Dispatches from the Peninsula

by Chris Tharp

  Love Motels

  These cheap and plentiful motels are found everywhere, in clusters throughout the cities, and even in the countryside. Huge rubber blinds hang down in front of the parking area, shielding customers from outside eyes. In the city, the entrances are typically shrouded by large potted shrubbery. Often the receptionist cannot even be seen: you just speak through a darkened Plexiglas barrier, handing your money and receiving the key through a half-moon cut out at the bottom. Sometimes the beds are heart-shaped, and more often than not they vibrate. Lotions and creams are offered up gratis, and third-rate Korean and Japanese porn can usually be viewed on the TV. Some love motels even feature murals on the ceiling depicting breasty women in various states of undress. On certain holidays such as Valentine’s Day or Christmas (seen as a couples’ day in Korea), the nation’s love motel rooms are booked solid, with millions of young couples getting it on.

  DVD Rooms

  These are even cheaper alternatives to the love motels. For about ten dollars, you pick a DVD from the collection in the lobby and get a private screening room, complete with a large, comfortable sofa-type seat. While some people do go there to actually view movies, true interest in cinema usually takes a back seat to other more primal needs. An old Korean friend used to be a DVD room attendant during his last year in university. Aside from ringing up the customers, his main duty consisted of emptying the used-condom-filled trash containers.

  * * * *

  Though not as overt as say, Thailand or the Philippines, prostitution is rife in Korea. It exists all over the country in just about every corner, on many different levels. The biggest consumers of prostitutes are obviously the nation’s businessmen, who, after soju-fueled drinking and karaoke bouts with co-workers, will often end up in room salons, where hostesses pour drinks, chat with clients, and perform a host of other services, if the price is right. These establishments can be seen all throughout the cities, and are often advertised with flashing neon signs. They are pricey, however, and not really set up for the average Joe. Much of the money that is pumped into the room salons comes from company and corporate expense accounts. Entertaining employees and clients is seen as a basic cost of doing business in Korea, and companies set aside large funds for this exclusive purpose. But what is entertainment? Meals? Drinks? Karaoke rooms? Paying for sex with willing young women?

  Prostitution is technically illegal in Korea, though this is spottily enforced, to say the least. It is widely participated in–and winked at, even. I’ve taught many businessmen who not only admit to, but proudly proclaim their love of, prostitutes. It’s a certain mark of manhood. And it’s not just the swanky room salons where this is going on. Proper red light districts exist in every city in the country–especially in areas near US Army bases. The most famous one is “Hooker Hill” in Itaewon, the foreigner district in Seoul. It is a hill packed with juicy bars and brothels, and has been around since the Korean War. One block away is “Homo Hill,” which is the most visible gay district in the country. In Busan there are several backstreet brothels with red-light windows in which the girls sit on display, Amsterdam-style. Most will refuse Western clients, though a persistent foreigner will usually be able to get serviced. These are as close as one gets to open-air sex markets.

  Lowest on the food chain are the old-school dabangs, which serve instant coffee, tea, and additional services, as well as the ubiquitous barber-pole rooms–massage parlors and sex joints, always marked by spinning barber poles. They’re usually staffed by older women who have moved on from the higher-paying places, time having taken its toll on their marketability. If you want a cheap blow job performed by a lusty ajumma, you’ve found your place. And unlike some contend, the barber pole is not just for show. I know a guy who once came to Korea to visit a friend. In need of a haircut, he wandered the neighborhood looking for a barber shop. He saw a spinning pole and knew that he was in business, so he descended into the windowless basement shop, where he was greeted by an ajumma who informed him that a haircut would cost 80,000 won (about $80 US). He thought this was a bit steep, but went along with it. He was immediately stripped, showered, and then laid. But, in the end, he did get his haircut.

