Parade of the Stereotypes

I use Dave's ESL as a last resort for information since threads often degrade into the usual Korea-hate but I want to share Majolica's story for a couple of reasons:

1. It happened in Mokpo.
2. It's a catalog of Korean stereotypes.
3. It's my apartment building.

Majolica is actually my other half and decided to vent on the forums since (if you don't have a blog) that's the only place where she felt she could vent. I was out of town and out of cell phone reach when this happened and I only heard about this late at night when she broke down in tears telling me this story. Majolica's tale is a cavalcade of Korean stereotypes, including useless police, drunk ajussi, and assault on women:

I was busy cleaning my apartment since the new NS were supposed to arrive in the afternoon. When we were done cleaning we started taking down the first load of garbage and recycling. We dropped of a pile of bags and went back to get the remaining ones when the "garbage" ajossi came out and started screaming at us. We were trying to explain that we were just going to get the rest of the stuff and then sort everything into the right piles, when he grabbed my friend and started hitting her. We started walking away fast, went back to my apartment, locked the door and decided to wait until he was gone before going back down.
Five minutes later, who is outside my door but the garbage ajossi carrying all the bags that we had left by the dump. Along with ajossi is ajumma, and when we open the door, they start yelling at us again(and speaking WAY too fast for my slow ears anyway).

Not crazy enough for you? But wait, who is coming now? Why, it's drunk abusive neighbour man, who joins in the "screaming and shouting at white girls" fest. He keeps trying to come into my apartment, and I kept telling him, "get out"... finally, the super shows up. This guy is nice enough, but kind of rude and overly belligerent when we can't understand what he's saying to us, so my heart started sinking when I saw that he was coming in.

He comes in, (WITH HIS SHOES ON!!!) and starts walking around my freshly mopped floors, going on about special garbage bags and inspecting my place, while I'm trying to ask him to step out and figure out what he wants... meanwhile, garbage ajumma and ajossi are still standing in our hallway, and drunk neighbour is still screaming racist slurs at us from the doorway. Finally, my friend manages to get a Korean friend on the phone, explains about the hitting and the screaming, and hands it over to the super. It turns out that she's freaked out and has called the cops.

At this point, drunken neighbour's screaming has reached a cresendo, my nerves are fraying, and I shut and lock the door. Then starts the banging on the door, the ringing of the bell. Super is still on the phone with Korean friend, ajumma and ajossi are still standing there. I'm now trying to explain through our Korean friend that I can't do anything about the garbage now, I really have to leave the apartment and go to my school and run errands and I don't have time for this insanity.

Everyone still with me?
FINALLY, the police show up. They are super nice, but sort of useless. I'm still trying to explain that I was expected at my school quite a while ago, and I will promise to do whatever it is with the garbage that I'm supposed to do when I come back.

The second policeman is outside the apartment with drunk guy, when drunk guy goes absolutely batshit crazy and starts kicking all our carefully piled garbage bags and recycling down the stairs. One of the bags busts and there's food and garbage all over the stairs, the glass starts breaking, it's just a big fucking crazy mess.

I take one look and start bawling. The super is still trying to convince us to take the garbage down, but I'm so pissed off about the mess the drunk guy made that I tell him I'm not doing it now. The police are still sort of ineffectually standing around and telling drunk guy to knock it off, when garbage ajumma shows up again, carrying the right kind of garbage bags.

SHE starts cleaning up (of course, although she wasn't the one hitting us, or kicking garbage down the stairs, or doing anything at all really). We start to help her, but the police make us come with them, drive us to my bank and school (with SIRENS!!) and drop us back at home. No idea what happened to drunk neighbour or anything else, but the sweet ajumma had cleaned up everything by the time we got back.

So anyway, that's a warning to you. You can throw out anything you want, in any kind of bag you want, in any quantity you want, but you got to wrap it all up in the fancy coloured bags before they'll let you put it in the trash. And also, it takes two policemen, two waegooks, two old people, and one drunk to throw out 4 bags of garbage and 2 boxes of recycling. Also, said garbage dumping takes exactly 3 hours and 20 minutes.
ahhh Korea, how I'll miss you.

I, on the other hand, am not impressed by the sad comedy of a foreigner living in Korean society. Korea, consider yourself warned: You're on notice!

Even Better News!

Dear Dave,

These are awesome. (And congratulations on the baby!)

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!

