Saturday 19 August, 2006 Dongjin Officetel Room 616
Sokcho South Korea
Well, amazingly enough, I have found my way back to the Land of the Morning Calm. I always knew that I would turn up back here, the money is too good and the country too charming for me ever to stay truly away.
Sitting here in my small Officetel, listening to Bob Marley, well, I could not think of anything else to do but sit and write a bit. As I have no television or Internet and it is a driving rain outside, my alternatives are pretty limited.
Before I continue this little missive, I guess I should explain what an Officetel is as you are probably all wondering about the word.
Officetel is a Konglish word, Konglish being the mix of Korean and English that most people speak here. Well, anyway, an Officetel is an apartment built for visiting businessmen to stay in during an extended stay in a city.
This apartment is a one-bedroom affair, with the kitchen, bedroom, and living room all rolled into one. Sometimes, if one is leading a good, clean, celibate life, the room can also include a loft, sadly I have none of those virtues so a loft is out of the picture.
My Officetel is in the Dongjin building here in Sokcho City. Lucky for me it is thought of as the premier building in the city. This is despite the fact that to me it looks like an East German apartment constructed during those golden years of Communism in the mid-seventies, looking grimy and sloppy two days after the ribbon has been cut at the front door.
Anyway, it is a twenty story white and black building facing north and south and I am on the sixth floor. The view out of my window is as spectacular as the one I had in Heung-hae, but in a different way.
In Heung-hae I had a view of low ridge of hills in the distance that were brown where the trees had been ruthlessly culled from the edges of the slopes. In front of that was the brilliant green of the rice fields.
Here in Sokcho I look out to the north, and, on a very clear day, although I have not seen it yet, I have been told that you can almost discern the summit of one of the Diamond Mountains in North Korea that form the border.
Immediately outside my window I have a low green hill that rises up from the sea plain that the town sits on. At the left sits a small lake, about a quarter of the size of lake Bemidji that occasionally has the local rowing team working out on it.
In front of the hill, and across Route Seven, the main north south hi-way in this part of Korea, sit a few small houses, some traditional, and the office of the local Buddhist authority.
To the left of the houses sits a large brown lot with tennis nets in it that the locals meet on to exchange volleys of fire in the pre-dawn hours, greatly disturbing my sleep with their grunts, growls and yells of “Assa” when they score a point. (Another new word for you, “Assa” means the same as great or yah me, a catchall phrase used when you do something stupendous.)
Looking a little bit south, back towards the city proper, one can see a large, thin red crane, engaged in Koreas endless building boom as it tries to not only house its population in ugly, preformed blocks, but to provide an almost permanent level of employment for the hundreds of thousands of men who work in the construction industry.
Down on Route Seven proper, one can see a line of Gingko trees, remarkably green and healthy, that march up and down the street, past the lake towards the East Sea. To the west they stride comfortably to the downtown area until they vanish in a line up a large hill.
If one goes to the bank of elevators, of which only two of four work (remember what I said about the East German building design?), you can look out a set of two windows at the usually deep green colour of the ocean.
Going downstairs in the elevators that are usually a little dirty, I run into one of the many foreigners, waygook-sarum in Korean, who make my little building home.
There is Kelsey, who works at Dari School and is from, believe it or not, Moorehead, the Mormon couple whose names I forget who never talk about their faith directly but always hint that individual religious instruction is available, Helen, the Brit, and her girlfriend (I think), Kirsty, the Aussie that I have the real pleasure of working with, and finally, last but most defiantly not least, Lloyd, the only person I have ever met to willingly sign a contract at a Wonderland school twice.
A little side note about Lloyd. He is about twenty-five, a Canadian, tall and thin with straight, long black hair that he wears in a pony tail, unusual to see on a person in Korea. Like all of us waygooks in the R.O.K, he has his little idiosyncrasies.
Diverging from my little story about Lloyd, every foreigner here in Korea is a little odd. We have to be to come to a country where no matter how long we live here, no matter how much of the customs, culture, and language we adopt, we can never be Korean.
Some of us are running from something. The law, a bad relationship, debt, fear, whatever. Others have chosen this lifestyle, that of the wondering edutainer, the light of English education in the second world. A few actually like Korea, the feeling of waking up to a challenge everyday, and sadly, there are a few who come to prey on the youth of this country.
