How to Get a Cell Phone in Korea

Today I finally got my own cell phone. Before, I had just a rental cell phone and it was a bit expensive just to have, not to mention talk on. All foreigners have to show their Alien Registration Cards to get a cell phone. It took a while to get mine, and then after I got it, the address had to be changed. I got it back for good last week. Since we were still on the summer intensive schedule, I did not have time to go and get a cell phone. I went to an SK Telecom store Friday night after work, but they were closing. I went three doors down to another SK Telecom store and the man there did not speak English. I felt like an idiot. The place was closing at that time too. Later, I looked at some places near the next subway stop in the other direction from my apartment. On one block, there were four SK Telecom stores! Saturday morning, I went to the first one on the block and told them what I wanted. A man in there told me to go to the one with T World on it. There was one employee working in there and he did not speak much English, probably only what was taught in Korean schools, which isn't much. He went next door to get somebody who spoke English and I told him what I wanted. After the first man figured out what I wanted, he said to come back on Monday. What I wanted was not available on weekends. I went back today and he remembered me. There was another man working there and he did speak English. It took a little while because it was Monday he said. I got a used handset for a prepaid phone. Here, you have to go to a dealer even if you want just a prepaid phone. You cannot buy a phone at a retail store and then set it up over a landline phone. SK Telecom stores are everywhere, and KT and LG also provide cell phone service. Virtually everybody here has a cell phone. I have confiscated cell phones from kids in class because they were playing with them. One day, about six kids who were not more than 8 (Western age) were taking pictures of me on their cell phones.

How to Pay a Bill in Korea

Today, I paid my gas bill. I did not do it in person at an office of the gas company, nor did I pay it online or over the phone. Instead, I went to the bank to pay it. There is no checking system in Korea, so unless you pay with cash or credit card, you have to pay by bank transfer. The bill from the gas company came with a stub that had some numbers and bar code on it. The bank has a special machine for paying bills. You put your ATM card in the machine. Then, you put the stub in the machine. It will ask you to verify by putting in your code. The bill is paid. I knew that there was a machine for it. One of the tellers came over and helped me do it.

Later, I wanted to have the transactions printed in my passbook. They still use passbooks for accounts here instead of people writing the transactions in a check register. You put the book in a machine, but not the same one used to pay bills. The machine then prints all the transactions that have not been printed yet. I could not figure out how to use the machine because it was in only Korean. I was able to use this machine to get money out with my ATM card because it could be used in English. I went up to one of the tellers and pointed to the page in the passbook. It took her a second to figure out what I wanted. I felt retarded not saying anything and just pointing. In the end, I did get the transactions printed.

What is This?

I've seen some gadgets here that I have never seen before. Some of them, I cannot figure out what they are. There was one appliance at E-Mart that I could not figure out. When I opened it, I realized that it was a countertop dishwasher. Tonight, I saw some contraption that I figured out from the picture that it is used to grind fish, chicken, etc. bones. I've seen one appliance that had I not been to a restaurant here, I would not have known what it is. I saw it at the store and it looked like an electric box. One day, I went to the food court at Home Plus Department Store with the other teachers. We had to get our spoons and chopsticks from a box that looked just like that other box. It turns out that it is an ultraviolet light sterilizer. You put the silverware in there and the ultraviolet lights sterilize them. Sunday, I decided to go to Hyundai Department Store and I saw a mechanism. Before I came here, I read an article about the best electronics that were not yet available in the United States. One of them, which was exclusive to South Korea, was a small laptop. I wondered if that device that I saw at Hyundai was a small laptop or if it was a translator. If it was a computer, it was very cheap, about $250. If it is just a translator, then it was a bit expensive, I think. Perhaps it was neither. I did not get a very good look at it because I did not want to seem too interested. All these apparatuses make me feel like the Clampetts living in Beverly Hills.

The Home Stretch

This is the last week that I will have to teach summer intensive courses. The first month that I taught, I had six classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, two classes on Tuesdays, and four classes on Thursdays. When the summer intensive courses started at the beginning of the month, two classes were added to my Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. I also had to teach five more classes on Tuesdays and four more classes on Thursdays. This month, it was summer break for Korean school and so we offered additional classes for some students so that they could go to English school everyday.

Next week, I'll have a different schedule from what I have now. I'll be teaching six classes everyday and will have ten groups of students. Right now, I have eight groups of students. This term I taught the lower levels, which can be harder to teach because the students are younger and they don't understand as much English as the other kids. It's also easy to sound like a broken record. Next term, I'll have more upper-level classes.

The one lower-level class that I will teach next term, if all goes according to plan, is one that I'm teaching right now. It's our lowest level course, but there is more freedom with the methodology because the class is unique to Pusan. Sometimes, it can be hard to keep the kids' attention. Today, we played hangman at the end of class and the kids seemed to like it. The kids did not know how to play so at first it was a bit hard getting them to guess letters. After they got the hang (no pun intended) of it, they were all yelling out letters and wanted to play hangman with another word.

Answer to the Question of the Week

How old would people with birthdates of March 10, 2001, and October 31, 1978, be in Korea on August 31st?

