Periphery

I find myself struggling with my list of the best things about Korea.

This doesn't mean what you might think it means. Korea has plenty of great qualities mixed in with some bad ones, much like anywhere else. The problem is that I keep trying to write about deep cultural aspects — yes, even deeper than food or pop music. As I try to explain culture here, it becomes more and more apparent that I know nothing about it. I've observed it, sure, living here for 18 months, but the life of foreigners in Korea is totally peripheral. I don't talk like a Korean. (I don't even speak Korean.) I don't look like a Korean. I don't think like a Korean. My perspective is entirely different in such a basic way that I'm at a loss even to describe it.

Maybe foreigners who stick to their foreign communities feel like this in every country. Probably, even. I feel like in Korea this alien feeling is further amplified. Korea, like Japan, is one of the few places on the planet where the borders of a country align with a nation of people — a group that all identify with each other, not divided based on history, culture or ethnicity. All the emphasis here seems to fall on sameness. Even fashion and hairstyles all fit in the same category, following the trends beyond anything I've noticed in the States. So much sameness makes every little difference stand out ten fold — and we do, all foreigners here.

You never get used to the staring. You train yourself not to notice it unless it's too blatant, but the comments and conspicuous glances of passers-by are always there. Some of it is innocent enough. Children look up at you, eyes wide with nerves, before calling "Hello!" Old women, hunch-backed and weathered-skinned, call "ipuda" (beautiful) as I pass. (It's not just me, Caucasian looks, pale skin and light eyes are the sought-after standard of beauty here, along with being tall and thin.) Some of it is obnoxious, like teenagers screaming "hello" and then erupting into cackles, or lewd lingering gazing from drunk old men. Sometimes it's frightening and offensive, like when a Korean man on the street asked me for sex, assuming that foreign women are easy, or that I was one of the Russian hookers you sometimes encounter here.

I have enjoyed my time teaching at Yeodo Middle School, but I find that when I'm not teaching a class, I spend most of it alone, or interacting with other Americans and Brits through cyberspace. Of the school's 800+ inhabitants, I am the only non-Korean. That's what I signed up for, not a cry for pity, just one more example of isolation.

The attention can be nice sometimes, a friend of mine loves living like a "D-list celebrity" here. I confess it's flattering that strangers call me beautiful when I trudge to the convenience store in my glasses on an unwashed Sunday morning, but I'm ready to get back to fitting in.

I had a conversation with a 15-year expat in a bar in Tokyo last October. He told me he'd been so excited about Japan when he first arrived, and so successful in business and learning Japanese, but he'd never been able to integrate. You'll always be a foreigner here, he said. Go home. I never expected to stay here, to become Korean, but I miss fitting into a community larger than the band of 100 foreigners in Yeosu. Reverse culture shock or not, I know in three weeks coming home will feel just right.

Swimming with sharks

Two months ago I swam with the sharks in the biggest tank at Busan Aquarium. Here's an account of the experience:

The Busan Aquarium is buried under the wide, yellow strip of sand that makes up Haeundae Beach just before the landscape drags the eye upward to the tops of the hi-rise hotels across the way. I’ve been here four times in my lengthy tenure in Korea and this 65-degree day in the middle of May is by far the warmest I’ve seen. Heather, Tess and I are waiting for Michael Jones, shark dive instructor extraordinaire, to show us how to survive an hour in the shark tank, an experience we've each paid 90,000krw for (less than $90). I’m wistfully remembering the potato burrito with real guacamole and the clean, minty flavor of my mojito from the Mexican beach bar the night before.

Michael, a portly Canadian who’s been in Korea 15 years and leading dives at the Busan Aquarium for 7, turns up on time and leads us down the stairs into a classroom in the belly of the aquarium. He talks about Lemon Sharks chewing on fish, human skulls found in 200 kg groupers just like the ones in the tank, equalizing air pressure, and how many fingers we’re to use when we wave at the school children on the other side of the glass. We sign papers saying we won’t sue Michael or the Busan Aquarium if the Nurse Sharks (better referred to as Sand Tiger Sharks when picking up dudes at the bar that night, Michael advises) decide to stick their jagged, curved teeth into us.

We wrestle with the thick rubber of our wetsuits, tugging, pinching and rolling them until we’re panting. Then we wait, looking in small tanks in the training and treatment area above the surface of the big tank, guessing how a three-legged starfish being nursed back to health by aquarium employees lost its missing limbs.