National Assembly Elections

It's election day today and another chance for a day off. Unfortunately it's also the first real rain storm of the year.

The National Assembly is a different legislative body but the process is pretty much the same as the presidential election I mentioned a few months ago. Now if you care about it you already know who won, so the only thing I can add is that I am happy election season is over. And I'm not alone in either; I wasn't the only one who got woken up by friendly reminders to vote:

I woke up Sunday morning to the sound of clapping hands, tacky Korean songs, and some dude yelling in a mike. It felt as if someone was slowly bolting a screw in my brain. I hate Korean elections because they are LOUD.

or who had to put up with it during school hours:

They are dancing with the sound of loud music. I enjoy listening and watching them but i can't stand it sometimes specially during our class discussion. Even when i close all the windows in the classroom, we can't concentrate in the class because students are busy listening and sometimes stand up, sing and dance, too!

But this is the perfect summary of the whole spectacle:

This has meant that for the past 3 weeks rigorous campaigning has taken place in every nook and cranny of this tiny country. Let me assure you that campaigning Korean-style looks nothing like our tacky lawn-signs and occasional door-to-door hand-shaking. No, here we've had dozens of trucks circling the city, blaring our campaign songs from 7am to 10pm DAILY. There are advocates for each candidate positioned at the major street corners, dressed in matching outfits, singing songs, handing out yogurt drinks and dried squid, whose ceaseless attempts to pester pedestrian and distract drivers grew old after day 1. Some of the larger apartment complexes (read: mine) even have advocates positioned at the driveways leading in and out of our buildings to ensure that we are bowed to each and every time we pass through. If you're really lucky you'll get an impassioned Adjuma (read: older Korean woman) taking up the mike at one of the many soap-boxes which have sprung up in our parking lots, admonishing the transgressors and extolling the virtues of Mr. Mokpo 1-9. All of this is delivered directly into our apartments via the 1000000000mhz sound systems that are installed in each one of these temporary lecterns. Long-story-short: sleep has been hard to come by recently. I am thanking the heavens above that it will be over by nightfall but even that doesn't seem quite soon enough.

You Can’t Buy Anything On-Line in Korea, Mr. Foreigner

I've talked about it before but Brendon Carr in his Korea Law Blog throws in his two cents on the matter.

St. Patrick's Day

Much to the surprise of my students (and myself) St. Patrick's Day does exist in Korea -- even Japan, Singapore and China had some green festivities this weekend. Sadly Mokpo did not have any Irish representation so instead we'll have to live vicariously through the Seoul bloggers who were in full blogging force; there's even this IAK promotional video (from the many) using images from last year's parade:

Valentine's Day

Valentine's day in Korean kicks off a trilogy of consumer love holidays. Now given the recent tragedy, the national sense of mourning, and the hyperbole abuse in the national media I don't know how much attention Valentine will get this year so if you've haven't experienced it in Korea you can easily use Pepero Day as a basis. It's commercially driven but without the corporate monopoly.

February 14th has a Sadie Hawkins twist where it's the women who give chocolate and other presents to the men in their lives (co-workers included). The sequel, one month later on March 14th, is White Day. There, men buy expressions of love and affection for their women, in theory returning the chocolate favors with white chocolate. And then there's the reject day on April 14th, reserved for everybody who didn't hook up to commiserate their patheticness over a bowl of 짜장면 (aka Jjajangmyeon), long noodles in a soybean sauce. Despite oozing with irony the name Black Day actually refers to the black sauce in 짜장면 instead of a westerners perception of despair. Fortunately you don't have to be single to enjoy 짜장면; it's available year round.

Valentine chocolates on the other hand are apparently becoming an endangered commodity:

The stock market plunge and concern on inflation seems to be inducing lovers to cut expenditure on Valentine's Day gifts. Imports of expensive chocolates, an icon of Valentine's Day presents for loved ones here, have decreased, substituted for by cheap candies, the Korea Customs Service said Wednesday.

BombEnglish

BombEnglish is another project by the Metropolitician that offers podcasts of English conversation accompanied by a complete transcript and glossary.

I caught it on its 3rd episode, Foreign Perspectives on Korea and just this episode alone makes me want to use it. Unfortunately my students' English is not quite prime time and I feel like they won't like it unless I've some how made it into a game or bribe them with candy. On the flip side I'm sure that this would work well for my mythical teacher workshops since (at least) the teachers can study the podcast and transcript as homework and come prepared to class for comprehension activities.

