::A Geek in Korea::

I don’t get out much with the baby occupying most of our free time, but I made a wife-sanctioned break for it today. She suggested I head up to Seoul and do whatever I want for the weekend. I had planned to see a movie or something, but it turns out one of my friends was in Seoul also killing time waiting for a friend to arrive from Japan. We went around town hitting some places of interest. I wasn’t up for all that an exciting weekend. If I could catch a 3-D IMAX movie in Seoul or something, I would, but otherwise I’d just head back to Daejeon after I got done with everything.

While we were taking one of the many rides on the subway we would need to get around town, there was an incident. There was a loud, drunk, noisy homeless guy selling something on the subway. Usually the businessmen that ride the subway selling useless items are quick efficient businessmen that quickly want to conduct a few transactions then move on to the next car. This guy started yelling as loudly as he could in Korean, “It’s winter! You need gloves! Gloves for winter! 1000 won! Winter gloves!” and stumbling around the car as soon as we got on.

I don’t usually mind people selling obnoxious stuff on the subway very often. I was telling my friend about this extending washing machine hose I once saw a person try to sell on the subway. I was relating the story when this guy stopped right behind us and got right in my face. Had I been here for a short time, I might have been scared by a drunk guy selling gloves, but I looked over him with the practiced disinterest of a Seoul-ite. His garlic/soju breath was blowing right up into my face. The person I was traveling with didn’t have any gloves on, and this guy had picked him out of the crowd to try to shill his gloves on us.

He went for the “Creepy as hell” sales tactic. In staggering drunk Korean, he managed to say, “YoooooU! You….arentwearing any GLOVES! You! No gloves in WINTER!” He had no front teeth in his upper or lower gums. His molars in back were rotten and black. I could see all this as he spoke to me inches away from my face.

I politely declined anything. “Oh, it’s okay.”

“You! Have…no gloves…in…WINTER! You will DIE!”

This is actually a common expression in Korean. Someone will say, “Oh, I’m lacking a basic item necessary for a task I need” and someone else will reply, “Oh, you’re going to die.”  The only difference is usually when you say “You will die”, you do it in a mocking tone. A student might say, “Teacher, I forgot my homework!” a joking Korean teacher might reply, “You’re going to die!” as to say, “Don’t do it again, alright!?”

This guy came  up inches away from me, with his rotten teeth and bad manners to say, “You don’t have any gloves! Buy these gloves or you are going to die!”

Instead of doing trying to get me to buy the gloves with a nagging, annoying tone of someone that knows better and is looking out for you, he did something else. He used a husky, threatening voice, then he stuck out his tongue, squinted his eye, and mimed slitting his own throat with the back of his thumb. “You are going to DIE!” he said again, to get his point across. He pantomimed his threat a few more times, then waited for what I would say. Even the person I was with got the message. It was not exactly subtle.

I looked at him dismissively, then just told him in Korean that we wouldn’t be buying anything from him. It takes more than a drunk getting in my face to get me to spend 1000won on some crappy gloves I don’t need. To his credit, he gave me the stink eye once more and moved on down the line to bother someone else. This is the first time one of these salesmen ever got pushy on me. No one else answered him or put up with him in their face either, but no one cared to help us when he was harassing us on the crowded subway. Luckily it wasn’t as big a scene as it could have been.

Other than that, I had a nice time in Seoul. I got a few new books to read, and I got a little shopping done for my wife and daughter. It was an okay day, minus the weird guy.