Another Reason to Improve My Korean

I finished my summer of language study in Seoul and I’m on my way to Norway. I’m writing this in Dubai airport while waiting for my flight to London. I’m enjoying a McDonald’s “McArabia Meal” which the advertisements assure me will offer me an “authentic taste” of this region. I knew I could trust the golden arches to provide me with a taste of the real Arabia.

My journey here was interesting one, and gave me a last reminder of how nice it would be if I could really speak Korean well.

While waiting to board the plane, suddenly a crew of police sniffer dogs came to the gate and sniffed everything. While Seoul’s airport has lots of security guards marching around in pairs with very impressive looking semi-automatic weapons, I was surprised to see that the KP team was soon replaced by about a dozen armed security guards who took up positions around the seating area of our lounge, surrounding us and watching over our “perimeter” while we waiting for the boarding announcement.

I couldn’t figure out what the fuss was all about so I looked around for politicians or other famous personages. The only person who looked out of place was some military officer who had two or three rows of those badly matching but very colorful collections of little badges on his uniform that, you know, all those generals and stuff wear. I thought perhaps he was our illustrious passenger but he seemed to be showing deference to a group of men who from a distance looked like perfectly casually dressed business men. It was hard to see because they were surrounded by a bunch darkly tanned identically dressed guys who looked something like a team of teenage high school basketball players going on a school trip.

When we boarded, I was surprised to see the security guards surround the team of youngsters and escort them through the first line and onto the plane, outside of which they then took up positions. The young men all wore light blue Umbro brand shirts, Umbro shorts, and identical Puma sneakers.

The fancily decorated military guy wished the men accompanying the team farewell and the rest of us were allowed to board the plane, passing by the security guards stationed at the plane entrances. By this time, I kind figured out what was going on…and had guessed that they were most likely some kind of athletes from the old Democratic People’s Republic of Korea up north.

I didn’t think much more about it until a few hours into our flight when I got into a conversation with a Dutchman at the back of the plane. He was telling me about his adventures working at the UNDP in Korea in the 1970s and the challenges of getting married to his Korean wife at that time. He then mentioned in passing that the snoring pile of athletes sprawled all over the back few rows of the plane were none other than the North Korean national soccer team…

Just at that moment one of players emerged from the bathroom across from our makeshift lounge. I had seen North Korean students in various places in Beijing when I studied there, but I never bothered to say hello. I waved hello to the soccer player and he nodded back to me smiling, then remained in the back with us instead of returning to his seat. I figured I would have a go at subjecting the poor guy to my bad Korean, and I was hoping to squeeze in the North Korean equivalent of simple common word that another friend had taught me the day before.

The conversation which followed had very mixed results and my more eloquent reproduction of it here in English hides the rudimentary level of our exchange. I cringe just remembering my broken and staggering efforts. I was delighted to see that he seemed to understand most of what I was saying. Unfortunately, however, I understood very little of his replies. Not only is my listening really bad, but he spoke really fast and had pronunciations of words that seemed completely alien to my ears.

I asked him where they were off too, and he said they had a game in @#%&. He asked where I was from and I said Norway to keep things simple. He asked me where I studied Korean and how long I had been in Korea, and a few other similar questions. I got him to write his name down for me but I’d rather leave that out here. He said most of the players on the team were 20 or 21 years old. I asked him about life overseas traveling with the team and he said he didn’t like the food and that he missed the Korean miso soup.

After these initial words of greeting, I congratulated him on the recent North Korean soccer victory over Japan and told him that some of my Japanese friends had gone to watch the game. I told him my friends were completely surprised by the North Korean victory and couldn’t believe they had lost. He was extremely happy to hear this and prodded me for more. I didn’t add the less flattering part where my friends described the North Korean team as showing less than talented team play and as all simultaneously running madly after the ball wherever it happened to land on the ground. It doesn’t change the fact that the massively funded Japanese team made up of players from teams playing in leagues around the world were beaten by the DPRK.

I had a real tough time understanding him at this point, since he suddenly seemed to be talking about “Dogs” or something, since he kept repeated a word that sounded like 개. This was most likely just my bad listening (I basically flunked the listening portion of my final exam at SNU this summer) and he seemed very happy and friendly as he said it, but I was a little suspicious since we had just been talking about Japan.

My Dutch companion, who was listening to (and I presume understanding) this exchange jumped in the conversation, by giving him the thumbs up sign and saying, in English, “One Korea, One Korea!” and then he asked me to tell him we wanted him to have freedom. I hope I am forgiven for not translating those emancipatory salutations.

The soccer player asked me for my name and telephone number but I explained that I was now studying in the US and didn’t currently have a number. I gave him my name and email address and asked him if he had some way of using the internet. Even though it was a yes or no question, he gave a reply I didn’t understand. He repeated it several times but I still didn’t understand so I just said that if he ever did have a chance to, that I’d love to hear from him (I was later told by a Korean stewardess who chatted with one of players that they apparently have access to the internet but are not allowed their own email address or something).

I guess I made the perhaps risky assumption at this point that handing out my contact info was not going to cause him any trouble. I didn’t think too much about this since he was engaging in this conversation with me in full view of the chaperones that seemed to accompany them. One, who may have been a coach or something, seemed very close to the players and was quite jovial. His Kim il Sung badge was visible over his brown shirt. A second companion was much more quiet. I never saw him talk to the players and he wore a dark grey suit and had a different badge. His Kim il Sung badge was not the round one I had seen on occasion worn by North Koreans in China, but was a larger badge with the round portrait on a background of a red flag.

Remembering my time in China, I told him I had seen other North Koreans in Beijing and that they were by far the best students of Chinese. I told him how a North Korean had won the Chinese speech contest at Qinghua University that I attended and that I thought they studied very hard there.

I then told him that I was thinking about trying to visit North Korea for a short time, via train from Beijing. There are some programs via some (probably Marxist) organization in Japan which are one or two weeks in length and involve Korean language and culture learning in Pyongyang, and another I saw involved a bicycle tour in the countryside (?!). I don’t know much about these yet, or if non-Japanese can go (or non-Korean Japanese – I saw all this on a Japanese webpage) but I’m interested in exploring the possibility to visit for the experience. Since Sayaka came back from Laos a few weeks ago, I’m hard pressed to find a more secluded place to visit.

I don’t think I made myself clear on this point about visiting North Korea because my new friend seemed to get very excited. It was almost as if he thought I was trying to tell him I wanted to defect or something. He asked me my seat number. Worried that I had given the wrong impression, I emphasized that I wanted to go just for a little bit to study. He said lots of things after that about coming to North Korea but I honestly couldn’t make much out of it.

Our conversation died down after that and we returned to our seats. It was very rewarding but clearly my horrible Korean prevented me from making the most out of the conversation. Notes to self:

-I need to find out what North Koreans call North Korea – I really don’t think the South Korean term 북한 is appropriate, and may even be insulting to them. In China and Japan we called them 北朝鮮 but I didn’t know today what I should use. Maybe is it just 朝鮮?
-My listening sucks really badly, I need to work more on that next summer for my next shot of summer language learning in Seoul. While I have enough on my hands with “standard” Korean, it might also be nice to learn a few basic things about the differences in northern dialects of Korean.