::A Geek in Korea::

A few days ago, winter proved itself to be a reader of my blog. No sooner had I posed about how nice the weather had been this winter than we got snow on multiple consecutive days and freezing cold temperatures with nasty biting wind. I’m still working a winter schedule that doesn’t provide me with any bonus hours, but does require me to come in several hours earlier every day of the week. This means that my morning routine of sitting around on the Internet tweeting like mad while I catch up on the news while waiting for the temperature to approach somewhere in the -4c or higher range before I walk our dog was shortened considerably.As such, when I did go outside, it was earlier than I would have normally gone out, and I was in a rush to complete our walk because it was extremely cold. I wanted a nice, fast power walk with the dog, then I was going to take a shower and get to work on time. I had waited as long as I could have, and it needed to get done before my fingers were frozen.

I was walking on the normal route when someone shouted out that I should stop. Yoshi heard this better than I did, as I was listening to podcasts and thinking warm thoughts. Yoshi was extremely excited and wanted to greet the person that had yelled at me. I had passed her by not far from my apartment building entrance as I was leaving, and she quickly approached.

Seeing as I know nearly no one beyond my friends, current students, former students, and the occasional parent of those students, I expected that someone was going to be asking me if I had taught at this school or another in the past few years. Such is the price of having a foreign face in Korea. I was met by a middle aged Korean woman that spoke in fairly fluent English. She took and officious tone and said, “I’m here conducting a survey of foreigners living in Daejeon. I usually have my paperwork and documents with me, but I don’t have them at the moment. I saw you on the street and wanted to ask you a few questions anyway. Is that alright?”

Instead, I said, “Uh…well, I’m kind of busy…make it quick.” My dog was jumping around and I was trying to stop my podcasts so that I could give this lady my full attention without bothering anyone else on the sidewalk. I had to take off my gloves, which involved a lot of hassle since my dog was in a leash and I didn’t want him to get away. My hands don’t react well to frigid temperatures and I must keep them covered in winter to avoid a lot of pain when they rewarm themselves later.

I wasn’t happy about being stopped, but if this was official I might as well answer the questions. I thought this was a follow up about the health care services they had offered us earlier in 2008. She claimed to have papers, and documents, and was conducting a survey. Clearly this had to be a legitimate issue about life as a foreigner in Korean. Perhaps someone was really going to take foreigner issues seriously and actually ask me what I thought about something for once despite not being able to vote.

“Well, the first question is about your religion? Do you follow Jesus, or something else? What would you say is your religion?”

I thought to myself, “That’s odd, because on the form required to fill out visa applications, one of the questions that they ask you when you apply is what your religion is. (YES, REALLY!) If they were really going to do a survey, wouldn’t collecting that information be easier? Would they really send people around asking me this sort of information?”

What I should have been saying was, “Great! Now I’m freezing and my dog is a pup-cicle! I need to get to work on time and you aren’t helping me with this line of questioning! You lying woman, you tricked me into listening to your religious spiel!”

She predictably went on to say, “Well, I’m from this (Long winded brand of Korean Evangelical church), and it says specifically in the book of …blah blah blah.”

That’s when I put the headphones back in, told her to have a nice day, and walked away.

I was pretty pissed off that she’d lie to me about her intentions just to get me to stop. If she hadn’t used the word “official survey” when she first started talking to me I would have recognized her immediately as a pushy evangelical and would have blown by her on the street. She must have perfected her opening so that she fooled enough people into starting a conversation with her using that survey line. I wonder if she really did carry around a pen and clip board full of materials at some point to keep up that deception. Starting up that sort of conversation with a complete stranger has to take practice, and it seemed she had worked on her opening lines well enough to get me to stop. No one has successfully handed me a Watch Tower in over a year because when I see startled old ladies reaching into their purses for literature I just tell them, “No, thank you,” and continue walking. She got me to stick around for two whole minutes before I figured out her real purpose.

The religious intrusion theme continued later that very same day. When I got back home, I needed to hop in a shower and before I went to work. While I was showering, Yoshi started to bark because there was someone at the door. My wife answered, and because of the water I couldn’t hear the conversation. I knew whoever was there wasn’t welcome, and I hurried with my shower in case there was a problem. After I finished drying off, I asked her what was going on.

She said that a weird Buddhist had stopped at our apartment while I was in the shower. He told my wife that he had stopped at the apartment because, “He was a religious person and wanted to give us luck for the new year if we’d only let him inside the house to pray.”

I assume he also went, “Hint, hint, me….give me money…” or something, if the implication wasn’t clear enough from his first comment.

She said that he just sort of waited at the door, but that since she didn’t open it for him to come in, he shuffled on to the next apartment. Buddhist monks make money in Korea by blessing houses or new places of business, and by selling trinkets. This is the first time I had ever had a pushy Buddhist approach our door. I’ve had a few bother me at restaurants asking for donations when we were in the neighborhood around a temple during a festival period, but never at our apartment. This guy was trying to “sell luck” door to door.

In both cases, people getting up in our faces is annoying, but even worse is the misrepresentation involved in both. The woman claiming to be doing a survey, and the man claiming to be “selling luck” both do their belief systems a great disservice with their actions. Making me stand out in the cold while you try to make your argument for your idea isn’t going to put me in your good graces, and using deceit to get me to stop in the first place is a really bad idea.