Eastern Medicine at a Gangnam Café
By Eugene Lee, ETA ’16-’18 I glance at the time on my phone’s lock screen—6:52 p.m.—and sigh. My plate is bare, freckled with crumbs from the pineapple tart I devoured an hour ago to stave off my hunger. I glance around and see a tall, pretty girl smiling, her grin half-nestled into her palm as she watches what could be a variety show on her phone. Gold headphones complement her sky blue coat and black stockings, and the scene feels almost like a phone commercial, a sight you just don’t see in the countryside. Sitting in the corner of the café, I can see everything. I notice that it isn’t just this girl but several people sitting alone, reading or browsing on their phones. I wonder if this is common in the city, in that odd, hanging space between shopping and waiting for a dinner rendezvous. After all, it was tiring just walking through Gangnam, as not only the buildings but the people themselves conducted a sort of electricity that pulsated through you, a rush of intimate chatters, honking horns and wafts of street foods like fishcake, all funneled into streets only about three people wide. I lazily flick through a New Yorker article on my phone, trying to force myself to make use of my newfound free time. I planned to meet a college friend at around 6:30 p.m., but he was never punctual. I glance out the window down at the street below. Everyone seems to be in a rush, a happy one at that: it’s finally time to unwind and meet friends, celebrate the weekend. A trio of girls walk by in laughter, covering their mouths with the pastel-colored sleeves of their sweaters. A man who was standing restlessly at the corner is pleasantly surprised by a woman who tackles his back. By the look of her polished business outfit, she must have come straight from work. The street has a reddish glow about it, one of the many passages in the maze of restaurants, bars and cafés that sprawl beyond the posh, blue lights of the main road. I readjust myself in my chair, envious of life in the city. Among other things, living in the city would mean living in a realm of possibility. The city is a dark sea of atoms pulsating at night, always on the precipice of collision with another, newer element—a far cry from the insipid countryside. Even if I don’t meet anyone new in this ocean of entropy, the very prospect generates within me anticipatory warmth, a premature satisfaction. “실례지만, 면접 시간이 있나요?” It takes me a second to register that he is talking to me. I look up to see a young man around my age leaning over my table, presumably to look less assuming. He has slightly messy curly hair, circular wire frames and a jumper that hangs loose around his thin frame—all in all, a typical young Korean man. “아, 사실 전 미국에서 왔어요.” “Oh, well my English is not so good, but we can switch between English and Korean,” he says with a near-perfect American accent. “Do you have time?” I glance at my phone again: 7:01 p.m. When I last checked my messages, my friend was just leaving his home for the subway. “Sure, have a seat. So what’s the question?” “I’m currently a college student and I research at a Mind Institute nearby. In my spare time I like to survey people and see what they think about their religion and their opinion of…” he pauses to find the right words in English, “meditation and looking for calmness of mind.” “Sounds interesting and I’ve got some time—the person I’m waiting for is running really late.” The words jump out more enthusiastically than I expect. I had spent the past couple of weeks holed up in my countryside town. I consider myself sociable, but I had grown rusty in simple everyday conversation. I place my phone facedown on the table. “Oh, but first, you said you were from America? Why are you here in Seoul?” “Actually, I’m not from Seoul, I teach down in Jeollabuk-do, near Jeonju. Have you heard of Jeongeup?” He pauses for a moment, mouthing the words to himself. Jeongeup, Jeongeup, Jeongeup. “No, I don’t think I’ve heard of it… but Jeollabuk-do! That’s very far!” He smiles to assure me he is not trying to be condescending. “Yeah, I actually took a bus this morning. I’m only here for tonight so I can meet my friend before he goes back to America.” “Only one night?” he asks, eyes wide in surprise. “Yeah, but sometimes I come up to Seoul for longer periods of time. I just need to go back to teach.” “Ah, that makes sense.” He drinks some of his tea and picks up a black pocket notebook I didn’t notice before. “So what is your religion?” he asks, wasting no time. “Hmmm…Christian, but I would say I’m in a weird place right now.” I hate that question these days, because words seal abstract thoughts into declarations. It doesn’t help that words sometimes prematurely leap forth, eager to fit snugly into social context. “Why would you say that?” He takes out a pen in anticipation. “Well… when I first came to Korea I was a pretty strong Christian, but it’s been hard living down in the countryside and well, you know, a lot of the churches in Korea are a little suspicious.” I hope the last part won’t offend him. He laughs. “Definitely. No, I understand.” He scribbles a few messy notes in Korean and reads them over. Satisfied, he looks up again. “And how are you doing?” The question catches me completely off-guard. “What do you mean ‘how am I doing?’ Like, in general? Or in my religion?” “In general. Like, life in general.” “I would say these past few weeks have been hard, teaching and whatnot. Actually, I haven’t seen many friends these past couple of weeks so
Damyang
