A Crazy July 4th

This post is definitely prompted by my friend Hyun-Joon, from Korea, who told me to post about the bad parts of Korea.

Saturday, July 4th, I was walking around town on an exploration voyage. My trip took me though my local neighborhoods, including the market which is very close, and then into the Bus Termeener (get it?). While walking through I was looking at the various shops, but then noticed a large group of people crowded around two. They were two men, I estimated one to be about 40 and one to be about 50, in a heated argument. Suddenly, the younger man lurches forward and shoves the old dude in the chest. His glasses fly off, fall to the ground, and break. The younger man then hurriedly walked out the nearest exit, while the older man composed himself and chased after. Ridiculous. I did not follow.

Flash forward to later than evening, when I am hanging out with foreigner friends. We are walking from dinner to Dan's apartment, and we pass a man, drunk and muttering. As we pass, he notices us, and starts yelling. My thought is that he noticed one of our group members was black, and obviously all five of us were not Korean. He then drunkenly yelled at us, as I looked back repeatedly. I wasn't sure what he was on about since I don't speak his language (especially not a slurred version) so I kept leering back at him which probably made him more angry.

So this guy actually starts walking after us. I wasn't even slightly worried about my safety, as there were three men in the group, each easily much larger than this guy. My only worry was that I didn't want to have to lay this dude out on the pavement. He kept walking after us. We kept walking, trying to ignore him as he kept following us, probably for a block. By that time, he started to slow down, at my last look he was at about zombie pace. Anyway, this situation passed with no harm.

I was talking with a friend Lisa from the UK, and her response to the bus terminal incident is that they probably had way too much Soju. Soju is this Korean rice liquor which can be very alcoholic. It's very common for Korean businessmen, etc., to get liquored up with business associates. Soju is also consumed at many meals.

Anyway, the 4th ended well, we all went to Dan's apartment and ate cake with jello and played hot dice. I was super tired so I went to bed about 11. Happy ending to a weird day.