Of Spas and Singing Rooms

Two of the rites-of-passage of life as a foreigner in Korea are the first trip to Jimjilbaeng and Noraebang (spa and karaoke bar, respectively). For better or worse, your correspondent has finally had both of them. Both were by turns memorable, fun, and incredibly alien experiences which offer tantalizing-albeit-marginally-intelligible glimpses into the Korean psyche. 

*** 

Johan describes Jimjilbaeng as sort of an evolutionary throwback to a Dark Ages inn. Jimjilbaeng provide ultracheap, sleep-on -the-floor accommodations for travelers as well as a built-in public bath. Every wide spot in the road in Korea has one. Like about everything in this country, the vibe of a Jimjilbaeng is profoundly communal -- which is probably why going there was so off-putting to my American individualist's psyche. At least at first, anyway. 

Johan and I went to the Jimjilbaeng in Dangjin, an angular, steel-and-granite hulk located at the end of a narrow, neon-lit warren. Standard operating procedure at this one is to trade your shoes in for orange, jailsuit-type garb (your sleepwear, if you stay the night). In Dangjin, spa and sleeping mat together cost you less than the equivalent of $15, which makes the Jimjilbaeng one of Korea's most affordable fun things to go do. 

Sleeping rooms are found one the third floor. Most buildings in Korea are equipped with ondol, a gas-powered underfloor heating system, and the Jimjilbaeng is no exception. The sleep setup is kind of like an Asian take on a youth hostel, meaning it's minus the bunk beds and actually quiet enough to sleep. Whole familes curl up together on thin mats sitting on the ondol. I didn't stay the night, but next time I go someplace overnight in Korea I am definitely going to avail myself of the Jimjilbaeng setup. 

Two floors up, you find the two spas (one for men and one for women) -- a collection of hot and cold pools where everyone soaks, chews the fat, and hangs out together naked. And yes, I did say NAKED -- as in. stark, utterly, not-a-stitch on you naked. Normally, this would totally bug out a stiff Protestant character such as your correspondent -- and it still did some -- but after a Spaghetti-Western moment's consideration, I shrugged, doffed my boxers, and did as the Koreans do. 

Another of the jimjilbaeng's SOPs is the shower. Everybody takes one in full view of the soaking pools. This is done as a kind of a good faith gesture to everybody else that you aren't filthy when you hop in next to them. The hot pools range between 34 and 44 degrees Celsius in temperature. The combination of the heat and the jacuzzi jets built into the walls and floor of some of them work wonders on sore muscles and chapped skin. An occasional trip into a (relatively) cold, 18-degree pool chills and refreshes. 

All around us, Korean teenagers gave each other touchy showers and feely back-rubs that looked, shall we say, eyebrow-raising, to my American mind. Suffice to say, though, that same-sex tactile interactions that would be either tooth-grindingly awkward or incredibly sexual for a Westerner just aren't that way here. Being an American, I have not seen any of my close male friends naked -- let alone most strangers. Here friend and stranger alike hang out naked as a matter of course. And it's all good in the hood. Moments like these make you realize how far east you actually are living in Korea. 

*** 

My first time at Noraebang was kind of like my first kiss – clumsy, surreal, embarrassing-in-retrospect, but fun all the same. Koreans like to hit up such singing rooms after a night out drinking. Hapdeok, the farming village where I live, is a town of maybe ten thousand that has at least ten Noraebang, which should tell you something about the popularity of singing rooms here. Maekju (beer), soju (a sugary vodka, usually about 19% alcohol), and makoli (rice beer) all flow freely at any social occasion, so by the time everyone stumbles into Noraebang spirits are high. Once at Noraebang, they drink more and very quickly, often going from completely sober to under the table and dreaming in about two hours. Every Korean I meet tells me about how getting drunk and singing together strengthens friendships. Even relatively light drinkers such as pastor's-daughter Grace espouse this view as if it were a Korean national mantra. They seem determined to get wrecked on schedule, so that they can rush home on schedule, so that they can then get up and go to work on schedule, since such revelry often takes place on weeknights. I went to the "Oh Korea" Noraebang located in Hapdeok's tiny downtown quarter. "Oh Korea" was a maze of polished marble and imitation wood-paneling bathed in a blue neon glow. Numerous sound-proofed rooms sat off the main hall so that the establishment's various guests did not disturb each other. 

