the words “disgraced journalist.” So I took some time off to recalibrate. But before I knew it, “some” turned to “a lot”: spring became summer and summer became fall. Meanwhile I had student loans I was still paying off from ten years earlier; the banks would not give me relief. I was now taking cash out on my MasterCard to pay for essentials like rent and vodka. It was almost fun to be in this kind of free fall into hopelessness. Nobody would give me a job. The few friends I had weren’t speaking to me. I was drinking all day long. And watching month after month as I spiralled toward personal and financial Armageddon.
Cut to a foggy afternoon: I was on the waterfront drinking alone in the Nautical Pub when I ran into an acquaintance from my university days. Over dinner, he told me how he had gone on to do an expensive MFA and then paid off the student debt he incurred by teaching in South Korea. Had arrived in Seoul $35,000 in the red, but after three years of teaching returned to Canada $15,000 in the black. Said I could do the same. “But I don’t have a teaching degree,” I told him.
“Neither do I,” he replied. “You don’t need one. I wouldn’t even call what you do over there teaching. You just stand up in front of a bunch of Asian kids for eight hours a day and Be White, Be Western.” We parted company with him giving me the address for an online job board.
So I checked it out. And I applied for something. And I got a job offer right away. During the brief, perfunctory phone interview, Ms. Kim didn’t even question why my seven-year tenure at The Daily News had come to an abrupt end. Nor did she ask what I’d been doing with myself in the eight months since. All she needed was for me to Fed-Ex a package containing my valid passport, notarized confirmation of my university degree, and a photograph, a headshot of myself — which, I later learned, was to confirm that I was in fact white. It would take her a couple of weeks to process my E-1 visa. After she did, she confirmed my salary — 1.9 million won a month, virtually tax-free — and that upon my arrival I would move into a free apartment, albeit with a roommate. “His name is Justin,” she informed me. “He is from Nova Scotia, like you.” She could have added He is also emotionally damaged, like you, if she had known.
As my departure grew imminent, I gave notice on my apartment, sold off whatever shabby furniture I hadn’t hawked yet, cancelled my phone. But it didn’t feel like a new beginning, a chance for a fresh start. Not at all. Even before I stepped on Korean soil, I knew the truth about what I was doing. People don’t go to Asia to find themselves. They go there, for better or for worse, to run away from whatever they have been. And all I could hope for was to butt up against something, anything, to fill in the craters that resided within me.
It’s the photos of Justin’s kid that always get me. He has a collage of them tacked to the wooden headboard in his bedroom; I see them every time I go in there. This is what Justin has been — a father to a son who died in 2000. His name was Cody. Nearly six years old when he was killed in a freak accident while the family was vacationing in Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland. The photos on the headboard show the little guy in various states of little-guy animation. They overlook Justin as he sleeps.
It’s early on a Saturday afternoon and I’m just getting mobile. Freshly showered, I towel down the remnants of my hair and try to shake off my soju hangover from the night before. A crew of us had gone out after work for kalbi, Korean-style barbecue, and the liquor had been flowing; Justin and I didn’t get home until nearly dawn. Let me describe what I mean by home, this shoebox that ABC English Planet has provided. Imagine the smallest apartment you’ve ever seen and cut in half. It has the Korean-style floor heating, called ondol, a plastic simulacrum of hardwood that you never walk on with your shoes; you must leave your footwear in the small, sunken entryway by the door. Our kitchen is just a countertop with propane hotplate sitting below a row of cupboards, and with a small fridge to the right. We have no kitchen table. The living room is a leather couch parked in the centre of the apartment facing a tiny TV in the corner. We get a few English channels — CNN International and the Armed Forces Network. There are two bedrooms to this apartment. Justin’s is much bigger than mine. The benefits of seniority.
After I’ve dried off and dressed, I knock on Justin’s door and enter when he calls me. I find him on his bed reading a paperback. The photos of Cody hover all around his head.
“What did you say we should do today?” I ask him. “You mentioned it last night but I can’t remember.”
He laughs his deep laugh. “Wow, you really were drunk.” He sets his book aside. “Scrabble at the COEX.”
“Right. Scrabble at the COEX.” This had been our plan, to take Justin’s Scrabble board and play a game in the food court of the COEX shopping mall. He and Rob Cruise had done this once before, with humorous results — it had caused a growing and enthusiastic crowd of Korean passersby to stop and watch them. Koreans are generally fascinated by English, even if they don’t speak it; most know that access to English means access to power. Scrabble is especially captivating, since there can be no equivalent of it with their own alphabet. My students are always begging to play the game in class, but Ms. Kim frowns upon it.
Justin gets up and digs the Scrabble board out from under a pile of clothes. It’s an early version of the game — the maroon box is sagging and held together with an elastic band. “We’ll probably only have time for one game,” he says. “I have my private at four o’clock.”
“Fair enough,” I reply. By private, he means a private tutoring session, not exactly the most legal of activities in this country. In theory, you can be deported if you’re caught teaching English outside of the regular channels. But of course we all do it — the extra money is too good to pass up.
He stuffs the board and a dictionary into his backpack and then we head out the door. The COEX is a twenty-minute walk from our apartment, and by the time we get there, our hangovers have turned to hunger. We order a couple of bibimbap in the food court. As we set up the Scrabble board, I notice a few curious stares from other patrons, but that’s all.
While we eat and play, Justin tells me more about the private he’ll be teaching later in the afternoon. She’s a twelve-year-old named (of course!) “Jenny,” a former student at ABC English Planet whose parents pulled her out after they realized how preposterous the curriculum was. But Jenny loved Justin’s demeanour and teaching style, and so her mother approached him discreetly to ask if he could teach her privately on weekends at their home near Dogok Station. The family is loaded — Justin makes 160,000 won for four hours of work. Jenny’s dad is an executive with a big Korean company, putting in ninety hours a week, and Justin hardly ever sees him during the tutoring sessions. (“Hell, Jenny’s mom hardly ever sees him.”) Still, Justin has found kinship with both parents — they’re only in their mid-thirties, just a couple years older than he is.
“It’s like they’ve adopted me,” he says, putting DIAL on the board. “They feed me; they buy me gifts; they help me with my Korean. And of the dozen sessions I’ve done, only about five have taken place in their apartment. The rest of time, Jenny’s Mom —”
“What’s her name?”
“Sunkyoung — she doesn’t have an English name. The rest of the time Sunkyoung says ‘Let’s take Jenny to a museum today’ or ‘let’s take Jenny to an English movie.’ She’s so adamant that we get out and do things together. The three of us.”
“And you go?” I say, adding ET to TOIL for a triple word score.
“Of course I go,” he replies. “It doesn’t feel like work at all. It feels,” and he lowers his eyes, ostensibly to add my score, “it feels like being part of a family.”
As our game progresses a few passing Koreans throw us a glance. One nosy woman stops to inspect our board and points at the
