The kimchi smell.
Okay. I don’t love kimchi; I like it. I find most restaurants serve it either too sour or not sour enough so I don’t eat it often anymore, maybe one bite to taste its fermenting stage. I used to buy ready-made kimchi at the store and kept a supply in the fridge but what kimchi does to a fridge is almost criminal and the sole justification behind an entire line of refrigerators made exclusively for storing kimchi. If you store kimchi in your refrigerator, by day two, if you so much as even crack open the door and shut it quickly you will be blasted with a cloud of awful rotting cabbage smell that permeates the entire house and lingers in the air until your nose just accepts it and your brain moves on to something else.
The gum smacking.
Oh the Korean old ladies here love to smack their gum. It’s like some rite of passage. I’ve never seen a young woman or any man smack their gum. It’s as if gum smacking epitomizes the Korean ajumma such that no one else dares to smack their gum lest they would be seen possessing an inherently ajumma characteristic.
The crazy bus driving.
Hang on for dear life and forget about it if you’re wearing high heels or carrying something in both hands, or worse yet, wearing high heels ~and~ carrying something in both hands – there’s a good chance you will lose your footing as the bus driver doesn’t even wait until the door is closed (oh, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way ~IN~, be quick about getting on the bus!) before he takes off in a mad dash and then breaks hard as he tries to maneuver between moving traffic and parked cars along the road.
The farting in public.
I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been walking along and the guy next to me just shoots off a couple rounds, sounding like a puttering car as it comes to a stall. And then there’s the farting inside restaurants … AT THE DINNER TABLE. I will never get used to Korea’s flatulent-friendly atmosphere.
The puke bombs.
I’m sure I’ve said it before but Korean businessmen drink a lot. It’s an expectation that comes along with the territory of being a company man in Korea. Whether you’re the deskman who pushes paper day-in and day-out or the face man who closes deals with prospective clients, drinking soju is part of your job. It’s sad because employees are expected to join colleagues after work for dinner and drinks regardless of their desires to not drink, or to be at home with their wife, or to be playing with their kids, or to be working on a hobby, or to be exercising for health, or to be peacefully reading the evening away. This goes for businesswomen too but to a lesser extent I believe. The after work dinner with drinks turns into after dinner norebang (singing) and drinks. Again, round two is not optional if you want to be seen as a team player and in a country like Korea where the individual’s needs are placed behind the need’s of the group most Koreans will shy away from appearing individualist as though it were the Scarlet Letter. So, getting to my point here: the drinking goes unchecked as each member of the dinner party must keep up with the next. Passing on a round is as bold a statement as, “I no longer want to be a member of this group.” So, the drinking stops basically when it’s time to go home around 2am or 3am. That’s when the puking begins; either on their way to or from their taxi rides home. On any give day on any given sidewalk in Seoul you will see the ever-present puke bomb. It could be as fresh as a few hours or as old as a few days but the fresh ones all look the same in color (peach), consistency (slushy) and texture (chunky).
The omnipresent trash.
For an industrialized country, Korea is sure behind the times when it comes to trash removal and a clean image. Recently the Korea Tourism Organization unveiled it’s new national tourism brand, “Korea Sparkling” in hopes that this kind of branding will promote the nation to foreigners and raise the nation’s tourism image. Sparkling is the very last word I would ever use to describe Korea. Trash is everywhere. People of any age and any gender toss trash anywhere they happen to have trash in their hand and want to discard it. It’s an act of such disrespect for one’s community in my mind. But, the government doesn’t make it easy for the people of this country to throw things away either. You won’t easily find a public trash can in common trafficked public areas or at parks or in every subway station or near bus stops or at trail entrances or anywhere one might think a trash bin make logical sense. For reasons that I don’t exactly remember from the article I read a while back, they changed their refuse collection policy country-wide in 1995 such that any individual or company must purchase appropriate bags for waste disposal, in lieu of a typical monthly refuse collection service fee because people were opting out of paying for that service and discarding their trash themselves into local community collection bins (which are now a thing of the past, I’ve never seen one). As one might expect, the government quickly ran out of money to provide the trash collecting service, as most people wanted their trash to be collected but didn’t want to pay for it. Nowadays you must use proper bags which you must purchase (at most local grocery stores) and discard your trash in them. Consequently all public trash bins were removed as individuals were using them to discard their house trash to avoid buying the mandatory trash bags, which incidentally are cheap. I’m a one-person household and I can get through about 5 months with 10, 10-liter bags, which cost about $5. That includes all my kitchen trash and bathroom trash (toilet paper is not flushed down the toilet) and my office trash. Recyclables and food remains are collected separately and at no charge for individuals, but one has to be a diligent trash sorter. Anyway, i'm rambling here. my point is that without conveniently located trash bins people will litter. they should give the trash collection issues an overhaul and come up with a new paradigm. Korean streets are so ugly and unsightly. How can Korean’s come up with a name like “Korea Sparkling” and throw paper cups out their car window? Oh, I know, “Korea Sparkling” is the work of Simon Anholt. The name doesn’t sound Korean to you? That’s because it isn’t. If Korea wants a competitive identity in the tourism industry they must, must, must clean up their trashy image. Who wants to come to Korea and get pushed around on the subways and struggle to order food at any local restaurant and walk by a drunk businessman peeing on the side of building and another relieving his gas while having to step over puke bombs and piles of trash. Are the great palaces of the past really that great?
An article about the trash from the JoongAng Daily.
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