Once inside, events progressed along predetermined lines. Korean beer was available in abundance and the lyrics to American Top 100 tunes and K-Pop scrolled across the room's LED screens. Teachers of the same gender held sweaty hands, stared deep into each other's eyes, and sang American love songs into the karaoke machine's mics with a fervor that had me gnawing my lip to keep from laughing out loud. Many of the Koreans seemed to take the singing very seriously and would have had good voices if they weren't about to pass out. Several weeks later, the traumatic-but-hilarious memory of all this is -- mercifully -- beginning to fade -- but I doubt if I will ever be able to listen to the BeeGees in quite the same way. Perhaps more frightening than the singing itself is the fact that the original meaning and sexual context of such songs seem completely lost on them. Korean affinity and esteem for English words are equalled only by their lack of understanding of their meanings. 

After several rounds of such songs and much peer pressure to "sing something," I decided it was time to put a stop to all the pop-iness, and dialed up "Back In Black" on the room's computer. Between all the booze and the excitement of the moment, I remember only flashes of what transpired next, but, since that night, nervous laughter and expressions of complete and abject horror will appear instantly on the faces of anyone at Hapdeok Steel High School if you so much as whisper that Erik Osburn might sing again. 

Shortly thereafter, Grace decided it was time for me to go home, and I was hustled out of the bar and into her gray Hyundai. My last memory of my first night of Noraebang is of me trying to define the word "pantheon" for Grace, so that I could explain how, in the Pantheon of Drunkenness, I really wasn't that high up Mount Olympus. Hermes perhaps, Apollo, maybe -- Zeus, no way. Apparently she couldn't understand my rather slurred explanation of all this, which, I am told, kind of served to disprove my point.

Word Blues

Originally Posted May 4, 2010


The French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote at length about the power language has over reality. According to Foucault, language has the power to make and unmake the world insofar as people who use language perceive it. Thus, language is the mechanism by which the powers that be regulate what can and cannot exist. You cannot imagine what you lack the words to describe. If you cannot imagine something, as far as you and your experience of reality are concerned, it cannot exist. To have the power to control what words mean becomes the ultimate power to dominate. Language, according to Foucault, is a prison for the mind. It can also be the means to escape this bondage. 

Hopefully I haven't completely lost you with all the one-hand-clapping and dreams-that-stuff is made of. 

Anyway, as you might expect, Foucault's ideas have been applied to lots and lots of political situations, both historic and contemporary. The Holocaust is possible only if the powerful can define –- through language –- who is and is not a person. Correspondingly, genocide cannot exist in a world where the words everyone uses to describe mass murder are not "mass" and "murder." In a similar vein, Orwell's totalitarian government in 1984 suppresses its citizens primarily through language. Vacuous, machine-produced pop songs, an ever-shrinking dictionary of colorless words, and a relentless censorship campaign directed against any thought that runs contrary to those of the Party – taken together, these three things make up Big Brother's strategy for staying in control. Even the Bible talks about the power of language. Before the building of the famed Tower of Babel, Genesis 11 says that all people spoke one language. This passage implies that this civilization’s unity of language is the source of its rulers’ limitless power. 

Truth be told, though, language has the power to oppress us, even if this oppression is not being conducted by a government or for political ends. I become aware of this fact when I live in places where people do not speak English as their mother-tongue. My working as a language teacher –- an engineer of reality –- at the moment makes me even more acutely sensitive to language's capacity to cause us pain. 

