Mokpo's Oldest Blog

In the same way that Matt at Gust of Popular Feeling delves into Korea's history I present you with a rare anthropological find from Mokpo's past: the oldest waygooken blog.

I'm welcoming corrections on this but after some searching I'm going to nominate Bulgogi and his Teaching English in a Fishing Town blog dated to the pre-jellomando year of 2002. It's a small sample but it does document a slice of the FIFA World Cup:

Tickets are pretty hard to come by for the world cup. First off only 8% of the stadiums are open to public tickets, the rest are corporate allocations. Thats why for most of the games the best seats are empty, and the stadium only looks half full. there are two ways to get tickets in korea. the first is for international ppl, tourists. you have to apply and they are usually allocated out as part of a package deal. they are also bloody expensive. The other way is for korean residents. You have to apply way in advance, so by the time i got to mokpo, the expats here had already applied, as both korean residents and international visitors. a coupla weeks ago they came through, and of course i didn't have one. then one of the guys had a huge falling out with the girls he was going with, and so he suggested that i use the ticket. if i got in (i might not have because everyone's name is on the ticket) i could pay him the 66,000face value. If i couldn't get in, i wouldn't owe him anything, as he wouldn't have gone anyway. good guy. this was all told to me only last tuesday, so i was stoked that i was going. We took the bus to Kwangju, only 1 1/4 hrs away from Mokpo, good fun, enjoyed the ton of extra expats, including the spanish chicks (i am going to spain soon. the women are phenominal. Everyone remember Andy from Oz Big Brother [the Brazilian dominatrix who got kicked out first]? these chicks looked like that). we watched the world cup games playing before ours (8:30pm, Spain Vs Slovenia, hence the spanish chicks), including the excellent England Vs Sweden (1-1 draw), at this cool dingy pup with abot 100 other expats. there are a sum total of 28 expats in mokpo, 14 of which i hang around, so it was really special. there were no koreans in the pub, including behind the bar (it was an aussie pub), and we loved it.

There's another candidate, one Daniel Roy, dated to April 2001. Unfortunately it's about his wife giving birth to their son in Mokpo while he's in Mongolia. I like this anecdotal proof that Koreans are dicks to people other than waygookens:

Ah, Korea... Sun-duk told me that Hye-young's son was born in Seoul last Thursday, but that his boss (Hye-young's a government employee in a town near Mokpo) wouldn't grant him leave on account of "urgent business". In fact, Hye-young had to work all weekend, and has seen even less of his son than I of mine! I mean, at least I've got a photograph; but the hospital where Soon-joo gave birth doesn't have a web site... Poor Hye-young! Poor us!