Dispatches from the Peninsula

by Chris Tharp

  Beer Korean beer is basically limited to three brands: Hite (Shite), Cass (Ass), and O.B. (Oh Pee!), though these days several sub-varieties are being introduced (the best of which is Max). These generally attempt to imitate American-style lagers and pilsners, resulting in a light, watery brew. As evidenced by the nicknames garnered, a lot of foreigners deride Korean beer for being awful–Hite especially. Most Korean brews are evidently made using corn (among many other ingredients), giving them a slightly sweet taste and causing any visiting Germans to turn up their noses and shake their heads in disbelief: there are no brewing purity laws in the Land of the Morning Calm. Sometimes the beer has a slight chemical taste, no doubt the result of preservatives. Rumor has it that formaldehyde is used, and though I’ve yet to have this confirmed. That said, the beer is light and crisp and goes well with grilled meat and is easy to drink during the sweaty Korean summers. I still drink it regularly and generally regard the haters to be whiners; while not great, Korean beer isn’t that bad. Or could it just be that I’ve lost all perspective–that I’ve been in this country far too long?

  CHAPTER 14: THE TALE OF AUSSIE MACK

  Despite the statistics to the contrary, some of the expats here are indeed not angels. And while almost none even approach the downright sociopathic behavior described in Amit Gilboa’s Off the Rails in Phnom Penh, which highlights a pack of champion scumbags slumming it in mid ‘90s Cambodia, Asian expat life always seems to attract a certain unsavory element, to put it in its mildest terms. I’ve met and known a fair share of raging boozeheads, compulsive brawlers, and serial fornicators. I remember a wall of a Canadian man who swung at everything that moved and once smashed in a taxi’s windshield with his fists. I knew an Englishman who would get so drunk that he’d wander from bar to bar in his pajamas. I knew a Kiwi who bragged about smoking cigarettes in class (he taught kids), an Irish guy who spent every moment of his generous university vacations whoring in the Philippines, and a Texan whose racist utterances would make a KKK Grand Wizard blush. And then there was Aussie Mack.

  As the name implies, Mack was from Australia, and when I met him he had been teaching in Korea for already a number of years. He was an obvious thug, though he was very friendly with Andrew, the proprietor of the Crown, where some of the most hard-drinking of the expat crowd used to pass the time. Mack was a mass of sinew, with dark, close-cropped hair, and angry-looking tattoos slithering around his arms. His expression was a perpetual scowl, and he spat out his words, as if each utterance stung his throat, palate, and tongue before being hissed at a hostile universe. Mack had known Andrew back in Oz and felt comfortable around him, so the Crown was pretty much the only place you would ever run into the guy. This was an unfortunate fact for many of the patrons, for Mack was a bully of the highest order, and after two or three white Russians, he was always looking for a fight. And as he was a bully, this was usually with the weakest-looking guy in the room.

  Mack looked tough and was tough. Some bullies are all bluster and hot air–this guy was not. When he threatened you, he meant it, and was more than capable of backing up his words. He’d grown up in a mixed-race family of rugby players. A close relative of his had once started for the Wallabies, Australia’s beloved national rugby squad. The man was no stranger to violence.

  I first met him over an informal poker game. Texas Hold ‘em poker had spread around much of the English-speaking world, and was just getting its start among the expats of South Korea. The Crown was the first bar to host a regular game, before it spread to almost every joint in town, only to disappear over the course of a year, like any fad is fated to do. Mack had never played the game before, and while I was certainly no expert, I understood the basic form of play, and began to get a bit impatient when old Mack could never figure out what was going on each time the bet came his way. Hold ‘em tournaments are already interminable exercises–this is one of the reasons that I’ve pretty much quit playing the game–as I suspect it is with most everyone else. But I have a hard time masking my annoyance, and Mack, while slow to pick up the betting rules for that particular card game, was no idiot, and quickly got his hate on for me, glaring across the table and saying, slowly and deliberately:

  “I don’t like you. I don’t like you at all.”

