Life in South Korea

10/23/09 5:48 PM

Since I came to Korea, I’ve awakened each morning with a curiosity and vigor for the world that I was afraid I was beginning to lose. I didn’t know a lot about South Korea before I came here. Actually, I didn’t know anything. I just signed up to be a teacher one night, at 4 a.m., 2 months until graduation, after reading another article about the crippled economy. I’d heard rumors about teaching in Korea: It’s a year of partying, it’s thankless mass labor, it’s a life changing experience, it’s a waking nightmare. The bits and bobs of knowledge that I had come across made the country seemed at once advanced and archaic; it was a savvy industrial microcosm with an ancient social code and standard of living. I knew Koreans eat dogs and...