The Strangeness of Kindness

We’d always talked about sticking a sign somewhere on the backs of our bikes.  Nothing fancy, maybe just some cardboard covered in packing tape, explaining who we are and what we’re up to in the native language.  Somehow we never quite got around to it the last time around (living in a tent and biking all day tends to eat up your free time).  This time, though, we were ready.  With the help of our Korean teacher, we made up a laminated sign designed to spark conversations with curious passersby and also reassure them that we are neither hobos nor circus performers, no matter how funny we look:

Translation: We are traveling the world by bicycle!  Let’s share together (conversation/stories, music, food...)!  We speak a little Korean!  Thank you!

By day two of the trip, we were in need of a little tender kindness.  We made it out of Seoul considerably later than we’d planned, and come nightfall we found ourselves with nowhere convenient for camping.  At last, in the middle of a crowded park, we discovered that there was a small, sheltered patch of grass behind a stage.  Not perfect, but we thought it’d do in a pinch.  Not ten minutes after we’d zipped ourselves into the tent, at 10:30 on Saturday night, who should wander by but a practicing saxophonist.  Pleasure at such gentle music to serenade us to sleep quickly shifted into horror as he went on to play “My Way,” no joke, seven or eight times consecutively.  Then, when he finally stopped and we relaxed once more, he began to play again, this time right next to our tent.  He could’ve been inside the tent, for all I know; I refused to open my eyes.  It was a rough night, is what I’m saying.

The next day, we hit the trail early, but four hours of sleep really took their toll.  By midday we were wilting under the hot July sun, and by three o’clock we had to stop for a nap by the roadside.  We were passed, as usual, by a parade of lycra-clad cyclists zipping down the path.  Some of them stopped to read our sign; many of them laughed, and a couple gave us candy to cheer us up.

Just as we were getting ready to saddle up again, a nice-looking middle-aged man pulled up, read our sign, and began to ask us questions about our trip.

“I was hoping to meet someone who could come give a talk about biking at my children’s school,” he told us, and in an instant, Jenn was fully awake.

“We’d love to!” she said.  “But we need a place to camp.  Could we camp at your school?”

“Oh, I’m not a teacher there, but you can camp at my house, no problem.”  He told us to call him Lee, and asked us to follow him to his house, about half an hour down the road.

Lee’s house is a little patch of heaven right next to the bike path, overlooking the sunset over the mountains and the river.  He asked us to set up in a patch of weeds, then suggested we shower before joining the family for dinner.  Reeling at this kindness, we did as he asked (covered in two days of sweat and road grit, the shower was more a courtesy for them than for us).

Between our showers, Lee showed us photos from his family's trip to Death Valley.  When we expressed surprise that someone would choose Death Valley as their vacation destination, he told us it was a Creationism-themed tour, and that Death Valley was a place of note in the Noah's Ark myth (and thus, evidence against the existence of evolution).  I politely asked no follow-up questions.

“My wife will be back from church around 8 o’clock, but until then, let’s start cooking,” he said, and put me to work grilling meat over the fire his kids had built.  We were supervised by the family dogs, who made sure we didn’t waste a single drop of grease.

"You're gonna get an immersive English lesson!" Lee told his kids.  They seemed unimpressed.

The dish I was asked to help cook is one of Korea's specialties, samgyeopsal, sometimes translated in English as "bacon steak."

Just when the meat was all finished, three people walked up to the house and were introduced to us as their priest, his wife, and Lee’s wife, Ji-young.  They explained that they had already eaten after church, and just watched as the rest of us went to town on a pile of meat.  Then, when the meat pile was reduced to rubble, the dinner turned to drinks and the priest and his wife excused themselves.

Over a glass of homemade makgeolli, Lee asked us, "Are you Christian?"  Bill and I stalled out, but Jenn charged in with "I mean, we're American, so..."  Ji-young laughed and slapped the table.  "Of course they're Christian," she chided her husband.  "They're American, everybody in America is Christian."

I kept my damn mouth shut.  If I were to pretend to be any religion, I'd prefer to be Fake Jewish to Fake Christian.  That said, questions like "Are you a Christian?" make me naturally nervous.  Six years living in rural Missouri has taught me that those most prone to asking questions like that are the ones who care pretty hard about what answer you give.

When asked, I wanted to say, "No, absolutely not, and it's downright offensive to say that there are no non-Christian Americans!"  But I didn't want to offend our hosts by starting a screaming match.  Especially when they had shown us such kindness and hospitality.  That is the side of Christianity that six years in Kirksville had not prepared me for: Christianity not as political position or a club with which to menace college students on the quad, but as a philosophy of kindness.  Even the same brand of Christianity that spends thousands on vacations that celebrate the non-existence of basic scientific principles, even this kind can be held by these kind, lovely people who would invite strangers into their home.