Now the rest of our gear. Masks first. We hold them to our faces and suck in through our noses. If they stay without us holding them, we have a good fit. Next, weight belts. We place the orange strips of fabric dotted with heavy yellow squares on the ground before us, swing them behind us and hoist them up around our waists. Last we get our air tanks, nestled in huge black backpacks with tubes and regulators spilling out of them. After Michael helps us strap them on we’re reeling from their weight, crouched slightly forward to avoid over balancing and falling back. We traipse between tanks of sick animals, narrowly avoiding tripping over water pipes on our way to the training lock. Today we share it with four sick Eagle Rays with pitch black tails nearly the same color as the floor of the lock, so we shuffle along the bottom, precarious because of our tanks, trying to avoid treading on the patients.

“Now my favorite part of leading these dives,” Michael jokes. “Divers, on your knees.”

We laugh and kneel in the lock, water up to our elbows, grateful it takes some of the weight of our tanks off our backs. Following Michael's instructions, we lean right and swing out our arms to capture the tubes of our dive regulators, slip them into our mouths and begin breathing tank air. We review hand motions for OK, go up, go down, come here, there’s a problem, stop. We ease into it, first breathing with our eyes above water, then lying on the surface looking at the shells and bits of kelp on the bottom. Finally, we sink down, all in a line with Michael in front of us. He motions to us in turn, asking first if we’re “OK,” then having us demonstrate removing and replacing our regulators and emptying our masks in case a little water seeps in as we dive.

None of us can do this quite right at first. The combination of letting in some water to demonstrate, then pressing the tops of our masks into our foreheads and breathing out our noses is somehow complex when we try it underwater with regulators in our mouths. Tess panics, wide eyed, looking defeated and terrified. She’s embarrassed more than she should be. We’re all a little scared. Breathing underwater through a tube goes against the most basic instincts. We should be unnerved and we are. Michael holds her hand, tells her she’ll be alright. Then, once we’ve all adequately de-watered our masks, he tells her she executed a demonstration-quality mask emptying in the eyes of the Professional Association of Dive Instructors and makes her his partner for the dive.

Finally, it’s time to really get wet. I lead our shuffle-kneeling journey across the lock, out the gate and onto the clear plastic tunnel filled with spectators. Michael tosses me the rope and tells me to start descending the side of the tunnel into the tank. Lean back, keep your legs a little apart for balance, equalize every two fists or so, he reminds me. I lean. I set my feet a little more than shoulder width apart. I lower myself slowly. Right fist. Left fist. Breathe. Pinch my nose and blow softly to equalize the pressure in my ears. Repeat. Breathe. The pressure builds. I wave at Michael, point to my ear. Something’s wrong. I look up to avoid the glass-bottomed boat touring around the surface, then raise myself a bit and try again. Again. Equalized and the pain in my ear subsides. Two more fists down it returns. Equalize. Right fist. Left fist. Equalize. Trouble again. I blow on my pinched nostrils four times before I equalize. Right fist. Left fist. On the bottom now, feeling the crunchy white gravel below my bootie’d feet for a moment before my ears are screaming again. I wave to Michael. Something’s wrong. He hoists me up to his shoulder. I try to equalize. Almost there. Once more and I’m alright. Back on the bottom my ear still hurts. Michael guides me to my knees to wait for Tess and Heather. I try to equalize again but the ache persists, so I get used to it.

My surroundings make a worthy distraction. Currents and the weight of my tank throw me off balance as I float-swim-stumble through the cool, thick water. Sharks dart past me – the tank holds twenty or so – their mouths overflowing with sharp, white teeth that are scattered across the rocks and the bottom of the tank as they shed them. They swim toward me, staring, and past with their eyes sticking to me. Families on the other side of the glass flash peace signs and wave at me. We snap each other’s photos as the sharks or schools of fish swim between us. My ears still ache. My mouth is dry as I focus on breathing slowly, steadily, constantly through my regulator, just as Michael instructed. The mask restricts my vision to the oval in front of me. When Heather points to the shark just beside me or above my head I have to twist unnaturally to see what she’s looking at. I hear the jangling of Michael’s bell ringing to catch our attention. He signals to us to stay together, to follow him closely. Tess, Heather and I pass the underwater camera back and forth as we float around each other waving at children beyond the glass, staring down the sharks, gazing back into the tank. We try and fail to keep our hands close to our bodies, remembering that the animals are hand-fed by scuba divers and we shouldn't confuse them unless we want to wind up armpit-deep in the mouth of a grouper.

Then, suddenly as it began, the dive is over. Michael beckons me back to the rope. I pull myself up to the top of the tank, remembering to keep my mask on and my regulator in when I inflate my buoyancy control apparatus at the top so that if I slip I won’t fall all the way to the bottom and if I do at least I’ll be able to see and breathe while I’m there. Michael calls me a Teacher’s Pet for my trouble. I s’pose it fits.