I should clarify mythical: My teacher workshops are often canceled by the head of the English department despite the interest expressed to me by other teachers. The results is sporadic conversations based on chance meetings in the main staff room. On one hand I like this arrangement since it's one less thing to plan, but on the other hand my conscious is telling me I'm shirking my responsibilities as a cultural ambassador. BombEnglish is a good start in a new year's resolution to try something more structured and introduce the teachers to Korean issues faced by ex-pat community.

But regardless of my efforts the podcasts serve as excellent primers for foreigners looking to live in Korea. Podcast #3 definitely puts together something that I've felt but couldn't articulate well enough:

Michael: Exactly. And the, it’s all from perspective because no one makes policies or plans, it seems, based on looking as foreigners as people living here as opposed to “Oh, you’re all tourists! We’ll smile for you, we’ll accept your money, but we don’t think of you as neighbors.”

Jennifer: It kinds of reminds me. I grew up in Oregon and for awhile Oregon had this sort of crazy motto for the tourists. Went something along the lines of “Welcome to Oregon, have a great visit and then go home!” I’m very loosely paraphrasing it but the gist was thanks for the visit, now go on your way.

Michael: Well I think that the Korean, the Korean unstated motto is “Thanks for coming to Korea, spend a lot of money, and please leave.”

Jennifer: I don’t know that it’s so much “please leave” as it is “Eh? You would want to stay?”

The Great Korean Bank Customer Service Questionnaire

I've mentioned once or twice in the past about my frustration with Korean banks, but the JoongAng Daily has recently confirmed what I've largely suspected: Korea banks have separate and discriminatory policies when dealing with foreigners living in Korea:

According to Lee, each local bank has different policies on issuing cards. Some banks issue the debit card without any restriction on foreigners while others limit the amount of money a foreigner can withdraw with the card to 10,000 dollars on a given trip out of the country. Many banks simply won’t issue any debit card to foreigners.

While researching this article I came across a KEB survey via Korea4Expats. It's a real nice effort and explains why the bank was tied for first place in Teaching Kimchi's bank poll. However I'm still sold on CitiBank for it's almost scary global dominance.

설날

설날 (aka Seollal) is on the 1st day of the 1st month of the lunar calendar and is may be more recognizable as Lunar New Year in Korea. Like Chuseok, the pre and post days are also included in the holiday and all are family intensive days that drives every Korean to return home in a country wide mass migration. The celebrated ghost towns phenomenon is in full effect and so it's a great time to wander the streets and see some sites, provided they're open.

But it's also the day where all Koreans age a year:

Several East Asian cultures, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, share a traditional way of counting a person's age. Newborns start at one year old, and each passing of a New Year, rather than the birthday, adds one year to the person's age; this results in people being between 1–2 years older in Asian reckoning than in the Western version. Today this system is commonly used in Koreans' daily life, with exceptions to the legal system and newspaper.

So happy birthday, Korean people.

Google Reader

I've had some questions about my blog roll, that list of blogs in the side column of the page. Mine is different and some people like it and want to use the same style. Unfortunately I can't take credit for the style since the blog roll is generated by my Google Reader account.

Since I set this blog up I've come to fully embrace our Google overlords. I search with Google, I blog with Google, I translate with Google, I even schedule, map, mail, and chat with Google,
and thanks to $1.65Bn I now use Google to watch naughty videos. I'm starting to wonder if I have a problem -- I mean with Google, not with watching naughty videos. And of course, I use Google Reader as my news reader to keep track of other blog-sandboxes that deal with with Mokpo, Seoul, and other parts of Korean life.

As a news reader in itself Google Reader is okay and has some faults. But it works well for me since I'm a big fan of thin client computing; I use the same application over multiple computers during the course of the day and don't want the hassle of re-synching (or re-installing) every time I log on. Another feature (and the one that connects Google Reader to my side panel) is the 'add a blogroll to your site' function that spits out code that you can add to a blank panel in your blog layout. The only extra work that I've done is to organize blogs into various categories by tagging them with labels, like Mokpo, Korea, Seoul, etc.

