Korean Job Discussion Forums

[kangnam mafioso]

Korea is like no other place and living there as a foreigner is a surreal experience. A friend of mine once said, �Korea is a bubble, and when you get on the plane to go home � the bubble bursts.� So true. Choosing to work in Korea is like getting sucked into an alternate reality, a time warp, a glitch in the matrix of the world. How can words express the poetry of the neon hieroglyphics in the mad streets, the dark recesses of smoky PC Bangs on lonely nights, the small cups of soju sipped back in your box-like apartment on the 10th floor of a sky rise complex? How can words express the feelings of abandon on a windy day in Seoul during Lunar New Year when the city comes to a screeching halt, and the wide avenues of Kangnam become ghost-like and vacant? Or to suddenly awake in your taxi at 8 am after circling lost neighborhoods, the driver yelling incomprehensibly for your address?

[Lloyd Christmas]

Three Dog???

[ohahakehte]

[Butterfly]

I like your description, it's very romantic, truly. Turn your life into art, I always do. I advise against drinking soju at home however, that's a bit of a dodgy path.

[coolsage]

A well-rendered slice of this life, with a poetic component to boot. I agree, though, with the idea that if one must drink soju (and may the gods forgive your innards), that it should be done only in obligatory Korean-based social situations, and never alone. Cheers!

[ThreeDogNight]

Your insights befit the scene here, I'll say that, and the description to boot.

Good creative writing, anyway. I got a deep feeling of what you meant, without sounding patronizing to creative writing in general, and agree in part about Korea being a kind of 'bubble.' It's a good way to describe the experience here, but I wonder if it's completely accurate or not. The surreal part goes away eventually.

[Butterfly]

[Eazy_E]

The language barrier confines me to a bubble. I'm the only foreign teacher at my school and the only foreigner in my postage stamp of a town. (I have foreign friends in the next town over, so I'm not lonely.) But I feel not unlike the bubble boy, being gawked at, pointed at, and talked to but unable to communicate in return.

I could start speaking Korean at school, but all I get from my co-workers when I do that is: "oh! Korean lang-gadgee good!" It's not really taken seriously. Almost every day I get talked at by people as though I can understand what they're saying. You'd think they would know better to talk to a foreigner in Korean....

Don't get the impression that I don't really like Korea, because I do like it so far. But the bubble is getting more stifling as I speak....

[Homer]

well written mafioso.

I would venture to say that the bubble theory is valid if you do your one year and out. Then the contrasts would seem quite big.

However, living here longer and going deeper its no bubble at all....its just another country with its very own cultural norms, blemishes and beauties.

[Tiger Beer]