By Howard Scott
I spoke to a good friend in England last night and found it hard to describe life in Korea. I think he expected colorful narrative full of local detail, but I struggled to explain what became my new reality on arriving three months ago. Of course, in reality it isn’t very different to life in the UK. I work in an English Village as a teacher, which _ strenuous office politics and crazy children aside _ is a regular job like any other I’ve had. I go drinking on weekends, usually winding up with the same type of hangovers as I experience in England. I even have cable TV which allows me to be anywhere in the world by pushing a button. Yes, I can watch almost the same rubbish programs as I can at home. And this is life for many foreign people in Korea. My friend asked when am I coming home, ``when you describe it like that, you might as well be anywhere.’’
It is easy to immerse yourself in globalization here _ enough to virtually pretend you are anywhere. ``What is Korea like?’’ Well, let’s see: Last weekend I traveled to Itaewon while listening to my MP3 player. There I dodged the tourists and American marines to get to an English bookshop where I bought magazines from home and a novel. I ate lunch at an Irish pub where I drank German beer and ate ``traditional’’ fish and chips. I then took a cab to a casino, which Koreans aren’t legally allowed to enter, talking to my taxi driver in English the whole way. He was impressed I was British and disparaged South Africans and Americans while playing country and western music. I gambled for an hour or two with tourists from Australia and businessmen from the Middle East and drank Russian vodka like James Bond. I counted my losses and converted the currency mentally to sterling.
The next day, while having a Turkish kebab in a cafe, the Korean waiter and I talked about Hanif Murakami, the Japanese writer whose book I had bought. He compared him to the Czechoslovakian writer Franz Kafka and I to the English novelist Alduous Huxley. Later, while sunbathing next to an American tank at the war museum, I reflected on all of this and wondered where the Korea was that I anticipated seeing on coming here. I was sad not to experience a jot of ``culture shock’’ in what used to be called the ``Far East.’’ That label summoned mystery and yearning for me as a youngster, before the political correctness police made it the drab, uninspiring and culturally sensitive (to whom?) ``East Asia.’’ Some of the mystery was gone by the time I arrived.
True, Korea has escaped the commercial homogenization that has ensured most European cities are identikit brand alleys of happy shoppers. The conspicuous corporate labels are all here but Seoul can never replicate Barcelona, London, or Frankfurt. Partly that is because of the dense layers of beautiful pictoral Korean script that hum and sing in their neon cases. It’s in the multitudes of Asian faces mulling through the street and it’s in the patriotic nature of Korean people, who steadfastly like to do things in their own inimitable way.
For all of this, Korea is still, to me, tantalizingly mysterious, hard to detect, and even harder to describe. That is why I’m staying longer. I’m waiting to see.