EPT
In three days I leave Seoul to go back to my hometown in Troy, Ohio for the first time in one year. I have not seen any of my family or hometown friends for that long. But being away from loved ones for that long was certainly worth it. During my stay here I have gained an extensive amount knowledge about this country, life in general, and most importantly myself.
Enter South Korea. Before I came to Korea I envisioned it as a shotty country where pro-gamers were social kings, with people all over the place on bicycles, and little kids roaming the street happily with their zealot lunch boxes. That was just a stereotypical image in my head, actually I didn't really put much thought into predicting what it would be like because I had never been to a country outside of the USA. My mind was like a clean slate...I was ready for anything.
I arrived June 23rd 2004 into the cauldron that is summer in Seoul. Many more buildings than I expected. Many more cars than I expected. Wow look at all these cute girls! Ummm why are there no trees? Uhhhh wheres the grass? Why are these asian people wearing FUBU? Jesus Christ these taxi drivers are nuts. Those were just a few of my opening thoughts. After about two hours of travel I made it to the gamer headquarters and was greeted by a multitude of happy, short, enthusiastic, did I mention SHORT? gamers. We lived in 5 room appartment with like 10 people. Never did I imagine 10 guys sleeping in one room the size of my own bedroom in America. WOW did it ever smell like SH**. Welcome to Korea. Houses virtually don't exist. Everyone lives in appartments. Luckily In college I lived in a tiny dorm room with three other guys...I was prepared for it. But going from living in a nice spacey two story house in the states with a four person family to living with nine other guys in a cramped space can be pretty aggrevating for the weak minded.
The language really caught me off guard. Being an ignorant American I was used to nothing except my own beautiful english. I was told before I came that most koreans could speak english, but unless by 'speak english' they mean able to say 'hi' then that is definitely not the case. Even the Koreans who do speak some english, they pronounce the words my differently. They have no "F" they just use the "P" sound for it. Their words cannot end in an "s" sound. Koreans do not say "Protoss," they say "Protossuh." Actually now that I think about it all the endings of their english words that end in consonants is messed up. If they say the word "Fork" they pronounce it as "Porkuh." It was so confusing at first but now I naturally talk like that and it's going to be a b**** converting back to normal. My roommmate Joel's name is pronounced "Jole" but because of Korean dialect I now call him "Joe L" just like all the other Koreans. Their sentence structure is also backwards also. Some of the players on my old starcraft team knew many english words but no grammar so they basically all spoke like yoda. If I said to them "me give you" they thought I meant "You give/gave this/that to me." Sure the educated koreans can speak properly but with the ones that speak just a little you have to dumb down your grammar and say it in their style if you have any hopes of communication. I get so many laughs these days when I see other foreigners in Korea trying to talk to Koreans with their perfect english grammar and semi-big words that there is no way in hell they would understand. Then when the korean is sitting there like 'uhhhh, what.' scratching their head the person rephrases using new yet equally difficult words plus sentence structure. But Korean is a very beautiful language in that it's so inherently simple. They don't complicate their sentences with all the mumbo jumbo that the english language has. They have the same phrase for "do you want to eat?" or "did you eat?" but the literal english translations of them are "food eat?" They just inherently understand the intricies of what eachother are saying based on enunciations and situations.
Korean people were what really made me like this place right away. Group oriented, intelligent, alcoholic, friendly, alcoholic, unselfish, alcoholic. Of course there are exceptions just like everywhere...but in general that is what I gauged about the general personalities of Korean people. Boy oh boy do they drink like crazy. If you didn't know Korea is the number one alcohol consuming country per capita in the world (I think). The drinking age is 19 years old and their main alcohol of choice is soju. Soju is some of the nastiest sh** you'll ever drink. It's like drinking rubbing alcohol. But these people are so accustomed to it they down it like water. If you go out to eat on a friday or saturday night at a korean restaurant (which most of them are...this is korea after all) 95% of the tables will have stacks of soju bottles on them and around the ground by them. Old business men in suits stumbling around the streets like drunken idiots is common and acceptable. Another one of the main things I noticed about Korean people is that if you ask them a favor they will happily do it for you in any way they can right away without any dispute. It's just like an inherent part of their culture, asian style community based structure. In america if you ask things of people a lot of the time they'll do it with a grovelling manner or just say no. I guess this goes a little bit hand in hand with their impatience. If they want something they want it NOW. If they are going somewhere and you are coming god forbid you make them wait a minute or two while you change your friggen shirt.