“Hey, didn’t you want us to speak at your school?” Jenn asked when the makgeolli had run out and a bottle of tequila opened.

“Oh, my teacher friend didn’t answer his phone,” Lee said.  “Just come back here when you’re coming back to Seoul from Busan.”  We promised we would.

After friending each other on Facebook, of course.

A Crash Course in Korean Culture

The other thing we did in our final days in Seoul other than, you know, pack or something: we made up for lost time by catching up with distinctly Korean experiences that we’d put off seeing for the previous twelve months.  Naturally, we knew that we had to visit the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.  This unique region is critical to Korea’s identity and is the key to understanding the relationship between Korea and the U.S..

But first: Pro Gaming!

Whew, it was just about to get substantial up in here.

For those of you not in the know, there's this computer game released in 1998 called "Starcraft."  It was moderately popular in the US, and eventually spawned a sequel.  Can't say I ever knew anyone who considered it their favorite game; by contrast in the freshman dorm in 2004, "Halo" or "World of Warcraft" claimed the academic careers of dozens of my friends.  But in Korea, though, they took this game seriously.  So when our friend Bill came to visit, he tracked one of Seoul's venues for professional gaming, a career that my parents assured me didn't exist.

From what little I understand of this phenomenon: there are multiple Starcraft teams in Korea, the most major of them sponsored Samsung, SK, and other top-shelf corporations.  The teams compete in various tournaments for prizes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and these tournaments are screened on two TV channels.  The competitors are almost entirely under 30 years of age (after that point, their reflexes start to deteriorate, explained Bill), and they spend upwards of 12 hours a day doing nothing but playing this computer game, day in and day out.  It's a joyless, grueling task for the players, clicking thousands of times and focusing their laserlike attention on the goings-on of little monsters and space zombies, the slightest mechanical mistake resulting in a loss.

That isn't to say that there's no fun to be had here: the announcers live for this stuff.  My understanding of rapid-fire sports-related Korean is poor at best, but I could pick up just how thrilled they were that Fla$h just clicked his thing and made some of sOs's guys blow up.  Behold the crowd going wild for an entirely-predictable ten-minute victory:

Bill was excited to accompany us to this particular match, as his nerd friends back in the States had encouraged him to go and cheer for someone named "Stork."  He also gamely tried to explain the inner workings of the game for us.

And he even made it on the big TV!

I'm sure there's something deep and distinctly Korean about the institution of pro gaming.  The commercialization of Korean culture over the past few decades, maybe, or the desire to excel at something that few others care to participate in at all.  We decided to hash this out like reasonable people: in front of the most heavily fortified border on the planet, in front of dozens of soldiers with hair-trigger tempers and very large guns.

Wheeeeee!  Overwhelming military presence!

So as it turns out, there was this war that happened in Korea awhile back.  And somehow, even though it was like a million years ago, they still haven't quite managed to wrap things up.  Apparently there was some country that cared deeply about Communism and was willing to use its massive military presence to prop up a dictator that would serve their agenda and keep a foothold in the Korean peninsula.  Actually, there were two of them, and one of them was the U.S.

Something we keep discovering while traveling here in Asia is exactly how badly the American educational system has failed us.  Both of us went to fairly excellent middle and high schools, and yet neither of us had ever learned about the American role in the division of Korea or, say, anti-Communist massacres in the Philippines and Indonesia.  Kind of makes the Teapot Dome Scandal seem even less important.  But yeah, every time we dig into the recent history of any of the countries we visit, we discover that US military involvement dictated the course of these countries' history, and the fact that we had never heard that before is pretty damn sad.

Fortunately, we were in for a doozy of an American education on the DMZ tour, operated by a USO-affiliated Korean travel agency.  At 7 a.m., dozens of sleepy tourists shuffled onto buses at the USO office in Seoul and were whisked away to the most defended border in the world.  Our tour guide, Vincent, asked the bus, "Why do you want to visit the DMZ?"  Predictably, there was not a peep, but unlike most tour guides, he persisted.  "No, really, I want to know, why do you want to come here today?"

I started to sweat.  Why did I want to go to the DMZ?  We had always intended to, figured it would be a good experience, but...I mean, it's not like we were going to the World's Biggest Ball of Twine or anything.  This is essentially hostile territory, where we would be stared at by soldiers and would witness such sights as "Bridge of No Return" and "Site of Ax Murder Incident."  We signed waivers that enumerated the things that could go wrong during this tour, ranging from minor inconvenience to complete dismemberment.

