The Kindness of Strangers

...I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. -Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

When you come right down to it, a lot of us who live here in Korea like to complain about it. Like, a lot. And in some ways that is justfied. It is easy for us to forget that the generation of Koreans my parents' age was born in a third-world country recently liberated from colonial occupation. It's easy for us to forget that people my parents' age lived through a civil war. It's easy for us to forget that while things look and feel and seem modern to us in Seoul, these changes are largely cosmetic and synthetic because economies and nations may modernize that quickly, but cultures do not.

And, make no mistake, the Korean economic rise over the past 50 years has been nothing short of amazing. South Korea allowed itself to be used as an outsourced manufacturing hub for more industrialized and modern countries, only to eventually catch up with and even pass some of those countries (Koreans are fond of mentioning they are the eleventh biggest national economy in the world) and begin outsourcing their manufacturing to countries like the Phillipines and Thailand (Taiwan performed a similar trick). And now, with the global economy based more and more on technology and networks, South Korea seems poised for more growth and a continuance of its past success.

So those of us who live here don't understand why the Korean government feels the need to prop up and defend each national conglomerate, or chaebol, with what seems like excessive protectionism. We don't understand why the Koreans seem willing to reap the rewards of the global economy but unwilling to allow foreigners to come here and succeed. We don't understand why, in the year 2006, a Korean parent will still not correct a Korean child when the child sees someone who isn't Korean, stops, points and says as clear as day, "Look, a foreigner!" as if the non-Korean were a monkey flinging shit in the zoo.

This is the mistake that most of us in the Korean expatriate community make: we assume that because Koreans have achieved a certain level of economic modernity that Korea is also culturally modern. This is not to say that Koreans are culturally primitive; rather, they are culturally traditional. New teachers get off the plane here and they see the Internet in every office and home they visit. They see ATMs, buses, taxis, a subway, movie theaters, airports and hamburger stands, and none of it (okay, not most of it) dilapidated and outmoded; on the contrary, everything seems thoroughly modern. So they forget. All of these things look like home, so they expect the Koreans will act like people would at home. They expect that Koreans will judge them not on the color of their skin (or shape of their eyes) but rather on the content of their character. They expect Koreans to look at other countries, their own country, and the geo-political situation as a whole not with xenophobia or nationalism but rather with cold detachment. They expect Korean people not to have ideas of racial homogeneity, and not to purport to believe that there are no gay people and no AIDS sufferers on the entire Korean peninsula. They expect the carpet to match the drapes. They think the culture should have grown up with the economy.

Korean culture is getting more modern and more global, and at an amazing pace, but we can't expect miracles. I see grandmothers and grandfathers walking around the city and I just think about all that has happened in their lives: Japanese occupation, General MacArthur's Incheon landing, splitting the penninsula between the Chinese and Americans, the Korean War, profound economic growth during the Sixties and Seventies, the assassination of President Park, hosting the 1988 Summer Olympic Games, continuing squabbles and negotiations with the North and hosting the 2002 Soccer World Cup. It would be akin to America having its revolution, Civil War, industrial revolution, Kennedy assassination and the Sixties all in one lifetime. It's a lot to wrap your head around, but I think it gives new meaning to Tom Brokaw's phrase about "The Greatest Generation."

So, yes, I grant you, not all Koreans are savvy or sensitive to the fact that it is somewhat rude to point and stare at other people, be they Korean or not. And yes, at times, and especially at national sporting events, you realize just how rabidly nationalistic the general population still is. But all of that being said, there is no doubt in my mind that these things, and other things like them, are on the way out, and there is no doubt in my mind that there is a total lack of malice in the Korean psyche as a whole.

The reason for this assurance is times like the past, say, 20 hours of my life. My wife and I wanted to put together some bookshelves we had bought but we didn't have a screwdriver and I was too lazy to go all the way to Wal-Mart (no, I haven't changed my mind about big chain stores since my last post) so we went to our local market instead, not really thinking they'd have one but taking a flyer. After using my pidgin-Korean to explain to the store owner what I'm looking for he pulls out his own personal screwdriver from behind the counter and hands it to me. When I tell him I can have it back to him that same night he insists that I keep it for as long as I need it and that he will be just fine without it.

