The Underside of Beauty
I lived in Haeundae in Pusan. Haeundae is the Beverly Hills of Korea, especially around the beach. I was privileged enough to live in a single room attached to big house. I was slumming it in Beverly Hills. It is hard to be poor among opulence.
One of my opulently wealthy students took me and a friend out for drinks one night. It was after a Friday night class. We all met at the institute and walked to the strip along the beach. We went to a restaurant that had drinking salons upstairs. We had raw fish in the restaurant and then took one of the drinking salons for the evening. A drinking salon is a small private room that has no window and no view. There are guards at the top of the stairs and in the hallway to ensure that no one who is not a paying guest is allowed upstairs. Usually there is a karaoke machine and a hostess will bring in platters with bits of fruit impaled on toothpicks, roasted nuts, and dried squid or other “anju” or drinking snacks. Koreans do not drink without having food on the table. This is true even if the food never gets touched.
The drinking salons also come with the ubiquitous amenity of a young woman who “facilitates” the proceedings. She is not a master of ceremonies. She smiles and laughs and keeps pouring beer and sings along with whomever is at the karaoke machine. I was uncomfortable with the practice of having these women around, because in my mind either something untoward would become of them or in the best case they were objectified and made somehow less of people than they should be. All my American friends who went out with their students thought this practice was at best immoral. It is not in the American character to assume a pretty young woman should be assigned a station where she is a known quantity- no one ever asked these girls their opinion on politics or philosophy. In any case, I knew the people I was with were good people, and they wouldn’t do anything that would cause them to lose face; they knew how I felt about having comfort women around.
After a couple hours of drinking beer and gnawing squid and making a complete mockery of some very bad seventies and eighties tunes, we took our leave. The person who tendered the invitation pays the tab, and my friend and I waited on the top step while the bill was squared away. When we got to the street, the gazillionaire student offered to get me a cab back up the hill to my abode, but my friend and I had been scheming to turn the night out into a long night out, and I respectfully declined.
Out on the street we said our long goodbye, as custom dictated, and went our separate ways. Friday night on the strip was just getting underway. There were tents and kiosks of varying sizes set up around the street that followed the beach. There were mechanical bulls, electric punching bags, and sundry other carnival games set up in and among the noodle stalls and soju vendors. Our plan was to start at one end of the beach and work our way to the other, while eating, drinking, playing games, and killing time. When we got the hotel at the far end of the beach we would go into the Irish bar and drink Guinness and play darts.
To make a story about a very long night shorter, we accomplished all of our objectives. We poured ourselves out of the hotel’s Irish bar sometime before morning and began to trudge along the beach on the sand, shoes in hand, listening to the waves. We came across a clutch of college students who said they were still on the beach because they were simply too drunk to stand up and walk away. They had a small propane burner set up in the sand and they were warming their hands and bottles of soju on it. Two kids had guitars and they invited us to sit and belt out a tune with them. Because I was different, they asked me to play, and I honored them with a ragged version of an old American song they did not know. We all got up to leave when the tide came in on us.
We kept trudging along the beach, with the understanding that when we arrived at the jetty on the far side my friend would catch a cab home and I would continue on up the hill to the frozen postage stamp that was more of my cage than my home. But it didn’t work out that way. My friend pulled out a collapsible fishing rod from his inside suit coat pocket. He said he just wanted to take a couple of quick casts from the end of the jetty before going home. Who leaves work and goes out drinking all night with a fishing rod in their coat? We headed for the jetty.
There was a small shack set up in the nook of the leeward side of the jetty, and when we got close the occupant called to me to join him for a shot and to watch the sun rise. My friend kept looking down, picking his way from concrete jack to concrete jack. I went to greet the occupant of the shack.
I was pulled into the shack by the arm. It was a single small room made of used pieces of wood and bits of iron sheeting. There were three stools around a small table that had a game of goh set up on it. There was a small propane heater in the corner with sets of gloves hung on a rack in front of it. There was a very stout, short man with a very red face sitting on one of the stools contemplating his cards. At first glance it appeared as if his entire body was chapped, and the roundness of his girth was not flaccid weight. He looked like a judo guy who had been left in the weather too long.
I was pointed to the empty stool by the smaller grinning guy who had led me in. I took the seat and we started to communicate in a fumbling way, using both Korean and English. I kept wanting to get up and see where my friend was and I was urged to play out at least one hand of goh. The person who had extended the invitation got a short bottle of soju and pulled snacks out of unopened boxes of cargo. It was then that I noticed that half of the shack was filled with just stuff.
Eventually my friend called to me through the open door of the shack. I had finished a hand or two of goh, had drunk a toast, and had laughed with the Laurel and Hardy of the jetty. They were pretty cool guys, I thought. I went outside to see my friend standing well away from the shack calling to me. He was insistent that we leave right away, and said as little as possible to the others. I took my leave and stumbled off with my buddy.
My friend told me that those guys were gangsters, and that they were stationed there to skim off of the traffic in and out of Haeundae. It made sense to me after he explained it in a little detail. They were obviously there for a while, but they weren’t fishing and they weren’t working. They did have a lot of cargo just piled up. They even had raw fish that they had taken from fishermen.
I thought it odd that there would be such an operation right there in and among the trappings of wealth. As I slowly made my way back home, I noticed that the normal rhythm of the morning had begun and thought it odd that I had turned a Friday night into a bright Saturday morning.
