We have a government office that handles paperwork we occasionally need to prove things, file things, or to make things official in our very own neighborhood. The place is set up like a bank, with people at stations that look things up on computers and print out the paperwork you need to file. You can wait and use one of the free (!) vibrating massage chairs as they copy and stamp the paperwork with their red ink legal stamp pads. It’s also air conditioned and functions as a community center, so occasionally the walls will be rumbling with aerobic music as people exercise on another floor. It’s a nice place to go to get paperwork done, but I avoid it because no one can speak English there, and all the paperwork is "Korean Only" sorts of things that I can’t legally do myself. Since I don’t have the same legal status as Koreans do, most of the time the paperwork is left up to my wife.
Since tomorrow is my pay day, and my wife needed to teacher her last week of intensive morning classes, I was the only one available to go to the local government office today to get some sort of paper my director claimed I needed for tax purposes. I didn’t know what the paper said, what it was about, or why I really needed it. All I know was I was handed a hand written note and my wife’s Korean ID and told to go there to get the paper as she went to work. Any reason to get out of the house is a good one, even if I am simply a messenger.
I was assured that the people in the office would be on the lookout for me. My wife said, when she handed me the papers, that she would call ahead and tell them, "Look for a clueless guy with a note from me and give him the paper he needs. He’s my husband and can’t speak Korean well enough to fill out this sort of paperwork on his own." The note she gave me basically said the same thing.
When I got to the office, I walked up, presented my note, presented the Korean ID, and waited. Whatever was supposed to happen when I had preformed this task didn’t come into being. The guy sort of looked at me, looked at the ID, then asked me for my wife’s phone number. She hadn’t called yet, and she was in class! He couldn’t get in touch with her. I fully expected to be told to get in touch with her to prove everything was legitimate before I could be given what I needed.
He asked for my foreigner ID, which was odd. It turns out he was trying to confirm my story. I think he looked up my marital status to see if our names matched.
I eventually got the paperwork. What pushed him over the edge, I think, was the fact that If I wasn’t the person I was claiming to be, who wrote the letter explaining why I was there? I still needed someone to write the note that explained who I was, and why I needed the paperwork, because it was clearly beyond my ability.
Once again, playing dumb has saved me.