• 8, 32-0 (0%)
• 7,30-1 (33%)
• 8, 31-0 (0%)
• 7, 31-0 (0%)
• 7, 29-2 (66%)

The correct answer is 8, 31. In Korea, everybody gets a year older at the start of a new year, not on the birthday. The only way that a person's Korean age matches his/her Western age is when he/she was born on January 1. Here in Korea, I am 23, even though I am 22 in the United States. When I ask the students their ages, they tell me their Korean ages. So, if a student tells me he is 10, then I have to remember that he is nine if his birthday has passed and eight if his birthday has not passed.

What Beautiful Eyelids You Have!

Yesterday during lunch with fellow teachers, I mentioned that I plan to get eye surgery while I am in Korea. I was talking about LASIK eye surgery, but one of the teachers thought I was talking about eyelid surgery. He wondered why I, a Westerner, would want to have eyelid surgery. He told me that some Korean women have plastic surgery on their eyelids to make them look more Western. Since learning that, I have looked at people's eyes here and have noticed that the eyelids are different. I've also heard that some women also have rhinoplasty to make the bridges more pronounced. Somebody once told me that the Japanese travel to Korea to have plastic surgery because it is cheaper to come here and have it done than it is to just have it done in Japan. There is a plastic surgery clinic at the mall!

Answer to the Question and Korean Names

What are the three most common family names in Korea?

The results are as follows:

• Kim, Park, Chow 0 (0%)
• Park, Honda, Lee 0 (0%)
• Kim, Lee, Park 3 (60%)
• Lee, Park, Chen 0 (0%)
• Kim, Park, Cho 2 (40%)
• Shin, Lee, Kim 0 (0%)

The correct answer is Kim, Lee, Park. Chow and Chen are Chinese and Honda is Japanese. This information comes from Tongku Lee in his book Yes, You Can Learn Korean Language Structure in 40 Minutes! Kim is the most common family name in Korea. In fact, in one of my classes, there are 12 students and six of them are Kim. In Korean, the family name comes first. A person's name can be two, three, or four syllables, but most are three. The first syllable is the family name and the last two are the given name. It is impolite to call a person by just his/her given name unless that person is younger than you or is a child. You call a person by his/her full name or by his/her title and family name. Women do not change their names when they get married. The children have their father's family name.

Reminder to All Patients: OTC means OTC!

Yesterday, I went to E-Mart to the pharmacy to get some Epsom salt and peroxide. In this country, you have to ask for any kind of pharmaceutical product, not just the stuff of which they want to control the sale, or reduce the theft, such as Sudafed or Plan B. Once, I needed some aspirin. I had to go to the counter and ask for it. I did not know if the pharmacist would know what I was talking about when I said aspirin, but he understood just fine. I later learned that Koreans do say aspirin. Yesterday, when I went to the pharmacy, I took the cell phone that I rented because it has a dictionary on it. I showed the pharmacist the word for Epsom salt and he was looking at it for quite a while. I don't know if they had it there or not. He was saying something to me in Korean. I don't know if he was asking if I was going to ingest it or if he thought I wanted regular salt, but I did not get any Epsom salt. I was able to get the peroxide though. I showed him the word for peroxide on the phone and he got it for me. Having to ask for everything at the pharmacy has made me hope that I do not need medications much here. It's not because I get things that I'm embarrassed to be buying; it's the language barrier and the fear that they are going to tell me that I need a prescription for something that I could buy over-the-counter in the United States.

New Question

There is a new question of the week. This one is about family names and which ones are the most common in Korea. I'll provide more information on Korean names when the poll is closed.

Question of the Week and More on the DMZ

The question of the week was "What city, whose location is now the site of the Joint Security Area, was destroyed during the Korean War?"

The results are as follows:

• Daeseong 1 (33%)
• Panmunjom 2 (66%)
• Gijeong 0 (0%)
• Chuncheon 0 (0%)

The correct answer is Panmunjom. Daeseong and Gijeong are both villages within the DMZ. Chuncheon is just a city in South Korea. Thank you to everybody who voted.

Daeseong is located in South Korea. It is known as Freedom Village. The people who live there are from families who lived there before the Korean Conflict. Its residents do not have to pay taxes and men living there are except from the two-year military obligation. Farmers in Daeseong have about 17 acres of farmland, whereas farmers in the south have about 4 acres. Women can marry into the village but men cannot because it would exempt them from the military service. Farmers in Daeseong make about $82,000 tax-free. The residents have an 11:00 curfew.

Gijeong is in North Korea and is known as Propaganda Village. There are no residents there, only maintenance staff. It is Propaganda Village because for six to twelve hours a day, propaganda about Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il is played to anybody around, with the hopes that they will defect to North Korea.

There is a lot of competition between the two Koreas. South Korea built a flagpole near the Military Demarcation Line. That flagpole is 100 meters tall. North Korea decided to build a bigger one. That flagpole is 160 meters tall and is the biggest and tallest flagpole in the world. The South Korean flagpole looks puny by that North Korean flagpole. When Seoul hosted the 1988 Olympics, the Olympics Committee gave South Korea an Olympic flag. The Republic of Korea gave it to Daeseong to show off to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea since they decided not to participate in the Olympics that year.