My Visit to Korea: Why (South) Korea and I Might Have a Love-Hate Relationship

You won't find any travel tips in this article (although you could probably infer a few if you read closely). This is a story about one guy and one country (and maybe some of the women in that country too). Don't expect to learn anything, but you might get some laughs out of it.

They say that first comes love, then comes hate, right? Or there can be no hate without love or something like that, right? Well, in any case, I think the message is that love comes first. Not in this article.

I was near the end of my study abroad experience in Japan, and since I had always wanted to go to (South) Korea and a ticket from Tokyo to Seoul is much cheaper than a ticket from Los Angeles to Seoul, I talked a Korean friend into going with me. It was just that one friend and I going to Korea (certain circumstances prevented any other friends from accompanying us), and she was a single girl around my age, so if you know anything about conservative Asian culture, you can imagine what it was like when she visited her family in Seoul bringing a male "friend," but that's for later.

Have you ever visited a place and instantly got the idea that things just weren't meant to be for you and the land? Well, for me, Korea was one such land.

It was absolutely poor timing on our part. My friend and I could not have chosen a worse time to go, but then again it was the most convenient time. In the words of my friend's grandma, who lives in Seoul (translated from Korean to English by my friend): "This is the coldest winter in decades." Wonderful. Aside from that, the yen had depreciated, so I was quite happy when I exchanged all my US dollars for yen. Not quite the case when I exchanged yen for Korean won, which had appreciated in the past week. Doubly wonderful.

Night of arrival, our hotel shuttle arrived late. When we got to the hotel, we found out something had gone wrong with the booking, so the hotel was full and my friend and I didn't have a place to stay (at least the attendant thought I was Korean after I said "yes" in Korean and started speaking to me as if I understood every word that was coming out of his mouth - I'm Chinese, and my friend had taught me only a few words in Korean). Eventually, we were brought to a better hotel at no extra cost. Yay. This country isn't so bad.

(Now you may think it's easy to mistake a Chinese person for a Korean, but Asians can tell. You wouldn't mistake a Frenchman for an Italian or a Brit, would you? I can tell Chinese from Japanese from Korean from Vietnamese from Philippinos from Cambodians.)

So far, I've only discussed woes befallen both my friend and me. Here's where the fun begins: just Korea and I. Second day, we took a train from Incheon (the only international airport in Korea is located in this small district outside Seoul) to Seoul. While in Japan, one of our friends had gotten trapped between train doors. Many of us laughed at him and sympathized with him at the same time for the improbability of something like that really happening. Well, it's not that improbable. At least not when you're me and when you're in Korea.

After prying me out from between the train doors, we went to the little Chinatown outside Seoul (and I use "little" very literarily; it was and still is the smallest Chinatown I have ever been to). You would think that a Chinese guy in Seoul's Chinatown would have some sort of divine right to a warm welcome. Yeah, right. I tripped, fell, and scraped my hands so badly that the lady at the restaurant, who also thought I was Korean until I spoke to her in Mandarin, came running out with band-aids.

The next day, we went to the World Cup Stadium (where that Korean hottie wearing nothing but the national flag garnered international attention at a match in 2002). There was a frozen lake nearby. It wasn't quite frozen, though. A few words of advice if I may: If it's only December, not quite the heart of winter yet, and you see a frozen lake that you suspect isn't quite frozen, don't try to find out. Luckily, I didn't have both feet on the ice.

Since one of my feet was soaked through, my friend and I decided to go back to the guest house to get me a spare pair of socks so I wouldn't get frostbite. Even though it wasn't snowing that day, there were still patches of ice here and there on many of the streets. The street leading from the main road to our guest house was one such street. I was looking forward because what reason did I have to keep my eyes on my ground? I had only tripped more than once and almost fallen through a not-so-frozen lake. So one of those destined patches of ice rose to meet my unsuspecting feet, and I scraped and re-scraped my hands, bruising my knee in the process.

I tried to laugh it all off, but it didn't really work until we met my friend's family, who showed us around and treated us to lots of delicious meals. My friend's aunt kept telling my friend, "He's so good-looking." When my friend told me later, I said, "Maybe she was just being polite." Then my friend said, "But you don't even understand Korean!" While drinking with my friend's uncle (man, I love drinking with old Asian dudes), he was saying to me, "I like you. You and I should keep in touch." My friend translated, subsequently saying to me in English and the uncle in Korean, "But you two don't even speak a common language!" And my friend's grandma practically showed me how to wash myself in the huge bucket she brought in just for me, since the little American boy wasn't comfortable working the Korean-style bathroom.

One of those days, on one of Seoul's many crowded trains, my friend and I were standing up, keeping our balance by grabbing hold of a pole or a handlebar. Sitting in the seat right in front of me was a middle-aged Korean lady, neatly dressed and well composed and looking through her cell phone. At least I thought she was just looking through her cell phone. At one stop, I heard a noise, then the lady left the train. A few seconds later, my friend and I stared at each other, both wondering what the noise was. It was a shutter noise that both American and Asian youth are all too familiar with: a phone camera. "Did she just take a picture of you?" my friend asked. I shrugged, a little creeped out but also a little flattered.

When I went to get my haircut, the pretty hair stylist asked me two questions. One: "Is she your girlfriend?" Two: "Are you Korean? You look Korean."

We, as human beings, always yearn for a sense of belonging, which doesn't mix well with the urge to travel, which only a number of us are cursed with, myself included. So to those who travel, one of the greatest joys of all is to be mistaken for a local. I liked being thought of as a Korean when I was in Korea. It was quite an honor. That was some real love.

I'll probably visit Korea again someday. But I probably won't go in December. And I won't care if that lake is really frozen or not.