西洋오랑캐

Yesterday I was sitting at home, under immigration office mandated vacation, organizing my mp3s when without warning my phone rang. The number was an unfamiliar one, so I answered with trepidation.

“Is this Jinhui?” a strange Korean man asked me.

Jinhui, unlike Kelly…or Chris, is one of those names that only girls can have, so when this character had any doubt as to weather or not I was Jinhui, I knew right away I was not dealing with the brightest fellow. I informed him that I was not Jinhui, but I was her husband.

“Ah I need to talk to you too. I need to set up an interview with you and your wife, when would be good for you?”

“An interview? Who are you?”

“Oh, I should have introduced myself! I’m with the immigration office. We need to interview you and your wife. What would be a good time to meet?”

“Well, my wife is working right now, I’ll have to check with her and get back to you.”

“Ok fine.” Click.

So I phoned up my wife, and passed along some information and phone numbers so that she could arrange a meet and greet with the good people at the immigration office. A short time later she called me back, “We’re going to immigration tomorrow morning for an interview. He said it would be about 30 minutes long.”

A 30 minute interview? That’s a pretty intense interview…I’ve had shorter job interviews than that. My mind began racing. “What questions will they ask me during this interview? What if they don’t like the cut of my jib?” I started to feel uneasy, much like Admiral Ackbar in Return of the Jedi (”It’s a trap!!!”).

After an evening spent doing mock interviews, the wife and I hit the sack to rest up for the big interview. Somehow it took us over an hour to get to the town where immigration is from our town, and then we had to catch a local bus…we would never make it to the office in time. So we snagged a cab…a cab with a driver that seemed to have no idea where we needed to go.

With a cab driver barreling down the avenue, and my wife and I giving half-assed directions (”I think you need to turn by that big crab statue,”) we somehow managed to arrive in a timely fashion. We bolted from the cab, ran across lanes of traffic, and up several flights of stairs. We had made it. We walked over to the window we were told to meet the interogater and announced our arrival.

He stared at us blankly.

“Oh…you people. Please sit down.”

He then handed my wife a sheet of paper and told her to write about how we had met, when we met, and why we got married. I watched the news on the television. Once my wife finished the paper, the guy asked her a series of Wyatt Dunn triva questions: how many siblings, hometown, major in college, name of my university, and so on. From there the guy asked my wife about some of the information of the papers we filed earlier in the month: “Who is Seonhui?” “My sister.”

I figured that I would have do write a similar deposition and answer triva about my wife so he could make sure we got our stories straight, but he simply took the papers, said he would call us in about two weeks and we were free to go. I had to do nothing…except offer up the more correct and commonly used name of my university (SUNY Albany as opposed to Albany State University). Other than that I did nothing.

So we left immigration and perpared to head home, first stopping for a cup of coffee. As we drank coffee we noticed a Chinese food shop (中國食品 as opposed to 中華料理) and decided we would go pay them a visit. I’m not really sure what we were looking for when we decided to pay them a visit, but we ended up buying 100 grams of Jasmine tea for ￦2,000 (about $2) and then calling it a day.

As we got on the bus home, I declared I would have never set foot in that town again, if not for cheap Chinese tea. “And the fact that immigration still has your passport,” my wife added.

“And that.”

孔子曰: “I don’t know what smells worse: the dog crap on the subway or the artifical banana scent perfume some girl was wearing on the bus.”

Prior to the immigration officals here telling me to not work, I was actively seeking employment…honestly I was! Perhaps I’ve been here too long and I’m not as trusting anymore, or maybe the 학원 (學院 / hagwon) owners in this area are slightly more dishonest, but while searching for jobs I had a hard time finding decent ones.

I’ve lived in Korea a while now, and I know what type of jobs I would be miserable working at, and therefore in my job search I avoided applying for things positions that included the word “kindy” in their discription. This was not so much that I hate kindergarten, it’s just that the chunk of a word that is, “kindy” annoys me to no end…it’s like people that use the letter U to mean “you,” but clearly I digress.

