Ruminations in Korea

Comment by Krapp's last krap

4 May 2005 @ 9:12 pm

Dy-namic Kraporea!

Comment by yak sox

4 May 2005 @ 9:22 pm

Hear friggin’ hear!
It always looks like they’re always looking for something to do - knock down and rebuild — why not convert the whole place to water closets. That’ll keep the economy booming.
I can’t even handle squatters let along the paper issue.

Comment by Brian

5 May 2005 @ 10:43 am

The problem is that there is no “improving Korea’s image abroad” involved with improving the local sanitation systems. It’s far too unglamorous an issue to waste money on…

Comment by hmmm

5 May 2005 @ 11:50 am

What I never understood is how in the world a toilet that is perfectly adequate to flush down a 17 inch fecal log is somehow incapable of simultaneously flushing a 2 inch square of water-soluble paper.

Who sits around and comes up with rules like “Thous shalt not throw thy toilet paper in the toilet!” ???

Here I sit, all broken hearted.
Came to shit, but only farted.

Comment by Thoughtcop

6 May 2005 @ 3:47 pm

After years of this toilet ritual — it is now considered Korean tradition.

There is nothing more sacred than the tradition of a non-Western country.

Thus, the smell of baking shit-paper in the summer has become the very essence of what it means to be a Korean.

I know many Koreans studying in America, who come across a filthy public toilet … and feel a pang of homesickness.

Jeff, you should be more sensitive to the cultures of other peoples.

Comment by GreenBud

8 May 2005 @ 3:09 am

Just ran into your blog, and you recall one of the most disgusting things about my stay in Korea.

Flush it!!

Comment by YiSunShin

11 May 2005 @ 10:08 pm

If you dont like Korea then GET OUT. You can wash dishes in the usa. You are getting rich beyond your wildest dreams in Korea.

Do not talk about what you dont know anythign about.

Comment by hmmm

12 May 2005 @ 12:12 pm

YiSunShin,

Dude, don’t blow a gasket. If you like wiping your ass and throwing the paper in an open basket for others to smell for days on end, then go for it. You’re prolly responsible for a lot of the “sidewalk pizzas” in my neighborhood too, aren’t you?

You live in a free country, wipe your shit wherever you want. Oh, by the way,–you have that right thanks in large part to the 50,000 American dish-washers who died for you. Therefore, you can throw your feces-encrusted tissue wherever you please. Go for it. Whatever gets you through the night, bubba.

Oh, and by the way…toilet paper came to Korea country from the United States.

If you don’t like Americans speaking their opinions, why not go back to your traditional ways and use your fingers or a handful of leaves?

5,000 glorious years of Korean culture and you couldn’t invent a halfway sanitary way to wipe your ass? Then you get angry when foreignors try to instruct you on the proper way to use this newfangled invention.

Oh, but you do have four separate and distinct seasons, don’t you: spring, summer, fall, and autumn.

Oh, Pilsung, Kooooreaaa.

Tell us how it is, brother! Can I have an Amen?

Asshole!

Close enough.

Oh, and Jeff, now that you’re rich beyond your wildest dreams due to your use and abuse of the poor oppressed Korean people, can I have your cool guitar?

Comment by Jeff in Korea

12 May 2005 @ 1:24 pm

No. It just means I can buy another one…or three

Comment by hmmm

12 May 2005 @ 2:28 pm

Not to hijack the thread, but I recently found a damn cool John Lee Hooker DVD at Kyobo Bookstore. I thought of you when I bought it.

I always associated the Boogie Man with the Epiphone Sheraton, but in the video he mostly plays a beat up old Gibson 335.

I gotta get myself one of those someday and had hoped that with all your wealth you might be able to help me out. Maybe if I had one of those my kids will think I sound like John Lee too.

Take care and make sure to flush that soiled toilet paper.

Comment by Jeff in Korea

12 May 2005 @ 7:30 pm

What is the DVD? The only exclusively Hooker DVD I have is:

John Lee Hooker - Come and See About Me: The Definitive DVD

Is there another one?

