Please Forgive Me
By Teddy Ajluni, a first year ETA in Gwangyang, Jeollanam-do When I first arrived, it was too early to think about leaving. Everything was so new and exciting. You were all so welcoming to me. I was almost surprised at how few problems there were, especially for elementary schoolers like you. Sure, you could get a little chatty here and there, but you still showed a passion for learning—much more than I did at your age—and it gave me the passion to keep teaching. There were few times when I felt bored with my work, and those moments were so few thanks to your energy. I can only hope you felt the same during class, though I know that’s impossible. Having sat in your seat once, I know there were times when you must have been bored. Either way, you were patient with me, just as I was with you. It was all too exciting, too good to be true. Now I’m looking at the prospect right in the face: I have to leave. It’s a little strange thinking about it. I still have some time before I must go, but I know how quickly that will pass. I remember the days when such a span of time would feel like half of my life. I guess it really was half of my life back then. While I’ve known you for almost 10 percent of your life, you’ve only been there for a tiny fraction of mine. The odd part about it is, I know deep inside that it will feel like the other way around. Yes, you’ve only been there for a fraction of my life, but this episode will live with me forever. Meanwhile, while I’ve been there for so much of yours, I will slowly fade away. It might hurt for you at first, but I know what is likely to happen after that. It happened to me too. The portion of your life that I was with you will shrink smaller and smaller until it is almost nothing. I will become nothing but a memory—fuzzy and intangible—slowly morphing here and there in the recesses of your mind until you only recall half of my face or the sound of my name. You might even forget me altogether, and I would not blame you at all. Whether or not you forget me, I have to thank you for something. It’s not the behavior or the positive attitude I mentioned before, though I appreciate all those things. In fact, you might not even remember it, but it was when you answered a question of mine and returned something I didn’t even know I needed. You see, thinking about leaving made me ask why I came here in the first place. What was I seeking? What did I hope to find? There are answers to those questions, but now I know they’re not the right questions to ask. The real question to ask was this: what was I running from? Someone told me once that everyone’s running from something. I wasn’t sure what to think about it at first, but now I know that they’re right. I was running, and I still am. But you answered that question for me. And it wasn’t until you showed me what I was running towards that I found out what I was running from. I still remember the day you helped me discover why I was running. I had to go grocery shopping and I didn’t want to spend too long getting to the bus stop after work. Then a couple of you spotted me. “Do you play PoGo?” Pokémon Go. You said it in Korean, but some of you know as well as I do that the language of the Pokémon Trainer is universal. Despite my lack of language skills, I knew what you meant. I took out my phone and laughed. Of course I played. That game came out when I was in high school. And now, as all my friends seemed to outgrow it, they left me behind, stuck in my augmented reality. As time went on though, even I began to play it less. But it was still there on my phone, right where I left it. So I told you yes, I do play it. I opened the app and showed you. You were all amazed, even though some of you were a higher level than I was and knew much more about the game. It was funny to watch. Of course, I had a lot of the old Pokémon. Maybe that’s why you were so amazed. But you had a lot of the new ones, ones that I’m sad to admit I didn’t even know existed. “Raid,” one of you said, pointing at the virtual map. I looked. There it was. A five-star Raid Boss. Dialga. I hadn’t gotten it yet. Neither had any of you. “Come with us?” one of you asked me. Hearing such a question with such sincerity almost made me laugh. Or did it almost make me cry? I don’t know, but I smiled either way. No one had asked me to play for so long. Without even knowing it, I realized that it was the offer that I’d been waiting to hear for so many years. And now, it was being extended. “Yes!” Almost as if my subconscious were answering for me, I didn’t hesitate. “Let’s go!” You echoed me in excitement. So, we ran together. We ran towards Dialga. And that’s when I knew what I was running towards. Dialga, #483 in the National Pokédex. It’s a Steel/Dragon-type Legendary from Sinnoh. You can catch one, but only one, at Spear Pillar in Pokémon Diamond and Platinum. If you want to get it in Pearl, then you have to trade. In Pokémon Go, it doesn’t work like that. You can catch a lot, as long as you beat them in a Raid Battle first. But most of you already know
The Foreigner’s Phrasebook for Eating Alone