So as I was saying, jobs I know I don’t want, I don’t apply for. Apparently this technic doesn’t work that well here in Korea, since each and every job interview I ended up going to was completely different than the job I applied for. So here’s a run down.

The first job I applied for was a job that went from 9:30 until 2:00 including an hour for lunch. This was a kindergarten job, but they did not use the word “kindy,” I wake up early anyhow and would like to be home before 10:00pm, the pay was good, and it was apparently close to my house. At least that’s what the ad would have had me believe. In reality, the school was not the 15 minute walk from my home the ad made it out to be, but was more like an hour or so…there are buses, but I’ve had about all I can take of being bused to and from work (which is why I didn’t apply for jobs farther away), then in the meeting the lady acted as if she had not even read my resume (which she probably had not), “So did you graduate from college?” “Why yes I did…and you would have known that if you had read my resume beyond the phone number.” The thing that actually turned me off from the school the most was the fact that the alleged 9:30 to 2:00 was in reality 9:00 until 4:40 (which later morphed into 5:00) two days a week, and 9:00 to 7:00 three days a week with meetings after 7:00 ever Friday night. Thanks but no thanks. So the lady drew me a map of how to get back to the subway station (since someone had picked me up in a car).

Later I applied for a job for a position a couple subway stops away. It was a part-time job, the pay was good, the hours were awesome, and the location was good enough. A few days after applying for the position I recieved an e-mail from the fellow alerting me to an awesome position in the city of 일산 (Ilsan), which is not anywhere near where I am living. I alerted the fellow to this, “Wow, that is a pretty outstanding position, but I live nowhere near Ilsan and have no desire to move there. Please feel free to e-mail me with any jobs you have close to the place listed as my mailing address on my resume which you have a copy of,” interestingly enough I’ve yet to hear back from him.

And then there was the ultimate. I wanted so much for the job to be good. Really I did, but walking out of my apartment, bidding my wife farewell, I just knew that the job was going to be horrible. I arrived at the subway station where I was to meet this character for an interview and after a brief walk was at the school to have said interview.

So far my fears seemed to be unfounded. The interview went fairly well, the owner seemed to be a pretty amiable fellow, his English was a little hard to understand at times, but over all he seemed to be a alright guy, until he uttered this, “So now I’ll take you over to the school you’ll be teaching at. Let’s take my car it will be faster.”

So we got in the car and drove and drove for miles, past my house, past the super market, on and on we drove, listening to AFN Radio in the car while a computer bellowed directions at the driver in Korean, “TURN RIGHT IN 100 METERS! 50 METERS! 10 METERS! NOW ASSHOLE! NOW!!!” After what seemed like a century we arrived. “Ok Wyatt, no matter how bad the job is, at least feign interest so they will give you a ride home instead of drawing a map…there’s no way in hell you can walk home this time.”

We entered the school, which in all honesty looked great. A bubbly, yet impossible to understand woman greeted us in English…I think. Apparently this would be the woman I would actually be working for, so she too wanted to interview me. So she began to interview me, only I couldn’t understand her…so in Korean I told her, “저는 한국말 조금만 할 줄 알아요. 그래서…” But before I could finish that thought, she cut me off.

“NO KOREAN! YOU MUST ENGLISH!”

“But there aren’t any students here right now. Wouldn’t it be easier to speak Korean?”

“ENGLISH! YOU MUST ENGLISH!”

So I Englished, and muddled through the interview. She, for her part, went on and on about the school and it’s swimming pool (which was empty). I, having already spent more time than I wanted to at this interview, wanted to cut beating around the bush and get right to the point.

“Yes, the pool is nice, but could I see the contract.”

The contract came out and I looked it over. It seemed to be pretty standard fare: “We own you for one year. During that time, should you happen to look at us the wrong way, we retain the right to fire your ass and cancel your visa.” All in all a standard hagwon contract.

