I Spent 10 Years in Asia and All I Got Were These Lousy Stories

05 - Land of Corn and Kimchi

Koreans are an interesting people for a number of reasons. For instance, in the eyes of a Westerner, Korean food is equal parts odd and delicious. Gejang crab is often eaten uncooked and covered in sauces and seasoning. If the crabs are eaten before they reach maturity, their shells are still soft (slightly harder than a Skittle) and edible, ensuring no part goes to waste. The dish known as sannakji can only be described as raw octopus sashimi: live octopus babies are cut into small pieces, lightly seasoned and meant to be eaten as they're still squirming in agony on your plate. A dish as gruesome as it is dangerous: the suckers on the octopus' writhing tendrils can lodge themselves on to your oesophagus, obstructing the throat and ensuring octopus vengeance from beyond the grave.

But the most popular dish in Korea might also be their most popular dish abroad. Kimchi is the spicy red cabbage they incorporate into every single dish. The average South Korean eats about 40 pounds of the stuff a year, and for good reason. It's damn tasty, and healthy to boot. They can't live without it, evidenced when 2008 saw the first Korean astronaut Yi So-yeon shot into the final frontier with a bag of kimchi, specially treated for space travel.

But Korea's quirks aren't limited to their cuisine. One of the weirdest traits I find in Koreans is something best described as either a cultural bipolarism or self-esteem schizophrenia. Simply put: they are the only people I've ever met who can simultaneously have both a superiority and an inferiority complex. On the one hand, they'll excitedly tell you about how Korean is the most beautiful language in the world and how their writing script, hangeul, is so much more efficient for writing than the Roman alphabet or any other global writing system. And yet minutes later, they'll be bemoaning the fact that no-one ever tries to learn Korean, because it's simply not useful and the world knows it. Equal parts too good for this world and utterly useless.

Similarly, they can be flag-wavingly proud of their great companies' achievements overseas and yet feel depressed that few people realize where these quality products come from. One of the worst things an outsider can do is talk about "Samsung, those awesome Japanese phones." Koreans, at least on the surface, hate the Japanese and choosing your words carefully on this subject is well advised. Saying the wrong thing could very well stir the nationalism of a group of Koreans and lead to a beating. The mistake is not surprising though, given that Westerners have been associating Japan with high-quality electronics, and typically hold roughly the same amount of knowledge of Korea as they do of Zanzibar. Outsiders are even more prone to confusion when brands end up with similar names, such as Japan's Honda and Korea's Hyundai, both of which make cars.

Another common, awful-for-your-social-standing mistake foreigners make is confusing North and South Korea. Again, the mix-up is understandable, since North Korea is frequently in the news, way more than their southern counterparts. Nevertheless, I've always felt that outsiders, particularly Americans, weren't helping when they asked if someone was from "The good Korea or the bad Korea". Especially since many Koreans feel a kind of kinship and bond with their northern brothers, even if they don't like their politics.

Thus it almost seems like an automatic, involuntary reaction when Koreans to explain their country to foreigners in terms that they think a visitor would understand. By 'terms that a visitor would understand', they mean in relation to something they believe to be similar in the United States. They hope to make the fairly unknown intricacies of their country easier to understand, by explaining a great many things through the following simple formula:

[Korean thing], Korea's [similar American thing]

The most famous of which could be Jeju Island, a popular vacation resort visited by about 150,000 people every month. It is referred to as "Jeju Island, Korea's Hawaii", although this isn't necessarily a uniquely Korean thing, since Japan and China also refer to their own Hawaiis (Okinawa and Hainan Islands respectively).

During my second year in South Korea, I worked in Yeouido, an island in the Han River which runs through the capital city of Seoul. It houses a large number of financial centers and headquarters of banks, and so of course I was told it was "Yeouido, Korea's Manhattan Island", just to paint me a picture. If anyone caught wind of me being British, they might have called it "Korea's Canary Wharf", so that I understood that I was talking to a true Anglophile.

On and on this continues. The Apgujeong district of Seoul, due to its high population of film and TV stars, was "Korea's Beverly Hills". Incheon International Airport was "Korea's JFK International", as opposed to the smaller Gimpo Airport, which was "Korea's Newark".

The weirdest one I ever heard, however, was when a local friend of mine told me he was traveling to the neighboring Gangwon province. "It's Korea's Iowa", he said. That threw me a little bit, and I had to follow up with questions about whether or not it was full of corn, had an ethanol lobby, or held an important presidential caucus.

"It's just Korea's Iowa", he said. And in the sense that I know about as much about Gangwon and Iowa, I guess he was right.

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