By Rachel Fauth, ETA ’16-’17 In the back seat of a car with three strangers driving three hours south to Damyang, traditional lute music on the radio. I think the man in the passenger’s seat is the vice principal, but the role of the man driving is undetermined. There are very few facts in the car. The first real gift I receive is the immediate kindness of a woman, Yoejin, sitting to my left, interpreting back and forth for the two austere middle-aged men and me. She looks to be about 20 so she’s probably about 32. Maternal energy, Christian, ponytail and front bangs, sleeveless dress with a short-sleeved T-shirt underneath, petite and assertive. She’s diligently engaged in the act of translating and doing everything possible to break the invisible partition between front and back seats. Seatbelt-less, Yoejin leans forward to volley eye contact between us and the vice principal, creating this sort of triangular field between the front seats and the back. She’s careful not to smush the two bouquets of baby’s breath and blue roses lying on the center console. Miles of green under an unsurprisingly gray sky whiz past outside Yoejin’s window and mine. None of it is painful, just strange. When I speak, the vice principal doesn’t turn his head, so Yoejin sort of takes my eye contact and packages it neatly, then delivers it to him. He looks back and responds something brief and syllabic. Yoejin catches it and passes it back to me, definitely taking creative liberty with her translation. “피곤하고 말라 보이는구나,” churned through her circuits becomes “The vice principal wants to know if you are sleepy. He says you are free to take a rest when we get to Changpyeong.” In the initial hour, it’s this quality of hers that holds everything together like gravity. The phrase Yoejin, thank you for lying, streams quietly through my mind on loop. We pull into the gravel parking lot of a rest stop. I get out. It’s a long brown building standing alone in the Korean countryside. A wooden deck with a myriad of pop-up stands sells corndogs and other miscellaneous meat sticks; hot things in flat crinkly grease-resistant bags. I see some round, fried things covered in sauce and poked with toothpicks, grouped together in a little cardboard boat, and a Korean person holding it. Then, at staggered and surreal intervals, I momentarily pass Evan, Jared and Sun. I feel a total rush of either love or recognition. We instinctively smile and wave and make fleeting appearances in each other’s vision. Three familiar aliens similarly strapped into business professional and the heat, they’re each flanked by strangers en route to some destination far from Goesan, where we spent the last six weeks with 73 other Americans preparing for this day. Shamelessly, I romanticize this aerial-view image of all 73 of us trickling around the map of Korea. I picture them in the back seats of similarly compact Kia cars on the highway, ignorant of having hurtled in the same cardinal direction up until this point. I wonder at what moment on the road we’ll splinter off into different trajectories. We spread out and away in waves from a fixed center, like ink dropped in a glass of water. All the while Yoejin, vice principal, ambiguous man and I sit sweating at a folding table in a convenience store drinking canned coffee, trying to assemble mostly-silent triangular conversation. One hour to go. Big swaths of farmland and greenhouses, long foil-covered plastic cyndrillical structures. Rice fields and squatting women in visors preface the main street of Changpyeong. There’s a sudden slue of one-story concrete buildings, each labeled with peeling red or black or blue algebraic writing. They’re almost post-apocalyptic. At the edge of town we pass only one pristinely-kept building. Beside a barred entrance gate, white hibiscus bushes grow into vines draped on the sidewalk. The hedges are pruned in the shape of stacked bulbs, swirls and other arbitrary designs. Yoejin: “That’s the school.” It passes by in a blur and immediately changes size. Later that afternoon I arrive at my homestay, but the host family is out of town at a funeral. The day I arrive they are at a funeral. Perhaps these two facts have a complicated relationship. I have no idea. They could have no relationship at all. To my surprise, instead of moving into a room in their apartment, I’m told that I have my own apartment and the host family lives downstairs in a separate abode altogether, but I’m to have every meal with them for the next year. How to digest this? My apartment is well lit, big and empty, fit with a teal door. While I’m unzipping luggage a woman pops her head through the open doorway, hands me a key, smiles and disappears anonymously. When she leaves, it’s just me and my suitcase in this apartment. I time 30 minutes of unpacking my life before Yoejin shows up at the door. She and another ambiguous man come and shuffle me away to the grocery store. Walking down the snack aisle, the ambiguous man—another teacher, I learn—pulls a crinkled slip of paper from his back pocket. Reading, he asks: “Do you like Skinny peanut butter?” and I laugh when he picks up a jar of Skippy, buying me bread, fruit, water and peanut butter to put in the fridge just in case the family doesn’t come back until tomorrow night. The bread is sweet like cake. At dinner, the entire English department meets for samgyeopsal at a local restaurant—thick strips of bacon-like pork barbecued at the table and served with a thousand side dishes in little white ceramic bird-belly-shaped bowls. We sit comfortably on floor pillows, pretzel-style and barefoot in nice clothes. Beside me, Yoejin takes a seat. There are 10 other English teachers who speak in mainly Korean; all jovial, mostly male and slightly drunk. They clink green bottles of soju above my head in my honor or perhaps in my excuse. Yoejin closes her warm brown eyes and prays. The dinner is for me, new foreigner, person who cannot and does not have to speak. New foreigner. Person who speaks when spoken to. Recipient of simple and direct compliments, free of obligatory dinner conversation, enjoyer of meal in