Food

After a year and a half in Asia, I would sell my soul for the delicious, spicy familiarity of a Chipotle burrito. That said, Korea has some seriously mouth-watering delicacies that I will doubtless miss when I leave. Here are a few of my favorites:

Kimchi: Ask almost any Korean person his or her favorite food and you're probably going to hear "kimchi" as the answer. It's the national dish, a super food filled with vitamins that aids with digestion, it's supposed to keep you happy and healthy if you eat it every day -- the more you scarf down, the better. Any table at any restaurant in all of Korea will have at least one plate of spicy pickled cabbage coated with chili sauce. Kimchi comes in hundreds of varieties and is at its best when made at home by a loving grandmother. Women get together to make kimchi each winter, a long and laborious process of mixing vegetables and spices in a large bowl with increasingly tired arms. Last November about twenty other foreigners and I helped a friend to make kimchi in her bar.

Korean Barbecue: Name your variety: samgyupsal, galbi, duck, chicken, eel -- all of it is fabulous. This dish is grilled on a barbecue set into the table over either a gas heat source or a bucket of charcoals nestled next to restaurant patrons' toes -- like most Korean food, this stuff is best enjoyed sitting on the floor with your legs crossed under the table. The server places a slab of meat on the grill where it pops and sizzles next to mushrooms, onions, garlic and kimchi. When it's looking browned and just a little bit crispy, you take out tongs and scissors to dice it into bite-sized pieces. Next, you take a leaf of lettuce and spread it across the palm of your hand, then drop a bit of meat into the center with your chopsticks. Add a scoop of spicy red bean paste called samjeong, a few veggies, a bit of kimchi and a slice of garlic, then wrap the whole thing with your lettuce leaf and stuff it into your mouth, all in one bite.

Chamchi jjigae: This spicy tuna soup sustained me all last fall and into the winter. It comes out boiling and bubbling in a little black cauldron, hot enough to scald your entire mouth, as I discovered the first time I tried it. The soup is orange with hot spices and full of mushrooms, cabbage, onions and tuna. It even has oval-shaped slices of rice cake, just to prove it's really Korean. Chamci chiggae always comes with a little cup of rice that I mix in with the soup to give it some density and protect myself from burning my mouth by eating it too fast.

Halloween rolls: It coud be argued that these are not really Korean, but I've only ever found them here so I'm still mentioning them. These sushi-esque rolls are served wrapped in seaweed and rice dotted with sesame seeds. Inside is the best part -- a surprisingly delicious crunchy and creamy combination of pumpkin and fried chicken.

Mandu: Korea's dumpling. These doughy balls stuffed wtih a blend of meat, veggies and rice noodles can be enjoyed in many ways. They come in soups, with ramen, stuffed with kimchi, the size of your thumb or of two fists together, boiled or fried. All are delicious and worth trying, especially dipped in the spicy sauce that accompanies them in restaurants.

Juk: Korean cuisine offers no better way to warm up from the inside out on a frigid winter day than with a heaping bowl of this rice porridge. The hearty and creamy rice has meat and vegetables mixed in. I go for tuna vegetable, but there are more interesting varieties such as kimchi octopus for the adventuresome. The meal comes in a bowl the size of your face with an array side dishes to mix in for extra flavor: spiced, dried beef, kimchi, spicy red paste. The meal usually finishes with cool plum tea to cleanse the palate.

Chamchi Doep-bab: Spicy red stew of tuna, vegetables and kimchi, served mixed with strips of dried seaweed and steamed white rice.

Kimbap: Korea's answer to fast food. These rolls look like sushi, but they're filled with pickled raddish, ham, fish paste, carrots and other vegetables, all wrapped in rice and seaweed. It comes in a variety of flavors with stuffings like tuna, kimchi, even fried pork. One of my favorites is the classic kimbap wrapped in a blanket of scrambled egg.

Soju: This cheap (about a dollar a bottle) strong (20% to 45% alcohol) clear liquor is a staple of Korean culture. Some drink it straight, others mix it with cola, cider (like Sprite), fruit cocktails or even with beer to make a drink called "so-mek" (beer is called "mekju) in Korean). You'll find a bottle or five on just about every restaurant table in the country, and crowds of old men drunk off it stumbling home each night through any area with bars.