Happy Together

Ms Parker sums up all of the cliche elements of Korean TV perfectly. I've talked about some examples in the past but I good one is a show that I've been calling the The Five Stooges since it seems to always involve the same collection of wacky Korean men performing mild, jackass-light stunts. I finally watched enough of it today to catch a commercial break and learned its true name, Happy Together. Apparently it's gone through various incarnations over the years:

The hosts('MC's', called by Korean popular culture) of Season 1 were comedian Shin Dong-yeop (신동엽), once K-pop artist Yoo Sung-jun (유승준), who was quickly replaced by entertainer Lee Hyo-ri (이효리). Later in 2003, the two were replaced by comedian Kim Je-dong (김제동), and comedian Yu Jae-seok (유재석), who continued the run till the end.

In Season 2 (Happy Together Friends), it was hosted by Yoo Jae Suk, entertainer Tak Jae Hoon (탁재훈) and Kim Ah-joong (김아중). Tak Jae Hoon and Kim Ah Joong was replaced by Lee Hyo-ri, and comedian Lee Soo-geun (이수근, served as a joint panel) came along later. In 2007, Lee Hyo-ri was replaced by K-pop singer Eugene (유진), and Lee Soo-geun was replaced by comedian Shin Bong-seon (신봉선).

In Season 3 (Happy Together: Let's Go To School; which the name was changed to Happy Together Season 3), it was hosted by Yu Jae-seok, comedian Park Myeong-su (박명수, a long-time colleague of Yu Jae-seok since co-hosting the Muhan Dojeon), actor Park Joon-kyu (박준규), and Shin Bong-seon. Recently, Park Joon-kyu has left the show.

I actually found part of the episode that I was watching, where the five stooges and special guest friends play the game where they are trapped in a sauna and must karaoke their way to freedom:

Or this game where they all are forced to where school girl uniforms and karaoke their way to freedom:

Or this game where they are all forced to karaoke their way to freedom from the dreaded falling platters from the sky:

And of course there are fan sites.

A Year In Mokpo's Readability Test

Via a Geek in Korea (man, I love that guy) I now know that A Year In Mokpo's readability level is...

My awesomeness being validated by a automated process is cool enough, but apparently I am alone in looking down upon my fellow Mokponians:

Adventures from around the World mapleandbrownsugar Kyre Ms Parker in Korea! Neal's Space Rushings Abroad! shan_korea What's happening and what's crappening... Who knows where I'll be tomorrow...
Flight Korean Adventure The Scroll of Bifurcating Considerations
Bound for Korea Koozmac in Korea Korea Light Enough to Travel
Garrett Gone Korean
Mokpo, ROK City

Korean Orphans

Recently a Dutch diplomat and his wife made headlines when they returned their adoptive Korean daughter:

HONG KONG ― A high-ranking Dutch diplomat and his wife, who adopted a 4-month-old Korean girl in 2000 when he was posted in Korea, gave up the child last year, officials here said.

Now, officials here are looking for someone to take care of the school-age child.

The girl, Jade, is still a Korean citizen because the adoptive parents, whose names were not released, never applied to give her Dutch citizenship, according to an official at the Hong Kong Social Welfare Department.

She doesn’t speak any Korean. She speaks only English and Cantonese, according to people close to her.

And she doesn’t have Hong Kong residency status, either.

The Hong Kong Social Welfare Department, where the Dutch diplomat left Jade in September last year, has had responsibility for her ever since, the official said.

Jade has been in Hong Kong’s foster care system, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.

The paper also reported that the diplomat, who has a senior management role at a European consulate in the city, said “the adoption had gone wrong,” without any further explanation.

“It’s just a very terrible trauma that everyone’s experiencing,” he told the paper. “I don’t have anything to say to the public. It is something we have to live with.”

The diplomat’s wife thought she was infertile when the couple adopted the Korean girl in 2000, the official said. After they moved to Hong Kong, the wife got pregnant. They now have two children of their own.

The story has fueled anger among the Korean immigrant community in Hong Kong, which criticized the diplomat couple for “irre-sponsibly renouncing their custody of a child who’d been with them more than six years after delaying the naturalization process in Netherlands for years.”

A couple of potential families in Hong Kong showed interest in the adoption, but are struggling to complete the adoption process because of the strict legal qualifications here, Koreans familiar with the incident said.

The Korean Consulate in Hong Kong said it is aware of the situation.

“We could send her back to a Korean orphanage, but she’s been away from Korea for so long, and it would be very difficult for her to re-adapt in Korea,” said Jeong Byeong-bae, a consul of the South Korean consulate in Hong Kong. “So it is for the best under the circumstances to find a Korean family in Hong Kong.”