My hosts here in Korea have been more than hospitable. Their kindness speaks all languages – transcends them in its warmth. And yet, there is still the inescapable feeling of distance, of separation, of being the outsider in this place of sames. When I speak with them, we all grope for the right words. They handle my language the way I wield a pair of chopsticks –- awkwardly – grasping with great effort and difficulty at those slippery grains of rice. And I can't speak their language at all. Nuance, subtlety – all these things evade us. It hurts. My coteacher and her friends converse in Korean's lilting sing-song, laughter often bubbles up at some joke they all share, but I cannot fathom. Or some emotion unmistakable-but-inscrutable flashes across my coteacher's mask of a face. Words to describe it, to join in the conversation, to laugh out loud with them, and to know what is in her mind when she makes that face -– they are always on the tip of my tongue and just out of reach all at the same time. 

Their language, from what little bit I've been able to gather, is light-years different from ours. It is nearly impossible to get my students to speak in full sentences. If, as a teacher, you can get them to put a noun and a verb together, that really is something to drink a toast to. Aaron, the long-timer American who teaches at the private school in Hapdeok, tried to explain this to me once. Apparently, Korean is more verb-oriented than English, so a sentence like "You are obstructing the way," would be rendered something like, "You're obstructing," or maybe just "Obstructing," in Korean. Insane levels of detail can be rendered through the verbs. How this effects the way the culture thinks I can't say – although the impact must be profound. Sometimes it all just becomes too much, and I duck around the corners of Hapdeok's plastic-and-plaster landscape to avoid people I know. Anything to avoid speaking English with these people –- at least for right now. Anything to avoid being reminded exactly how out of place I really am here. Other times we manage, for the blink of an eye, to fight our way through all the language that separates us. These moments are as dazzling as they are rare –- like sunshine slipping through a thunderhead. Like when I explained the concept of something being "High Mileage." Mr. Chang's smile was miles wide, his salt-and-pepper hair wobbling as he convulsed with laughter. For this instant, we understood each other – and it was like shooting stars in the void. Other times, the difficulty with which we communicate can almost be a merciful thing. 

Running into another American here often reminds me of this. All the things I could say to such a person, if only I knew what to say. All the things I usually do end up saying, most of which I don't intend. It's so easy to make meaning that it’s easy to get lost in that ease and forget to say anything of substance. I don't have to think about what they are saying to understand, which means I can feel all manner of embarrassed and creeped out and worried by every little nuance of every little word and expression – and it all shows because I understand so easily that I don't have time to make my face lie. 

Don't get me wrong –- I love talking to Koreans and I love speaking English. Maybe what I really mean to say here is just that life as a human being –- making meaning, whether it is easy or difficult or somewhere in between –- is a difficult thing, whether you can speak the language of the people around you or not. Longing and loneliness –- trying to read Grace-whose-name-is-not-Grace's expressive-but-alien face. Losing myself in the hedge maze of another pointless conversation about Tarantino's dialogue with some English-speaker I meet at a party. Sometimes it is all just too much. I am lonely and alone in the prison for my mind that is my language. Foucault's word blues. Every once in a while, though, mercifully, by a grace I don't understand, lightning strikes. 

"High Mileage."

On Odysseys

Originally Posted April 25, 2010


Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story 

of [...] the wanderer, harried for years on end, 

after he plundered the proud height of Troy [...] 

til he came ashore at last 

on his own land. 

Homer, The Odyssey 

Robert Fitzgerald, Translator

***

So begins the great journey, taproot of Western literature, to which all our modern tales of adventure owe some kernel of inspiration. This is the big one, the lode stone of Western stories. Despite constant opposition from adversaries divine and mortal, Odysseus manages to come home from exile. Allegory of human potential and entertainment par excellence -- this story has it all. While I am living overseas, I study it in order to better understand what stories ought to be. Perhaps this story can also shed some light on another story -- my own -- in which I am far away from home and trying, in some sense, to get back again.

