::A Geek in Korea::

I was feeling good walking down the street on the way to get a taxi. I had just eaten at a local restaurant that had a graffitti wall where bored patrons could scribble. I had spent the time while I waited for my meal reading the wall and was satisfied that I could understand lots of the messages. I was feeling good about the amount of Korean I was able to process.

As I crossed the street, I noticed there were organized pairs of Christians handing out small packets of tissues. People use this as a way to get a map to their church with you. They print out the maps, messages, and pictures on the packets of tissues, then hand them out on street corners. You keep the tissues with you when you throw them in your bag or put them in your pocket as you walk by. I personally found that they are good emergency tissues if you run into a bad bathroom somewhere.

99.9% percent of the time I’m annoyed when someone hands me some religious doctrine on the street, especially when they stop me, dig through their purse, then hand me some English version of some strange religious tract. Keep it to yourself. I don’t bother you, don’t bother me. The thing is, I haven’t had a spare set of Jesus tissues (as I call them) in my bag for a while, so I was actually kind of hoping to get offered some. You can never be too prepared if you need to use a public toilet in some bus station some where.

 I walked by and heard them say "Jesus saves" to each person in front of me. Then, right as I was about to be offered a set of tissues to keep for myself, the two ladies look up, see I am a foreigner, retract their arms, and refuse to give me the "Jesus saves" speech in Korean or English. They just act as if I wasn’t there and set on giving out the tissues to the person behind me. It happened at the same time for both ladies, so someone had trained them to react that way. I continued walking by, as this was the first time I ever was left alone by any religious person as I walked down the street. I actually laughed out loud on the street (a bit of a faux pas here), turned around, and watched them continue to hand out the tissues.

I realize I wouldn’t have gone to their church had they offered me the tissues, but neither were any of the other people that went by most likely. They clearly weren’t discriminating with the Korean people on the sidewalk. Why did I get special treatment? Because the didn’t think I could figure out what they were saying? "Jesus saves." How hard is that? Is it because Jesus wasn’t saving non-Koreans with the tissues? Did they assume I was already Christian, which many Koreans tend to do, and think I wasn’t worth their time?

What are the particulars of tissue distribution that I don’t grasp? I really had an urge to walk up, claim a set of tissues for myself, then give them a nice stare as I walked off stuffing them in my bag. Instead, I just walked away to avoid getting involved in a scene. If I get stuck in some bathroom somewhere and end up suffering for them because they withheld their message tissues, I’ll remember it for a long, long time.