The First 48 (days)

As this blog is supposed to chronicle my experiences living and working in Seoul, it would probably be wise to start at the beginning. Beginnings are exciting, adventurous, and full of wild expectations. However, I’m a little behind the ball. I’ve been in Seoul for almost 2 months now. The goal of this post, then, is to get this blog up and running and to make up for my lack of communication with the outside world (sorry Nomie and Mrs. Trinity). So, without further ado, I’ll begin my stint as a travel blogger with a story I find most representative of Korean culture.

Dongryeong is my roommate and landlord. He is a character. A common outfit of his involves wearing his waist-length hair with a small Jedi braid, a full suit with a turquoise necktie, and large, square glasses that could either be from 1965 or 2025. He sits at his computer desk 20 hours a day, talking with international students and Korean business-owners on 4 different social media platforms trying to arrange a never-ending series of promotional events. I’m sure he will be mentioned numerous times over the course of this blog.

As a side note, Dongryeong is one of the few guys in Seoul that “run” the international exchange student business. While that is something I would love to write about, I’m afraid it’s a story for another time. Just know, a handful of private individuals control the market for where foreign students live, eat, and party. It’s a curious and lucrative business, full of its own politics and dealings.

To get back on track, Dongryeong was in the process of acquiring new properties during my first weak in Seoul. He asked me to tag along as he investigated a new apartment and closed a deal for another property. We went first to tour the apartment. In the West, it is my understanding that the current tenants of a house or apartment are typically asked to leave whenever potential buyers want to look at the property. This is not the case in South Korea.

Dongryeong and his real-estate friend brought me, some random white guy who didn’t speak a word of Korean, into the home of two elderly women on a normal Friday evening. They sat and watched the nightly Korean T.V. programming as Dongryeong rummaged around measuring wall lengths and testing acoustics. I stood by, smiling and nodding, questioning my reason for being part of this intrusion of personal space. The two ajummas (the Korean word for an older woman) didn’t seem to mind having strangers inspect their living space for imperfections. I was quickly learning that manners are defined by a different set of rules over here. I’m still not sure exactly what those rules are and am forced to live in a constant state of feeling uncivilized.

Next stop was the real-estate office. Korean drivers are terrifying and have little respect for the law; Dongryeong is no exception. Time was against us to close the deal, so we had to bulldoze our way through the crowds of Hongdae (the neighborhood where we live and also one of the busiest places in Seoul on a weekend night). After nearly killing half of Hongdae, we made it just in time to wait an hour for the realtors to finish printing the contract. During that time, Dongryeong and the owner of the property talked politely (from what I gathered, being unable to understand a word) and exchanged business information. With the contract complete and payment made, it should have been time to go home.

That’s when, however, the realtor brought out the seafood. He grabbed some Styrofoam boxes full of recent catches like they were average storage containers to have lying around in a realty office. Inside the first box were 30 or so dried squid about a foot in length (30cm for all you Europeans out there). The three men each took a squid, ripped off a hunk with their teeth, and sucked on the aquatic delicacy. I was gestured to do the same, so I tore off a small piece and spent the next half hour chewing madly, fearful that I would die unceremoniously choking on squid. The next box held Korean oysters. Apparently, those were not suitable for office consumption, so Dongryeong and I were given a large plastic bag full of the shellfish. I would later deeply regret eating those oysters…

It took me a minute to come to terms with the fact that I was in a Korean realtor’s office on a Friday night silently eating dried squid and holding a bag full of oysters. You can’t help but ask yourself, “What the hell am I doing here?” Looking back, that’s a question I have asked myself many times over the past 2 months. Being a Westerner in Korea pretty much guarantees that you’ll find yourself in situations you never expected to be in. Since coming to Seoul, I’ve stumbled my way into filming documentaries with North Korean defectors, fighting off raccoons that were trying to steal my wallet in a raccoon café, haggling with sketchy electronics dealers, and so many other, “How did I get here?” moments.

With the seafood celebration complete, Dongryeong and I packed up and headed home. I’m still not certain why he brought me along on this midnight real-estate jaunt. Maybe he just wanted to show me around because I was new. Maybe having an American accompanying you is good for business. Regardless, it was a good introduction to how nearly every aspect of society is different here than it is in the West. A few examples:

Are you going on the subway? Be ready to fight.

Are you vegetarian? Well you better ask the waiter at a restaurant if they consider seafood a meat, ‘cause they don’t.

Want to buy a rice cooker? Good, there are 10,000 of them at the local Homeplus.

Do you not like K-Pop?  Too bad. That’s all you are going to hear.

Throwing out trash? Good luck figuring out which of the 15 waste receptacles it goes in. 

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea: Seoul is an alien planet. A planet that somehow happens to sit on the other side of the Earth. It only took some squid for me to realize…

Thanks for reading. These are a few random photos from the past month or two. Definitely more to follow. In the coming months, I will be writing more stories and sharing photos about what South Korea is like for an American. My time in Korea has been, and certainly will continue to be, full of surprises both good and bad. This blog is not going to be an advertisement for Seoul or the Co-op program or anything like that. I just want to share honest stories. I do hope you enjoy my writing, so feel free to comment or email me if you ever want to hear more. That’s all I’ve got for now.

-JCP