  CHAPTER 7: HIGHER EDUCATION

  By August of 2005, I had survived one year on the peninsula. I had grooved into my 30 teaching hours a week by encouraging the kids to kill me; I had gotten tight with a new pack of friends, with whom I ate and drank several times a week; I had gone through two girlfriends and dated others, including a red-haired English woman who was doing her best to obliterate my desperate, needy heart; I had been to Vietnam and loved it, igniting a desire to travel that would blossom into a near-addiction. In short, I had spent almost a year of my life outside of America… and thrived. I had found my place, at least for the time being. For all my faults, I had worked in Korea; Korea, for all of its faults, had worked for me.

  Not all English teachers who come to Korea work in the hagwons. These ubiquitous academies mainly house the short-timers (people who come for one or two years) and the newbies–those bright-eyed kids who stumble off the plane, having come from Manitoba or Missouri, armed with good intentions and liberal-arts diplomas so new that you can smell the dampness of the wood fibers. While teachers who arrive on the shores of the peninsula usually do start off slogging away in the hagwons–with their grueling teaching hours, short vacation time, cruel children, and sketchy directors–after a year or two or three, most move on to better gigs. Consider the hagwon to be the gateway drug of English teaching addiction. It certainly was for me.

  After just one year at the Bayridge Language School, I was all geared up to ink my name for one more. After all, it had been a pretty good twelve months. Korea had been an adventure, an education, and above all, about five years’ worth of normal people’s fun compressed into one. I was not eager to return to the bleak prospects of working back home–the land of laws, rules, and credit checks.

  That said, America wasn’t so tough on everyone. Many of my high school classmates were doing very well. Many of them were employed by that smiling, khaki-wearing ogre of corporate hegemony, Microsoft. They were living happy, liberal Pacific Northwest lives, with beaming blond children, golden retrievers, and mortgages that could choke a dinosaur. They listened to NPR and drank café macchiatos while commuting in their forest-green Subaru Outbacks to Microsoft’s “campus” in Redmond, Washington.

  So most of my old classmates–at least the ones who, like me, had the wisdom to go to college–were doing well, sucking on that ever-so-generous tit of information technology, and living very proper American lives–the kind with fat 401Ks, diversified stock portfolios, and pre-paid college tuition for their gifted children. I, on the other hand, had taken an opposite route, one that led me through chaos and art, willful irresponsibility, dependency, and despondency, and had finally deposited me on the other side of the ocean, a bit older and battered, but still in one piece. And guess what? In my limited estimation, it was going smashingly. Sure, I couldn’t vomit up a down payment on that three-bedroom house in an insular Seattle suburb, but for the first time in years, I wasn’t broke. There was always some cash in the bank; in fact, at any time I could go take out hundreds of bucks and not even sweat it, despite the fact that I was shitting away much of my money like a tourist with a nasty case of dysentery. With the exception of the nagging daily stresses brought on by my parents’ declining health, and the fact that I had fallen hard for a wispy English girl whose love for me evaporated every time I left the room, life was pretty good.

  “As you know, Chris,” my boss Jimmy said, “You are very popular teacher at Bayridge Language School. We would be so please you come back for another year.”

  “Sure,” I agreed. “It’s been a good year and I would be pleased to sign on for another.”

  In Korea, hagwons are at the bottom of the heap, but they’re the easiest places to get hired. They’re all over the country, in every city and every town, and most school kids attend a
t least one. I was lucky to have sleepwalked into a pretty good one. Sure, I had to work a lot of hours each week, but I was always paid on time, and both the heat and air conditioning worked. I had been to some of the ghetto academies where less-fortunate teachers worked (they always seemed to be Irish, Brits, Kiwis, or lowly South Africans), and I knew that I had a pretty good thing. But I was still at a hagwon, and even after only a year I was casting my gaze higher.

  The Korean ESL food chain is essentially three-tiered. There are, of course, hagwons; above them are primary (elementary/middle) and secondary (high) schools, both public and private; at the top is that holy grail of English teaching jobs: universities.

