Korean Job Discussion Forums

[cdninkorea]

Once, when walking through the parking lot of the Lotte Hotel to get to Jamshil station, I saw a few buses with large banners saying "Welcome UN War Veterans" and a lot of elderly Westerners outside the hotel. I stopped to talk to one of them, who was a New Zealand Korean War veteran, on a group tour of Korea with other veterans. This was in 2007, and he said it was his previous trip to Korea had been in 1952, when Seoul was complete rubble. I didn't talk to him for too long, but it was interesting to get his perspective on how Korea had changed.

[daeguowl]

[jfromtheway]

I guess I got one. I got sauced with the French guy with the gray beard in the AXA commercial I see nearly every day. I also saw him in another commercial, but I forget the brand. I knew he was a model of some kind, but that was a good two months before the commercials came out, so it was funny to see the first few times. Now, it's just annoying and overplayed.

[Yaya]

A businessman who has lived for decades in Korea, Peter Bartholomew, is waging a lonely but dedicated fight to preserve Korea's hanok homes.

I'm sure plenty of other people would qualify a mention in this thread. I guess you don't hear too much about them as they normally don't congregate with other expats because they're too busy doing what they do.

[myenglishisno]

[diver]

I took Smokie scuba diving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0wgTxWcpJQ&feature=related

[dogbert]

[pegasus64128]

I once saw this Western girl in Bucheon and she was actually hot. She had unusually feminine qualities for a Western girl - great skin, nice body, innocent look, not at all fat but not too skinny. She was refined and pure. It was weird. Never met her though. I was going out with a Korean girl (who was with me) at the time.

[Allthechildrenareinsane]

I never had the chance to talk to him, but when I lived in Busan I would always see this older white guy in overalls playing the banjo and busking outside of the Homeplus in Centum City singing old timey country music. I wish I had gone up to him at least once just to ask him what his story was.

[Paddycakes]

[pegasus64128]

[Chris.Quigley]

[Gladiator]

I met Gary Rector at an acquaintance's wedding in 2004. I recall he said that the kitsch wedding hall conventions (dry ice etc.) had been around since as long as he could remember.

I also met a North Korean defector driving cabs in Seoul. Tragic life story.

Met too many characters too mention in the nineties when the hagwon explosion and "yongo kyoyuk yol" was at its zenith. The Hellwon I worked in in Kangnam was jam packed with eccentrics, wayguk and Hanguk. Ah the nineties, that's when living in Seoul was really interesting!

[creeper1]

[jacksthirty]

Three people spring to mind.

1. I was buying some cheap fried chicken at the small town I was in, when a Korean woman in her fifties started talking to me in fluent English. Turns out she spent the past 30 years living and working in New York. But when her husband's father died , they both returned to the fathers hometown to take over his small seafood restaurant. Funny thing is, her husband didn't speak a lick of English!

2. In the same town, another time, I was walking around minding my own business when I Korean man in his 40's started talking to me in fluent English. Turns out that during his military duty in Korea he went to the States and spent 20 years there as some kind of military liason officer (or something like that). When his father died, on onion farmer, he went to back to his hometown to take over his fathers business. He married a girl that he went to school with and they adopted two Korean kids!

3. In other countryside town (yes, I've spent a fair amount of time there) I met this Korean man who had spent 20 years living all over Europe working for a pharmacutical company. After his extended sojourn he decided to move back to his hometown and open up a local pharmacy!