I Want To Eat Your Manager

We're putting on an ultimate frisbee tournament in Mokpo next weekend, and I've spent some time going around to businesses in town asking for sponsorship. The title of this blog is what I said to one of the staff at a store trying to speak with their manager. I may have actually asked to eat "with" the manager, but either way, the staff member gave me a wonderfully strange look before she managed to figure out what I was trying to accomplish.

So far no one has decided to help us with our tournament, which I think is more a result of us not being able to communicate properly with local businesses than their unwillingness to sponsor events. No one knows what ultimate frisbee is, and while I have managed to put together some request letters in Korean explaining our plight, they don't seem to have done the trick. The one time I did manage to have a Korean come with me to help translate became nearly as problematic as if I had gone on my own. Shannon's old co-teacher, a magnificently intelligent and nice woman, met me at city hall to help negotiate lowering the costs of renting the fields, but the from the moment I saw her until just before we were ready to leave, she was crying. She managed to keep her composure fairly well, but tears were pouring down her face, she went through piles of tissue wiping her nose and eyes, and no matter how much I protested that we should perhaps wait till she was feeling better, she was determined to trudge on and get things done. No one we met with said anything about her emotional state, and she was fairly quick to assure everyone that she just had a real big piece of dust in her eye, but wow, what a strange afternoon that turned out to be.

Some other friends had an incredibly difficult experience of their own recently , one that ended with the police coming to their apartment. My one friend was cleaning her apartment to get ready to leave the country, and another girl had come over to help her tidy up. The two of them were taking the garbage out, and they didn't sort it out into the proper recycling piles right away, as they had to bring more from the apartment. Well, the ajosshi (middle-aged man) patroling the parking lot went ballistic, running after them and slapping them across their bodies to get them back to fix the garbage. The girls got scared of course and ran back inside; the ajosshi followed them, now accompanied by an ajumma (middle-aged woman) and hauling all the garbage they had just taken out. At the apartment door, more shouting ensued, and the drunk next-door neighbour decided to get involved. The girls were now pushing the door closed to keep people out of the house, the gabage had been kicked down the stairs and had exploded everywhere, and not knowing what else to do the girls called our Korean friend who phoned the police. When they arrived, things calmed down a bit, as the drunk man was put back in his house, the lady cleaned up the garbage and the garbage ajosshi eventually went back outside.

I should take a moment to explain these two terms, "ajosshi" and "ajumma". Basically they mean a middle-aged man and woman, but they're used in many different ways. The online dictionary translates them as "auntie" and "uncle", Koreans have explained the words as describing someone who is married, and both can be used as a respectful description of a person or as an insult. Foreigners may say someone is being very "ajosshi" when they're coming across as arrogant and imperious, yet if you watch a Korean movie, you may read a subtitle that uses someone's name yet hear them being referred to as "ajosshi" instead. An "ajumma" can be anyone from a loving grandma to a poor street person who collects cardboard from the streets for recycling.

What it seems has happened is that Korea, being a culture that places great emphasis on respect for elders, has been caught in an almost paradoxical situation where older people (the men moreso) are given a natural respect by society, and have in turn taken for granted the respect they've been given and make themselves look like fools. The garbage ajosshi was certainly right that the girls didn't sort their trash, but smacking them and chasing them into their apartment doesn't really get the point across. Most ajosshi's take great care in dressing nicely and taking care of themselves, but at night it's those same old men in suits that you find peeing in the parking lot outside your front door. Foreigner discussion forums online are filled with strange stories about old men defacting in flower pots on the street, falling down drunk on the sidewalk and just sleeping there, or harrassing people around them if they feel they aren't being treated the way they deserve to be. Shannon pointed out that in North America it's often the women who want to get married because life seems so much simpler to them after that. In Korea, most men are looking to get married and women much more wary. From what I've seen and heard, once couples are married and move in together, the man becomes much more "I'm the man" and the woman takes care of the house and kids. The co-teacher who was crying during our trip to city hall - Shannon and I both suspect her husband may be cheating on her, and we know he spends a great deal of his time outside of work golfing and drinking. He's certainly not the kind of man to go passing out on the street or telling strangers how they should run their lives, but I think some of those "ajosshi" qualities are a little much sometimes.

Geez, I feel like I've done another one of my "Look how bad Korea is" rants, when the truth is I'm really enjoying my time here lately. My palate has warmed to Korean food to the point I'm going to miss it when I leave, I've made some wonderful Korean friends over the past few months, and school is, well, it's OK. I really am going to miss this country when I leave. Anyway, I've written lots for today and I think it's time to get ready for class. I've had heaps of holidays the past few weeks, so I'm a little slow on keeping up with the blogs, but thanks for keeping with me. Take care till next week.