  University jobs are the most sought-after, and consequently the most difficult to get. The teaching hours are low (generally 9 to 12 per week, depending on the school), the money is usually decent, and the paid vacation time is massive–at least two months off per year, often three, four, or even five. Universities in Korea also have higher standards. They prefer candidates with master’s degrees, though three years of in-country teaching experience can usually be substituted for this. Graduate degrees aren’t unheard of among many of the ESL teachers on the peninsula, but they’re still not common enough to make having one an ironclad requirement. With regard to qualifications, it’s still a bit of a buyer’s market, though this seems to diminish with each passing year.

  Toward the end of my first year, I put in for a university job on a lark. I had become good friends with Angry Steve, who worked at one of the big universities in town. His undergraduate and master’s degrees were both from respected American schools and were English-related. He had, in fact, been a real teacher in the States, specializing in English lit for some years at exclusive prep schools. Why he had defected to teaching half-dead college freshmen was anyone’s guess (though it turned out that, like a lot of us, he really enjoyed the expat lifestyle and the new friendships that came along with it).

  I had met Angry Steve at a weekend Korean class, where we had taken part in an all-foreigner staging of Heungbu and Nolbu, a famous Korean folktale about a two brothers. I played the poor, younger Heungbu, while Steve played the greedy, Scrooge-like Nolbu, who turns his back on his starving brother. I was happy to learn that he too had a background in drama, having directed plays on top of teaching back home. He was smart and funny and liked not just good books, but great music. He was dark and just a bit brooding and had little time for idiots or bullshit, though his good taste and piercing intellect could at times be mistaken for a kind of East Coast snobbery (the son of a prominent professor, he hailed from near Amherst, MA). The man simply did not suffer fools.

  I gave Steve my resume, he passed it on with a recommendation, and before I knew it, I was wearing the one suit I owned and interviewing for the gig. Like many universities in Korea, this one was perched atop one of the city’s many mountains and commanded a good view of much of Busan. Parts of the rock mass had been carved out to house department buildings and high-rise dormitories–this was steep terrain. Angry Steve accompanied me to the meeting, sitting on one side of the sofa while the secretary/translator sat on the other. I was sandwiched in the middle. A scowling middle-aged Korean man named Dr. Chun was seated before us. He sported a thickly-sprayed helmet of hair, and after twenty seconds or so of staring me down, he began lobbing questions my way, which, in contrast to his sour demeanor, were the biggest bunch of softballs I’ve ever had the privilege to field. My language skills were rudimentary, so I just listened intently and nodded, waiting for the stammering half-interpretations from the young female “translator.”

  Dr. Chun: Ja… mungodmeoyengyeanimhageso… onjedulanhanminildaokinikka?

  Translator: Will… uh….will you… will you teach well?

  Me: Yes. I will put forth my greatest effort and teach well.

  Steve: Yes, Chris will do very well. He is a good teacher. (Thumbs up)

  Dr. Chun: Gurumnibabidayaminyikkahaesumal… alumnibumnigom… kumshinuhalgsumnikka?

  Translator: Are you able to… to … can you not the late? Uh… keep the time? Will you… uh…will you please honor your promise?

  Me: Of course. I’ll make sure to show up on time and not miss any classes.

  Steve: Do not worry. Chris is very punctual. He understands the importance of this issue.

  The line of questioning was based on fears of things that I might do. “Will you not come to the class naked? Will you refrain from vomiting in the wastebasket? Will you avoid publicly masturbating near the school’s front gate?”

  Steve was one of the most respected foreign English instructors on the staff at the time. His words carried a palpable gravity with both Dr. Chun and the secretary, and despite my rather light resume, I felt that the gig was mine. How could I lose with such a cheerleader? And my suspicions were confirmed just two days later, when, at 8 a.m., the rooster crow I had picked as my incoming ringtone jarred me out of my beery sleep, and, through the hissing cotton in my head, I was formally offered a position at the university. I hung up, leapt out of bed, and danced a naked jig in front of the 10th-story window of my apartment. I had climbed up to a university after only one year in the country. This didn’t happen too often. I was learning quickly that connections trump all in the Land of the Morning Calm.