Among all the Engrish legalise, there was something I had never seen before in a contract. Apparently one of the reasons that could lead to the early termination of a teacher was “overt homosexuality.” There was a brief moment of outrage, and “That would never fly in America!” before I realized just how rediculous the wording was.

Overt homosexuality? To me that brings to mind hardcore gay sex, and if a guy happens to be on the giving or recieving end of some man-love at the school he should get canned. But, by that same token, engaging in overt heterosexuality at the school should be cause for dismisal. Is there something less offensive about heterosexual pounding in a kindergarten? The answer is no, and that both are disgusting and creepy.

As the lady continued talking about the virtues of an empty pool, I realized that they probably just meant “homosexuality.” I began thinking of the rammifications of such a stipulation. What if I were to wear a pink tie to work, or spend a little too much time on my hair one day, or happen to wear my assless chaps to work.

“Sorry Wyatt, we’re going to have to let you go…you’re in clear violation of the overt homosexuality clause.”

“But I’m straight! I can prove it!”

I was tempted to ask about this clause, but remembered I was miles from home, and had no idea how to return, so I held my tounge. What I did not hold my tounge about was housing.

All full-time teaching jobs in Korea (at least every job I’ve ever seen) offers their teachers an apartment, or money towards an apartment of the teacher’s own. Due to the fact that my marriage provided me with a vastly more badass house that any hagwon could ever offer, I went for option number two: the money.

“I have a house already, so I don’t need the apartment. How much of a housing allowance do you offer each month?”

“Zero.”

“Zero?”

“Yes, you already have a house.”

“I know, that’s why I want the money instead of a house.”

“But we don’t do that.”

“Then I’ll take an apartment.”

“But you said you have a house already.”

“I know, but you aren’t going to give me a housing allowance, so I want the apartment.”

By this time I’d had enough. A bait and switch, a lengthy car ride, getting yelled at for attempting to increase efficancy by speaking Korean, a prohibition on overt homosexuality, and now no housing. I was ready to go home…so I did.

The next day, some jerk at immigration told me not to work…so I stopped looking for a job, and started exercising.

꽃보다 남자…”Man That (Looks) Better Than a Flower.” It’s a pretty stupid term isn’t it? Somehow with the sucess of the film 왕의 남자 this term began showing up on all the Korean versions of Entertainment Tonight, and in all the fashion magazines. What exactly is a “Man that looks better than a flower?” Well friends, today we are going to do an in depth and comprehensive study as to what makes one a 꽃보다 남자.

These lads, for those of you that don’t happen to be 14 year old Chinese girls, are F4. F4 are some sort of Taiwanese ensemble, perhaps singers that were the hunky lead actors in a Taiwanese television program Meteor Garden (流星花園), based on a Japanese comic book, Hana Yori Dango (花より男子). This show aired in Korea, and for some reason, I briefly become all about it.

This program became my first exposure to Flower Men, primarily due to the fact that in Korea it was given the title, 꽃보다 男子. So in my first understanding of the term, 꽃보다 남자, was simply an Asian man with long hair strong jaws, and muscles that make the young girls swoon. And apparently I wasn’t that far off the mark. The series finished it’s run and that was the last I heard of 꽃보다 남자…until this winter.

The winter of 2005 / 2006 brought about the Korean film of the year, 왕의 남자. For those of you unfamiliar with this film, I turn you over to Joel of About Joel, who has a much better thought out and reasoned write up of this film than I could ever hope to create. I’ll wait for you, I promise….

Ok I see you are back. The above picture is 이준기 (Lee Jungi), the current King of the Korean Flower Men. In the film, this was the actor portraying the character kings assumed was a woman (or perhaps knew was a man and didn’t mind). Anyhow, as the film become more and more successful the press (and high school girls) started paying a lot of attention to 이준기 and his looks. The phrase 꽃보다 남자 came back, and my understanding of the term changed.