My wife and I then go home to attempt to use the newly-borrowed screwdriver, but it has a flat head and is small while what we really need is large Phillips head. As I am still too lazy to go to Wal-Mart, my wife now goes to another market to ask if she can buy a screwdriver. A second shop owner, completely unrelated to the first, produces another personally owned screwdriver (this time a large Phillips screwdriver) and hands it to my wife. "How much is it?" she asks him in Korean. "Rental," he says in English, "First hour free." My wife comes home, we finish the bookcases and return both sets of screwdrivers within the hour.

The next morning I go to sign up for a membership at a gym which is always excruciating because, frankly, the fitness community hasn't exactly embraced English the way the commerce or education industries have, and while my Korean is serviceable it doesn't quite reach the lofty peaks of "I don't need no goddamn Pilates, just show me where the bench-press is." And so but I walk into this gym (which is just my style, scuzzy and 95% male) and the owner speaks perfect English. He charges me $60 for a month which is exactly what the sign on the front of his store says (try pulling that trick in America, where there is always a goddam $40 "initiation fee"). He shows me where to pick up my membership card, he shows me where to put my locker key, he shows me where my locker is, he tells me to enjoy my workout and then he leaves me alone. Can you beat that? All in perfect English. Later I'm in the shower and an employee I've seen cleaning up around the place starts up a conversation with me. Usually this is doubly awkward because 1) I'm naked and 2) there's a language barrier but, again, this guy speaks flawless English. He assures me that it's perfectly okay to take more than one towel ("several" is the word he uses and I'll be fucked if I can figure out where he picked up that vocabulary) because I'm a big guy. I say that being a big guy is why I'm here and I'm trying to get down to a one-towel body-size. He actually laughs, he actually gets that! And then (I swear to god, I'm not making this up) he asks me how I like the gym and I say I like it plenty and that the price is very good relative to other gyms in the area. And he says, "Yeah, you don't want to pay 100 bucks a month for a place that offers Pilates classes when you never do Pilates." My jaw hits the floor, which is unfortunate, as it probably has athlete's foot on its underside now.

And finally, today at work I have my pre-school class. My English academy made a deal with another daycare/kindergarten thing that we would take their kids on Tuesdays and Thursdays for an hour and a half just to get the kids some light experience with the language and so they're not horrified when they see a pair of round eyes. Obviously this approach backfired when all 225 pounds and bald head of me walked into the room the first day, but the kids have come to treat me as a crazy uncle who they tolerate, and it works most days. Unfortunately today one of the students' grandmother and grandfather come to visit and the kids are really bouncing off the ceiling. They're yelling, they're getting out of their seats, I'm having to reprimand them every five seconds; every teacher has days like this, or at least I like to tell myself they do. Regardless, do Domingo's (I swear to god that's his English nickname for class, and I didn't give it to him) grandparents complain? No. Do they file a complaint with the principal? No. They buy milk for every goddamn kid in the class so that I don't have to teach the last ten minutes, then they buy me coffee to show me how much they appreciate my efforts (which largely involve yelling "sit down" in both English and Korean, for all they saw).

I don't much relish writing autobiographically about my life in Korea, just because my life is prety dull. I'm happily married, I'm content with my job, I go to the gym (not as much as I should) and I'll be resuming my martial arts classes here pretty soon, none of which I think would much fascinate the general public. But the reason I felt like I had to trot out these anecdotes from the not-too-distant-past was just to prove the point that Korean people, I feel, are as good and as kind and as welcoming as anyone, if not more so, and that any shortcomings they do have will be resolved in short order as they become more familiar with their international neighbors and more savvy about intercultural relations.

I bitch as much as anybody here (of course I bitch as much as anybody anywhere) but in the three years I've been here my hosts have taken good care of me, and for that I am truly grateful.

감사합니다.


You can find TMH blogging seven days a week at http://anamericanwerewolfinseoul.blogspot.com/. -ed.