New Tactics for living.

IF THIS STORY seems somehow...under-researched, well that's because it is. Prior to going on this trip, I knew almost nothing about Korea and even after spending 10 days there I didn't really absorb all that much. I could have supplemented my experiences with some easy fact finding vis a vis the world wide web, but my flatmate's father cut off our internet connection. We had been pirating his account but he went and changed the password on us. We made a few half-hearted attempts to guess what he might have changed the password to, but with no success.

SOME OF YOU MAY BE THINKING to yourselves: "Well, why didn't you go to your local library, I'd wager there are a number of books on the topic." That's a very logical line of reasoning. All of you who had this thought, go ahead and pat yourselves on the back, you will probably grow up to be mid-level executives or junior vp's. You're obviously very good at delegating responsibilities. I'm the author; therefore it should be my responsibility, very true. You'll go much further in life than the readership whose response was "Under-researched? Oh well." Who will in turn go much further in life than those whose response was "Korea, wait, is that, like, a part of China or something?" These people will likely become bank tellers and guidance counselors respectively. Of course, all of you will be surpassed by those self-motivated folks who thought to themselves, "Well this is going to be a shoddily-written piece by some slacker who can't even fulfill his modest obligations, then I'm going to head down to the library m yself, read everything there is to read on Korea, and then move on to other topics that interest me such as combustion engines and photosynthesis. If this was your reaction, congratulations, you get to be anything you want: astronaut, ballerina, marine biologist, anything. Anyone who skipped this article altogether, in favor of looking at the pictures, will likely end up in advertising. So count yourself lucky for getting this far.

I bet you didn't expect a personality/career aptitude test in a travel article did you? Well, I figured that if I couldn't teach you all kinds of things about Korea I could at least teach you a little bit about yourself. And in the en, won't that be a lot more valuable?

AS I ALLUDED EARLIER, this article isn't big on facts. I don't know what Korea's population is, for example. I don't know what the surface area is and I sure as heck don't know what the gross domestic product is. What, if anything, do I know? Well, here are the answers to the most common questions I was asked after my return to my hometown of Toronto.

The skaters:

CLARK HASSLER

Clark is a strange bird. He seems pretty spacey most of the time but he's more on the ball than you'd guess. When we played a skateboard 'name game' he outperformed all of his fellow ams by a significant margin. Since I'm pretty good at this game myself I see this as a sign of great intelligence. Clark sang along with every song he knew, which was the vast majority. He also dropped a few strange theories. Among them that "Marley is the resurrection of Christ" and the parents of certain skateboarders are probably aliens wearing human costumes. This sounds like the kind of thing you say in jest, to get a chuckle from your friends; but in Clark's case, I think he was serious.

RICARDO CARVALHO 

Ricardo is Brazilian, so he takes Brazilian sips from other people's drinks and Brazilian bites from other people's food. "We should bomb Germany" he declared one day at lunch, quite out of the blue. "What?" we cried in disbelief. "Germany sucks, man," was his only supporting argument. We were at a loss to explain Ricardo's distaste for the fatherland until he described how he had struck his head at the Dortmund contest this summer. His German doctor sent him to a mental hospital where he was forced to remain for two weeks. The episode evidently scarred the poor fellow.

COOPER WILT

Cooper was my roommate for the duration of the trip. He was a perfect roommate, quiet, low-key, polite, no detectable foot odor, only very light snoring and even then only for brief spells.

"Ask Coop how many letters are in independent," Mike whispered to me. "Hey Coop, how many letters in independent?" I asked. "Eleven." Cooper replied without hesitation. I wasn't sure what the joke was until Mike explained that Cooper has the semi-amazing ability to total up the letters in any given word. Really? "How many letters in cat?"

"Three."

"He's good," I confirmed. "Coop, misappropriation."

"Sixteen."

"Antidisestablishmentarianism."

"28."

Damn, Coop!

ROBERT LIM

Robert Lim was the most valuable cultural liaison. Robert grew up in Southern California but both of his parents spoke to him in Korean and raised him in a home steeped in Korean culture and traditions. Robert was an all-round pleasure. Very friendly and dogged in the pursuit of a trick.