No longer did I assume it was muscled Asian dudes with nice hair and Superman-esque jaws. Now I was under the impression that the term referred to men that looked like women. “Ah! So 하리수 (Korean post-op transgender Harisu) is the ultimate 꽃보다 남자.” Apparently it doesn’t work that way. The second you have breasts (topless pictures of Harisu…avoid if you have problems with such things), you apparently become ineligable for 꽃보다 남자 status.

So I went back to the drawing board and came up with this theory…if you are a decent looking man and attract hordes of girls to scream and show up anywhere you go, then you are a 꽃보다 남자. Though this is the thing I don’t really understand. Here we have men that are prettier than the girls idolizing them…it would be kind of like American men lusting after big burly women that compete in Lumberjack Games, or have sex with the 1-2-3 Kid.

Anyhow, I’m going to go cut pictures of hot guys out of my Tiger Beat magazines and hang them on my walls…thanks a lot diary, you’re the only one who understands me!

Happy Valentine’s Day from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit…and all of us here at Kimchi & Me. We’re all wishing that you get some.

A meer two days after failing my written test for my driver’s liscense, I found myself once again face to face with the irrational beast that is Korean beauacracy. The day started off innocently enough, I found myself sitting in a cafe with my Korean teacher, explaining about my failed attempt at becoming a liscensed driver in Korea.

Before I departed from my homestead that morning, my wife informed me that after my class we would be going to the local immigration office to apply for my F-2 (family member) visa. Now this visa is a visa most awesome! As an English teacher in Korea, I have very little control over my own destiny, mainly due to the fact that the school I work at controls my visa. I quit, they cancel my visa, I’m in Korea illegally. The school decides to randomly close…again my visa ceases to exist and I’m in a world of hurt legally. The F-2 visa would allow me to taste the sweet freedom of being able to quit a job without any sort of reprecussion should I so desire. The F-2 visa would allow me the freedom to not work should I chose to go study something…or randomly ride my bicycle about. In sort the F-2 visa is awesome!

But like all things totally awesome: Nintendo circa 1986, Kirby Puckett rookie cards, or cases of beer at age 19 (in America); the F-2 visa is a little bit hard to come by. First you have to find a Korean person willing to marry you. Ok, I accomplished that. The next part is where beaucracy first reers it’s ugly head. Like those seemingly pointless quests in any role playing video game (”Collect for me 3 troll heads, Moon Powder, and a complete set of 1988 Topps Baseball cards and I will award you with a weapon of unstoppable fury!”) my wife and I…well really just my wife, had to collect all manners of random papers. Marriage liscense, id cards, family registry, my passport and id card…and proof of employment stating that my wife was able to take care of my sorry ass.

It was this proof of employment, like the three troll heads, that was impossible to come by, since my wife was not employed at the time. The Korean government was willing to cut us some slack though…if we couldn’t get that proof of employment, a bank statement declaring that she had 30,000,000원 (approx. $30,000 US) would be good enough. Between the two of us, we had a little under that ammount, so we also needed to present the deed to the apartment we were living in.

After a morning of jackassing about collecting papers, we headed off to the immigration office. Since I technically no longer live in Seoul, I had to travel to a different immigration office than the one I normally visit. I had to visit one of the immigration offices out in the provinces, and man were there a lot of South East Asians in the house!

Normally a trip to immigration in Seoul will result in at least one, possibly two conversations with Canadians while waiting for my number to be called. At this place, I was the only white person out of the more than 50 or so people waiting around for numbers to be called. So we filled out the papers we needed to fill out, purchased some stamps to affix to our documents, and than sat down and studied some Korean while we waited, and waited…and waited to be called up.

While waiting I located a box with slips of papers for Kindness Reports and Unkindness Reports that could be filled out evaluating the service of the immigration gestapo that attended to us. I took both, a placed them in my pocket for future use. Shortly there after our number rang and we walked over to the window.

