I was sitting in one of my iBT classes the other day grading essays when I came across a particularly jarring sentence that one of my students, Jane, had written. The task of the essay was for students to compare their way of life with that of their parents and decide which one would be more satisfying for future generations. Yes, a rather vague, not particularly well-devised question, but these are the things I’ve come to expect teaching this test. In any case, in her essay, Jane was talking about her parents’ way of life, explaining that she was impressed with their attention to detail. Then came this slap-to-the-face of a sentence: "For instance, even though my father is drunken, he puts his shoes right beside each other. Also, he brushes his teeth even though he can't even walk."
I’ve had numerous conversations with fellow teachers and friends about the kind of things that our students have to put up with from their parents: an intense, unspeakable amount of pressure to achieve academic success, physical and verbal abuse, and just as commonly, unpleasant behavior from a father who comes home after more than a bit too much drinking.
I’ve come to learn during my nine months here that, while some things about Korea remind me a lot about home, there is still a huge cultural divide that I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to. I understand that I can’t expect things to be the way that I am used to them being, and that people in different places and cultures have different ways of dealing with their problems.
Yet still, when I read a sentence like the one Jane wrote in her essay, I can’t help but feel more than just a little unsettled. The example she gave sounds like the kind of story I would tell my friends from a really rowdy night, not the kind of thing a 14 year old student should be casually writing in her iBT essay about her father, as if that were completely normal behavior for a parent.
The problem is (and yes, I am going to call it a problem, despite the possible outcries from you cultural relativists out there) that this is indeed rather common behavior for Koreans.
I know that I have mentioned in the past the degree to which alcohol is abused in this country, but now I feel like I finally need to devote a full post to an official rant against the soju-drinking, foul-smelling, bench-sleeping ajashi (read: adult man) population of this country.
I was riding the subway the other day, transferring from one line to another at Sadang station when I saw a man sleeping on one of the benches made for people waiting for the next train. This is a very, very common sight in Korea. I tried to explain to Rira the other day that if you see a person sleeping on a bench in the subway in America, you can almost guarantee that person is homeless. In Seoul, the people who frequent the subway benches as makeshift beds are almost exclusively men, between the ages of 30 and 60, all of whom are wearing full dress suits. Like I said, this is the kind of thing that when I first got to Korea I couldn’t really believe, but now I am almost surprised when I ride the subway after 8 p.m. and I don’t see an ajashi passed out somewhere. For some reason, though, when I saw the man the other day, I wanted to go over to him and kick him in the face. Something just clicked inside my head; I had had enough.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I am no prude. I am of the opinion that a person should be allowed to do whatever he or she wants, so long as that behavior doesn’t harm other people. You want to get so drunk that you can’t stand under your own power? Go right ahead. You want to pound so much soju that you wake up the next morning feeling like someone has taken an electric drill to your skull and given you an enema with Tabasco sauce? Be my guest. But do it on your own damn time! I am getting pretty sick and tired of seeing guys passed out on benches, falling over on innocent people (myself included) on the subway, stumbling down the street, basically being carried by two other old men, with such intense Asian Glow that it looks like someone has taken a tomato to their faces.
I have to admit that these scenes have provided me and my friends here a fair amount of entertainment over the months. Watching these men go by is one of my favorite pastimes of a night out in Korea, and constantly reminds me that, no matter how much you drink, you can always be drunker than you are. But at the same time, though, the more and more I see of this kind of behavior, the sadder and sadder I get. Sure, it’s funny. But really, when you think about it (especially if you are sober), it reflects pretty poorly not just on these nameless, sloppy gentlemen in suits, but on the country as a whole. Honestly, guys, it’s just embarrassing.
Part of me feels pretty bad for these dudes. They work ridiculous hours at jobs they probably despise, only to invest most of their hard-earned money on their children’s hagwon educations. It is fairly obvious why so many of them drink so hard that they pass out in the middle of a 6-lane thoroughfare (yes, I have seen this before): it is their only escape from the intense, draining, workaholic lives that they live on an everyday basis. The Four Hour Rule for the sleep schedule of middle and high schoolers carries right over into the working life of the average Korean, but instead of staying up until 3 a.m. studying for exams, they are drinking themselves into oblivion.
As a student of drug policy, this situation really, really bugs me. The Korean legal system takes a ridiculously hard-line approach to drugs--considering marijuana and meth to be equally dangerous--and is willing to throw a foreigner in jail and deport him just for being in the same room where weed is being smoked. All of this while seeming to completely ignore the fact that a large percentage of their adult population regularly abuses a far more dangerous drug—alcohol—and publically, no less. Don’t get me wrong—I am by no means advocating for Koreans to go out and start using meth as an alternative to soju. I just think it is time for Koreans to take a serious look in the mirror and deal with what is clearly a serious problem. Maybe I’m just being a Debbie Downer, but for me, the line gets crossed when kids start to expect their dads to come home having lost the ability to stand up. Even if they can still brush their teeth.
