Special Report: Things I Have to Know That You Also Now Have to Know.

Hello, and welcome to a very special installment of English Major Away. This post will not include the (hopefully) usual work of short creative nonfiction, but rather will focus on giving you, the beloved reader, a little bit of the background information about South Korea that I’ve gotten in the past five days.
First of all, allow me to introduce you to EPIK, which stands for English Program In Korea. They are a government agency that recruits and places Native English Teachers (NETs) throughout the country. Here at orientation they are represented mostly by young Korean teachers and Koreans studying to become teachers. In case you’re wondering, yes, this does make me an employee of the South Korean government and yes, they are taking very, very good care of us. Between classes designed to help prepare us for what to expect when we step into the classroom, a field trip to several places (more on that in my next post), and an introduction to Korean cafeteria food, we’ve had very little time to worry much about the fact that we’ll be real teachers next week.
Okay, with that out of the way, it’s on to the point of this whole post. Ready? Good. Here we go.

Jake’s Very Important But Poorly Organized South Korea Facts Learned Thus Far:

1. The population of South Korea is roughly 50 million. Of those 50 million, roughly 20 million live in Seoul and its satellite cities such as Incheon and Seongnam City, which is where I’m having my orientation.

2. The total land area of the peninsula, including the islands, is 223,170 square kilometers. Some 44.6 percent (98,477 square kilometers) of this total, excluding the area within the DMZ, constitutes the territory of the Republic of Korea. The combined territories of North Korea and South Korea are about the same size as the state of Minnesota. Which means that this whole country is about half the size of Minnesota, making it the world’s 3rd most densely populated nation.

3. The national dish is kimchi (KIM-chee). It usually comes in the form of cabbage fermented with chili paste, horseradish, and fish sauce, among other things (sort of like a spicy sauerkraut). It is served with everything here as a side, including at breakfast. Nothing like some spicy fermented cabbage to wake you up in the morning.

4. One of the more popular alcoholic beverages here is soju (pronounced exactly how you’d expect). It’s a liquor typically made from rice, although other starches can be used in the process. It usually hovers around 20% alcohol by volume and is popular both due its sweet taste (imagine weak vodka with a hint of vanilla and none of the bitterness) and its bargain basement price of 1000 to 3000 Korean Won for a bottle the size of a bottle of beer. It also produces a pretty splitting hangover, as I found out this morning.

5. The culture here is hugely rooted in Confucianism. It is, in fact, arguably the most Confucianism-oriented country in the world. This means that everything is based on age and respect. People will often ask you how old you are before they ask your name. I have been bowing to anyone older than me in the street.

6. Handing things to people with one hand here is considered rude. I have learned this the hard way over and over already.

7. 70% of this country is mountainous terrain. In fact, if all of the mountains in South Korea were smoothed down and the true land area were measured, it would cover about a third of the United States.

8. North Korea. It’s up there. I am within a two and a half hour drive from a destitute dictatorship, which is something to ponder for a later post. South Koreans are, on average, four inches taller than North Koreans due to malnutrition. Also, as it turns out, America set up the South Korean government and China and the Soviet Union set up North Korea’s. The separation of the two countries and subsequent gap in living conditions is largely due to foreign influence.

9. The border of North and South Korea, the Demilitarized Zone, means that South Korea is the only non-island nation that cannot be reached by automobile. There is a place called the Joint Security Area (JSA) in which North and South Korean soldiers can see one another. Tourists can visit this place and, depending upon the population of North Korean soldiers in the JSA at the time, can set foot in North Korea under strict supervision by South Korean soldiers. Also, the two nations are still technically at war, though South Koreans generally hope for reunification. And before you ask, yes, I will be going to the Joint Security Area.

10. Ajumma, which means older married woman, is the term of endearment and respect for the elderly Korean women who are in better shape than most Americans (yours truly included) and appear to generally find us foreigners to be completely adorable. My greatest wish is to find one to adopt me for the duration of my stay in South Korea.

11. It’s not that Koreans hate the Japanese necessarily, but there is a general dislike for Japan. It’s no wonder, considering they were a hostile occupying force for much of the first half of the 20th Century. I’m not quite sure how this will manifest yet, but for instance today one of the lecturers used a map in which the Sea of Japan had been renamed the East Sea.

So there you have it: some very basic facts about my new home. So now when you read about the ajumma who fed my roommate and I at a food stall or about how I’m climbing mountains all the time with a bottle of soju and a belly full of kimchi, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Next time on English Major Away, final thoughts on the EPIK orientation, first impressions of Daejeon, and if you’re really really lucky and wish extra hard, a work of creative nonfiction. ‘Til then, annyeonghi gaseyo!

The First One: Welcome To Seoul, or Maybe Not.

Greetings, one and all, those with enough time on their hands to read these ruminations. Before I begin this thing in earnest, I suppose I should have a sort of introduction. So here goes.


For me it had always been a matter of time before I decided to live abroad again. I got a small taste of adventure while studying abroad in London. London’s a great city, and I had a great time there, but I’m ready for a bigger challenge. So today is my first day in Seoul.