  Andrew, who was playing next to me, tried to assuage the growing anger of his Aussie acquaintance. “He’s all right, mate. Just make your play.”

  Mack put down his cards and continued his death-glare. “No. I don’t like his fucking attitude. I think he needs to apologize.”

  Seeing which way the table was tilting, I granted his request and apologized at once, which really didn’t make things good, but allowed me to walk away that night with my limbs attached and my jaw intact.

  Like most of us, Mack was in Korea teaching English, specializing, amazingly enough, in kindergartners. He made his living teaching the youngest of the young–tiny, tiny kids. I had never once seen the guy crack a smile; instead he’d always stare right through people. The chip on his shoulder was a towering, dreadful thing to behold. If he put the fear of God into the deep centers of adults, how must he be viewed by 6 and 7-year-old Koreans, who can cry for weeks on end at just the sight and sound of a foreigner? I think that we are often seen as huge, horrific monsters by these little guys. How must have they viewed Mack?

  “He graduated from college? No way, man.” One night, after Mack had staggered up the stairs of the Crown to an unfortunate taxi out front (his Korean was nonexistent), Sam confided his disbelief in Mack’s credentials. “There is no way that guy has a college degree.”

  Mack wasn’t just a bully in that he intimidated other people. He had beaten several guys up and loved to brag about it. One of his victims was the hapless Rob, another one of the poker crew. Rob was a short dumpy guy from Wyoming who had crossed words with Mack and paid the price: a complete beat down. Mack had reportedly kicked Rob in the head and ribs, resulting in a three-week hospital stay that Mack was forced to pay for over the course of a year.

  “Yeah, I put him in the hospital and paid out six grand. He deserved it and you know what? I’d do it again. When he was there he whinged the whole time. He cried and called his mother. He called his mother. Can you believe it? How can he call himself a man?”

  Mack eventually grew to like me, which may have been worse than having him hate me. I had picked up my guitar one night and gave a bit of a concert down at the Crown, singing some original tunes mixed in with some rock and roll covers. Mack was very impressed by this and decided that I was now cool. After this he always wanted to talk to me; he would sit beside me and clink a glass and tell me how good he thought my playing was. But I never could trust him. It was like being around a terribly aggressive dog that has grown used to you. Sure, it may wag its tail and lick your hand, but you still knew that at any moment the thing could snap, that it could chase you down and chew your face off. Any conversation with Mack was like this.

  Even though he professed a new liking for me, Mack hated Sam and would usually try to goad him into a fight at the bar. He tried to fight everyone, unless they were obviously bigger than him. One night Sam and I had had enough: we plotted to ambush Mack, to follow him home while he was drunk and take him down with baseball bats, just to shut him up. This was just beer-fueled bravado, however. Despite our drunken oaths for justice, we swallowed our plan and never spoke of it again. That didn’t stop others, though. We weren’t the only ones dreaming of Mack’s demise.

  One night he was followed home by little Rob–whom he had gravely beaten a year before–along with Arthur, who was the most massive Texan on the peninsula. Mack had also run afoul of Arthur, and Arthur, with the aid of a revenge-seeking Rob, exacted just that, beating the hell out of the boozed-up Mack.

  The next day I saw him at the Crown. He was just about to board a plane to Manila to visit his Filipina wife, and was medicating himself with booze. Both eyes were black and a front tooth was shattered, its jagged remnants jutting toward his swo
llen tongue. His left arm was in a sling. He looked as rough as it gets, but was nonplussed.

  “It’s not the end of the world, mate. It’s just a fight. It’s not the end of the world.” He shrugged and gulped down his mixture of vodka, Kahlua, and milk.

  I got the impression that this wasn’t the first beating old Mack had taken, nor would it be his last.