Some jerk with a Yao Ming-esque crew cut addressed us shortly, “Give me your papers, passport, and identification card.”

Now I can imagine the stress that dealing with an endless stream of immigrants must cause this man, but right away I began to feel the urge to crumple up the Kindness Report resting in my coat pocket. We handed over the papers to the gentleman as requested and he proceeded to ask us some questions.

My wife then alerted him to the fact that my job would be ending soon (or had already ended), which prompted the gentleman to go on and on about a two month investigation that would have to be conducted since we were getting married. He claimed that people would come to my home, and that phone calls would be made to my place of employment, and that the whole thing would take 2 months.

“Two months?!” my wife and I bellowed in unison.

Nathan (of Seoul Hero), as well as one of our other friends were both recently married and both applied for F-2 visas which were issued within 2 weeks time. Perhaps the man made a mistake.

“Ah…you must mean two weeks,” my wife proclaimed.

“No. I said two months,” the man continued, “A lot of Chinese and South East Asians fake marriages to stay in the country so we have to check everyone.”

Now, I may not have the whitest skin, but that was the first time I had ever been confused with someone from Vietnam. Clearly my wife thought the same thing.

“But as you can see, he is not from China…”

“Everyone!”

I’m going to give the immigration office credit for at least being fair in this regard. I’m not thinking I should get special treatment due to my nationality. But I still had a question regarding the fairness of the system, “Why is it only two weeks in Seoul?”

We got no answer. The man took our papers and told us that someone would appear to check in on us when we least expected it. We then brought up the point that my current visa would expire while this two month background check went down. The man insisted that this wouldn’t be a problem so long as I didn’t attempt to get work…basically he was saying, “Well buddy, for the next two months, sit on your ass and watch rock videos and cartoons at youtube.com,” which was not what I really wanted to hear.

Once out of the immigration office, my wife began jamming on the phone, calling friends, family, and other immigration offices across the country, and in the process learned that the office we went to had the longest turn around time from application to issuing of the visa.

So I wait, and I wait…and I wait…and wait…

One of the best things about moving into my current place of residence is the abundence of things I now at my disposal that meer months ago I could only dream of having access to. On the lower end of this spectrum are things such as some awesome books, and a scanner (hence the recent posts built around a scanned image of something I found on the street in the first months of my arrival), on the upper end of this is a car.

That’s right there’s a car here…a car that no one knows how to drive. My wife recieved her driver’s license and then never got behind the wheel of a car again. My father in law, upon hearing that I was a licensed driver (in the State of New York) for 10 years now, thought it would be a good idea if I instructed his daughter (my wife) on how to use this car. The only thing is I would need a valid license in Korea if I wanted to take the car out of the parking lot.

So it was Wednesday, February 1st, 2006 and I headed out to the Korean version of the department of motor vehicles. Since I already had a valid license issued elsewhere in the world I was exempt from most parts of the test. I had to fill out a form, have a health exam, and then take a written test of the rules of the road. Easy enough task…or so I thought.

The paperwork I needed to fill out was not that bad, but like all Korean government institutions, filling out the papers required me to fill things out, get them stamped, walk down some flights of stairs to purchase proof-of-purchase stamps, walk back upstairs, wait in line again, and give the woman that originally stamped my papers the papers that now had proof-of-purchase stamps on it. Not really bad or difficult, just annoying, and kind of a waste of time. Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply pay the person who is stamping your paper? Anyhow I digress.

With papers stamped and stamped again, it was time for the physical examination. I entered a little building in the parking lot, and was ushered into a small room with three women sitting at a table. I handed the first woman my sheet of paper, and she then administered an eye exam which went well until I mixed up the Korean words for 8 and 9 (again) and she thought my eyes were worse than they are when really it’s my Korean that’s bad. The woman passed my paper to the next woman at a table and I moved down the line.