I understand the anger coming from everybody, but since the various takes are giving me flashbacks of another child in limbo I'm more curious about the parent's decision rather than simplynjoining the bandwagon of eople calling for their heads. After some researching on why people return their adoptive chilren I found this story where the adoptive child turned out to be harmful to the younger children:

The agency didn't tell us about his mental health issues, and they knew he had them. It took us 4 years to figure out that he had Reactive Attachment Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, Fetal Alcohol Effects, and Mood Disorders. By the time we educated ourselves and recognized what was going on, it was too late. Our son was raging in our home everyday and had tried to kill his little sister twice in front of me. This started many trips to the ER and to psyche hospitals. Two in one month.

I found some other takes on the Dutch story but the additional information is minimal. One give the girl's age as 8, the outpouring of support from the Hong Kong Korean community and even this bit of trivia:

In Korea, parents cannot return adopted children, but no such law exists in Hong Kong.

At first read it seems like a laughable sentences. I mean, it poses the questions: Is this incident so crazy that the Hong Kong courts haven't had any history to create a precedent or did Korea experience a time where Korean children were being returned to the orphanages. The outpouring of support from the Korean community should be a good sign about how Koreans feel about adoption but then I find this in a post by the happy couple in Kimchi and Cornbread:

The wrong is this: single mothers in Korea are forced by societal norms to either give up their baby for adoption or have an abortion (Korea has one of the highest abortions in the world). This equates to 6 children per day being put up for adoption, despite the country's low birth rate (the 4th lowest in the world.)

But Koreans do not and will not (for the most part) adopt other Koreans. Bloodlines are important in Korea. So important that they would never adopt another child not related to their family. Especially if it were a boy, who would one day receive his parents' inheritance.

It doesn't shed light on the discrepency in law, ut it's interesting that the attitude of Korea Koreans kind of contradicts the offers of help from the Hong Kong Koreans. Then again, the cynical side of me see the Hong Kong incident as something more to do with uniting against the white devil motif rather than show of support for a girl who has been tainted in the eyes of Koreans.

In the same Google search I also I find that it is possibly illegal to volunteer at an orphanage thanks to an interpreation highlighted by last year's Babopalooza Incident. In fact volunteering for anything isn't as easy for a foreigner:

Han Heek-young, who works at the information desk at the Seoul Help Center for Foreigners, had also never heard of non-Koreans getting in trouble for volunteering.

"I’ve never even before thought that it could be illegal," she said.

When she called the Immigration Bureau on Friday, officials would not provide her information if she would not tell the nationality of the inquirer. She said officials said the question was important because foreigners for these purposes are divided into two groups: Chinese and everybody else.

Officials said foreigners were less likely to have problems if their volunteer work was unrelated to their paid work, Han said. For example, English teachers volunteering in kindergartens are likely to be suspected of taking money under the table for English instruction.

When Han spoke to immigration officials on Monday, they told her that foreigners should have no trouble volunteering, as long as no money is exchanged, even to recoup costs.

It's somewhat related (if only by the fact that it matches the key words of 'foreigner adoption korea') but it's good to know for the Mokpo foreigners who do help out at the local orphanages.

Update: The story has evolved the past week; Monsters & Critics has this account from the maid:

The woman, who has requested not to be named, worked for the Dutch vice-consul Raymond Poeteray and his wife Meta in Hong Kong and when the family was based in Jakarta in 2002.

She said she thought it strange that the girl, now eight, was so quiet.

'They did not treat her the same way as the son. There was not the love there,' the maid told The Post.

And this analysis:

However, the couple issued a declaration which was published in the Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf Thursday that rejected the accusations published in the Hong Kong media.

The Poeterays said their eight-year-old daughter Jade, adopted in 2000 as a four-month-old, was suffering from what they called 'commitment anxiety' and that they were advised by the Chinese Social Services to 'place her in foster care temporarily.'

They wrote that 'contrary to what has been written in the media, we do not want to get rid of our daughter. We never even considered giving her up.'

