Copyright Jeffrey Miller 2012 All Rights Reserved.

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Lost Luggage, Digestive Crackers, and David Letterman

How did you end up in Korea? is a question that most people have asked when they learn that I have lived and worked in Korea. I turned left at Japan, Ive often replied, tweaking a famous line from The Beatles A Hard Days Night when John Lennon was asked, How did you find America? upon which he replied, Turned left at Greenland. One thing is for certain, I didnt end up in Korea based on what I knew or didnt know about the country. To be sure, if you were to have asked me prior to 1988, which Korea was the communist one, who Kim Il-sung was, or where Korea was located specifically in Northeast Asia, I probably wouldnt have been able to get all three of them correct. I had heard of Korea though. Two of my uncles fought in the Korean War. One of my high school friends, Louis LJ Kirsteatter learned Taekwondo in the 70s, (he could tell you what the symbols on the Korean flag Taegukki meantpretty impressive for him to possess that cultural knowledge about the flag back in the 70s when not too many people knew about Korea). And I had a Korean roommate when I was at college. I knew a few Koreans in some of my classes, but we never talked much about Korea. Sadly, for most people from my generation our knowledge of Korea was limited to what we could glean from the popular TV show M*A*S*H. On the other hand, the few times that we did hear anything about Korea was when there had been some breaking news story like the USS Pueblo seizure in 1968, the Panmunjom Axe Murder Incident in 1976, Koreagate, the downing of KAL Flight 007 in 1983, and student demonstrations in the 80s. Despite these international events, our knowledge about Korea remained limited. Even the Korean War, which was for all semantic purposes a substitute for World War III, had sadly been called the forgotten war. Even my two uncles who fought in it never talked about it. Of course, the world would learn much about South Korea in 1988 with the Seoul Olympics that could be best described as one massive coming out party for the nation and its people. As far as teaching English, Korea was not some place that you just heard about one day and decided that is where you wanted to go to teach. At a time when there was no internet and a letter to and from Korea could take as much as three weeks, Korea was not some place you just showed up at one day ready to teach. It was still a place that you had to have heard about somewhere from someone who had either been there or knew someone who had. People just didnt end up here by accident. Fate maybe, but not by chance. On a cool, clammy Friday night in December 1990, just two weeks before Christmas, I arrived in Seoul. For some, traveling to another country around the holidays to begin work might be a little depressing, but I was too pumped up to feel depressed. The recruiter, who had phoned me back in October and offered me the job, told me that I would be too excited to feel depressed. She was right. Then again, it wasnt my first Christmas away from home and definitely not my first Christmas overseas. I had spent the previous Christmas in Japan and there were the two Christmases I spent in Panama back in 1976 and 1977 when I was serving in the United States Air Force; so the holidays were not much of a