***

I have been in Korea working as a high school English teacher for almost a month now. To be honest, I never particularly wanted to teach and I am not very good at it. I took this job because it meant I could leave Indiana, even though I love my home state. I came to Korea because I feel compelled to wander, but can't really say why. Unbidden-but-unignorable, like a stone inside my stomach, wanderlust drove me here. Ever since I came back from a year spent studying in the Dreiländereck of Germany, I knew I had to leave home again. My family has lived in Indiana for at least five generations, and I feel a deep kinship with the people and deeply at home in the state's landscapes. The way people stretch their vowels (wash to warsh, fish to feesh). The molten iron of the August sun slipping beneath the dancing ripples of cornfields. Something inside drove me to forsake these places and people I know and love. In a way, I suppose it is because I know and love them that I had to go. 

*** 

On the surface of things, Odysseus's journey home in the Odyssey and my journey out to Korea couldn't be more different. The essence of Odysseus's character is his desire to return home. 

Odysseus [...] 

sat apart, as a thousand times before 

and racked his own heart groaning, his eyes wet 

scanning the bare horizon of the sea [...] 

such desire [was] in him 

merely to see the hearthsmoke leaping upward 

from his own island, that he long[ed] to die 

The essence of my character at the moment is my desire to wander. Odysseus journeys back, even as I head out. Upon closer examination, however, perhaps our two journeys have more in common than what is immediately obvious. 

*** 

Because I love my home I had to leave it. By forsaking the familiar-beloved, I hope to find it afresh. By becoming familiar with people and places utterly alien to me "in glance and gesture" as Rilke puts it, I hope to discover new territory within myself. Who are they, and who am I really, and how are we different, and how are all people everywhere the same -- or are they even? What does it really mean to be American? How is this different than being Korean, or German, or any other nationality? Is it possible to really love your country without hating the others? I journey farther outwards in order to travel further inwards. I leave my place to become more myself. 

*** 

It is Odysseus's destiny, we are told, to go home. Destiny. Purpose. The achievement his character strives toward. It is not that his home is the absolute perfect place. Kalypso, the nymph who holds him prisoner, is more desirable than Penelope his wife. It is hard to imagine that life at home will be more comfortable than the life he is so desperate to escape in exile. In spite of this, Ithaka is the place to which Odysseus belongs. He fits into this place, and the place fits with him. To go home is to make himself whole. For better or worse, Odysseus becomes most fully himself when he is in Ithaka. 

*** 

Before the homecoming comes the journey, though. The obstacles and enemies that Odysseus overcomes prove his cunning, prove his character. Odysseus, Master of Strategies, always harried on every side -- but also always unconquered. The perils he faces force him to flex the muscles of his essence. Whether he is stopping his ears with candlewax to escape the Sirens' sweet voices or using a wooden horse to capture an unassailable fortress, Odysseus's cunning is his greatest asset and most defining trait. The ability to adapt, by contrast, is mine. Adapting to life as a stranger in what is often an utterly strange land forces me to search for the things which Koreans and Americans share. Erik, Indiana farmboy, raised on banjo music and wagons-west American myth, exiled to a world of rice paddies and hive culture and technicolor neon night. And yet I can – I will – adapt even to this. Opposition really is a forge for character. Journeys exercise the human spirit, and it is because of this that they are worth making. 

Thus, I voyage ever outward in order to really get inward. Further away from home, in order to come home finally. Odysseus voyages homeward and in the process moves inward. Closer to home, and in doing so, ever closer to becoming the person he is destined to be. And they are one and the same, these two journeys. 

Outward and homeward, inward and onward -- all these bleed together and become indistinguishable -- separate streams flowing together into the great ocean of travel we are both trying so hard to cross.

Four Snapshots

Originally Posted April 13, 2010


Whenever I travel I always meet colorful folks. This trip has been no exception.

