Koreans on the street don’t generally approach me or casually say “hello” in a way that they periodically do back home. This isn’t viewed as being cold in this country, and it doesn’t particularly bother me as I used to routinely make fun of my father for waving to random passersby who were zipping by on the highway at 70 mph. If a Korean approaches you out of the blue, it is usually for one of four reasons: 1. They want to sell you something. 2. They are 5-years-old, recognize instinctively that you are not Korean, assume (correctly) that you speak English, and say “hello” to you to make their parents or friends giggle. 3. They want you to come to their homes to teach them English. 4. You are sharing a mountaintop with them, the endorphins have effectively kicked in, and they want nothing more than to give you a bag of oranges.
Situation #3 has occurred twice now, and both times were within the span of an hour. I’ve heard that this sort of scenario is not uncommon: a person who speaks moderately good English wants, for various reasons, to speak better English, and they would prefer to learn it privately from someone who speaks the language natively. Occasionally they might want you to teach both them and their children. Or even in some cases, they might want you to teach multiple children whose parents cannot afford to send them to a proper hagwan. I’ve heard that this is a pretty easy way for teachers to make extra money during the day or on the weekends…of course, it is completely illegal. My visa allows me to come here to earn money from one specific job…if it was discovered by the government that I was making an extra income from elsewhere, I would be slapped with a fine and would probably get sent home. The Korean government also rewards people for tattle-taling. If a person is caught violating the rules of his/her visa, the person who tattled will get half of the money from the fine. Therefore, if (hypothetically) I were to illegally distribute my English language ability, I would have to be extremely clandestine about the exchange. I’ve heard that it’s probably safer to get recommendations from another foreigner than it is to accept a proposition from a woman who approaches you in the grocery store. The two women who approached me and my friend Kelly both seemed very honest and sincere, but since I am a terrible judge of character, there is no way to know for sure. They both gave us their phone number and home address, and begged us to call them when we finally get phones. I have no intention of doing so at this point. For now, I am content with my above average income and 30 hour workweek.
Situation #4 happened to me last Sunday. Daegu is basically surrounded on all sides by mountains. Therefore, there is no lack of places to go hiking. On a frigid day in December, I was not expecting to face a traffic jam atop a mountain. As is usually the case, I was wrong. Koreans evidently love their hiking, and they prove it by decking themselves out in high-tech gear and titanium climbing poles. I felt both ashamed and amused as a middle-aged Korean woman walked up the mountain backwards at a pace that was faster than the one I was moving at forwards. I don’t know what it is about the mountain air that makes people so damned happy, but the Koreans you encounter in nature take on a different persona than the ones you encounter on the subway. Perhaps it was the sense of community that comes along with taking on nature’s beast in unison, perhaps it was the feel-good energy that comes along with extracting sweat, or perhaps it was the fact that I smelled soju on the breath of a lot of fellow hikers. Nevertheless, roughly 50% of the people we passed greeted us with an “Anyeong-ha-se-yo” or a rapid, smiling sentence in Korean that I did not understand but responded to by smiling widely, nodding rapidly, and making a random noise that suggested “I don’t have a bloody clue what you just said, but I like you…” If they weren’t trying to verbally communicate with us, they were likely trying to communicate by feeding us. Here’s a tip: If you are ever broke and would like some fresh produce, go climb a Korean mountain. Apples and oranges were being hurled in our direction all day, and the Koreans wouldn’t take no for an answer, so we had no choice but to squeeze them into our pockets and backpacks. It was amusing right away, but after awhile I began to feel like a zoo animal. “Here’s an orange, Jin Hyeok,” I imagined they were saying. “Go see if you can get the American with the jellyfish-like hair to eat it from the palm of your hand…it’s o.k.; it won’t bite.”
Before long, whenever I would see people get that crazy look in their eyes like they wanted to give me something, I would instinctively try to take an alternate route. I wasn’t intentionally being rude…I just have no use for three pairs of gloves…
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