problem. The only problem, at least after I arrived in Korea, was going to be a change of underwear. Ill get back to this later. I left Chicago the day before at 7:00 in the morning on my way to Seattle and then on to Seoul. The day before I left, I spent hanging out with friends from my past. Kind of like Ralph Edwards, this is your life Jeffrey Miller sort of thing. First, it was lunch with Dick Verucchi, former drummer of Buckacre and The Jerks and whose familys Italian restaurant in Spring Valley, Verucchis Ristorante, is one of the Illinois Valleys more famous eateries. Well, we didnt have lunch at his familys restaurant that day; instead, Dick recommended Chinese at the House of Hunan. Guess he figured that I needed to get back into the routine of eating with chopsticks. There we bumped into Steve Stout, a renowned local author, who wished me luck. Later, Dick had some errands to run for his familys restaurant, including picking up an order of bread from Valleros Bakery in Dalzell, a small town between Peru and Spring Valley, Illinois. We caught up on our lives as much as two old friends could in a few hours. While we were waiting for the bread order, Dick turned to me and said, You know they eat dog over there in Korea. I shrugged my shoulders. There would be many things I would find out about Korea in due time. Later that afternoon I visited my friend LJ, who quizzed me on my knowledge of the Korean flag. In the evening, I called my friend and college roommate, Luke, who was attending the University of Kansas. Just a few months earlier, he visited me in LaSalle, a small town 90 miles southwest of Chicago, and we went to an outdoor concert in the neighboring community of Oglesby to see Peter Noone. After the innocuous, but vocal heckling Luke and I gave Noone at that concert, Noone probably would have been relieved (if he had known) that I wouldnt be around the next time he played Oglesby. Im leaving for Korea in the morning, I told Luke. Be careful, he warned. Dont go causing any trouble over there. This was from a guy who hung a bedsheet from the window of his third floor Eureka College dormitory room with U.S. out of Nicaragua written on it. A gutsy move in my book, considering that Eureka College was President Ronald Reagans alma mater. Finally, my good friend, Mary Sue, drove me to OHare at three in the morning. Inasmuch as I was excited to be heading overseas again, it was a bittersweet send off when you have to part ways with friends, some of whom you may never see again. At the time, you dont think youre never going to see someone again, when youre about to start a new chapter of your life, but that is exactly what happened when I came to Korea. If you had traveled to Korea prior to March 2001, when the new Incheon Airport opened, you had to go through Seouls Kimpo Airport. What I remembered most about Kimpo that night, and all the other times I flew in and out of there over the next eleven years, was how dreary and archaic it was. Theres no question that Kimpo was an obvious testament to Koreas rapid economic development in the 70s, which came with a price tag: the airport still had this sort of developing nation feel to it. Even though Korea hosted the Olympics just two years earlier, one really felt as though they had stepped back into timeback to the 70swhen you had to go through Kimpo; either that, or some Cold War thriller, which was reinforced when passengers had to pass through another metal detector and have their luggage screened after they cleared immigration. I have flown in and out of Korea countless times over the years, and usually when you go through immigration formalities, the immigration officials hardly utter more than a sentence or two, if that. However, on that night the immigration official asked me for a stick of gum. Well, it was more like give me a stick of gum, but I have to give the guy credit for trying out his language skills. It made me think about that classic line from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest when Jack Nicholson gets The Chief (Will Sampson) to finally say somethingMmmJuicy Fruit. If my first night in Korea was going to be a memorable one, it was not going to get off to a good start when I soon discovered that my luggage had been lost. Great, I thought. I start work on Monday and I dont have any clean clothes to wear. After waiting until the last bags from my flight were unloaded and then needing to fill out some forms,

one of the ground staff assured me that my luggage would arrive in a day or two. It didnt. I wasnt alone. Turned out, a few other passengers who had flown out of Chicago with me on the same flight were also missing their luggage and looked just as disoriented and pissed as I did watching the empty luggage carousel go round and round. I should have known there was going to be a problem when I checked in the day before and noticed that the luggage conveyor belt was broken and the luggage had to be carried downstairs by the ground staff. Well, that sort of thing is just begging for a problem to happen. Lost luggage aside, I was not the only teacher arriving that night. There were three others who would be joining the ELS Kangnam (a district in Seoul, referred to as a Gu in Korean, south of the Han River) school staff (one more was due in from Thailand a few days later). After we met, we got in a van, handed an envelope containing 200,000 won for traveling expenses (sweet!) and headed to Chamsil (located on the eastern fringes of the city that had just started to spread out amoeba-like swallowing up the landscape and very close to Olympic Park), which would be my home for the next two years. ELS was a franchise language school based out of Culver City, California. Back in the 90s, when I started teaching, ELS had schools around the world including South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Spain, and even some in the United States. The three ELS schools in South Korea in 1990 were owned by Sisa-yongo-sa, at the time, Koreas largest English book publisher (now the company is called YBM Sisa.) In Korea, ELS was one of a handful of language institutes, called hogwons (institute or academy) operating in the early 90s. Over the years there have been countless horror stories about the pitfalls of these institutes like the stories of teachers coming to Korea and after being met at the airport being handed a book and told that their students were waiting for them in some crowded classroom. However, back in 1990, ELS took very good care of its teachers and made it very convenient for a person, who had just flown halfway around the world, to teach English in Korea. Helping newly arrived teachers settle in and get acclimated before the first day of classes started with putting up teachers in these spacious apartments in Chamsil, not far from the Olympic Sports Complex, which was only meters away from the sprawling Lotte World shopping and entertainment complex. In 1990, Lotte World was one of Seouls major attractions that had everything from a classy hotel, department store, and indoor swimming pool, to Lotte Adventure, a Disneyland-like theme park. Instead of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, Lotte had characters patterned after raccoonsLotty Raccoon and Lorrie Raccoon; problem was there are no raccoons in Korea, at least I have never seen one, not unless of course you count those two lovable raccoons prancing around at Lotte World. The apartments were starting to look a little rundown back then (the housing complex was leveled a few years ago and new apartment buildings have already gone up). If you didnt mind the rats scurrying above in the crawl space and the black soot from people still burning yontan (cylinder-shaped, charcoal briquettes used for heating and cooking) which darkened the walls, it wasnt too bad of a place to call home, especially when you didnt have to pay any rent. While I waited for the school director and a staff member, who were taking two of the teachers to their apartments, I stood outside and had a smoke. I listened to the steady drone of traffic speeding along the nearby Olympic Expressway. The housing complex had this gulag feel to it, row after row of apartment buildings all looking the same with a central heating plant. I might have been in Asia, but it sure didnt feel like it. A few residents passed by and gave me a quick look. Obviously, they had seen a few foreigners in their housing complex, but over the course of the next couple of months, those quick looks would soon become hardened stares. For now, they were innocuous. Unlike the other teachers who arrived that night, I did not have a roommate waiting for me. He was supposed to arrive from Thailand a few days later. For now, it was just a quick tour of the apartment. In the morning, another teacher would take me around the neighborhood and show me how to use the subway to get to the institute (a ten-minute subway ride). The apartment came furnished and even included a telephone and a TV. The refrigerator was stocked with a few items to satisfy any hunger pangs that I might have until I could get to the store. I didnt find the package of Digestive Crackers too appealing (gee, I hope I could digest them), but a few hours later