One of my opulently wealthy students took me and a friend out for drinks one night. It was after a Friday night class. We all met at the institute and walked to the strip along the beach. We went to a restaurant that had drinking salons upstairs. We had raw fish in the restaurant and then took one of the drinking salons for the evening. A drinking salon is a small private room that has no window and no view. There are guards at the top of the stairs and in the hallway to ensure that no one who is not a paying guest is allowed upstairs. Usually there is a karaoke machine and a hostess will bring in platters with bits of fruit impaled on toothpicks, roasted nuts, and dried squid or other “anju” or drinking snacks. Koreans do not drink without having food on the table. This is true even if the food never gets touched.
The drinking salons also come with the ubiquitous amenity of a young woman who “facilitates” the proceedings. She is not a master of ceremonies. She smiles and laughs and keeps pouring beer and sings along with whomever is at the karaoke machine. I was uncomfortable with the practice of having these women around, because in my mind either something untoward would become of them or in the best case they were objectified and made somehow less of people than they should be. All my American friends who went out with their students thought this practice was at best immoral. It is not in the American character to assume a pretty young woman should be assigned a station where she is a known quantity- no one ever asked these girls their opinion on politics or philosophy. In any case, I knew the people I was with were good people, and they wouldn’t do anything that would cause them to lose face; they knew how I felt about having comfort women around.
After a couple hours of drinking beer and gnawing squid and making a complete mockery of some very bad seventies and eighties tunes, we took our leave. The person who tendered the invitation pays the tab, and my friend and I waited on the top step while the bill was squared away. When we got to the street, the gazillionaire student offered to get me a cab back up the hill to my abode, but my friend and I had been scheming to turn the night out into a long night out, and I respectfully declined.
Out on the street we said our long goodbye, as custom dictated, and went our separate ways. Friday night on the strip was just getting underway. There were tents and kiosks of varying sizes set up around the street that followed the beach. There were mechanical bulls, electric punching bags, and sundry other carnival games set up in and among the noodle stalls and soju vendors. Our plan was to start at one end of the beach and work our way to the other, while eating, drinking, playing games, and killing time. When we got the hotel at the far end of the beach we would go into the Irish bar and drink Guinness and play darts.
To make a story about a very long night shorter, we accomplished all of our objectives. We poured ourselves out of the hotel’s Irish bar sometime before morning and began to trudge along the beach on the sand, shoes in hand, listening to the waves. We came across a clutch of college students who said they were still on the beach because they were simply too drunk to stand up and walk away. They had a small propane burner set up in the sand and they were warming their hands and bottles of soju on it. Two kids had guitars and they invited us to sit and belt out a tune with them. Because I was different, they asked me to play, and I honored them with a ragged version of an old American song they did not know. We all got up to leave when the tide came in on us.
We kept trudging along the beach, with the understanding that when we arrived at the jetty on the far side my friend would catch a cab home and I would continue on up the hill to the frozen postage stamp that was more of my cage than my home. But it didn’t work out that way. My friend pulled out a collapsible fishing rod from his inside suit coat pocket. He said he just wanted to take a couple of quick casts from the end of the jetty before going home. Who leaves work and goes out drinking all night with a fishing rod in their coat? We headed for the jetty.
There was a small shack set up in the nook of the leeward side of the jetty, and when we got close the occupant called to me to join him for a shot and to watch the sun rise. My friend kept looking down, picking his way from concrete jack to concrete jack. I went to greet the occupant of the shack.
I was pulled into the shack by the arm. It was a single small room made of used pieces of wood and bits of iron sheeting. There were three stools around a small table that had a game of goh set up on it. There was a small propane heater in the corner with sets of gloves hung on a rack in front of it. There was a very stout, short man with a very red face sitting on one of the stools contemplating his cards. At first glance it appeared as if his entire body was chapped, and the roundness of his girth was not flaccid weight. He looked like a judo guy who had been left in the weather too long.
I was pointed to the empty stool by the smaller grinning guy who had led me in. I took the seat and we started to communicate in a fumbling way, using both Korean and English. I kept wanting to get up and see where my friend was and I was urged to play out at least one hand of goh. The person who had extended the invitation got a short bottle of soju and pulled snacks out of unopened boxes of cargo. It was then that I noticed that half of the shack was filled with just stuff.
Eventually my friend called to me through the open door of the shack. I had finished a hand or two of goh, had drunk a toast, and had laughed with the Laurel and Hardy of the jetty. They were pretty cool guys, I thought. I went outside to see my friend standing well away from the shack calling to me. He was insistent that we leave right away, and said as little as possible to the others. I took my leave and stumbled off with my buddy.
My friend told me that those guys were gangsters, and that they were stationed there to skim off of the traffic in and out of Haeundae. It made sense to me after he explained it in a little detail. They were obviously there for a while, but they weren’t fishing and they weren’t working. They did have a lot of cargo just piled up. They even had raw fish that they had taken from fishermen.
I thought it odd that there would be such an operation right there in and among the trappings of wealth. As I slowly made my way back home, I noticed that the normal rhythm of the morning had begun and thought it odd that I had turned a Friday night into a bright Saturday morning.
posted by Traveler at 11:23 AM
2 Comments:
It's funny that your buddy had a sollapsable fishing rod in his jacket all night. Did you ever see the guys who take fishing rods out with them surfing? There are a couple fishing dudes who surf Courts at Ala Moana. It's pretty impressive to see a guy fishing between sets and then strapping the rod to his back and catching a wave.
I had never seen a guy casting between sets, but I did see a couple locals smoking pakalolo between waves. I never could figure out how they kept it lit.
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