The obvious foreigner
The days have continued to pass with a great deal of drinking here in Seoul and sightseeing has been scant although it's been fine to do something different for a while. Having helped out with my friend's school trip which took children to a fan making class we've found our photos appearing in several newspapers. It seems that the photographers there, of which there were many for reasons unknown, wanted in particular to take photos of the funny foreigners trying the Korean art of fan painting. I was at the front of the photo despite being an imposter and not an English teacher.
Koreans have a fascination with foreigners. Even in Seoul where there's a good number of Westerners, either teaching English or from the US army bases, you still get children and sometimes adults stare at you as if you've landed from Mars and were greeen with six arms. It's a good deal worse in other towns and cities where foreigners are a good deal rarer. We've encountered children shout (in Korean the equivalents of): "Oi foreigner!" and "American!" which is pretty rude, but my friend can understand them. What's more it's common for Koreans to just come up to you and speak to you in English. While this is fine if you're in the mood for a chat, if it happens a lot it gets to be a pain and you quickly find yourself wearing headphones on the metro so that people are disuaded from speaking to you. It doesn't help that it's often older people who want to chat, and to be honest I'm not that interested in speaking to them and no doubt answering the same questions as everyone asks. Occasionally the person can be interesting, but it's just being forced to have a conversation when you might have preferred not to that's a bit of an irritation.
Otherwise you get a lot of children saying "hello, how are you?". Although I encountered some children saying "hello" randomly in Japan, the Japanese were a lot more reserved in speaking to you. Here it's very different. Yesterday I was in a touristy part of Seoul with my friend's flatmate looking at the souvenirs when a young Korean guy noticed my companion's Irish football shirt and started rambling on about Irish and English and football players like a man possessed. The whole idea that when you're having a chat with friends you might not want to be interrupted by the random stranger wanting to practice their English doesn't seem to occur to them. Fortunately my friend is familiar with English teaching in Korea and knows that aside from a few set phrases most Koreans can speak very English and so if confronted uses the stock phrases "Hi...how are you....I'm from Manchester United" which is pretty much all many of the locals can understand, and it provides us with a good laugh in the process.
Soon Korea will be behind me though as I've got a flight booked to take me to Hong Kong in about a week. Before then I'm off to the DMZ - the border between North and South Korea. More about all of that next time.
Koreans have a fascination with foreigners. Even in Seoul where there's a good number of Westerners, either teaching English or from the US army bases, you still get children and sometimes adults stare at you as if you've landed from Mars and were greeen with six arms. It's a good deal worse in other towns and cities where foreigners are a good deal rarer. We've encountered children shout (in Korean the equivalents of): "Oi foreigner!" and "American!" which is pretty rude, but my friend can understand them. What's more it's common for Koreans to just come up to you and speak to you in English. While this is fine if you're in the mood for a chat, if it happens a lot it gets to be a pain and you quickly find yourself wearing headphones on the metro so that people are disuaded from speaking to you. It doesn't help that it's often older people who want to chat, and to be honest I'm not that interested in speaking to them and no doubt answering the same questions as everyone asks. Occasionally the person can be interesting, but it's just being forced to have a conversation when you might have preferred not to that's a bit of an irritation.
Otherwise you get a lot of children saying "hello, how are you?". Although I encountered some children saying "hello" randomly in Japan, the Japanese were a lot more reserved in speaking to you. Here it's very different. Yesterday I was in a touristy part of Seoul with my friend's flatmate looking at the souvenirs when a young Korean guy noticed my companion's Irish football shirt and started rambling on about Irish and English and football players like a man possessed. The whole idea that when you're having a chat with friends you might not want to be interrupted by the random stranger wanting to practice their English doesn't seem to occur to them. Fortunately my friend is familiar with English teaching in Korea and knows that aside from a few set phrases most Koreans can speak very English and so if confronted uses the stock phrases "Hi...how are you....I'm from Manchester United" which is pretty much all many of the locals can understand, and it provides us with a good laugh in the process.
Soon Korea will be behind me though as I've got a flight booked to take me to Hong Kong in about a week. Before then I'm off to the DMZ - the border between North and South Korea. More about all of that next time.
posted by Daniel at 7:44 am
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