  Mack came back from the Philippines a month or so later, with his wife in tow. She was a lovely girl he had taken out of a Manila bar and married. Her English wasn’t great, though I wouldn’t know, since I made sure that my conversations with her were brief as possible. Mack would often bring her along to the bar, leave her at one end, and then go around and talk to or threaten whichever unfortunate patrons decided to brave his presence that night. It was always the same. He would–white Russian spilling in his hand–walk up to an unsuspecting customer and make small talk, eventually culminating in ominous words related to how he planned on negatively impacting their dentistry. This had a chilling effect. His poor wife would be consigned to sit alone and stare into space, no doubt bored beyond comprehension. She was pretty and friendly, but no one dare even cast a glance her way, for fear of stoking Mack’s sizzling ire.

  The last time I saw Mack was the only time I saw him get his fight. Again he was there, smoldering at the bar, gulping his milky fuel. He had tried to go after Sam, but Sam knew how to avoid trouble with Mack and pretty much ignored him–so he then turned his sights onto Wes. Wes was a slight American guy who greeted everyone with an “aw shucks” smile. He was sweet as honey, though bright as a five-watt bulb. He just liked to have a drink, listen to some rock and roll, laugh, and smile in that happy, relaxed, California beach style. He was the opposite of tough, and if not the sharpest guy in the room, he was a real heart. Mack had cornered him, and Wes, sensing tension, offered to pour Mack a drink out of his personal bottle of Jack Daniels whisky which stood on the bar.

  “I don’t want your fucking whisky, mate. You taking the piss? You trying have a go?”

  “No, man. I’m cool. I just wanna have a good time.”

  “I’ll show you a good time, you cunt. Let’s go. Let’s have a fight.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you, man,” Wes looked around for support. Eyes averted his gaze.

  “I’m not asking you if you want to or not, Yank. We’re going to fight.”

  “All right, Mack, all right. That’s enough, mate.” Andrew’s tolerance for Mack had reached a limit. “You can’t pick fights with everyone in the bar, mate. I think it’s time for you to go.”

  Mack stood and squared up with Andrew, who had now stepped out from behind the bar, looking him in the eyes.

  “Enough’s enough. You’ve had enough to drink. You need to go home.”

  Mack held his ground for a moment, shrugged, then took down the rest of the white Russian in one swallow.

  “Have it your way, mate. I’m fucking off.”

  He swayed and lost his footing, stumbling into the bar and knocking his glass to the floor in the process, where it fell and shattered. Andrew got under one of Mack’s tattooed arms and walked him to the door. Mack’s wife meekly followed. Andrew then opened the door of the pub and aided Mack on the long hike up the steep, treacherous stairs.

  Sweating, Andrew returned through the door, and made his way around the bar.

  “Sorry, lads. He’s an old mate but a bit of a psychopath. I just can’t have him acting like this anymore. It’s just bad for business.”

  We all nodded and took a sip; the sentiment was shared by all. Good riddance.

  With that, there was an enormous clamber outside of the door:

  BUDAGA-BUDAGA-BUDAGA-BUDAGA-BUDAGA-BUDAGA-BUM!!

  A figure lay at the bottom of the stairs. It was Mack. He was half-conscious and bleeding badly from two gashes on his head. He was a wreck. He had slipped at the top of the stairs and tumbled down to the bottom. He had done everything he could to provoke a fight; he had needled, cajoled, and threatened. He tried to fight with the bar all night and, in the end, he got his wish. But the bar won.

  * * * *

  Mack was deported soon after that. He had told me that Immigration authorities had already questioned him several times about his chronic brawling, but that’s not why they ended up giving him the boot. It seems that under close scrutiny, his bachelor’s degree didn’t pass muster. It was, in fact, a forgery, most likely procured down a Bangkok backstreet, where such things are readily offered up. Sam was right. There was no way that Mack had graduated from college. He was a fraud. And like Al Capone, he was done in on a technicality.

  INTERLUDE: CHRISTMAS DAY, 2007

  TE ANAU, NEW ZEALAND

  I’m in the far south of the South Island, spending my first Christmas ever in the Southern Hemisphere, though you wouldn’t know it from the slicing winds whipping off of the huge lake in front of the town. It’s supposed to be summer, but warm weather has yet to arrive in Te Anau. The winters must be murder.

