These Things Seem Perfectly Normal to Me Now...

By Nicholas H. Simpson

"Even when my brother-in-law was dragged off and lynched by his feet to the deck railings, I still thought it was one big jape, some utterly obscure practical joke to be played on unsuspecting foreigners. I was still desperately hoping that I wouldn't have to take part. That was my first mistake..."

In November 2011, I moved to South Korea to teach English at the British Council's Seoul office.

I had never been to Asia in my life. What was I thinking?!

This book is a thought-provoking, often humorous collection of the incredible things I've seen and experienced in my time in this truly amazing country, including:

Suffering through a brutal and painful traditional wedding ritual

Making kimchi in ancient rural villages

Playing drums on stage with one of Korea's biggest rock bands

Teaching North Korean defectors

Cycling across the Korean peninsula

If you'd like to hear about these adventures, and more, then read on! Ultimately, I hope reading this book will help you in some way to feel closer to the people and culture of the country I now call home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicholas H. Simpson
• Release date: Apr 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201346683

Nicholas H. Simpson

Nicholas H. Simpson is a university English teacher living and working in the ultra-modern megalopolis of Seoul, South Korea. He lives with his wife and two children and when he's not teaching, can be found penning articles and stories, or riding his bike down the Han River bike path.

Book preview

Preface

The life of an itinerant English teacher has taken me to some interesting places (and some not so interesting ones. Nantwich, Cheshire, I’m looking at you). I lived in Spain for four years, staying awhile in Madrid, doing my initial teaching qualification certificate there and then staying on to live for two years, before moving first to La Coruña and then Seville. In the process, I came to love and closely associate with many areas of Spanish culture. I picked up the language reasonably well, had Spanish girlfriends, learned how to cook the food, went to football matches and bullfights and bars until the sun came up. I never felt truly at home there, though, as some expats do. Madrid was too dry, too dusty, too far from the sea. La Coruña too wet, too cold, and it just felt isolated, up in the top corner of the country. Seville ... well, Seville is Seville. If you really want a taste of Spain, go to Seville. You will NEVER feel at home there, unless you are a right-wing, Catholic, bull-fighting aficionado with a love for pageantry, pomp, and searingly hot weather. I am, as you might be able to guess, none of these things. After more than four years in Spain, what I needed was a new experience, something totally unfamiliar, fresh, new, uncertain. I loved my job, but I wanted a change of scenery. I knew my skills and experience would be in demand elsewhere, and so a plan was hatched.

In November 2011, I moved to South Korea to teach English at the British Council’s Seoul office. I had never been to Asia in my life, but I signed a two-year contract, full of youthful confidence that I was making the right step. What was I thinking? I knew Europe like the back of my hand. I had friends in Spain, Italy, Germany, and England. I loved it there; the history, the culture, the art, the literature, the variety of languages, cuisines, and ways of looking at the world. Why did I feel like leaving it all behind? When I was about 11 or 12, I lived in Prague for two years while my dad was working there. I’d had a Korean friend a long time before, when I was attending the international school there. He was one of about twenty or so kids of different nationalities in my class alone, and we got on well. I vaguely remembered going round to his house for dinner on a couple of occasions, driving silently through snow-covered streets in the dark after school to sample Korean food and meet his gentle, quiet mum, stern dad, and chubby little brother. Perhaps something of that experience rubbed off on me, made an impression. I had bulgogi there for the first time, although it was not until some fifteen years later that I was able to look back and put a name to the food I had eaten. I remember how fascinated I was with the rice cooker (made by Daewoo of course, the company my friend’s father was working for at the time) and the little bowls of white, pearly rice it produced. I had only ever had rice at Indian and Chinese restaurants, and this was nothing like I had ever tasted—clean, nutty, with a hint of sesame flavour. In the short two years I was in Prague, I did a lot of growing up. I learned to find my own identity, got into music in a serious way, and made some good friends. Sung Ho was one of them, and I’m sure, today, that the formative time we spent together made an impression on me, that the times I went round to his house instilled in me a curiosity about his culture that I would one day have to explore.

Whether it was these first forays into Korean-ness that brought me here or not, I can say for certain that living abroad and attending international school was an experience so new, so exciting that it left an indelible impression on me. The world became smaller. I met people from far-flung countries who had so much to teach me, yet, as it turned out, were not all that different from me after all. My horizons opened up and my identity, which had been missing for so long, became an international one as I felt at home in this fascinating world, where just in my class alone, I could talk to people from more than twenty different countries. I wasn’t afraid; in fact, I absolutely loved it. I knew then, as I still know now, that my life would have to be somewhere down this path. I’d had my first taste of the wide world, and I would spend the next fifteen years looking for more.

This book is a collection, in no particular order, of observations and experiences I have had living in Korea. It is a truly fascinating country, changing faster than perhaps any other and I hope reading this book will help you to feel closer to the people and culture of the country I now call home.

1. The Brutal Ritual of ‘Dongsangnye’ Or: Welcome to the Family!

It was the day after we got back from our honeymoon. We had decided some months before that it would be a good idea to move in with Suji’s in-laws after our wedding to save up a bit of cash for a possible move back to Europe a couple of years down the line. So we arrived at their house bleary-eyed and mostly wishing we were still in France, where we had spent a glorious couple of weeks munching cheese and getting happily pissed on wine every night. The overnight flight from Charles De Gaulle had got us in sometime mid-morning, and the drive from Incheon on an airport bus had been long and slow. Understandably, in that state of suspended, hungover reality that jet lag induces, all we wanted to do was laze about in the quiet for the rest of the day, with perhaps a bit of light unpacking here and souvenir stroking there. However, when we finally got there, we were greeted by what can only be described as a gaggle of various family members who had turned out to wish us well on our nuptials—there were various emos, uncles, cousins, and neighbours. Everyone had gathered in front of the house, where a large barbecue had been set up on a half oil drum; there was samgyupsal (pork belly, by far