Finally someone on the bus spoke up as the pause grew interminable.  "History?" tried Bill.  Vincent praised him for speaking up, then went on to take our lunch orders, the question still largely unanswered.

After an hour and a half, we arrived at Camp Bonifas, the center of US strength in the area.  We were ushered off our bus and handed over to a square-jawed young soldier named Specialist Reese, who gave us some fun facts about the ride.  Now, I may be violating some pretty scary laws if I continue with details, but suffice to say the terms "razor wire" and "thousands of mines" came up.

After a brief slideshow presentation about the establishment of the DMZ, the first stop on the tour was the border itself, the line demarcating the North from the South within the Joint Security Area.  Our guide told us that there is always a single guard standing outside the North's headquarters, and that he is named "Bob."  He also let us know that the Northern soldiers would occasionally line up along their side of the border and hurl insulting gestures and rude comments at the US and South Korean soldiers in a "childish" attempt to goad them into retaliation.

We later moved on to view North Korea's "Propaganda Village," a town near the border meant to convey the luxury of life in the People's Republic.  According to our guide, it's unoccupied, and its buildings are just empty shells.  Also, he told us, this flagpole is a few meters taller than an identical one on the Southern side, and is the culmination of a short-term race to build the tallest pole.  The jokes write themselves.

I wish I could fully explain exactly how this tour made us feel.  Confused, mostly, to be sure.  But I felt that it was very difficult to turn off the critical thinking center of my brain (thanks, Truman State University!), and that colored all of the information that we received from our guides.  Again and again we were told about the childish, irresponsible antics of the North, while as far as we heard, no Southern or US soldier had ever acted as anything but a paragon of discipline and rules-following.  We were told a history of kidnapping, murder, and immature one-upsmanship, all from the point of view of a freshly-stationed, well-rehearsed 24-year-old soldier from South Dakota.  Not that I have any love for North Korea, nor do I have any reason to believe that things are better or less crazy than our guide told us, but all the same, it's very hard to uncritically hear about unchecked aggression and warmongering when you're surrounded by tanks and Claymores.

And this is what we came to do!  We paid for this!  Dozens of us taking pictures, taking selfies in front of a soldier we unironically called "Bob," whatever his name might actually be, shaking our head and tut-tutting North Korea's buffoonery.  We listened, rapt, to stories of defectors streaming across the border to find happier lives in South Korea, as well as to rumors that Specialist Reese had heard that the South Koreans are growing extremely tired of caring for so many defectors.  "Free money," he called the resettlement allowances that the South Korean government offers to defectors, and half the bus shook their heads in astonishment at the luxury provided these...refugees?  Traitors?  Freeloaders?  Question time was over at this point.

What mischief are these two kooky characters up to this time?

After a stop at Dora Railway Station (which connected Seoul and Kaesong Industrial Complex for a few years in the 2000s), we went on to the last stop of the tour, the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel.  I'd read about this before: North Korea had dug a system of tunnels under the DMZ.  Their official line was that the tunnels were meant for coal mining, an argument slightly undermined (get it?) by the fact that there is absolutely no coal to be found anywhere in this region.

The most interesting segment of the Infiltration Tunnel, by far, was the video they played us at the beginning.  For some reason, photography was prohibited during the screening, so you'll have to make do with a half-remembered recap by this schmuck instead.  Over the soundtrack from the trailer to a horror movie, a deep, disembodied voice related to us the horrors visited upon the Korean people by the evil North Koreans.  A map showed glowing red lines stabbing through the DMZ and hordes of faceless soldiers filling the country and turning it blood-red.  Then there was an abrupt shift as the narrator intensely told us about the wildlife to be found in the area.

"The international community has not held North Korea culpable for its incursions," said the video (or something very close to it), "but their offenses have grown ever more cunning and provocative.  This can only be seen as a declaration of war."  Stock footage of missiles launching drove home the point that war is imminent, although I'm still not sure why they were trying to persuade us.

"One day, Korea hopes for reunification," the video continued; reunification is a theme we'd heard many times by that point, though this time it was accompanied not by an image of coexistence, but of the South rising up and swallowing the whole peninsula in a bright, friendly blue.  "Until then, the DMZ will stand...forever."

A concrete line in the sand to last a thousand years.