The next woman uttered two English words at me, “Sit down.” I looked around, but there was no chair to be found. I kind of shrugged, and then remembering this is Korea, kind of squatted as if I was using a Turkish toilet. “Good enough!” The paper was passed down the line, and I moved on to the final test.

The third woman opened up a book to a page with a circle of red dots with a number made of green dots in the center. Now inspite of what my wife or sister may proclaim, I am not color blind. I don’t know the difference between “eggshell,” “white,” or “parchment,” but I know my primary (and secondary) colors! “5! 74!” I bellowed triumphantly. My paper was further stamped up as fanfare blared and I was ushered out of the room.

With all that nonsense behind me, it was time for a written test. An easy enough task, or so I thought. It’s going to be a lot of “Who has the right of way,” “What does this sign mean,” “How do you correctly pass,” questions I explained to my wife as I waited to be called into the testing room. My name was called, and a police officer lead me to the computer terminal where I would be taking this exam. After signing in, the test begain.

“In the event of an acident (sic) what is the first thing you should do?”

Acident?! Oh damn…this is going to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. Hard was an understatement. I mean perhaps if I had taken a first aid class I might have been able to pass (since there were no less than 4 first aid related questions). However, the only knowledge I have of life saving techniques came from those public service announcements at the end of GI Joe cartoons, and since none of the answers to any of the first aid related questions contained the phrase, “and knowing is half the battle. GI JOE!!!” I was out of luck.

Then there was the easy question. Such an easy question. I should have knocked it out of the park…

Which vehicle will always have the right of way?
a) a motorcycle
b) an ambulance with flashing lights
c) a car
d) a bus

Since I had actually learned how to drive in America, I answered B, an ambulance…completely forgetting that this test was being administered in Korea, therefore making the correct answer D, the bus. The bus is the biggest and has the loudest horn, therefore giving it the right of way in all situations.

But perhaps the best question of all was this gem: “The following sentences are statements about left hand turns. Which one?”

Which one? Which one what? Which one is correct? Which one is incorrect? Which one does not contain a typo? Nothing…it was just “Which one?”

Needless to say I did not pass the test…nor did either of the other two white guys who took the test in English. So we went back downstairs and asked about taking the test again. I would have to wait at least 24 hours before attempting again, and the lady at the desk gave me a book to study with these words of encouragement, “It probably isn’t going to help you on the test at all, but you might want to read this.” So I did read it, and she is probably right, it’s not going to help me much on the test. But that’s not to say I didn’t learn anything in reading the guide to driving. Here are some of the more enlightening moments of the book, scanned for your pleasure.

Traffic Rule #1

Oh I’m sorry, did my attempts to draw attention to the fact that I’m being carjacked disrupt the flow of traffic? Next time I’ll just let my attacker take me back to his lair where he’ll chop me up into little pieces and fashion a tunic out of my skins. Wouldn’t want to cause a scene.

Traffic Rule #2

Man, I guess this means no more Friday night dance parties in the backseat of the Hyundai. I was not aware that the driver of the car was responsible for making sure such behavior did not go down…or was I aware that dancing by passengers of moving automobiles was such a problem that it warranted being included in the driver’s manual.

Traffic Rule #3

This isn’t that funny, unless you consider the fact that the book didn’t include information on things such as how to regain control of the car if it is skidding off the road due to wet or icy conditions, or how you can escape from a car submerged in water, or even the distance one car should be behind another car while driving in normal conditions, the inclusion of this rule (with illustration no less) becomes pretty damn funny (to the likes of me anyhow).

But, when the bulk of the images in the driver’s manual look like this, I guess what I should really be asking myself is why bother? I mean look at that mess. There are explosions and fires and cars all over the place. Do I really need to deal with that? Especially if while avoiding certain death I have to be on the lookout for puddles I may splash someone with, and keep an eye on my passengers to make sure no spontaneous raves have broken out in the backseat. The answer is…no, especially since I have a bicycle.