I settled on South Korea in between working at the American Girl Boutique and Bistro in Minnesota’s own Mall of America, paying off student loans, and generally having to scrape together enough money for rent each month while dreaming of traveling. A big part of it was honestly the money; I wanted to teach English and South Korea pays its teachers better than a lot of other countries. Places that do pay better often require something a bit more substantial than a Bachelor of Arts in English and Theatre. There was that, and stories I’d heard from friends of mine who’d been teaching there. They told me they loved it, in so many words.

I’ll be training in Seoul with the EPIK program for a few days, and then it’s off to Daejeon, about eighty miles to the south, to start my job. If you’re wondering what age group I’ll be teaching, well, so am I. EPIK has a way of making sure you get to the country with as little information as possible. But I’m actually pretty lucky that I made it here at all. Which leads me to the meat of this post, entitled:



WHY I”LL NEVER FLY UNITED AIRLINES EVER AGAIN. EVER.



My working idea behind this blog is that within each post will be embedded a short work of creative nonfiction. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep this going throughout my yearlong experience here in South Korea. This particular story has to do with my experience with United Airlines and their repeated efforts to ruin my new adventure before it’s even begun. Let this be a warning to young and inexperienced travelers: United, like all American corporations, wants your money. They want your money so, so badly. They want your money so badly that they have foolproof measures in place to ensure that if they screw up, no matter how much, no matter how much they lie to you, it will be you who gives them even more of your money in the end. You have been warned. Here goes with a little creative nonfiction.



Yusuf seemed detached. It must be hard not to be when you deal with angry people day after day. At this point, I was one of those angry people and Yusuf was dealing with me.

I had tried to contain my anger. I really had. I knew that the situation I now found myself in wasn’t his fault. I knew that really it wasn’t anybody’s fault but that of whoever wrote the rules for the airline. But my rage had to go somewhere, and Yusuf was right in front of me.

“What do you mean, it’s not your policy to switch the ticket? They told me they had already switched it!”

“They shouldn’t have told you that, then.”

“Damn right, they shouldn’t have!” I paused. “I’m sorry. I know… I know it’s not your fault. I just…”

“I understand,” Yusuf said, still tapping away on his keyboard, still not even glancing up at me. “The woman over there has the same problem.”

I glanced to my left and saw a woman with her head on the desk, sobbing. This did not help my outlook on my own situation.

“I will make a call. Give me your passport,” Yusuf said, picking up a white phone that, until this point, had remained out of sight beneath his desk.

Now, I know that everyone who has ever gone to an airport could probably tell a horror story or two, but I believe mine qualifies as one of the worst. Let me explain what happened to me in the twenty-four hours leading up to my conversation with Yusuf.

I was trying to get to Seoul in time for the start date of a contract I had to teach English. I had left out of Madison after bidding adieu to my family and friends for the year and arrived in Denver more or less on time. The plan was to fly from Denver to Los Angeles, then from Los Angeles on to Seoul. Unfortunately, my flight out of Denver was pushed back to the point at which I would have missed my connection out of Los Angeles.

So what does one do in a situation like this? Why, find a customer service desk and get an updated itinerary, right? Apparently, about half of Denver thought this was the best option, as well. As I walked up to the customer service counter the line of annoyed and irate passengers behind me was so long that I could not see the end of it as it stretched down the terminal.

In Denver, they assured my that, despite my flight from LA being on a different airline, that they would switch it over to their airline and get me on a flight out of San Francisco the following day. After a flight out of Denver and a night at the Best Western Hotel in the scenic South San Francisco Industrial Park, Yusuf assured me that this was, in fact, impossible.

He hung up the phone. “They tell me that there is nothing they can do,” he said.

“So then…”

“If you’d like a flight out today it will cost…” He tapped on his keyboard for a few seconds. “Fourteen-hundred and sixty-two dollars.”

My head dropped onto the desk. I looked exactly like the woman next to me had a few minutes earlier, minus the sobbing. Though I felt that may not be far behind.

“There’s no other way to get there?”

“It appears that all other Korean Air flights are sold out until…” Tap, tap tap. “March.”

“Jesus.”

“You would have to purchase a ticket with a different airline.”

I lifted my head off the desk and reached for my wallet.

“Fuck it,” I said, and slapped my card down on the desk. “Just do it.”

I turned away as Yusuf tapped away at the keyboard, copying the information from my card.

I had decided to leave my comfortable Saint Paul home to look for adventure, and I suppose I’d found it already. In less than twelve hours I’d spent my first night alone in a hotel and spent more money at once than I’d ever done in my life.

“Here is your card and passport. Here is your boarding pass,” Yusuf said. “Thank you for flying with us.”

I took my things from him and turned around without replying. I wondered if he’d included that last bit for the sake of irony or because he was constantly on autopilot. Either way, at least I was finally on my way.



So that’s it for my first attempt at my second attempt to keep a regular blog. In all honesty, I don’t know if I’ll keep this creative nonfiction thing up for the whole year or just go back to it when something totally ridiculous happens, but I figure hey, at least it’s different from your normal travelogue, right?

Next time on English Major Away, ruminations on my orientation in the greater Seoul area, thoughts on the textural sensation that is raw baby octopus, and a few surprising things I’ve already learned about my home for the next year.