My life at a Korean law firm (part 47)

By Jacco Zwetsloot

Upon returning from my weeklong trip to North Korea in late August 2010, I set about trying to make a living for myself as a freelancer. I worked in three main areas: writing and editing, training and teaching, and radio and voice recording. The variety of work that I was doing and the people it brought me into contact with made it fun and interesting. I've always liked variety, and sitting at a desk all day every day is not a job that appeals to me. A couple of highlights: designing and teaching a class on how to socialize effectively for young Korean diplomats about to start their careers, and giving a weekly "Agony Aunt" advice segment on a radio show.

To cut a long story short, freelancing was feasible but it required a lot of hustle to get enough work, and also a lot of moving around Seoul from gig to gig. These two factors took a lot of the fun out of being independent, and made me long for some stability and security again.

Around April 2011 I was put in touch with the head of marketing for the Dragon Hill Lodge, a hotel on United States Forces Korea's Yongsan Garrison. This man, whom I'll call Mark Kim, was looking for a person to lead historical walking tours around Seoul and other parts of Korea, and I was one of three potential candidates he had been put in touch with. It was a part-time, ad hoc job, as tours would only run when enough tickets were sold. To audition for the position, I had to put together a sample walking tour and guide Mark Kim around.

Earlier, when my cousin Jan-Willem visited Korea in September 2010, I took him on an impromptu tour of Jeong-dong, pointing out some of the historical landmarks and explaining the story of the neighborhood. I realized that Jeong-dong was a perfect area to tell the story of Korea's opening up to the outside world (in particular, to Western nations) and the downfall of the 1392-1910 Joseon Kingdom. There are so many important places to visit there, and everything is so close by. What's more, it's a pleasant stroll. Therefore, it was a no-brainer to pick Jeong-dong for my audition tour. I dressed up a little retro, something like a faux version of a late 19th century Western diplomat, and led Mark on a walking tour. It took about an hour and a half.

The audition was a success, so I was asked to expand it into a half-day walking tour, beginning and ending outside the main gate of Yongsan Garrison. My tours would be advertised at the Discover Seoul tour desk inside the Dragon Hill Lodge, and I would be paid a flat rate. The first tour would run in June 2011.

There was only one problem: because I am neither American nor Korean, I could not be directly paid by the hotel. Instead, I would have to work for a Korean tour company that had a concession to sell tours to U.S. military personnel, their family members and other people on the U.S. bases in Korea. I'm going to call this company Galaxyjean. Its head office was located in another hotel outside the base in downtown Seoul.

Only 10 or 12 people signed up for that first tour, partly thanks to the error-ridden English of the poster produced by the marketing and design team of Galaxyjean, and the lackluster sales efforts of staff at the desk, who didn't really understand what I was trying to do. Because of the small number of actual ticket sales, I was pressured to lower my fee. I refused, and the tour went ahead as scheduled. Because of some personal connections, I was able to take the tourists to some places that were otherwise off-limits to tourists. Customer feedback was good, so I was asked to run the tour again, and also to make some more.

I designed a full-day tour to Incheon that took in some of the major locations of the Incheon landing of Sept. 15, 1950, led by General MacArthur, that turned the tide of the Korean War. I also included some other locations that had historical significance, such as the location of a World War II-era POW camp that held Allied soldiers from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. This trip necessitated a bus to take us there and back and drive us between the various locations, because they were far apart, but the walking part was enjoyable, and tourists enjoyed seeing so much in one day. On the bus trip, I quizzed them about which countries fought on the side of South Korea in the Korean War and other historical trivia.

The hotel management quickly came to see the value in having a native English speaker with an understanding of Korean and Western history, as well as customer service, on permanent staff at the hotel. Mark Kim asked me to come and work at the Dragon Hill Lodge full time as manager of the Discover Seoul Desk. But again, there was that problem that I had the wrong citizenship, so I would have to be employed by Galaxyjean, and sent to the Dragon Hill on secondment. Towards the end of 2011 I began fulltime at Galaxyjean, and this marked the beginning of one of my most stressful and frustrating periods of employment in Korea, that ended with my resignation and hospitalization.