That American Boy 

Standing in line at O'Hare, I struck up a conversation with Steve, a Minnesotan who was on his way to Phnom Penh to meet a girl. Steve was the caricature of the American tourist. He wore a blue safari shirt and cargo pants. He was also taking anti-malarial pills and a dozen other exotic meds, because that's what American tourists going to Cambodia were supposed to do. Middle-aged, clean-cut, and very bald, Steve gravely explained in Fargo-Don'tcha-Know-lilt how he had always wanted to find a nice, conservative Christian girl. The sort of person who would have dinner cooked and on the table when he came back from work, you know? After a straight-laced but lonely life, Steve hoped he had finally met such a person in Judy, a woman who a Cambodian coworker of his at ConAgra had set him up with. They had never met, but had spoken often over the phone. The line was going nowhere, so, to pass the time, Steve pulled out a calling card and carefully dialed a mile-long string of numbers to call Judy. Judy, Steve was surprised to learn, was sleeping, because it was night on that side of the world. Steve apologized, told her he loved her, and let her get back to bed. He showed me her picture on the display of his cell phone. She was attractive, and looked like she was significantly younger than Steve. I wondered what Judy and Steve would think of each other when they finally met, and whether Judy was even the name this woman normally went by off in far away Phnom Penh. 

The Wayfarer 

Jaime sat to the right of me during the fourteen hours of Korean Air Lines Flight 38's journey from O’Hare to Incheon International. Jaime was stick-skinny and weathered looking. His sandy hair was thining. His toothy, yellowed grin was crooked and a few of his teeth had bits of black at their corners. His laugh -- part cackle and part wheeze -- was the laugh of the trickster and the roustabout. It held notes of wandering and desperation and the absurdity of life. He said he had traveled to seventy-seven countries during the course of his life, often with little more than the shirt on his back. Tales of his journeys flowed freely. Outside of Africa, there was almost nowhere he had not been. He'd dodged immigration as illegal help on an Australian fruit farm. He'd slept in the public parks of Tokyo. He'd lived with girls from Sweden and Switzerland. He'd nearly died of pneumonia in rural China. He'd had his passport stolen on the beaches at Tel Aviv. He'd rode the trains from Vladivostok to Moscow. If half the stories were true, this guy had been everywhere and done everything. He also was on his way from Seoul further on to Phnom Penh to visit a friend of his who was teaching English out in the Cambodian Countryside. I really liked talking to the guy, which is probably part of why I made sure to tuck my passport and credit cards into my underwear before I slept. When we parted ways in Seoul, he told me to have fun teaching English, and then seemed to fade into the corridors of the airport like a phantasm of the endless road. 

The Schoolmarm 

I met my coteacher, Lee Eun Hye, or Grace Lee as she prefers to be called, in Daejon, the day after I arrived in Korea. I spent the night at the Motel Pharos in Daejon -- one highrise among a forest of others -- all blossoming with neon and sitting on the edge of a rice paddy. Jason, my recruiter, told me that the motel was a favorite for married people having affairs. Among other amenities, it featured a special curtain over the garage door to hide the license tags of vehicles inside. The decor reeked of intrigue. Everything was mood lit and floral patterned and painted blood red. After a mostly sleepless night spent on top of the motel's not-quite-cloth sheets, I had just gotten dressed when Jason walked in followed by a slight, dark haired woman, Korean, with pale skin and a heart-shaped face. Dressed in carefully tailored jeans and a dark woolen coat, everything about Grace was scrubbed clean and starched and thoroughly out of place in Motel Pharos. She spoke good English. She was the daughter of a Baptist pastor (a rarity in this country) who had recently made the pilgrimage to Texas to collect his PhD from a theological seminary there. Now, anytime I see her, her expression and cadence suggest she is the kind of hardworking, idealistic, clean-nosed person who is bound to be underwhelmed by the mediocre realities of life. Particularly when she faces down a classroom of noisy seniors, all slouches and vacant stares in tweed uniform blazers, none of whom give a rip about their English homework. She often works later hours than other teachers. When she has free time, she likes to indulge the twin passions of the young Korean with money to spend -- eating foreign food and shopping. 

"Girls like department stores," she tells me as her friends and I ride back from a supper of Korean not-pizza. "Actually we love it."  