If you walk around the streets of most of the major drinking/club/shopping/basically fun areas during night time you'll get a slight dirty feeling about the streets of Seoul. Little pornographic cards everywhere on the streets advertising brothels are everywhere. They have guys who walk around at night and put cards with nude girls on them in parked cars windshield wipers. There is trash everywhere, littering is apparently not against the law and a common act. Drunk people are walking around everywhere, puny korean guys yelling 'shippalsekki' acting badass to their friends, and waiters from Korean booking clubs trying to perseude sexy girls to come into the club and trying to get guys to come in and drink before the guys see the bill and realized they got ripped the f*** off. All the 'manner' that is part of the Korean society goes outside the door with the Korean night-life culture. Manner doesn't exist, anything goes, and people just want to have fun. Plenty of times you'll see the shyest girl in the club get up in the dance competition and then just go crazy and rip her top off (in these dance competitions you're supposed to leave your clothes on). Korea has two types of clubs basically. The standard usa-style hip hop club. You pay an entrance fee, there is loud hip hop music playing non-stop, multiple dance floors, and a huge bar with many bartenders to serve you any beverage you'd like. These places are very hot, sweaty, and grimey but are great places to go and not give a f***. It's hard to 'meet' people there so to speak because the music is so loud and communication is almost impossible, but it certainly is common place to 'bubi bubi.' Ask your korean friends what bubi bubi means if you haven't figured it out. I have made tons of friends at these places just by dancing and drinking, then meeting them at a later time to realize that they are really cool people with much more to offer than just some skinny-gangsterclad-wannabe in a club. The other type is the Booking club. I've been told that booking clubs were invented in the 1970's because the Korean population was going down not up because there weren't many babies being produced due to the general shyness of korean people (no idea how true this is maybe someone can fill me in). Basically you go in with a group of guys 2-5 and get a booth. Girls get small crappy tables and a couple beers but they get in for free. For men it is incredibly expensive. The waiter provides you with whiskey, many beers, a big fruit dish, and various non-alcoholic beverages. Once you have all the stuff on your table the waiter and his sub-waiters immediately start dragging girls from the girl tables to your table and sit them next to you. This is called "booking." The girls can get up and leave whenever they want but I suppose these clubs were invented because most korean guys did not like taking the first step of approaching a girl, and at these places that step is taken for you. The girls can get up and leave whenever they want and a lot of the time it's right away for foreigners if the girl speaks no english and you speak no korean. There is music that goes from dancing music to slow music and a relatively small dance floor. The dance floor is predominantly female in the better booking clubs and when the music goes dead they all go back to their tables and waiters immediately grab them and book them out everywhere. These places can be very fun and relaxing and a great way to meet people. If you're visiting Seoul for a week for fun, "BOSS" is one place that you cannot miss as it is a great place to have fun with your friends and meet new people(though it might run you around 500$ for 4 guys).
Being a foreigner in Korea is easy and hard for their own reasons. Lets start off with the easy reasons. You are taller than everyone, short in USA makes you average in Korea. Three things earn you respect in this country. #1 Money #2 Age #3 Height. Sometimes the culture feels very superficial but at the same time it's fun so who cares. Also Koreans love to learn/speak english. Actually they are OBSESSED with it. Korean people will be naturally magnetized to you merely because you offer them an outlet to learn the language. Speaking english well is very important to all major companies in Korea. People will be more inclined to help you out because they think you're clueless. Though it's quite hilarious how surprised and interested Korean people become when they realize you speak and understand quite a bit of Korean. Did I mention the drinking age is 19 here? Yeah it's 21 in the states and I'm 19...so thats a plus. Theres plenty of other benefits that I can't think of right now too. There are many downsides though. Korean people are very open to foreigners but man I cannot count the number of times I've stared into the eyes of some guy giving me a dirty look. It's amusing and sad at the same time but I'm kinda weird and get some sort of satisfaction out making some guy look away before I do. There is a small share of racist people here. And if racist also includes thinking your country and people are absolutely superior to everyone in the world then I guess every single Korean can be classified as a racist. Sometimes taxi drivers will just dodge you because they assume you speak no Korean, other times people don't want to let you into club because they think you're US Army. Also language barrier. If you don't have a guide in korea don't come. If you're own your own you're screwed. Not that I do but if you like drugs other than alcohol don't come to Korea. Smoking marijuana in this country is just about as bad of a crime as killing someone. Oh yeah, make sure you have lots of food in your fridge. Delivery food in korea may be very delicious and inexpensive at the same time, BUT FINDING A KOREAN TO ORDER YOU FOOD EVERY DAY IS A B****. Dear god I've been forced to play SC games vs b.net girls just so they would order me some damn food. But luckily now my two korean roommates order for me. In this country you'll stick out like a sore thumb so I hope you ooze confidence and don't give a crap if you know everyone is looking at you thinking "OH LOOK MOMMY! A MONKEY!!SO INTERESTING!!!!"
So. Here I sit ready to go back to my home after experiencing all this stuff. Have I changed? I'm still the same person I just know so much more. I guess you could say I'm zealot but my upgrades went from 0-0-0 to 2-1-2 and leg speed, but at the end of the day I'm still a petty zealot who could die at any second to a nuclear launch (ooo that was deep). I wonder what mommy and daddy will say when I talk about all the stuff with them that I never talked about before, or when I do whatever I want whenever I want. The main thing I realized is to keep perspective. Live your life, have fun, go for the money, go for the power, go for the hot girlfriend, make yourself feel special. None of that really matters. The only thing that matters is doing what you enjoy and not preventing others from doing that too. So, after one measely month in the USA I shall come back here and continue to earn money while studying korean and continue wrecking the havoc that I am currently wrecking while trying to figure out what the f*** to do with my life. That is what I enjoy.
I hope this gave you guys some entertaining information on Korea. Thank you for reading.
-Rekrul
<img src="http://mpg.cc/DFS79/korea2-067_large.jpg">
Gangster.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/userfiles/454.jpg)
Me and Peter in BOSS.
<img src="http://mpg.cc/DFS79/korea6-012_large.jpg">
Dan in BOSS.
<img src="http://mpg.cc/DFS79/korea6-004_large.jpg">
Us with some random booking girls on peter's birthday (They were probably the worst in the club too lol but we were so plastered that we didn't give a shit at that point).
<img src="http://mpg.cc/DFS79/korea5-016_large.jpg">
Joel with his G-UNIT pants in my house.
