Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Louis VI]

A guy on a small island I visited who made a habit of walking down to the ferry and chatting with any foreigners who happened to visit. He had spent over thirty years in California and spoke of how he had seen Marilyn Monroe in person. I didn't ask his age but I'd say he was pushing 80. I had a nice seafood meal with him and have his pic on my cell phone. Gee, that was over six years ago. Time flies, and my phone is getting old.

[minos]

Met an 80 yr. old guy on the street who told me thank you cuz i was American.

As a kid, he saw a battle between North Korean and American forces. He still couldn't forget seeing all the dead americans. He told me the N. Koreans were evil bastards for what they did along wth a host of Korean curse words for them.

[R. S. Refugee]

After I've had enough soju, I usually have some rather animated conversations with King Sejeong himself. Don't ask me how, but he speaks perfect English. No translation required.

He was rather POed that it took a couple of hundred years for hanguel to catch on. ;-0)

I'm thinking rather seriously of calling on Admiral Yi to tell me about those turtle ships next time.

[Jeonmunka]

My father in law (75) was captured as a 14 year old and taken to boot camp run by NK soldiers. He and another boy went to the latrines and decided to run. As they ran the boy next to Dad got shot and fell and Dad kept running. He eventually made it back to Andong and hid out in the roof of the house.
When asked his preference and worsts, US, Japan or NK, he says thay are all as bad as each other. The 'massacre' of NoGun-Ri was still hidden at that time. But, the local pple knew what was going on. Mum was also scared of GI's. I dunno if that was because of experiences with soldiers in general ... but she was frightened by a time when some soldiers came banging on their door shouting for girls.
Mum sometimes speaks passable Japanese because she studied that in school. That was the schools' lingua franca.

An elderly woman (84) for whom I worked spoke to me of a Japanese contingent of officers who lived near her family house and an uncle who befriended them (the Japanese) when they were occupiers. She was always told just when to hide when the regular soldiers came to take away girls.

[ramyunmori]

I had to be hospitalized recently, and there were two 80 year old women in my room. We didn't talk about the war or anything. They did tell me about old customs for planting and preparing vegetables, old timey weddings and diet tips. I was quite ill, so the healthier one spent a bit of time nursing me and telling me things would be okay. Oh, none of them spoke English, but I speak Korean, so we got a long well.

[Mikejelai]

An old man (80's?) wrecked his bicycle; I stopped and helped him get up and remounted. He started talking to me in fairly fluent English. I noticed the USA/Korean flag pins on his cap and asked him about them. He said they were from some Korean War veterans group he belongs to (he was on his way there for a meeting/lunch/drinks when he wrecked the bike). He told me he learned English from his job working with the Americans during the war, but he didn't say what the job had been.

[NYC_Gal 2.0]

I chatted with someone in his 80s when in the hospital in January. We talked about how hospital food was bad, and pain killers were good, and played cards.

[Steelrails]

From back home one guy there was in his late 70s, and was a young man in the war when he was trapped behind enemy lines during the initial NK push. Made his way down to Pusan and after the war moved to the States, started a plastics company, married an American woman, and can't speak a lick of Korean anymore or has some psychological impediment to doing so (People spoke Korean to him, like 'watch out' or stuff like that and he didn't even twitch). It wasn't until the mid 2000s that he tried to get in touch with his past.

Then there was my boss, not THAT old, but brother killed in the war, grew up in a village kicking a sheep's stomach for a soccer ball with no electricity. Then he got rich and though we don't know the full story, it seems he got caught up in the S&L scams of the 80s (or some other sort of scandal) and had to move to the States. He didn't go back to Korea until after 15 years...