  * * * *

  That August I went back to America for three weeks, and when I returned to Busan, much refreshed, I started work as an English Instructor at Gaegum University, which had an enrollment of about sixteen thousand. I arrived at the foreign teachers’ orientation woefully underdressed (I had yet to learn that on this campus, a shirt and tie were de rigueur), sweating through my white T-shirt in the maddening August humidity. Dr. Chun stood in front of the twenty or so foreign instructors, once again encouraging us to “teach well” and “keep the class time”–this time via a more-fluent translator. The suit-and-tie-clad foreigners mirrored his grave expression and nodded lightly, indicating their understanding and their hopes to speed his speech along and get to the buffet lunch that always accompanies such a meeting. And soon we were there. I stuffed myself with fresh sushi, crab, noodles, fried rice, and marinated beef. A little beer was also sipped (as it always is), and after the feed I was transported back up the mountain on which the school sat, shown the communal office, and given my own computer and cubicle (on whose carpeted walls I found an engraved plastic name plate: Christopher John Tharp). This gig looked and tasted real: I was a real pretend genuine fake professor.

  The Korean frenzy to learn English is not just relegated to children. It’s an all-age venture, and the universities are not immune. Most of us at Gaegum were not hired to work with students majoring in English. We weren’t there to mentor students committed to mastering our native tongue in accordance with a path to their degree. We were instead hired to teach basic, conversational English at all incoming freshmen, representing every majorin the school. These, for the most part, weren’t students who wanted to study the language or those that even had even the faintest interest in learning it. English Conversation was a compulsory course for freshmen. The students took the class whether they wanted to or not. And it’s safe to say that most would have opted out if given the option.

  The Korean and Japanese education systems are remarkably similar, which isn’t surprising: many modern Korean institutions are based on Japanese models, a result of both the colonial legacy and pragmatism on part of the architects of modern South Korea. Both systems emphasize high school, with endless hours of study, rote memorization, and an almost-militaristic obsession with mastering the annual college entrance exams.

  These exams are taken each November in Korea, during which time the whole country is shut down to allow easy access to the test sites. After all, we wouldn’t want young Min-ho’s future dreams shattered because he was stuck in traffic. The makers of the exam are sequestered for months on end. For weeks beforehand, legions of mothers go to churches and Buddhist temples to pray for their children’s success. On the day
of the exam, students from the lower grades come to cheer their seniors on, singing songs, clapping, chanting–even removing their shirts and painting motivational slogans on their naked, freezing torsos. The entrance test is the pinnacle of years of education, and it is taken very seriously.

  Once the test is taken, most of the students enter one of many universities. While the best are extremely selective, taking only the top one or two percent, the gate is open much wider as you go down the food chain. This is true of most any country, but the difference with Korea is that almost everyone goes to college. Four-year degrees are as common as kimchee refrigerators. But university, while important, is generally viewed as a time to relax after the hellish rigors of high school. Students are expected to commit to a modicum of study, but allowances are now made for drinking, cutting class, and getting laid. Approaching university without the monastic seriousness of high school is not only tolerated by both the students and the professors, it’s expected. The result is an inconsistent, watered-down experience–a general shittiness in the level of education–especially for students in non-technical fields. This is especially true for students at lower-tiered schools. Korean universities are not widely esteemed outside the country’s own borders; you’d be hard-pressed to find an American four-year institution that would transfer in even one credit.

  I discovered this right away. Armed with a textbook and a CD player, I was thrown into huge classes filled with apathetic freshmen, the vast majority of whom wanted the best grade through the least amount of work possible. Classes were 30 to 50 students in size, and like anywhere, the most curious and diligent sat toward the front, while the back was inhabited by the larger group, who passed the time by shifting in their seats, talking, sending text messages, compulsively checking their make-up mirrors, and attempting sleep. This lack of interest I can understand: I’m sure that many American freshmen forced to endure a required course act similarly. After all, I knew the situation; I knew that I had been hired to instruct a paint-by-numbers conversation class.