K-pop and Noraebang

In the past year and a half I've complained about Korea a lot. Pushy old women, homicidal taxi drivers, people peeing and spitting all over the sidewalks, pervasive vanity and materialism, and an over abundance of multi-colored neon lights are just a few of the things that have irritated me. But more on that later. For now I want to remember the good stuff. Whatever its faults, I've had fun here, learned about myself and the world, and grown up a good deal. Coming here was one of the best choices I ever made, or at least one I'm happy with, so to remember this temporary country of mine well and part on a high note, I present Korea's greatest hits.

I'll start with music, in honor of my little url up there. I have had some great musical experiences in Korea thanks to K-pop and noraebang.

Bring on the distaste from true musicians and musical connossieurs. I do not contend that either K-pop or noraebang has done anything for music, but both are so much fun I can't help loving them.

K-pop is the abbreviation for Korean pop music. It's arguably even more contrived, cutesy, advertising-driven and looks-focused than its international counterparts. The outfits are over the top, the singers are constantly featured on reality television and almost every band member has admittedly had some sort of plastic surgery. Groups record lengthy jingles for new cellphones and release them as hit singles. (Take BigBang and 2ne1's Lollipop, advertising the Lollipop cell phone, for example.) Despite the overt commercialism, K-pop comes out with some very catchy tunes, some ridiculous costumes (that one inspired my Halloween costume last year), and music videos with soap-opera dramatic storylines. Sometimes they even pull out a monkey playing guitar. From the week I arrived in Korea, I have loved it. At first I pretended I listened to it because knowing the latest happenings of Rain and Lee Hyo Ri would get me in good with my students. It's true, there's nothing a 14-year-old middle school student loves better than sharing an oggle of CN Blue with her teacher, but the student bonding thing was all pretext. My love of catchy K-pop tunes is pure -- and why shouldn't it be?

Now there are those among the vast 외국인 ("waygookin," Korean for foreigner) community who would debate K-pop's position among Korea's best, but no one would challenge the supreme awesomeness of noraebang. Noraebang divides into two Korean words, 노래 or norae meaning "song" and 방 or bang meaning "room." Traditional noraebang-ing happens around 3 a.m. as the conclusion to a night out. Along with 5-10 of your friends, you go to one of the plentiful noraebangs and rent out a room by the hour for about $20. (My favorite is called My Sweet Show and has glowing floors, velvet couches, crystal chandeliers, swirling colored lights and plentiful teddy bears.) From there you search out songs in a huge book and punch in the corresponding numbers, then belt them out with no one but your closest friends to witness whatever crimes you may commit against tone, key or pitch. I never truly appreciated Journey, Madonna, or Total Eclipse of the Heart or even The Killers until I met noraebang. I fear that a night out in the States, or any other country for that matter, may never compare.

Tell me you love me

Rarely a day passes when I don't see a pair of young Koreans decked out in matching couples garb: each one sporting a t-shirt with half a heart on it, or with the very same logo and design. The lingerie shops on every corner feature displays of matching couples underwear, the tight boxer briefs just as lacy, pink or leopard-patterned as the bra and panties intended for the female half of the couple. (It's worth noting that Koreans don't believe homosexuality exists in their country.) Downtown areas have contrived date spots -- little cafes with pink walls, sheer ribbons, flowers everywhere, sometimes even seats suspended from the ceiling like porch swings. Every advertisement shows pictures of a happy couple. Shows following stories of heart-wrenching, undying love at first sight are the most popular on TV. My single 28-year-old co-workers constantly lament their lack of boyfriends. When i admitted to being single at a work dinner, the entire table of teachers raised their glasses to the hope that one day, I might find a boyfriend.

In short, Korea is obsessed with romance and all of it must be serious and all about love. At times I can be a little too easily intrigued, too. So here are my top 5 ridiculous Korean dating adventures:

5. Jun Chan: One weekend evening I was walking by myself to meet some friends when I noticed a cute Korean boy keeping pace with me. I looked over and he said "hi." We chatted briefly and I asked where he was going: "I'm following you to ask for your number." I laughed and gave it to him. We went for dinner the next day. I showed up late to find him wearing a backpack and holding an English textbook. "I studied all day so I could talk to you," he said. I grinned. We went to the restaurant and struggled through conversation in his admittedly not so good English. No love connection because we could barely speak to each other, but his constant looking up words in his book and his phone dictionary (Korean-English dictionaries come standard on just about every phone here) and his assertions that he was "very gentleman" each time he filled my water glass was so adorable that I couldn't stop smiling. He said again and again that I was beautiful and he had plans to tell me funny stories next time. He even walked me home all the way across the neighborhood. But then he never called me again. I guess that Korean love obsession means you pull out all the stops, even when you're not feeling it.