The supporting cast:

MIKE STANFIELD

Mike is a filmer, perhaps you've seen his independent release Amateur? This was the first trip that Mike had attempted to organize, and after all the complications I hope he's not discouraged from organizing another. Things worked out alright in the end, I mean, you're reading this article aren't you? But there were complications along the way. For the week leading up to the trip I received a minimum of two calls a day from Mike telling me alternately that the trip was off and then back on. It came right down to the wire. I had my bags packed in the car waiting by the phone at two in the morning to hear whether it was a go or not. Since I had further to travel, I had the fear that the trip would be cancelled one last time and I would find myself alone in Korea for a week and a half. Needless to say I was relieved when I met up with everyone on the plan from Tokyo to Seoul.

JOO AND KOREAN MIKE

Joo and Korean Mike were our guides. Joo organized everything from when we landed to when we flew home. He bought all the meals, shot photos and filmed (often simultaneously). He took us shopping and he even bought me a Korean DVD because I "looked upset" for having lost the keys to the van (just imagine for an instant that same scenario only with a bunch of skaters in the mid-west, ain't nobody buyin' nobody no damn DVD). Joo cam ready for business: he had a generator with lights and a heater for the chilly nighttime sessions. In short, Joo was a goddamn champion. Korean Mike was Joo's little buddy. Robert explained to us that there is a distinct age hierarchy in Korean culture. The older you are the more you boss around the youngin's. Joo wasn't cruel to Korean Mike who was several years his junior. But Mike did have to do some errand running--all of which without complaint. The flip side of this is that you take care of your younger friend like a little brother.

Korea wasn't exactly what I'd expected. It appeared more prosperous than I had anticipated. i was going on the assumption that with so much cheap merchandise being manufactured there, the minimum wage must be really low, and the working conditions must be really bad. And maybe that is the case, but it certainly wasn't evident in the cities we visited. I've never been to Japan, but Seoul and Bussan (the two cities we visited) were a lot like how I imagined Tokyo to be. It was very Bladerunner-like, total visual chaos-- busy, advertising everywhere.

Seoul was absolutely massive. It was hard to determine where downtown began since everywhere we went was built up. No matter where you went there were either sprawling markets or strips of stores. Seoul was also freezing cold. After the demo, which was attended by about 70 kids and three or four US Military types who skated, we headed south to Bussan (which is also spelled Pussan about half the time). The roads were packed with cars. Tailgating was very much the norm and there was sort of a Darwinian approach to merging. I'm sure glad that I didn't have to drive, It was stressful enough just trying to cross the street.

The hotel where we stayed in Seoul was dodgy Some of the rooms didn't even have beds, just blankets piled up. On the plus side, the floors were heated and there were complimentary slippers waiting for us.

In Seoul there were a few Americans around, but in Bussan we were the only non-Asians. Little kids would come up to us and say the one or two things they knew in English, usually "hi" and "bye," then they would run off laughing. High school girls did much the same thing. Mostly to Coop. They'd wave, giggle, then slink away while covering their mouths. I don't know why Korean girls cover their mouths when they laugh, but they do.

Most of the Koreans we came across spoke very little English. We would have been sunk without Robert, Korean Mike, or Joo. Robert told us that everyone learns English in school but with no opportunity to practice they quickly forget everything. Cooper and I watched a program on TV that was created to help people with their conversational English. It coached you step-by-step through a fictional exchange that was most humorous. I've never heard any one in North America tell a friend that he required new tactics for living.

You see a few English words around, but it's not nearly enough to get by. In fact for the most part any see is downright confusing. We passed by a restaurant with the words 'Donkey Fried Chicken' painted on the front.

Common Question #3

"What did you eat?"

There were two kinds of restaurants: with or without chairs. The restaurants with chairs don't really require any explanations. That's what most of us are used to. The chair-less ones had heated floors, like the hotel. You took your shoes off at the front and sat on a mat at a low table. The tables had either little pits with blazing hot coals or little gas ranges. The idea is that you cook you own food. They bring you a wok and a bowl of raw meat and more or less leave you to your own devices. Being herbivorous, I opted for either a tofu stew or a rice dish served in a hot stone bowl.

There was also a huge variety of squid products. In an ordinary 7-11 you'd see a multitude of squid crackers or even squid-jerky, all with cartoon illustrations of happy bug-eyed squid on the packages. For obvious reasons I found it all quite distasteful but others in our crew grew to enjoy these happy squid snacks.

Common Question #4

"Think you'll ever go back?"

At the risk of ending this little article with the ever so cliched "The week-and-a-half seemed to come to an end too quickly, we had so much fun that we're already making plans to return." But we did have a lot of fun and we have already talked about making plans to return. Squid jerky, warm floors...what am I made of, stone?