Ruminations in Korea

Comment by Joel

23 July 2005 @ 4:35 pm

When I would tell my students that there was always vomit and urine in the elevator they insisted that I lived in a “low-class” apartment building. So I guess you live in a low class apartment too.

Comment by Jeff in Korea

23 July 2005 @ 5:10 pm

This had better not be a low-class apartment for the amount of money I paid for it.

Comment by Joel

24 July 2005 @ 12:40 am

I was being sarcastic. I assumed with your job you could afford a nicer place than mine. I was just using the same “logic.”

Comment by Jeff in Korea

24 July 2005 @ 2:12 am

Yeah I know….I was being witty…

Anyway… Happy Pioneer Day!

Comment by Joel

24 July 2005 @ 5:09 am

Oh yeah. You too. And me without my handcart or fireworks. I’m slacking on my duty as a Utahn it would seem. I hope you did something for the both of us.

Comment by Jeff in Korea

24 July 2005 @ 5:12 am

No….no I didn’t…but it is time for me to go to sleep now I think….

Comment by hmmm

25 July 2005 @ 8:30 am

Yum, “sidewalk pizzas”.

Why is it that Koreans have such a hard time admitting to–and doing something about–this foul phenomenon?

Where ever I go or whoever I speak with in Korea if the topic of vomit puddles is even brought up it’s an instant case of denial.

“Nu-uh, you didn’t see any such thing! Not in Korea. You’re just making things up to put Korea in a bad light. You westerners are all alike.”

Not 5 minutes after having this conversation with a Korean acquaintance a few weeks ago we emerged from a local subway station and nearly stepped into a pile of fresh human shit next to the exit stairs. There was a newspaper nearby that had clearly been scrunched up and used as toilet paper, but why oh why couldn’t the crapper have simply put the paper out flat and taken his dump on top of it rather than just nonchalantly shitting on the sidewalk?

But nevermind, I’ve learned never to ask WHY in this country.

What a disgusting practice, to take a crap or vomit in a public area and leave it for others to deal with while it roasts in the hot sun.

5,000 years of glorious culture and history and no one has yet figured out to do these things in private, or to at least clean up after themselves when they have an accident?

Buncha friggin drunkards.

Comment by dingles

25 July 2005 @ 2:08 pm

The yankees puke more. You hate korea. so get the fuck out. you should only post good stories baout korea.

Comment by Brad Spit

25 July 2005 @ 10:31 pm

Sorry to hear about your underwear. Up here in Seoul, hardly a day goes by without encountering “sidewalk pizza,” as the natives fondly call it. It often showed up on the steps leading to our (former) apartment complex, indicating that somebody just managed to get out of the taxi before hurling. Will it ever end? Methinks not.

Comment by hmmm

26 July 2005 @ 9:57 am

“The yankees puke more. You hate korea. so get the fuck out. you should only post good stories baout korea.”

OK, Lemme get this straight…it’s okay for you and millions of your countryemen to call me a “yankee”, to burn my flag, and to throw eggs at my embassy, but I have a solemn duty to either get out of your country or only tell good stories about Korea?

Gimme a while to mull that one over, alright?

Ahh, I got it….here’s a “good” story….

Once upon a time there was a proud people who thought themselves superior to all other peoples. They once had an exhibit in their Independence Hall in Chonan claiming intellectual superiority to other peoples based on the volume of their cranial cavities. They also boasted to anyone who would listen, of their 5,000 years of glorious, toilet-paper and toothpaste free history, which of course could only be measured from about 57BCE.

But then one day they woke up to the stark realization that they were actually completely irrelevant, and all their sour grapes were for naught. In fact, it became apparent that if this people had never even existed at all the world would hardly be any dfferent. But it was worse than that, if this people ceased to exist tomorrow–were transported off the earth and colonized Mars, for example–no one would even care. In fact, very few would even notice.

And the world would go on about its business, not caring whether the Sea of Japan or the Liancourt Rocks got new names or whether Pak Chan Ho choked season after season or whether Pak Se Ri won the Jamie Farr Classic again or whether another bribe got paid under the table to win Olympic boxing mathces against Roy Jones, or to get Salt Lake City prostitutes in exchange for OIC votes, or even whether the price of kimchi and garlic are going up this year.

In many ways this is a very “good” story. It’s much better to be thought of as entirely irrelevant, unimportant in any way at all, than to be thought of as the haughty, in-your-face, love-us-or-leave-us, vomit-capital of the world. Doncha think?

Comment by Taemin

27 July 2005 @ 2:00 am

Ya gotta hate it when someone takes a tongue-in-cheek post at face value.

Comment by jtb-in-texas

30 July 2005 @ 6:00 am

Some Westerners _are_, in fact, wound up too tight and need to eat more Texas-style BBQ and less kimchee…

But I digress…

While I was indeed fortunate to miss the cultural eccentricities described in the blog and comments, I did see piles of hooves laying on the sidewalk outside the butcher shop (right there by the Chung-Hwa Apts, a block from BK in Itaewon)…

It pains me to say that it bothers me in Seoul; but not in Oklahoma outside the feed lot. Is it just that we see a large city that resembles a Western city and expect Western values?

No. It’s the piles of toxic body expulsions and other potential sources of plague, cholera, typhus, or worse!!!

Koreans identify as a group and in fact feel offended personally when an outsider complains about any Korean. They don’t appreciate the low-lifes, alcoholics, or whomever is doing this any more than we do… but their culture restricts how they react to it in front of us way-gooks…