Comment by hmmm

13 May 2005 @ 8:41 am

That’s the one. With Clapton, Santana, Richards, Raitt, and others playing along with JLH.

My kids didn’t appreciate it as much as I did, but they got to listen to some really cool music. I forced them to sit through the whole thing. Bwuhahaha.

Comment by bystander

14 May 2005 @ 9:59 am

Do not talk about what you dont know anythign about.

Yeah! Hmmm and Jeff. Get with the program. You obviously haven’t been in Korea as long as you’d like us to believe.

Why shouldn’t the Koreans throw their toilet paper anywhere they please?

Don’t you know…

Korean shit don’t stink!

That’s one of the first lessons you’re supposed to learn when you step off the plane.

You guys are still a couple of multi-cultural amateurs.

:-P

Comment by miss coffey

31 May 2005 @ 2:42 pm

I flush it anyways. :o) Maybe I wouldnt if I considered myself a permanent resident here, but I don’t. So I flush!

Comment by Kang

12 December 2007 @ 10:14 am

This is addressed to HMMM.

The Korean War was a byproduct of US politics, of which Korea was a pawn. Because of the cold war which even you may know was mostly orchestrated by the US and the Soviet Union, it divided countries like Korea and Vietnam, caused its people to kill its own in civil wars and genocide, and caused many deaths and heartache and split families forever between imaginary land and political divisions imported from the west. It was a part of the Cold War between the US and allies against the Soviet Union and their communist allies. The 38th division is maintained by the US with its own money not out of kind hearted intentions for poor abused Koreans struggling against its evil northern counterpart, but to maintain its military and economic presence and might in that part of the world. The US government sent its “50,000 dishwashers” to die in a game of money and power. It is out of ignorance of history, or maybe the result of successful propaganda which you have gulped down, that you can say in such a ridiculous and bigoted way that we should be grateful for Americans having died to fight a war they started. Understand that I am not condemning any of the soldiers who came to Korea to fight, but the nasty politicians who played with the lives of innocent people for the sake of money, nuclear power play and politics.

We did not start a civil war to which the American soldiers came to us like angels from heaven to help fight. The American soldiers came because their country’s politicians wanted them to push the Soviets back from what they considered to be their land. They came because they were drafted. They came because their personal circumstances made the army the only alternative. They came because they were duped into thinking that it was an idealistic cause. They came because they wanted to kill the commies. They came because they were patriotic. But it all boils down to the fact that they came because the government put its people in a war that they did not have to fight and die for.

Many countries still have old toilet and sewage systems and that is not very nice to have to deal with coming from places like most of the US (aside from trailer parks or many places in even NYC where you are begged by management not to flush toilet paper down the toilet). However, before you condemn the whole country as backwards, stop and think about other ways in which the US is behind other countries, such as the NYC subway system. It is disgusting. People piss in plain view down there, there are stalactites of dirt, grime and neon colored ooze dripping from the ceilings under which socialites, dishwashers, and big wig businessmen all stand day after day in mind numbing masses to get to someplace important in the city. Compare that smelly, dank and archaic 100+ year old system where modern cell phones do not work of a too old infrastructure that cannot support modern cellular technology to the clean and new subway system in Seoul where the latest gadgets work without fail. Do you see people saying that the US must be full of backwards and ignorant people who, after beefing their egos up by saying they hosted the olympics in Atlanta, and discovered penicillin etc etc, can’t even manage to clean up and build a new subway system even after charging its riders exorbitant amounts of money? That they allow the city to maintain such a dirty smelly old and crumbling subway system that countries like Seoul, Thailand and Germany would never associate themselves with? NO. You don’t hear that.

So, please stop and think what foul filth comes out of your mouth before you make what amounts to racist and ignorantly bigoted statements like the one you made in response to YISUNSHIN. I do not think YISUNSHIN should have attacked you and told you to get out of the country for expressing your opinion, but your opinion, in my opinion, sucked.