4. P: This boy will remain semi-anonymous because, though things didn't work out between us, he's a nice guy who doesn't deserve to be mocked. But the story's too funny not to tell. One weekend when I'd been seeing P for a couple weeks we went to a baseball game in Gwangju with a group of friends. Out at the bar he decided to get as drunk as possible with his best friends. I laughed along, but got more and more annoyed. That annoyance reached a breaking point when the three of them dropped their pants in the street and started smashing signs and jumping on cars. In their underwear. Mortified and unsure of what to do, I took off running toward the hotel through the crowds of Koreans wandering Gwangju's downtown shopping and partying area. P, holding up and periodically dropping his pants, chased me, occasionally pausing to high-five a cheering spectator, until he caught up with me in front of a convenience store and tackled me to the pavement.

3. Sung Gyung: The lead-up to the first Korea match in The World Cup was a whirlwind. We spent the afternoon running from one social commitment to the next, all the while searching out t-shirts and light-up horns to make sure we'd fit in with the cheering crowds. By the time we made our way to Longlife to watch the kickoff the bar was packed to brimming with chanting, flag-waving fans, but fortunately, Sung Gyung and two of his friends were nice enough to share their table with us. We yelled, we laughed, we high-fived, we jumped with joy as Korea crushed Greece 2-0. Then we went to noraebang where Sung Gyung charmed me by serenading me with my favorite BigBang song. He wandered off plastered, but texted me how much he liked me. I had to ask Wendy multiple times before I could remember his name, but I rounded out the night thinking he was alright and hoping to see him again. Then began the texting. Seven or eight times a day. Always in poor to incomprehensible English. Often consisting exclusively of confessions of love and how much he missed me. In the most recent message he told me to teach him English and cook him dinner. Ha. I don't cook for anyone.

2. Cheol Hoon: One Friday night I went out to Wabar for a drink with some friends. I thought I was just hanging out and rounding out the night with some noraebang, but actually I'd caught the attention of a neighboring Korean man in his late twenties. The next night I was out late watching the US team get knocked out of The World Cup at Soyouki, and a waiter approached me with a note in decent English. It contained a phone number and a request that I call. I caved to curiosity and sent out a text introducing myself and asking my admirer's name. "I know your name is Julie," he replied. "I saw you Friday night and I heard it." He then told me he'd written the note on Friday but been too shy to give it to me. Then he spotted me on Saturday and followed me into Soyouki, waited an hour to catch me alone, and finally gave up and passed the note to a waiter. Curious, flattered and only slightly creeped out, I agreed to meet him in hopes that someone so interested might also be interesting. And from the second I saw him, I knew he was, but it was too late to flee since he'd seen me, too. Cheol Hoon was carrying a shiny black leather purse and had his hair blown out into a gelled puff around his head. He was wearing an ill-fitting white t-shirt emblazoned with a metallic gold heart, a powder blue blazer and caramel and white patterned bowling shoes. We ran out of things to say to each other after about 10 minutes, but he did not find this discouraging. Instead, after we awkwardly sipped our tea for awhile he took me to a restaurant where he ordered two portions of everything and then refused to eat any of it. I was killing time until my friends finished work and shamelessly taking advantage of the free food, so we rounded out the evening at a bar with his friend who spoke more English than Cheol Hoon but used it almost exclusively to hint that my date should quickly become my boyfriend.

1. Jayden: I met the boy who deserves the top spot at a nightclub in Gwangju about a month after I arrived in Korea. We hit it off at the club so well that he asked for my phone number even though I was returning to Yeosu and he was headed back to university in Seoul at the end of the weekend. For the next few weeks he called or texted me every day -- lavishing an as of yet unknown level of attention on me. Sometimes too much. I remember one night he called me again and again at 3 a.m. until I picked up the phone, all because he'd had a dream that I killed myself because I missed him so badly, and he had to make sure it wasn't true. I did not heed this warning of unwanted intensity to come. About a month after we'd met, when I'd seen him just once in the interim, I headed up to Seoul with a group of friends and made plans to meet up with Jayden. I took the subway across the city alone in a cute new dress, and he met me outside. He took me to a restaurant that served huge, bubbling pots of seafood soup that spat bits of bright orange liquid all over the tables, and all over my new dress. While there he tricked me into eating a crunchy/chewy fish brain that squirted salty fluid into my mouth with each bite. Then we went to a cafe where he fed me each bite of fruit off his chopsticks, despite an uncomfortable audience. Finally, he took me to a bar where he looked deep into my eyes and uttered some of the most ridiculous words I've ever heard from a man I barely knew: "Julie, tell me you love me."

**Disclaimer: like all who date, I do crazy things sometimes, too. But since this is my blog and they're embarrassing, my silly moments are not included in this list.