[Featured photo by La Toya Crittenden] by Paige Morris 1. 초딩 입맛 (A Little Kid’s Tastes) Life as a foreigner in Korea often relies on a fixed script of questions and answers. Where are you from? America. What are you doing here? I’m an English teacher. Over time, the questions grow weightier, more loaded. Are you married? Do you like Korean men? How do you do your hair? Slowly, I’ve acquired the vocabulary needed to respond. After two grant years and even more years of language study, I know how to politely say no, how to demur, how to describe the interweaving of strands, both real and synthetic, that form my braids and twists. But when I first came to this country, I was overwhelmed by the amount of language I didn’t have, all the things I didn’t yet know how to do. Certain lines of dialogue demanded to be learned with urgency. There were interactions I had to become fluent in, fast. One of the earliest lessons I had to figure out was eating in Korea on my own. This wasn’t a skill I was even sure I’d had in English. Back home in the US, I hardly ever ate by myself. In college, eating was a decidedly social occasion, with eateries and dining companions within walking distance from my dorm or apartment. My friends and I hosted huge potluck dinners at least once a month and shared at least one meal a day. I had gotten used to always having someone around whenever hunger set in when graduation scattered us all over the globe, and I found myself in a new place where I knew no one. When I ate dinner with my host family that first year, I felt like I was scratching at something familiar, starting to uncover a sense of closeness that came with eating a meal together. But it was also strange to be treated like another child in this family. I wouldn’t know what that night’s meal would be until I was called down to eat. I would ask questions about dinner, curious to learn all the words for the food laid out before me, but it seemed this frustrated my host mother, who had to set her chopsticks down to look up the words in Naver dictionary. I heartily ate what I was served, but when I set aside the little slivers of egg from my kimbap, my host father chided my choding ipmat and called me a pyeonsikga—a picky eater with the stubborn mouth of an elementary-aged kid. I started to question my every move during meals. If I ate only one serving, would my host mother think I disliked the food? If I went for another bowl of jjigae, would my host father think I was being greedy? Should I wait for my two host sisters to stop quarreling over who was the prettiest member of Twice and finish their rice before I got another pat for myself? Should I have eaten the hodu snacks—even though I’m allergic—so no one would think I was too particular? The anxiety around eating grew so intense, I decided I might be better off having dinner on my own. 2. 한 명이요. (Table for One) More than almost any other cultural differences, my efforts to eat alone proved incomprehensible to the people around me. When I mentioned at breakfast one morning that I’d be getting dinner on my own after work and volunteering, my host parents panicked. “With your American friends?” they asked. “With other teachers?” When I told them the other volunteers lived on opposite ends of the city and I was planning to go alone, they were scandalized. “You’ll eat alone?” my host mother echoed, incredulous. “We can save some dinner for you to heat up when you come back. You shouldn’t do that—eating alone?” She turned to her husband, murmuring, “Where would she even eat? By herself, at that?” It turned out this concern wasn’t for a lack of options, but for the perceived strangeness of the situation itself: a foreigner, or anyone, eating somewhere unaccompanied. The first few weeks of my experiment were predictably difficult. Even at restaurants in bigger cities, it seemed lone foreigners were unlikely customers. I would step inside a kimbap shop, a kalguksu place, a mandu-jip, and be greeted with a look of surprise. Sometimes the surprise melted into excitement, the thrill of spotting an opportunity to try out some English or to ask questions of the Black person who had suddenly appeared in the doorway. Other times, the surprise shifted into panic. What was anyone supposed to do with me? Why was I here, instead of off somewhere eating hamburgers or steak? In any case, the script was initiated as soon as I entered. The waitstaff would ask: 몇 분이세요? How many people? I’d hold up a single finger. The grammar to indicate the size of your party is a pure Korean number, plus the counter for people—myeong. 한 명이요. One person. Just me. Here is where the script might fracture. Sometimes, there was no issue. I’d be ushered to a table. Often, I’d have a good view of a wall-mounted TV showing a drama from the early 00s that I had never seen. Most times, despite some initial trepidation, I managed to order without a hitch, which would put all of us—the waitstaff and the foreigner—at ease. There were times, though, when I’d be met with a firm shake of the head. This was usually at places with grills and pricier cuts of meat: pork and beef. The owner of the restaurant would hold up two fingers and shake them to say there was no room for someone looking to dine alone. The first time it happened, I glanced around the restaurant and saw several open seats, which made me wonder why it was that business from one customer was made out to be so much worse than no business at all. I realized
Soul of Korea
