Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

Until they opened the Starbucks I've usually had little reason to tarry long in Itaewon. Sometimes I go to Gekos with my Portland, OR friend who teaches down in Bundang. There we like to play a game. We watch other foreigners and try to guess "Soldier? ESL Teacher? Creepy sex tourist?" It's a pretty easy game:

Solider: Very short hair, very young, good body, wearing a sports jersey purchased in Wong Dong Market wherever that is, lost/frightened look.

ESL Teacher: Late 20, early 30s, facial hair, longer hair, fatter, not wearing a sports jersey but poorly dressed all the same, miserable or weary look (alternatively they match the solider somatotype but their lost/frightened look is replaced by a keen, unbreakable interest in an Aussie rules football match on Gekos projection screen).

Creepy sex tourist: 50something, pot belly, short sleeved dress shirt regardless of season which is a size too small and his expanding belly is testing the tensile strength of the thread holding the bottom three buttons in place, fails to grok Korea is not Thailand or Mao jacket China (ie 20something Korean women generally don't want to trade dignity for a man twice her age and a detached home in West Virginia with forced air heating).

Anyway, if my friend doesn't want to hoist a beer and play S/E/C, I'll only head there if I need some new used books. I make break for exit 3, climb the hill, get my books, and get back on the subway. The new Starbucks has changed this pattern somewhat. But whatever.

Anyway, my understanding is the shortest route is through that street of hooker bars "Starbutts" being the one that always invokes laughter. Head down, quicken your pace. Nothing worse than seeing some guy come out of Starbutts and trying to figure out how to avoid eye contact with him.

Back during Sollal I went to get a couple new books. I was about three steps up Hooker Hill when the door of one of the establishments burst open and some cute but skanky woman shouts "hello hello hello" to me and starts waving me over. Must have been a slow day. Everything about me -- the backpack, the eyeglasses, the book in hand -- says intellectual and not ho mongerer. Or so I thought. It was cute in a way, being surprised and flustered at having to turn down her invitation into her moist lair of fee-based erotic friction, but at the same time, I felt a bit like "Jesus, do I really look like a pervert?" I felt kind of bad in the same way maybe a woman waiting at a bus stop feels if a guy pulls up in a car and asks "How much?"

Does this happen to you? How does it make you feel?

[HapKi]

You don't have to go that way, you know. You can go farther down and then take a left up the hill, following the signs for the mosque.
From the girls' perception-
walking up hooker hill+foreigner=pervert

[Pyongshin Sangja]

I like to carry my whips and chains in a backpack when I set off up the hill, too.

[casey's moon]

Have you seen the thread titled "hooker hassles?"

I've been asked "How much?" while walking home from E-mart, with an overloaded backpack, no makeup on whatsoever, wearing a man's winter jacket and hiking boots and everything about me screaming CANADIAN chick. I was no where near hooker hill or any such place.

[Atkinson]

[kangnamdragon]

just keep going....

[chiaa]

I have had to walk that route for the past two years and the "girls" still have not realized that I am not buying.

The best thing to do to have them leave you alone is to have a fake conversation on your phone. Works like a charm.

[hari seldon]

[mindmetoo]

[igotthisguitar]

>. I've tried to find What the Book, but thave to this point been unsuccessful.

It's somewhere in the area of hooker hill & the mosque ... right ??? I'm also curious to know what their policy is on trade ins ... AND how flexible they are if someone wants to purchase say over 100,000 won in product ???

igtg.

[Saxiif]

[d503]

to get to what the book from the itaewon subway stop you go out exit four (i am pretty sure it's the one by the starbucks) walk to the street with a light and a sign for the mosque turn right.

walk up that hill until you see the sign fo indian joes on the left turn on that street. Follow the main street until you get to what the book on the left.

You will pass the mosque on the left and abby's on the right, there is also a meat market on the right, I always note but you might miss it. If you get to a place where the street splits in the middle you have gone to far. Return to go.

[chiaa]

[Zed]

[Zed]

Probably a special cemetary for them somewhere.