Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jpe]

Wait, Dave's a real person?

[dogbert]

I knew this kyopo once, kind of an arrogant guy. Had worked as an English teacher, then went on to do something else.

Anyway, he got disillusioned with Korea after a few years (he'd been in Korea since the mid-90s) and decided to move to L.A. But after about a year in L.A., he found out he couldn't deal with "LA kyopos" and went scurrying back to Korea. I got a chuckle out of that. Some people are miserable wherever they go, not realizing the problem is really them, not other people.

Last I heard he was still in Korea, living mostly on the Internet, and bragging about how he brought home a five-figure salary and was saving a ton of money by living in Korea.

[kiknkorea]

[The Floating World]

[sirius black]

Perhaps this doesn't qualify as unique and apologies if its a hijack of sorts but for me its the 6 degrees or less of separation I've come across. People I have a connection with in Korea that extended back to America or elsewhere.

On my flight to my small little first town from Gimpo by airplane I sat next to an elderly couple. Me being the only wayguk on that flight, they started a convo. Said they were coming back to this small town after being away for 30 years. Turns out they were from the neighborhood next to mine in the states. We knew some of the same stores, points of interest and a few people of note.

I went to a new town to teach and met some random folks my first night at one of the bars. Turns out one girl I spoke to ended up being a colege buddy of a a guy I knew from my previus town. Both had no idea they were in Korea as they lost touch after school.

There are a few more such similar stories. The world seems to be getting smaller.

In terms of interesting people. I got stopped by a korean guy who seemed like he was homeless. He had a tattered old pic of his unit in Vietnam and the Americans he befriended in the pic. Some students translated for him and he did the knife across the throat sign and they said he and some americans slit the throat of several viet cong soldiers on a search and find mission. The guy had these old glassy but steely eyes. He was a bad ass back there it seems.

[Maserial]

[radcon]

[Zyzyfer]

[Skippy]

I have a couple of those "small world stories". I call them that. One involving a childhood bully and strange phone calls. Two others of the "7 degrees of bacon-esk" type.

Other unique people?

[Yaya]

[Enrico Palazzo]

[myenglishisno]

I knew this American guy once. Him being American actually matters, because he saw his lack of Korean skills as a matter of culturally superiority. After a decade on the peninsula he still couldn't read, could barely speak even the most basic Korean that most of us can speak immediately after arrival, couldn't use chopsticks and didn't really know anything about Korea.

When he wasn't going on about the return of Christ or how atheists were inhuman and had no morals, he liked to carry his laptop around with him (I'm assuming he has an iPad now) and shoving it in the face of every Korean he had to interact with. He always had Google Translate or Babelfish up and he'd translate English to Korean on the fly and make unsuspecting Koreans read it as key to doing business/talking with him. He'd make them type with it and translate if they couldn't speak English at all (and one old lady almost hit him over the head with it).

He also had a car and would offer to take people places all the time (assumingly for free). Since I met him at a GEPIK orientation in the middle of nowhere, Yongin, he was taking a lot of people a lot of places. When they arrived, he would ask them to pony up dough, often the same amount as if each person was taking an individual taxi.

[highstreet]

I met this older man and his wife at yonsei kli in 2009. He was retired. Made millions off some program he sold to the govt. they were renting some room at a swanky western hotel for a year and traveling on to other countries after Korea.

[Yaya]

Like I said in my original post, this thread is intended to be about unique, not freaky, people. I guess the definition of unique can vary but I'd like to focus on people who are unusual in a more positive way, as in they've done something successful.

I remember briefly meeting this one attractive American woman, Suzanna Samstag Oh, who has stayed in Korea apparently for samulnori, a traditional form of Korean percussion music. She worked for Newsweek Korea and married a Korean man and I believe she is still here.

[Swampfox10mm]

Met an old guy at a stoplight in Itaewon who was American, and white, but had lived in China almost from birth. His parents had been missionaries. His Chinese was far better than his English.