The Expat 

I met Johan the South African toward the end of my first week teaching at Hapdeok Steel High School. I was sitting at my desk in the teachers' office, listening my coworkers jabber while making Korean not-coffee when he burst through the door. He bowed, and rattled off a greeting to the teachers in Korean, with what sounded like a very English accent. They smiled and bowed back. For a long, spaghetti-western moment, I stared at him. I hadn't seen a Westerner since I got off the plane to Seoul. 

"You are not from here," I managed. 

"Yeah," he said, "And I imagine you are the only Westerner in Hapdeok." 

I was still in shock. Another white face. Whoa. 

"I've got to teach a class now, but I will be back at four," he went on. "I can show you the bus to Dangjin then if you like. There are a lot of us there. This place can fuck with your head. You should check it out." 

Later that afternoon we rode the bus into Dangjin. The bus was crammed with the boarding school crowd -- giggling, rough-housing teenage boys in tweed blazers and stained brown slacks -- all headed home for the weekend. Some half-bowed, showing respect, as we pushed our way into the bus's sweaty interior. I started to bow back. 

"Don't do that," Johan hissed, staring down a particularly wild group who had stopped fighting for a seat to stare at us. "It screws with Confucius. And you *really* don't want to screw with Confucius in this place." 

We arrived in Dangjin, an ultra-rich little city, bustling, filled with plastic highrises, golf courses, imported German cars, and neon. Everywhere neon. An anthropologist by training, Johan seemed to have the inside track on much of the beautiful, perplexing, super-saturated insanity that is life in South Korea. As we walked under the rainbow of signage, he explained how advertising here rarely touted the actual merits of a product, but instead played up the brand's appeal as a way of showing the consumer's personality. You buy a Samsung TV set because Samsung's values are your values. Western brands -- Calvin Klein, Levis, Dunkin Donuts, and the odd KFC -- were also at work in this teeming cauldron. The whole place seemed like the illustrated version of a Theodor Adorno thesis. 

Listening to him talk, for some reason I thought of Apocalypse Now. Johan was Martin Sheen’s character – drawn, for better or worse, ever up the river even though much of what he finds along the way disturbs him. 

"Go with the flow," Johan said. "Bow, eat the rice, play the foreigner, say gahm-sahm-nee-dah at every opportunity, and you'll be just fine here."

Electric Night

Originally Posted April 8, 2010


...electric night of a new Asia..." 

-- William Gibson, “New Rose Hotel” 

Korea is the embodiment of the postmodern. Image occludes -- and at times supersedes -- reality here. Branding hangs like fog in the very air you breathe. Lighted signs for Hyundai and SK and Lotte Mart and other titans of Korean industry burn bright in the darkness where they are suspended from plastic skyscrapers. A younger, more photoshopped version of Rick Deckard from "Blade Runner" would fit right in. Corporations get epically huge here -- Hyundai, for instance, is involved in steel production, manufacturing, construction, and textiles. And this is the rule rather than the exception. The local brands vie for supremacy with Western brands. Dunkin Donuts, Jack Daniels, Levis, and a hundered others are out in force here, too. Media is omnipresent, and seems very Westernized and very alien at the same time. Televised advertising is eye-poppingly cinematic. English is displayed constantly for show in advertising and packaging, but the phrases are often meaningless and absurd. Form overwhelms content. And the landscape is rife with the ironic and the incongruous. Everything new here seems to be made from ornamental brick or imitation wood. Crumbling plaster buildings with mildewed walls stand next door to gleaming glass-and-chrome highrises. The world's fastest internet is transmitted through a primeval countryside of forests and mountains. Hyperconsumerism and poverty lie cheek to jowl. Gleaming BMWs and Calvin Klein jeans stand right next to sunburnt farmers grubbing in the mud of their fields. Zoning is non-existent and rice paddies stand right next door to tall buildings. Almost nothing seems to have been constructed more than twenty years ago. Korea is a country with even less architectural past than the U.S. -- a place suffused with a vibe of ultrasaturated artificiality that you can't quite put into words, but which you feel always, like a weight pressing down on you.