Korea is within inches of breaking me. I've had enough, and I really cannot fathom spending any more of my life here. I've been angry, sad, annoyed, perturbed and disturbed, frustrated and despondent; now I'm just desperate.
Every time I go to Seoul (a trip I'm obliged to do often) I end up hating Korea a little bit more. It's become bad enough that it requires physical effort to will myself out of the door, head to the bus stop and begin the five or six hour journey.
This time, I reached Gohyun (the town on my island from which the bus runs) to find I had forgotten my credit card.
A long, laborious trip back home (it takes an hour each way) and I found myself searching my belongings to find my card. (It was under my bed; how it got there god only knows.) Card in hand, I exited, found the bus and travelled another hour to Gohyun. By this time, I had sacrificed three hours of my life sitting next to, in front of and behind Koreans who would as soon spit on me as say hello. This fantastic and vibrant countries' people, epitomised by the man who stood shouting at me for (presumably) being white, for a full five minutes at the bus stop, can all rot in a cesspit. I've met five nice Koreans, four of whom have lived abroad or are only half Korean.
Think about that statistic. For a Korean to be nice they must live abroad. Not just for a year in a terrible Korean-run boarding school, but for many years, even decades.
Now guess how many Koreans have done that - I would probably require only a few more digits than I own to figure that one out.
So an entire country of horrible, snivelling, grotty, filthy, ignorant, spastic, morose, incompetent, racist, scum are diluted by a tiny minority. Shouldn't I be talking about that the other way around? Shouldn't I be saying the minority spoil it for the majority, like in England?
That aside, if I have to make the trip to Seoul one more time, I feel I will snap. Whether it's the bus going the wrong way, the trip taking around 10 hours, being shouted at for being foreign the whole trip, being kicked and prodded, being spat at, sneezed on, coughed on, laughed at or tripped up, it's never pleasant. Let alone when the person I'm visiting gives me the wrong directions (as has happened not once, not twice, but thrice) and I end up face down in a ditch full of shit-water. I give up. No longer can I take it. No more. I'm only going to the airport to get away from this shit-hole.
On a side-note, how comes it's morally objectionable if Japan hunts whales, but it's okay if the Scandinavians hunt whales?
I really can't fathom how you are meeting all these Koreans who aren't being nice to you. Having lived in Korea quite a while, I have only ever met one rude one, and even he was drunk when he shouted at a korean lady for talking to my friends and I.
ReplyDeleteNone of my friends have ever been spat at, kicked, triped etc. Perhaps you are being negative to them yourself and and causing all this. If it's happening on a regular basis then surely you must look at the common denominator (you)and think you are playing your part.
Korea is a very nice country, Geoje is a beautiful island, just travel further down south from Okpo, where you reside. The locals are friendly, the foreigners I met were friendly and the who place is great to live in.
By the way, how is it taking you an hour to get from the bus stop in Okpo to the bus station in Gohyeon? It's less than 10km. Don't go in the heavy rush hour traffic and it will only take about 20, including all the stops.
jesus - who said propaganda was dead - read above...
ReplyDelete