No one else on the tour seemed particularly fazed by the propagandistic tone of our tour.  They discussed whether "Bob" is allowed to go to the bathroom and were tickled by the antics of the North Korean army.  I'm not really sure what to take away from this trip.  I guess it's easy to pick on North Korea, in a manner of speaking; they're isolated, they're one of the most prominent hereditary dictatorships of our time, and they're scary.  But something that was missing from all the rhetoric during our tour, something that was always mentioned in discussions with our Korean friends and colleagues, was that the people of North Korea are Korean people.  From what I can tell, South Koreans do dream of reunification, but not in the "wiping-out-the-enemy" sense that the video portrayed, more in the sense of "we are all Korean people, and we hate to see our countrymen separated from us and suffering under an illegitimate despot."  They are not the enemy to be destroyed, but relatives to be pitied and aided...but not if you ask the US soldiers at the DMZ.  And we weren't to speak to any of the Korean soldiers, nor was there any information that wasn't provided by the US during our tour.

In any case, we chose not to buy any of the cute cartoon-character-branded objects at the gift shop.

Leaving Seoul

Note: We're out on the road!  Badly dated tales of our biking adventures will be up shortly.  Until then, please enjoy some extremely self-important reflections on a blogless year in Korea.

A year really isn’t all that long of a time.  Sure, it can drag on for dozens of work weeks, a thousand meals, 0.5 haircuts (if you’re Harry, anyway).  But especially if you move around a lot, a year can pass by in a flash.

We didn’t come to Seoul to find the Real Korea.  We didn’t come to make friends or learn a lot about ourselves.  Frankly, we came because we could earn more money in a year teaching English here than we could anywhere else.  Our months of job hunting while touring in Japan (which is not recommended, btw, as it requires carrying around unnecessary button-down shirts and showering on the semi-regular) yielded a multitude of job opportunities for experienced but unlicensed educators, yet none of them as good on paper as even the lamest of hagwon jobs in Korea: an international kindergarten in Hong Kong paid just well enough to afford the astronomical cost of living in an exciting city, provided we were willing to live in a tiny apartment with two other roommates; Disney English in China offered us a chance to work for the Evil Empire, which, as Star Wars has taught me, includes decent pay but terrible benefits; a program in Vietnam, astoundingly, offered us a pittance to work at a dozen schools for an absurd number of hours per week...and also would not pay us a cent of that pittance until the end of the contract.

Meanwhile, while the Powers That Be are definitely trying to pop the EFL bubble in Korea, it’s still possible to find 30-hour-a-week jobs in Seoul for about $25,000 a year, benefits, housing, and completion bonus included.  Factor in a relatively low cost of living and suddenly Korea makes a whole lot of sense.  Sure, the job you find might be one of Those Jobs that we all hear about: a friend of ours fled her contract after a few months of late paychecks, missing paychecks, and bedbugs.  But for thousands of dollars in savings, we could endure any job for twelve months.

So in short: while we were fond of Korea (except for the bugs), we didn’t really choose Korea.  It chose us.

It wasn’t easy after a year of unmitigated freedom to go back to working a regular job five days a week.  We tried to focus on the positives, on the luxuries like air conditioning and showers that we missed on the road.  But our goal was to make the year pass as profitably and quickly as possible so we could get back to our Real Life, as we thought of bike touring.  We didn’t seek out new friends, knowing that we’d be leaving in a year and would have to say goodbye right after meeting.

And yet, somehow, after twelve months in this dirty, crowded, sprawl-y city in a damned sub-Arctic desert, we found ourselves tearfully bidding farewell to more new friends than we had ever expected.

“You may not think you have anyone here in Korea,” said our Korean teacher, beginning to cry, “but you do.  You have me, and I hope you come see me if you ever come back to Korea.”

The last days in Seoul were to be spent simultaneously getting ready for an international move and a year-long bike trip.  We’d had a to-do list taped up next to the bathroom door since March, and a dozen tasks to be done were gradually whittled down to two or three, which then ballooned back up to twenty or thirty in our last days as more and more chores made themselves known.

“Get travel vaccinations.”

“Buy ferry tickets.”

“Transfer money.”

“Buy shoes.”

The final week was insane...and in the process of leaving, we discovered that we had so many friends to say goodbye to that we underwent an abrupt re-prioritization of chores.  More tasks were discarded as unimportant or impossible than actually completed.  Some of those we regret.  “Buy spare inner tubes” never got done, for instance.  Nor did “Go grocery shopping.”  But we regret not a minute that we spent saying goodbye to our new friends who are soon to become our old friends.

In short, Seoul is a good city.  It’s not a great city, perhaps.  It’s dirty, the air quality is fairly hellish, and it takes forever to get anywhere.  But it’s not a bad place to live.  Especially with friends like these.

Also, Jenn learned belly dance!  Truly, our skills are as varied as they are impractical.