Aspects of Korea

This week I thought I’d try something a little different. It’s time to pull out the report card and grade Korea on some its finer points. I present to you: Aspects of Korea

Ajumas: Holy hell, Ajumas. An ajuma, for those who aren’t aware, is basically a middle-aged Korean woman who wears garish clothing, does lots of power walking and will KICK. YOUR. ASS. In a male-dominated society, ajumas are like a power-bloc with dreams of revolution. In fact, the boss at my school refers to them as a “third gender”. I think he’s scared of them. Honestly, though, a little bit of fear is in order here. Ajumas take no prisoners. When you see them power walking at you on the bike path, sweat all thick on their brows, orange sweaters and green pants temporarily stunning and confusing you, faces stern with purpose, be sure to leap out of the way. You may need to dive. Do what you have to do. Get to safety.

B+


Restaurants: This is it. This is why we’re here. When it comes to eating out, Koreans have found the way. Here’s the wa y it works: Everyone shares everything, there’s a call button on the table that summons the waiters, there is no tipping, there are numerous side dishes and you can eat as much of them as you want without increasing the bill, and you cook the meat right at your table on a big burner in the middle of everyone. You get all this for about 6 bucks, as long as you don’t order anything to drink. And if you do order a beer, say, it’ll come in a very large plastic bottle and with as many glasses as there are people drinking. It’s customary not to pour your own drink, but to rely on your fellow diners to fill you up when you’re empty. The side dishes and the meat are also shared among everyone, rather than each person getting an individual order. The communal aspect of it is really nice, and the price is impossible to beat. It’s no surprise that eating out at restaurants with others is the centerpiece of the average Korean’s social life. It’s much the same for foreigners living here as well. Simply put, there’s no reason not to go out to eat with others at every opportunity.

A+


Not having a dryer:

Here’s how it goes.

“Ah FUCK! Forgot to hang up my wet clothes… Guess I’ll just run back and forth between the balcony and the laundry room 8 times with loads of clothes, and… SHIT! I totally dropped that shirt on the floor. Ah, man it’s so not clean anymore… I mean, it’s not so bad… I guess I could use it as a mop head or something… “

24 hours later

“Well, I guess I’ll just take a shower and put on some of my new clean clothes. Doo dee da doo… Which shirt should I wear today? Oh wait, none of them are dry yet! And none of my jeans will be dry for another full day! And everything will be as wrinkly as a damn golgi apparatus anyway.”

Fuck not having a dryer.

D-


Pepero Day: Pepero Day is November 11th. 11/11. Pepero is a kind of candy that has many different varieties, but basically, the thing that makes it pepero is that it’s a cookie stick with stuff on it. Just a long, thin, round and crunchy candy snack that can be covered in chocolate or something. It’s similar (maybe the same?) to the Japanese snack, pocky. In Korea it’s called pepero and it’s usually manufactured by Lotte, the shadowy overlords who rule Korea with an iron fist. (No fooling. In addition to dominating the candy market, Lotte has a chain of department stores, major real estate holdings and even a giant indoor amusement park called “LotteWorld”. They remind me of BnL, the megacorporation from Wall*E.)

So anyway, pepero is okay but not exactly amazing, so Lotte came up with the genius idea of making up a fake holiday where people would just buy a shit ton of pepero and spend all day giving it away and receiving it. It’s on November 11th because the ones are supposed to look like pepero sticks.

You can imagine how the kids at school feel about pepero day. If they have pants, they poop them. If they don’t have pants, they poop something else. Pooping happens.

It works out great for the teachers because some of the kids will come in and their moms have loaded them up with huge bags full of boxes of pepero so they can give the teachers and staff mounds of the stuff. When I finished work on pepero day, I had more than ten boxes of the stuff on my desk, and spent about two weeks eating through it.

What’s hilarious is that Lotte tries to deny that they invented this holiday. They claim that they noticed sales of pepero went up around that day anyway and they just started to capitalize on it. Like people were writing the date and saying “My God! That’s it! Pepero!” It’s a delightfully feeble lie. I bet at this moment Lotte goons are dreaming up new kinds of candy that look like numbers. “We just noticed that a lot of people were eating our ‘3’ shaped cookies at 3:33 everyday! What? Stop looking at us like that!”

B-