That's not true.
Some Koreans are liars I suppose, others are not. But in the cutthroat blogosphere, and the much more expansive blogoverse, you've got to push the envelope...be a little edgy. I'll never get that Pulitzer writing fluff pieces about funny things my students said in class today. That's a job best left for uptight stooges and Canadians. It's my right and duty as a big American man to proudly mount my soapbox and yell things until someone acknowledges my opinions for what they are: facts. Glen Beck has been doing it for years, and his words have as much substance and consistency as diarrhea.
(Really Glenn, social justice is the same as Nazism? And whereabouts did your Mormon daughters go for their two-year missionary trip?)
Fact: Glenn Beck has a high school education.
In keeping with the theme of making unintelligent generalizations sound important, below I've compiled a list of the five biggest lies I've been told since coming to Korea. Some were told to me by Koreans, others by Korea enthusiasts, most of whom were also Korean. In either case they're gross exaggerations of the truth and a great big smelly turd in my travel pants, starting with:
#5: It never rains in Korea
False. For the two and a half months that I've been here it's rained almost every day. I can count on one hand the number of times I've walked home and not been peed on by the dirty Yeongcheon sky. And it's cloudy every morning! It's like living in Ireland, except the fish isn't fried and the cabbage is pickled and covered in chili pepper sauce.
Runner-up in the "Make Yeongcheon Look Like a Piece of Shit" Photo Contest. First place was a photo of a piece of shit from a local cow farm.
#4: Korea is the most broadband-friendly country in the world.
False, as far as I can tell. And this one really gets my goat. Because on those rainy nights when the girlfriend is away and there's nothing good on the three American channels I get, sometimes I feel the urge to go on my computer and visit some of my personal favorite sites...to learn about science. But the internet connection is so slow in my apartment that often times the science videos take a long time to load, or they play then stop every few seconds. My fellow science enthusiasts know how irritating this can be, especially when you're right about to learn an important fact. I could just learn with pictures I suppose, but come on, I'm not in the sixth grade anymore.
Science Fact: The heart of a shrimp is located in its head. That's why he can never understand the end of Love Actually.
#3: Koreans like karaoke.
False. Koreans don't like karaoke. They love it! They drink it up like sweet wine. They pass the microphone around like a joint, getting higher with each falsetto note and 1960s American water skier flickering on the screen. But they don't sing karaoke like we do in America, where only the drunkest and most tone-deaf participants are permitted to sing Bon Jovi in front of a crowded bar. In Korea, a group of close friends rents a small room in a karaoke establishment called a noribang. Noribangs look like larger versions of the VIP section of a strip club: they're comprised of a series of small, dark rooms with thick walls and tinted windows. The hallways bounce with the muted echo of a protruding bass line, but rather than smelling of Vaseline and shame they just smell like soju. And shame.
#2: All Koreans are smart.
Okay this one is 99% true. Koreans on the whole are very intelligent and industrious people. From an early age they are taught that education is their top priority, and it is very common for children as young as four or five to attend after-school classes until dinnertime. High school students literally spend every waking hour either in class or studying for the SAT, and on average manage about five hours of sleep a night if they're lucky. As a result their heads become like Thanksgiving cornucopias, constantly being stuffed with the fruits and vegetables of knowledge. (I lost myself on that one too.)
Photo of last year's Korean National Spelling Bee Champion
Yet despite this vast abundance of education, there are still a few stragglers in every class whose total lack of brain beans would make them even stretch applicants for the Devry Institute. It's sort of like being the slowest cheetah in the pack: if you can't keep up with the race, you might as well move to South America and become an alpaca.
Science Fact #2: Cheetahs are not pack animals.
Science Fact #3: I was educated in an American school.
#1: Koreans don't like Americans because of a checkered history of military presence.
False. I don't know who wrote the Wikipedia article that I plagiarized that line from, but they clearly never spent a day in the Land of the...Something. Koreans love everything about America, from the hooded sweatshirts of colleges they've never heard of to the baseball caps of teams they've only vaguely heard of. And they don't shy away from telling you that you're not too hard on the eyes either. Practically every Korean I've encountered, from my coteachers to students to random strangers on the train, happily tell me that I'm "very very handsome." I strongly urge anyone with self-image issues to come and visit Korea; it's great for your self-esteem--like living in a country populated entirely by your mom.
Usually when I have this dream my teeth fall out and everyone around me is speaking German. Still working on that one with Dr. Hirschfeld.
Now recently I've begun to suspect that these compliments are not always completely genuine, especially when they're given to me by a bratty 6th grader after I catch him playing games on his phone during class: "Yes teacha, sorry sorry! Very handsome teacha!" But then again, I'm only human, and an American one at that. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I'll take the shallow compliment, put it under my cap for later, and give that kid an A for the day, because he's one astute little cornucopia.
