Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Babayaga]

I've been back in my home country(Canada) for some time now and am feeling really nostalgic about Korea. I'd like to read about your interesting experiences here!

[numazawa]

Now, now, don't be coy. Yer fishin' fer sex stories, ain't ya?

[Babayaga]

[numazawa]

[Babayaga]

[quote="numazawa"]

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[quote="Babayaga"]

[Swiss James]

the best experience you've had in Korea is walking around town with some girl?

A lot of the stuff I've really enjoyed and found interesting here don't make particularly good stories- stuff that's weird at first is pretty normal these days.

Staying up all night drinking on the beach at Pusan and going swimming when the sun came up, the time I slept in a temple, stumbling across an ajumma badminton club, drinking the juice from a tuna's eye, getting a scrub down in the sauna - those are good little stories to tell folks back home.

I think my favourite might still have been one I had years ago when I went ice fishing though- I wrote about it for a magazine:

"A friendly work colleague with a twinkle in his eye and a zeal for English, Mr Oh had invited me to join him on a skiing trip a few hours outside of the city.
It was organised by a "Magic Club" he had joined on the internet with the sole purpose of meeting eligible girls, and would be the first time I had left Seoul since arriving in Korea a few weeks earlier. The traffic was brutal, but it wasn't long until I got my first glimpse of the purple-grey mountains that litter the Korean countryside
"Tigers used to be live in these mountains" Mr Oh told me, "Maybe there are still a few left".
(I didn't see any).

Mr Oh had never skiied before but was completely fearless, I had to convince him not to go straight onto the black run before he knew which end of the poles were which. Maybe he was trying to avoid the music of Mary J Blige being pumped out of the speakers up and down the nursery slopes, or perhaps the crowds of squealing ladies who were grabbing hold of random people for stability as they slid out of control- although on second thoughts, he probably enjoyed that more than the skiing.

All too soon the sun went down and we headed off to the apartment which had been rented by the magic club for samgyeopsal, soju, and card tricks.
The next day we said our goodbyes and headed in the direction of the capital before Mr Oh suggested a diversion on our way back to Seoul.
"Have you ever been ice-fishing James?"-
I hadn't but it sounded like a lot of fun, and there was a festival on the frozen lake at nearby Chuncheon.We parked the car, scrambled down the banks onto the thick ice, and slid over to a family already fishing.

The concept couldn't have been any simpler- you hacked a hole in the ice and dropped in a line. The fish were attracted by the light glinting off the unbaited silver hook and, if you jiggled it just so, they would bite. These inch-long pencil-thin 'penga' then suffer a death that is the stuff of fish nightmares as they are dipped in hot pepper sauce and eaten whole.

If you ever find yourself faced with the prospect of eating a live fish on a frozen lake in small town Korea, I have two tips:
1) Hold on tight as you dip it in the pepper sauce- it really makes them wriggle about
2) Bite the head first, put the poor bugger out of his misery. You'd want the same thing in his position."

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[Swiss James]

[Cedar]

Maybe the time I had to get stowed away on a boat by the mafia in order to get back to my job on the mainland on time when every ticket was sold out for the next 4 days after a storm on Ullungdo.

[captain kirk]

Well I headed out West on my 350cc Suzuki on/offroad enduro motorbike, west of Cheonan where I live now. On Sunday afternoon heading for Amneon Island where there's a marine national park/seashore. But stopped short to get off the bike and go hiking which just happened to be a forested hilltop next to this fortress built in 1400 to defend against Japanese pirates.

That kills me, Japanese pirates. What picture comes to your mind? Also, this fort was involved with the execution of Catholics during the late Choseon. Nice. It's a big fort near Sosan. That area is well out of the way of progress, lots of rice fields and mountains. Gotta love Korea for its ancient history.

[joe_doufu]

I ate one of those silkworm larvae once. It was nast-y.

[Babayaga]

[quote="Yu_Bum_suk"]

[Babayaga]

[numazawa]

You mean the one on Early Korean Love Triangles?