Mokpo's Novelty Plane

It's been well documented that I'm a map nerd. When I first got to Mokpo I immediately set about using Google's Satelitte photos to compensate for the touristy map that I was given:

View Larger Map
Thanks to great Korean Internet Controversy I took the effort to learn some Korean (via my language tools) and I've managed to move away from my Google maps and fully embrace Naver maps. But Graham over The Scroll of Bifurcating Considerations has found what I thought was too nerdy to talk about: The Novelty Plane. While it's old news to me (Google maps tells me that I found it June 2nd), Graham goes for gold with his analysis:

These measurements put it WELL within the realm of a normal jet airliner. The length is consistent with the larger models of the Boeing 767, as is the fuselage. What I haven't been able to match to my liking is the wingspan; 134ft for a 201ft long plane is a bit short. That gives this a wing:length ratio of about 2/3 (.0667). Most jet airliners I looked at have a ratio closer to .8333. So, the mystery lives on. What jet has these specifications? and more importantly, why is it perched on top of a building?

Korea Police

There's an unfortunate stereotype that the police in Korea are corrupt, inefficient and just plain slow. The stereotype is apparently live and well; Micheal Williams (The Metropolitician) got arrested for reporting harassment to the police. His exchange (in Korean) was recorded and in the comments he warns:

And if you're a foreigner, document, record, grab witnesses, and make sure your ass is covered. Imagine last night WITHOUT conversational Korean skills?

I'm one of the foreigners who has no conversation skills and unfortunately would be utterly useless; I wouldn't even think to record the incident.

It's funny how this incident contradicts the official policy of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency. Of course a little digging gives us this gem from the FAQ:

I want to report a foreigner for misconduct (sex trade and trafficking, or gambling).

If you witness an incident involving a foreigner or know an foreigner who was involved in misconduct(sex trade and trafficking, gambling) you can report that matter to cyber 112 center of Seoul metropolitan police agency, visit the nearest police station or call 112 on your phone.

Winter Heating

For some reason Koreans seem proud of their four seasons. Maybe it's pride is too strong a word, but Koreans at my school take extra care to inform me of the special days when one season starts and the other season begins. It's a little bit eerie since the only other people that I know who do this are Wiccans.

Of course conflicts occurs when the foreigner perceives a season starting too late or (in my case) too soon. For example, no matter how cold it gets in November the school will not turn on the heating system until December.

Although the temperatures are approaching the freezing point, Koreans do not push the little button that magically warms the room. Whether the venue be school, work, a store, or a restaurant, Koreans are either completely indifferent to temperature preference or everyone is too cheap to warm up the air to be a little more comfortable. It kind of reminds me of my Dad and how he wouldn't turn on the furnace until December, but to the extreme! "Just put on a sweater." Sorry Dad. It is so cold inside that no one bothers taking off their winter jackets once they get inside.

For a little perspective this isn't a case of bring a sweater to work, my school is so poorly insulated that there are literally gaps in the windows where the wind whistles through.; my average English classroom temperature is 10C. I walk around the school to find that windows are left wide open. Given all of the other examples of Korean Komfort, I can't understand the mentality towards winter heating. I'm not alone questioning this logic:

First off, I can't feel my toes and am super cold because there is no real heating system in my school and I have to wear open toe slippers at work. There's only heating in the office and maybe the classroom, not sure if the heat is just from the number of students haha. The rest of the school is freezing and as everyone complains about the temperature, pretty much every window is wide open. Sigh...my friends and I have been saying that when in Korea, take anything that seems the most illogical and apply here because that's how it seems to work haha.

Mondegreen

Mondegreen "is the mishearing of a phrase as a homophone or near-homophone in such a way that it acquires a new meaning." It's a pretty common occurence to experience it in ones own language. It even happens in a Korean context when some people hear I love only squid instead of I love only you. But as Ellison points out fun starts happening when the phenomenon crosses two different languages, courtesy of the genius of Buffalax:

Korean Driver's License.

In case you ever wanted to see one, Joseph Buchman has posted his online at It'll be like this forever:
I don't know how safe it is to post your driver's license online but take it for what you will.

Wikia

Wikia is a like wikipedia, but not. I don't quite understand how it's different, but it's another place on the internet where you can find informaiton about Mokpo, like:

• Mokpo is located on the southwestern tip of Korea in the province of Jeollanam-do.
• Area: 47.24 km²
• Population: 245,482(2001)
• Pop. density: 5,196.5 people/km²

In fact that's all the information that you can find, making it as useful as...well nothing. It has less information than Wikipedia's Side Bar on Mokpo. It does have a list of foreigners with cyworld blogs and foreigners with non-cyworld blogs but nothing that's not being done already at Galbijim, The Korean Blog List, and everywhere else on the Internet.