and feeling a little hungry, they hit the spot. They were similar to graham crackers and I had no trouble digesting them. I turned on the TV and the David Letterman Show was oncourtesy of AFRTS, the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service or as it was more appropriately called in Korea, AFKN (Armed Forces Korean Network). Weird. I might have traveled halfway around the world and ready to experience another culture, but there was David Letterman beaming into my apartment. And if I might also add, just in time for his Top Ten List. I walked out on the balcony to have a smoke while David counted down his list that night. On the sidewalk below, I could hear people walking home from work, stores, and the bars. It had gotten foggier and cooler. Across the street, a thousand points of light shone from rows of towering housing gulags, which dwarfed the smaller housing complex that would be home for the next two years. I listened to the night. I listened to this strange, new language drifting up, wondering how long it would be before I would be able to understand it. And I wondered if I was going to like it here.

Dont get your Panties in a Twist

After flying halfway around the world to South Korea, one of my first priorities was shopping and clean underwear. Not knowing when my luggage would arrive, and wearing the same underwear for three days, I had no choice but to spend my first Sunday in Korea shopping for clothes. I packed a pair of jeans and a sweater in my carry-on, but not something that I wanted to wear on my first day on the job. Surprisingly, finding shoes, socks, pants, and a few white dress shirts to tide me over until my luggage arrived was not a problem. However, when it came to buying underwear, it would be an entirely different and embarrassing story. I figured all I had to do was find the mens section in a department store, locate the underwear (hoping that there would be some familiar brand name), buy a few pairs and be on my merry wayor so I thought. So, with this in mind, I headed over to the Lotte Super Store, which was part of the sprawling Lotte shopping and entertainment complex not too far from where I lived. My spirits were immediately dashed when I couldnt find any familiar brand names like Jockey, Calvin Klein, or Fruit of the Loom. The only brand names (in English) that I could find were James Dean (thats right, that rebel without a cause had a line of underwear named after him in Korea), BYC, and TRY. Toto, were not in Kansas anymore. Translated: Well, youre in Korea now; youll just have to make do with whats available. The other problem was that they came in four sizes: 90, 95, 100, and 105but would a Korean medium/large be the same as a Western medium/large? And then there was the timing of this underwear expedition. Imagine this: a busy department store on a Sunday afternoon two weeks before Christmas. Now, intensify that by being in Seoul, one of the largest cities in the world and only being able to speak a few sentences of Korean. Thats when the fun began. No sooner had I picked up a package of underwear to check the size when out of nowhere three female clerks materialized to help me with my purchase. Panties? one of the clerks inquired. No, underwear, I said, showing her the package. Ne (yes), panties, she said, smiling. Before I knew it, the three giggling clerks started to open up various packages of underwear for me to choose. Like some scene out of a musical, they all took turns holding up the panties for me to observe and select as they pranced around me. I could feel my face getting redder and redder as they held out in front of me zebra-striped bikini briefs, polka-dotted bikini briefs, and even some camouflage ones. They all looked to be about the right size. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw customers stopping and staring at this foreigner surrounded by these three clerks dancing and prancing around with panties waving in front of my face. I ended up buying five pairs of these panties. Later, I discovered that in Korea, panties was Konglish (Korean-English) for underwear for men. Come Monday morning, I was ready to begin my sojourn as an English teacher in Korea wearing my