  Sam and his brother are back at the hotel, eating from the Christmas buffet. At fifty bucks a head I found it a bit dear, electing instead to fill my belly at an outdoor burger truck–the only thing open in this comatose town. I gobbled down a double-patty grease bomb with a fried egg on top. Kiwis throw fried eggs on almost everything. No wonder Peter Jackson filmed Lord of the Rings down here. These people eat like hobbits.

  Yesterday we came down from the mountain after a four-day trek up the Greenstone River. We spent the whole time stalking monster trout in the gale-beaten valley, battling wind, rain, and swarms of biting sand flies, which turned my ankles into raw meat. I landed several giant rainbows on black woolly buggers, though the fish are so big that they’re actually snapping a lot of my leaders. I’ve already lost a lot of expensive flies, as well as my digital camera. This already-pricey trip costs more every day.

  New Zealand is even more beautiful than expected, but it is a sleepy place, seemingly mired 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Everything closes early and the streets are as empty as ghost towns. Suyeong College regularly sends students to New Zealand on internship programs, and while these kids always return to Korea refreshed, they inevitably complain about how boring the place is, especially compared with the 24-hour charge that is life in Busan.

  I called home yesterday, talking to my dad from the front desk phone at the hotel in Queenstown. Dad put his best voice forward, forcing a cheer that I knew was truly absent. He was interested in the fishing, of course, and I was proud to tell him of my success. I told him I loved him before hanging up. It was the last conversation we’d ever have.

  CHAPTER 15: DAD

  The call came in the morning. The buzzing stirred me from my sleep, and I climbed over the still-dozing Da-jin–who had risked her mother’s wrath by staying over–jumped out of my bed and stumbled over to the desk where my phone lay. The number on the display screen was long and unrecognizable, a sure sign of an international call. What time was it in America?After several years, the math still turned me around, especially at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday, before I’d even had a whiff of coffee.

  “Hey Chris, it’s Mark…”

  Despite the murkiness of my head, I recognized that Mark never called at this time of day; in fact, he rarely called at all. Most of my family phone time was spent with either my mother or my brother Glen. And once he spoke, I immediately heard that his voice carried the tone, the tone we all recognize and hope to never feel oozing out of the end of the receiver. Deep and concerned. Pressing. Grave.

  “It’s Dad…”

  I held my breath and waited for the worst–waited for the words that almost always follow the tone–but I was spared, at least for the time being. He wasn’t dead… at least, not yet. He was in the hospital and it was bad and yes, this may be it. The information was spotty and inconclusive. Mark didn’t know for sure how things could or might turn out, but it just didn’t look good.

  Over many years there had been many scares. Dad had
been seriously ill since 2004, but he had not been well for at least ten before that. He had been in and out of the hospital so many times that, despite the constant jitters set off by such news, the blow was deadened with each email or vibration of the phone. I had just become desensitized to the cycle of sickness–or dare I say, used to it? Whereas other friends would shift into the depths of panic at the mention of even a beloved aunt having surgery, the news of my father–or my mother, for that matter–spending time in the hospital became routine. It’s not that such news stopped bothering me. Far from it. I just became used to being bothered. This thing, this sickness, this distant view of my parents’ long, sad decline, was just my circumstance. I had to endure it and press on with my own affairs, my so-called Korean life, despite the growing hairball of anger, pity, guilt, and self-loathing that no amount of alcohol or casual distraction would allow me to cough up.

  So I was not surprised, when, on that clear January morning, my brother finally summoned me home. I had been expecting that phone call since the first day I set foot on the peninsula. I had known that Dad was sick and would get sicker as each day passed. Every time a call came through from home I could feel my heart begin to sprint; I’d breathe in deeply and take hold of the nearest support, fully expecting to be slapped by the worst possible news. But the worst news never came. What I got instead was an infuriating succession of bad news. One chilling diagnosis piled upon another. Money woes exacerbated by an almost-criminal disregard for even the most basic attempts at financial solvency. Stonewalling. A lack of details. An unwillingness to change even a fraction of their lifestyles for the better, despite the fact that both of them–my mom and my dad–were killing themselves. Slow and total disintegration.