Two Punks in Korea

I needed a passport, fast. That was the first problem. The second was that I quit every job I had, trusting that maybe this strange little website business would turn into something real. The dotcom boom was still shaking the world, and we thought we were riding it. Chris and I lived in the studio, training, dreaming, and bullshitting. We pulled my buddy Mike into the mix for a while, taking our backyard military fantasies and hand to hand combat jokes to the next level. Then Mike went off to college at Penn State Mont Alto, and it was just me and Chris again, trying to figure out life with no map.

To get a passport in less than a week, Dr. Park drove me to Philadelphia and paid extra to expedite it. That meant only one thing. We were getting on a plane soon. I had never left the country. I had never flown anywhere. This would be my first time in the air.

Dr. Park bought three plane tickets. One for him, one for Chris, and one for me. The plan needed to be discussed, and the best place for that was Min Sook, the only Korean restaurant in Harrisburg that I knew existed. Looking back, it was probably the closest thing to home cooking that Dr. Park had in the entire region. For me, it was my first taste of something I did not understand. Kimchi hit my senses like a punch. Chris tolerated the food because someone else was paying. Meanwhile, we were two teenage punks who barely respected the man footing the bill.

We packed our suitcases and one beat up duffle bag. Dr. Park drove us to Newark Airport. Of course we were flying Korean Air. It had to be symbolic. It had to mean something. When the engines roared for takeoff, I nearly ripped the armrests off my seat. I was terrified. Once we were in the air, it became manageable, but halfway across the world, we landed in Alaska. That was when my head exploded with a sinus headache so brutal that I thought I was dying. Airports tend to make you question your choices. Alaskan ones are worse.

Landing in Seoul felt unreal. Chris and I collected the luggage like obedient soldiers. We pushed everything through the arrivals gate and stepped into a world we had only imagined. We were loud, arrogant, and acting like celebrities. Just two punks from Pennsylvania who had somehow made it to the other side of the world.

We did not make it to Japan, but Korea felt like the next best thing. It was the first time we had ever stepped foot in another country together. That mattered. It mattered more than the business itself.

We took a taxi through downtown Seoul. Dr. Park slipped back into his mother tongue and talked with the driver like an old friend. The traffic put New York City to shame, but somehow it all worked. He wanted to impress us, or maybe he wanted to impress Korea.

Dr. Park took us to the Lotte Hotel. I did not know it then, but it was luxury. It was the kind of place people saved for months to visit. There was even a theme park attached, not that Chris or I cared. We wanted music stores. We wanted culture shock. We wanted to feel like travelers.

We went to a mall that looked nothing like anything back home. There was a concrete garage, dusty stairwells, and then a subterranean maze of tiny shops. It felt like a flea market mixed with a bunker. Dr. Park wanted me to look like a business employee, so he bought me dress shoes. They were stiff and sharp, and they tore open the backs of my ankles. I still have the scars. Chris laughed at me the entire time. He was right. I looked ridiculous. He kept dressing like a punk, and I envied him for it.

We brought our entire desktop computer to Korea. We did not know about the voltage difference. When we plugged it in, nothing happened. We wasted hours trying to figure out what was wrong. At some point, I realized there was a switch on the back that needed to be flipped to 220 volts. It was my first overseas tech problem and my first overseas fix.

With the computer running and my ankles bleeding inside my shoes, we made our way to Seoul University. There was an English teaching conference that weekend, and this was where we would debut our website. Except the website was not much to debut. It was young and thin and looked like something whipped up by New York City Korean web developers with too much ambition. But marketing was everything, and Dr. Park was a master.

Dr. Park had friends from the university come by. They were young engineering students, smart kids who helped set everything up. Chris and I handed out business cards because that was what real businesspeople did in the nineties. Chris hated it. He gave out a few cards and vanished. I kept going, even though I hated it too.

Then Dr. Park panicked. Our booth was being ignored, and his solution was pure desperation. We printed banners featuring bikini models. White women. I hated it. I knew it was stupid. Chris checked out completely. I stayed, trying to believe that something might come from this circus. The banners went up, and the embarrassment washed over me like a bad smell.

To blow off steam, we sneaked into the university restroom. We were still just kids. I grabbed some toilet paper and tossed it over a stall onto some poor guy trying to take a shit. Slam dunk. Chris cracked up. I feel awful about that now, but at the time, we were proud of our stupidity.

That night, we ate and drank with Dr. Park and his friend, a former Olympic judo champion. The man was enormous. He had hands like baseball mitts and the presence of a mountain. I remember being told that he had won a bronze medal in the men’s open division at the 1976 Summer Olympics, but the memory is foggy now.

We ate whatever exotic bugs were dropped onto the table. It was disgusting and perfect. Of course, we sang “Tears in Heaven” at karaoke because that seemed to be the only English song that existed in the entire country. Just like Queens. We were drunk, singing badly, and partying with a Korean Olympic hero. It felt surreal. It was all made possible by Dr. Park’s generosity.

The next morning, we had a day off, but Dr. Park was not stupid. We were not allowed to roam Seoul alone. He sent his nephew, Gi Chew, to babysit the two Americans. For Chris, Seoul looked like Japan’s cousin. There were narrow streets, tall concrete apartments, neon signs, and the hum of life packed tightly into small spaces.

We went to Gi Chew’s university, a lower tier school that looked worn and cracked compared with Seoul University. I had to use the bathroom. I opened the stall, and there it was. A hole in the floor. My first squat toilet. My first moment of real cultural shock. I squatted, prayed for balance, and let the Korean food do its work. It was an awakening, a cleansing, and a rebirth in a tiled room.

After lunch, we met up with Dr. Park and prepared to fly home. Was the trip a success? Not in dollars. Not in customers. But for Chris and me, it was something better. It was our first time overseas, our first stamp in a passport, and our first proof that the world was bigger than Central Pennsylvania.

I sat on the plane and looked down as we flew near Japan. I wondered if I would ever see it. Korea was cool, exciting, and strange, but it was not Japan. It was not the place I dreamed of living.

It was a taste. A small bite of the world. Once you taste something like that, you spend the rest of your life hungry.