possibilities. They were evasive and unhelpful, and seemed bitter and sarcastic about Korea. I quickly decided that I was going to ignore them for the remainder of my stay in this hotel.
For ten months, I did so. As I said, I was a bit frazzled.
I wasn’t too sure how to find a job, however. I put on my blue suit and hit the streets, a file under my arm full of fraudulent resumes, gushing forged references, a real BA in English Literature and a doctored photocopy of a TEFL certificate. The old woman looked at me in my suit and smiled radiantly. She spoke one of her few words of English – “Gentleman.” – with a respect and regard that has forever moved me.
There was at that time only one English-language newspaper in Seoul; it consisted of four pages, and was released once a week. I managed to find in it a “Jobs Offered” advertisement, however – I called the school and spoke to a reasonable-enough sounding Korean guy. He told me to come for an interview. After a 30-minute metro ride or so, and I located a small school – not, however, the one I had called. Nonetheless the manager, the only person in the small office of the school, wanted to see me. He spoke no English, but handed me a contract written in English offering a salary of 1,300,000 Korean won a month, plus accomodation with a family, plus a work visa, plus some other crap. At that time 800 won was about $1.
I smiled and said I’d think about it and get back to him. He didn’t understand, so I just nodded and smiled and made my way out of the office.
Good god. I made my way back to my subway stop and flowed with the dark-suited crowd up into the street.
Then I noticed there was a language school next to my subway stop. Well, now that would be convenient, wouldn’t it?
I went inside. It was bustling with students, and had a desk full of uniformed Korean women. Looked a little more promising. I asked a woman if they were hiring teachers, and if I could speak to the manager.
Indeed they were. Out came Mr. Yong. A typical Korean guy – cheap suit, smelled of cigarettes and garlic. He smiled beatifically at me, pumped my hand. He was clearly far more nervous than I was.
They took me upstairs into their office, which was small, shabby and cluttered. Some chewing gum stuck under the table stuck to the leg of my new blue suit, causing Mr. Yong great horror. He and his assistant looked over my credentials and seemed almost religiously impressed. They wanted to see me in action, so opened a text book at random and had me try to teach them something. I did so. Can’t really remember what it was, but they were much more terrified than I was, so they finally offered me a job at $20 per 50 minute class hour, plus a work visa.
I spoke to another teacher, a guy about my age – 27 – who was wearing jeans and had a beer nose. He didn’t have too much to say about the place one way or another, but he said they always paid on time and in full. That was more or less good enough for me.
“So, okay, we’re very glad to have a gentleman like yourself here,” said Mr. Yong. He’d studied in America for while and his English was good, if strongly accented. “And now you will meet the owner. Okay?” He began straightening my lapels in a disconcertingly motherly way, even pushed some of my hair around on my forehead, scrutinizing me with a careful eye.
In walked a guy who I had seen before, but had thought was the janitor. He wore a coat with no tie, open-toed sandals with socks instead of shoes, and a baseball cap. He stepped in and Mr. Young all but prostrated himself. They guy in the baseball hat sneered at him and barked some insulting-sounding words in Korean, and Mr. Young began babbling away obsequiously.
It finally dawned on me that this was the owner.
He flopped down in a chair opposite me and sneered at me.
I smiled back innocently.
“Where are you from?” he said, still sneering, in heavily-accented but passable English.
“America,’ I said.
He sneered and stared at me. Feeling no particular emotional investment in the situation one way or the other, I just smiled blandly back.
“How much money have you got?” he asked.
That got my eyebrows up a bit. “Uhhh. Well. About a thousand dollars.”
He barked a laugh and began speaking in rapid Korean to Mr. Yong. Then he got up and left without saying goodbye.
Mr. Yong breathed a sigh of relief. “He says it’s okay. Congratulations!”
“Thank you,” I said.
My first – though not last – experience with Confucianism, Korea 1996 style. I agreed I’d accept the job, if for no other reason than because I couldn’t stand the thought of going through all that shit again. They said I could start in a couple of weeks, on the 3rd of May.
The weather was cold and rainy the first week, but by the second week spring was in full swing.. I hung around the parks of Seoul, read and did some exploring and sightseeing. I studiously avoided speaking to the people in my hotel and watched American sitcoms in the evening. That’d show ‘em.
The cherry blossoms bloomed; for three days pink petals rained down seemingly non-stop in the parks and palaces.
A good salary and cherry blossoms – well, what more could a guy ask for?
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