new panties. One thing, which I liked about ELS, was how they provided a week of orientation as well as time to settle in, recover from jetlag, and take care of immigration formalities. During that first week, I also learned that I was very diligent. At least, almost every student I ran into told me that. What time do you wake up? a student asked. Six oclock, I said. Hmmyou are diligent. What did you do last night? a female student asked. I wrote in my journal and read for one hour. You are diligent, she said. I envy you. Envy you a lot. I heard that one often, too. Koreans, especially language students, are sticklers for certain words in Englishtranslated from Korean. Diligent was one such word. It carries a lot of weight in Korea, but when students told me how diligent I was, it just seemed strange. I heard diligent spoken more that first week in Korea than any other time in my life. My luggage finally arrived on Thursday. Only took one week. Then, the airline expected me to go out to Kimpo to fetch it myself. It took a bit of pleading, but finally it was agreed that it would be delivered to the language institute. I still had to lug it home, which was a bit of a pain in the ass trying to get it through the subway turnstile. Most new teachers who were at ELS worked the same schedule: 10:00-12:00 a.m. and then again 6:0010:00 p.m. five days a week. The two-hour morning conversation class would be a breeze, but I could see that four-hour block in the evening getting a little grueling especially at the end of the week. Going home on the subway at night wouldnt be a problem because the rush hour was over. However, given all the drinking establishments, karaokes, nightclubs, and discos around Kangnam Subway Station, there were enough sloppy drunks to make the ride home interesting. In 1990, there were not too many foreigners in Korea and not too many traveling on the subway from Kangnam to Shinchon, five subway stops away, at 10:15 at night. As such, peopleusually the brave and drunken oneswould spot us and then, to impress their friends, or in the case of a salaryman (white-collar businessman) one night during my first week in Korea, some of his female colleagues, with their English language skills. What do you think about having your body touched by all these women? he said, both hands grasping straps on an overhead bar to keep him from falling. Excuse me? I asked. The three females with him giggled nervously Korean-style; they covered their mouths with a hand when they laughed. What do you think about this crowded subway and women touching your body? Got to hand it to him, he spoke good English but not the kind of loaded question you wanted to answer. Not with a bunch of men all liquored up on soju (Korean rice wine), with their faces beet-red, staring you down. Yes, the subway is very crowded. Thankfully, the next stop was my stop. When I said goodbye and got off the train, the women were still giggling. The first couple of days in Korea, I kept coming across all of these red and orange amoebae-shaped patterns of noodles, which I took for spilled spaghetti, splattered on the sidewalks and on the streets when I was going to school in the morning or coming home at night. I thought that maybe these noodles spilled when the garbage was taken out or one of these Korean or Chinese restaurant delivery drivers spilled them when they were zooming along on motor bikes. I would soon find out the truth behind these noodles, or as I would soon begin to call them vomit landmines.

After a night of drinking, people would stop off at some convenient store and slurp down bowls of instant noodles or ramen. Problem was ramen doesnt mix well with a stomach of beer and soju and public vomiting is quite common. No one bats an eye when they see someone puking out their guts on the streets, in subway stationspretty much anywhere. Over the years, Ive seen some of the most beautifully dressed women, with immaculately applied makeup, hunched over a trashcan or squatting over the side of the road throwing up. And they are never alone. Theres always a friend nearby to help. A good friend in Korea is someone who helps you throw up by pounding you on the back, a student said when I inquired about this vomiting duet. On Friday night at the end of that first week in Korea, I was walking to my apartment when I saw two salarymen throwing up in a trashcan. One of them saw me coming, and with one hand wiped away some of the vomit from the side of his mouth. Welcome to Korea, he said, wiping the remaining vomit from the corner of his mouth. The last sound I heard, as I turned the corner and continued to my apartmentlocated in the bowels of the concrete labyrinthine housing gulagwas their retching duet, throwing up in that trashcan.