Okay you say, I have read this fucking far so what is so strange about Lloyd? Gentle reader I am ready to tell you Lloyds little foible…
The Lloydster absolutely loves the King of Pop. He adores him the way Castro adores surviving wave after wave American presidents determined to hammer him back into the red earth of Cuba.
Lloyd swears that Michael can do no wrong. When asked about his affinity for small boys in his bed, he says that is just the way he shows affection. Questioned about the King holding his son, Prince, out of the window on the sixth floor, he said it was a doll, and not Prince at all. Finally, like all followers of the Michael Jackson cult, Lloyd does posses a single, perfectly white glove that he wears on one hand when we go to the bar.
After the little story about Lloyd, I bet you are all anxious to return to the tour of my happy building.
After you reach the lobby you see a large, always empty reception desk, round and curving along one wall. It was obviously supposed to be manned when Sokcho became the shipping hub of Asia with vessels coming and going to Vladivostok, North Korea, Habrin, and Japan. Unfortunately for the owners of my fine home, this flood of drunken free spending international businessman has never materialized.
To the left is the stairs that lead to the surprisingly well-stocked store, two restaurants, sauna, laundry, and the lower level parking garage. Back in the lobby, if you are so inclined you can rent a movie at the video store, or if you are drunk enough, visit the Dongjin Melody Capsule, our little in building singing room.
Going out the front door you can see the guard shack were a uniformed man drinks and smokes with his buddies all day and night. Physically the man changes from tall to short and from fat to thin as the hours sweep away but his role remains the same. Invite old war buddies over and drink soju and smoke cigarettes with the occasional trip to the garbage area to organize the recycling.
So that is my building, the Dongjin as it is called here in Sokcho. Ask any taxi driver to take you to the Dongjin and you will get here. Everybody knows of it but the only people who call it home are the transient foreign community and the drunk, newly single or newly independent Koreans who want to live in what they think of as luxury but who really live in a place that a babushka in Tomsk would feel right at home in.
Lets get back in the elevator and push the button for six. Do you hear the ding? That’s our floor, we have to get out now or the automatic elevator will take us up to twenty!
Out the door, right then jog a little left and go down the hall, my door is right there past the fire door number 616. Lets turn the key and I will show you around a little bit.
This is the entryway; notice the fairly nice black and gold tile that was put in to satisfy an obscure vision of a high-end hotel.
That door to the left, see it? That is my surprisingly large bathroom. Shower, toilet, sink, no tub or shower stall. You clean yourself during the morning and can hose down your bathroom at the same time, actually quite a good idea!
Come on out and I will show you the rest, watch your step, there is a ridge where the frosted sliding glass doors separate the entry way from my room!
At your immediate left is my kitchen area and washing machine. For a small one room I have a surprising amount of cabinet space both under and over the sink.
Next to the sink is my one burner camping stove that fits my needs quite well. Next to that is my dorm fridge and bookcase, thankfully stocked with forty or so novels, both classic and shit to get me through the inevitable boredom that comes occasionally in the night.
Next to that is about a four-foot long table, sited so I can see through my panoramic windows that I eat and write at.
Going a little further is a hideously green set of bedroom furniture. A little desk where my non-cable T.V. sits and a six-foot wardrobe that holds almost all of my gear.
Across from that is one of the most comfortable beds I have ever slept on, thankfully a double, with two coverlets, one pink and one white, with the tie-died blanket my mother made me under it all to keep me warm from the surprising night chill that is announcing the immanent arrival of fall.
Right in front of my window sits my Carrier air conditioner that the management shuts off according to some arbitrary date rather that how warm the weather is.
Going back down the right side of the room is my little fan; it helps to drown out the night noise, and my drying rack that is always full as it takes a good two days to dry anything in the all-impervious humidity of summer in Korea.
Well kids, that’s it for the House of Pain, (that sucks, I really do have to find a new name for my place). The main room is about twenty-five feet deep by fifteen feet wide, small by United States standards but more than enough for the swinging bachelor or bachelorette here in K-land, and despite its size, very comfortable.