by Grace Lee, ETA ’15-’16 I sat down, preparing for the English Bible study to begin. It was my first week living in Sejong and I was elated to see an elderly gentleman sitting across from me at the table. “Are you from the South?” He asked. “Yes, I am from Georgia.” I was a little surprised. “How did you know?” “You have a Southern accent. I graduated from Columbia Theology Seminary school in Atlanta.” From that moment on, I knew I wanted to learn about this 86-year old gentleman and Korean War veteran. I had partly come to Korea in order to interview the elderly community. My own grandparents passed away in 2009 and 2014. I could not ask them about their personal upbringings before their deaths because of the language barrier, but I yearned to talk to them. After my parents’ divorce, they remained a strong presence in my life and prepared me to live a prosperous life in the US. I knew their immigration story and of their successes with their hotel business. However, I knew that their stories started long before they immigrated to the US. Understanding that story meant understanding more of my Korean heritage. This is why any chance I have to speak to an elderly person here is a special connection for me. And here I was, sitting in front of an elderly gentleman who spoke perfect English. I could not let go of this great opportunity. After sharing my goals, he said “Grace, you are the only person who I want to share my story with.” He told me that I could tell his story to you. But, he had a wish. He wanted me to use his friend’s name Mr. Jung in this article, instead of his own name. He wishes to honor his friend, though it is only a name. I decided to honor him by complying with this wish. For five consecutive weeks, from September to October 2015, I sat down with Mr. Jung anywhere from half-an-hour up to one-and-a-half-hours at a time to hear his story. When I listened to Mr. Jung, nothing else mattered and nothing else existed. Although he was soft-spoken, I felt charisma through his words. They had a subtle, yet sweet conviction where you knew each one held wisdom. When he spoke, I concentrated. _________________________________________________ “Grace and Suffering.” Mr. Jung came from Jeollabuk-do, a small southwestern province in Korea. He prayed to live until he was 65 years old. The life expectancy of Koreans was 37 years during 1925-1930 and rose to 52 years during 1955-1960 1. He is now in his 80s. “Until [God] calls me, I have to pay back grace that he’s given me,” he said. “I still have one more Grace of God…next to me.” His last statement gave me goosebumps. I felt humbled to be in his presence, graced by hearing his story. ______________________________________________________ “Escaping from the Mud” His father died at a young age and left nothing for his family. From first grade until the sixth grade, he spoke Japanese in school because Japan occupied Korea at the time. He didn’t have enough time for studying though because he and his friends worked for families whose sons were drafted for the Japanese army. Mr. Jung worked diligently. Growing up, the Japanese educated Korean students to hate America and England. “We must destroy the Americans and those from England,” they told him. He and his classmates believed that the Japanese would win the war and destroy their enemies’ countries. “They educated us that way,” he said. Continuously, he and his classmates chanted: “We must destroy the Americans and those from England.” But while publicly declaring his animosity towards the British and Americans, Mr. Jung privately disagreed with his public outcries. I’m pretty sure that my grandparents had the same experience as Mr. Jung. They immigrated to the United States in the 1980s. But, I never heard about or felt any distrust or animosity towards the American or British people from them either. Like my grandparents, Mr. Jung empathized with foreigners and showed no prejudice towards them. But at the time, he had to keep those thoughts to himself. Living in the countryside, the Japanese in the community knew that he had little money. Wealth disparity was common in the living conditions amongst his friends. From 1911 to 1937, Korea was dealing with economic problems. When the Japanese gained a large access to Korean farmland, Korean farmers were immediately forced to become sharecroppers2. The Japanese governement owned all the industries and made it difficult for Koreans to get their own businesses running. They charged Koreans at least 25 percent more in interest fees than they charged Japanese people. This was one example of the hardship Koreans faced. One day while walking to middle school, some Japanese people said, “Even strong cow is in the mud.” Their statement made him believe that he could not escape from the mud, his poverty-stricken life, no matter his strength. With the help of his aunt, Mr. Jung moved to Jeonju. He had been a Christian since his childhood. His aunt knew a better life was waiting for him with the missionaries. By 1940, ninety percent of missionaries had left Korea because of the harsh persectutions they were facing during Japanese rule. However, some had stayed. The church took a lead role in helping mend the country of its suffering. By the church being advocates for democracy, Christian church members fought for the rights of Korean people3. Mr. Jung had been told by his aunt that he could help the missionary’s cook, so he went and worked faithfully and honestly there from 1946 to 1950, learning English while he worked. “[The missionary] helped me escape from the mud,” he said.“From that time, my life was changed. He would continually feel grateful for their kindness, for caring for him as if he was their own son. When Japanese rule over Korea