10 Things I Will Not Miss About Korea: Part 2

1. I often have trouble signing up for things in Korea because I have a foreign name and it's either too big to fit in the 'name' section of the website or it just simply won't except it.
   
   Sarah and I once tried to go to our local library that opened up last year. We went in, walked up the stairs, found an empty booth and sat ourselves down. About 2 minutes later someone walked over with a ticket in their hand pointing at the booth. Sarah talked to them and apparently you had to reserve the booth. We later discovered that you had to book tables and basically any little space in the library in advance too.
   'OK, no problem. Let's get a ticket,' we said.
   Well, apparently, you have to sign up to the library in order to be able to get a ticket.
   'OK, no problem. Let's sign up.'
   So after about 30 minutes of filling out forms, which were all in Korean, and talking to the librarian, who wasn't helpful, we discovered our names could not be accepted by the system and so there was no way for us to use any of the library's resources. I got so angry at the time because I thought I had finally found a quiet place to study only to be rejected because the guy who coded the library's system hadn't thought that any one but a Korean would think to visit.
   
   For me, it was less about going to the library itself than trying to be a part of normality. As a foreigner, things are difficult enough, but try to do anything outside of 'popping to the shops' and it's a fiasco, every time, without fail. I understand that part of living in a foreign country is having to deal with not being able to fully participate in society or even really feel part of that society, i.e. you are foreign. I'm just saying that it will be nice to return to the UK and feel part of daily society again.
   
   
2. I won't miss how everything is at the last minute. It's almost a cliché to complain about how last minute things are here in 'dynamic Korea'. But it is certainly something I won't miss.
   
   Only this week did I feel slightly annoyed by this. Sarah and I had to go to a different school for half a day this week and talk with Korean teachers about a number of different topics. My class was on Tuesday morning and, even though I've known about this for a number of weeks through my co-teacher (actually Sarah told me first), I only got a call about it on Monday afternoon detailing how many people will attend my class, if there are computers in the rooms, where the school even is. As it turned out I had roughly 11 people in my class, but what if I had prepared a lesson for 30 people? And say I had created it on powerpoint only for there to be no computer in the room? Despite there being weeks to tell us these things, telling us the day before left very little prep time.
   
   Happens all the time, too. Not just to me, but Sarah and most, if not all, native teachers. Do Koreans themselves complain about this? I'm not sure.
   
   
3. Koreans don't like to give feedback and if they do it's rarely critical. I believe this is down to the whole 'not losing face' thing. Basically, the idea here is not to allow anyone to 'lose face' i.e. not hurt their pride or dignity through various ways. They consider 'being critical' as one of the ways a 'losing face' situation may occur.
   
   Now, at first glance, this sounds like a good thing, and in some ways it is. People are very nice here, my co-teachers always tell me that my classes are 'great' or they tell me how I did a 'good job' at the end of class. The problem I have with this is that when I know my class has failed or when I haven't been able to control the students, my co-teachers have still told me that my class was good, when I was just looking for a bit of constructive criticism on a class that I could see had failed.
   'What can I improve?' I ask.
   'Nothing. Good job today,' they say as I try to wake up my students to tell them that class is over.
   How can we improve when people's opinions are restricted by culture?  By the way, I'm not sure what Korean-on-Korean criticism is like, this is just what I have experienced.
   
   
4. How I get excited when things sound like stuff from home only to be disappointed that it's often something completely different.
   
   For example, when my mate Chris visited me in Korea, he ordered 'cider' in a restaurant thinking it was the alcoholic cider we enjoy at home, only to be served Chilsung cider, a fizzy drink that tastes like Sprite... 'What a let down...' he said.
   
   'Toast' here is often not just single slices of bread spread with jam, marmalade, butter or the like, but it refers to grilled bits of bread with sandwich filling inside - salad, ham, and cheese are the most popular fillings (for me :P). Actually I love this place. The food is cheap, fast, and tasty :) These pictures show a shop similar to my local one:  [1], [2]
   
   I also got excited when Sarah told me they had sausage rolls in Tous Les Jours - a Korean type bakery with endless supplies of cakes, bread, and pastries. When I stormed into the shop in search of the elusive sausage roll, I discovered that it was just one really long frankfurter-type sausage wrapped in a helix of doughy bread... It was tasty, but still a fail.
   
   
5. The global community has a constant eye on the goings on between North Korea and South Korea. The media get excited when anything happens, be that Kong Jong Il dying, the recent prisoner amnesty, or the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. Admittedly, if I were anywhere else but Asia right now, I too would get excited about any North/South news. I'd see it as 'history in the making', a spectator to something I might one day tell my grandchildren about.
   
   But actually being in Asia, being in Korea, you want the news to be littered with K-pop or how the price of kimchi is soaring. The last thing you want is any 'eventful' news about the North.
   
   It's all good and well being thousands of miles away and watching Kim Jong Il's funeral on TV, but here in Korea I look upon such news through cautious eyes. Questions begin to arise, scenarios go through your head - all of which would be absent in the mind of a foreign spectator. You begin to scrutinise daily things with elements of, I think, justified paranoia.
   A plane goes overhead - 'Was it a military plane? Could something be happening?'
   A siren sounds - 'Is it the monthly drill already? Where are the closest shelters to me right now?'
   An unusual and loud noise outside the apartment - 'What was that?' I say as I rush to the window (it's more often than not the Tous Les Jour van unloading... but it still gets me in a panic).
   
   When the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island happened, I told myself that I wouldn't panic, that there would be plenty of options if the situation escalated. Nowadays, I'm not so sure. I think being with Sarah has made me wiser and that I look upon things with more maturity and sense of reality than I once did. Nothing has really changed from that day in 2010. Sure, Kim Jong Il has since died, but I'm not sure how less unpredictable the North has become. If anything, the situation remains the same: anything could happen at any time. I mean, we all knew the Dear Leader was crazy, but we know very little about this 'Great Successor'. I doubt the apple falls far from the tree...
   
   It's being worried, hoping that today's news is uneventful and boring, the feeling of teetering on the edge of a danger that you can do nothing about - those things I will not miss.

Kim Jong-Il looking at a persimmon tree (from http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/)

Posted in: cider,EPIK,esl,kim jong-il,korea,last minute,north korea,toast