How “a drink after work” turns into 4am at a Noribong

After first week of work, I decided it would be good for my coworkers, all of whom are Korean, and I to get together chat and have a drink. They agreed, so we planned ahead and went out after work on Friday. I had let some other people know that I was going out for a drink with coworkers but might meet them later. Little did I know “a drink” in Korea is not just a drink, and I definitely wouldn’t be going out with other people that night.

We left work around nine and wandered around our district of Ulsan, looking for a place to eat. The nice sashimi place the girls were wandering toward happened to close early that night, so we decided anything would do. Still, all the other places we checked were closing or closed, and after an hour of searching, we still hadn’t found a place. This was my first clue that the night was going to be long.

Because of the dead-end in our district, we headed downtown to a place the girls knew would be open. We ordered soju, beer, and a giant plate of sashimi, which of course, came with ten or so side dishes.

As we started eating, drinking, and getting more comfortable, we were sitting traditional Korean style on the floor, the girls I was with started joking about a second stage. I laughed and thought, ok I’ve done that before. Dinner one place, dessert another. At this point, I was pretty convinced I would be spending the evening with them, then going home, but I really had no clue what I was in for.

After about an hour of eating and drinking, another coworker showed up with her boyfriend, and we continued to eat and drink. He had been out drinking with coworkers previous to meeting up with his girlfriend and suggested almost immediately that we head to a Noribong, which is Korean style karaoke. The girls laughed, but obviously took it seriously because after we drank a bit more, there we were, outside, walking toward a Noribong. My coworkers half gave me the option to leave, by asking me if I wanted to go, but of course, they really expected me to come. While I’m not crazy about karaoke, it was definitely an experience I was curious about, so I went along thinking I wouldn’t sing, I would just sit and watch.

Fairly typical Noribong hall stolen from the Internet

When we got to the Noribong, we were shown our own private room fully equipped with tambourines, two microphones, two TV screens, a table and a nice cushioned bench to sit on.

Inside of a Noribong "singing room" also stolen from the Internet

The girls ordered more beer and food, and the singing started almost immediately. They handed me a book, showed me the English section and encouraged me to pick out a song. How can you say no to that?

Here’s the thing about Noribong. No one can get away with not singing. I mean, maybe if you have iron resolve, haven’t been drinking, and dislike the people you are with, it’s possible. No matter how much I stalled, saying I couldn’t find anything, my coworkers kept insisting and encouraging me. I tried looking for a song I listened to as a teenager, that I knew I would know all the words to, but failed. Finally, I saw a song I knew and thought, I listen to this song all the time and sing along, so I must know the words. Boy was I wrong, I knew maybe fifty percent of the words to a song I listened to all the time. It was a bit catastrophic.

When my turn to sing came, I got nervous. I had no clue how this was going to go. I grabbed a mic, pushed back my fear, and tried to imagine I was in my apartment just singing along with the song. This pseudo-self-confidence worked until about 10 seconds into the song when I realized I hardly knew the song at all. While someone with more confidence performing would have simply embraced it, I kept shaking my head, saying I didn’t know the words, shrugging my shoulders and the like. After a humiliating two minutes, the song finally ended, and I sat down. Perhaps because my coworkers were drunk, or maybe just out of politeness, or out of excitement that I had participated, they congratulated me and said it was great.

It wasn’t great.

The Noribong gives you a score. My coworkers had been scoring in the 90s, making me think it was impossible to get a lower score.

I scored a 76.

This was a fairly embarrassing affirmation that I didn’t know the song and sucked at singing it. I shook my head, and started looking for another song. I thought, I’ve got to be able to do better!

In the end, over the course of perhaps three hours, I sang three songs, one with the help of a coworker, and I discovered that regardless of how much Koreans argue that the words are on the screen, it doesn’t help unless I actually know the song.

I have no idea what time it was when we arrived at the Noribong, but after an hour or so of singing, the boyfriend who suggested Noribong in the first place, fell asleep. No one seemed to pay him any mind, and we continued to hang out, singing until I started showing obvious fatigue. I danced less, was less interested in finding a song, and generally was overwhelmed by the cultural immersion I was experiencing.

Finally, at four o’clock in the morning, we all headed home. My first initiation into Korean night culture was complete. Afterwards I was surprised how going out for “a drink” turned into all night, but it was a Friday night after all, and we did have a pretty great time.

Now that I have been here nearly two months, I am beginning to discover that going out for “a drink” with Koreans is never just that, regardless what day of the week it is. This last Thursday evening the scenario repeated itself. When with Koreans, the night will have many stages - first grab food, soju and beer, last head to Noribong, with a few unknowns inbetween.

Human interactions can be hilarious

My nature is shy and introverted and perfectionist. If you catch me at the right moment, sitting in Starbucks or at a park reading All Story, my favorite literary journal, you might get a glimpse of this more introspective girl. I will get wrapped up in the story, laugh, and occasionally look up to ponder something the author has just written. I will be having a constant inner dialogue. If it’s a particularly well-written story, my disposition will change based on the scene being described. When you see me drawing, or walking down the street listening to music, you might recognize that I am perfectly happy to be alone.

And while I am perfectly happy to be alone, over the years I have come to value human relationships more. Often in a comfortable and familiar setting, I am fairly passive when it comes to meeting new people. I’ve learned to be a bit more outgoing, and living abroad by myself has pushed this to the extreme. Now I actively seek out genuine, honest, down-to-earth, laid back people, who are like me but challenge me.

Throughout my experience of meeting different types of people. I’ve become better at reading people and judging from first impressions, body language, and attitude if I will get along with someone. I have also come to thoroughly enjoy other people’s interactions.

Names have been removed from the following example to protect the unaware.

One evening out, while sitting at the bar, I was introduced to my friend, J---’s close friend, H--- and two girls that were acquaintances of J---’s. Particularly attractive, especially for an Asian, H--- spent much of the night scanning the bar for women, despite having two interested girls, M--- and G---, sitting right next to him. My first observations of H--- established him as intelligent, confident, aloof, and aware that girls find him attractive.

After spending a bit of time talking to J--- and getting acquainted with H---, I went to talk to the girls, M--- and G---. They taught at an art school, and I wondered if I could possibly make some good connections. While this didn’t pan out because the school mainly taught performance arts, I gained quite a bit of entertainment from the situation that followed our brief conversation.

I sat down between M--- and H--- at the bar, and M--- quickly told me that H--- was her boyfriend in a flirty, cute way. Because I didn’t know either of them, I accepted this statement at face value and quickly suggested that maybe we should switch seats, so she could sit next to H---. She shook her head coyly and said it was alright. Then, she looked at H--- and asked him to give her a kiss while gesturing to her cheek. At this point, I just thought perhaps she was a slightly territorial girlfriend that was a bit nervous to have me sit between them but not willing to take my seat from me.

After a few retrospectively hilarious minutes of H--- denying her a kiss, and M--- letting me know she wasn't actually his girlfriend, she was just flirting, I got up to go to the restroom. Because H--- had seemed moderately interested in her, though he didn’t want to lean over me and kiss her on the cheek, I suggested that she sit next to him, of course, in order to flirt more properly. When I exited the restroom and looked across the bar, M--- was sitting next to H---, hugging his arm while H--- scanned the room. For all intents and purposes it was as if the girl hanging on him was invisible.

As I walked back over to the group, I laughed.

Disregarding the comfort of either party, it was quite a comical scene.

Picture it. An attractive male, uninterested in the girl hanging on him and talking up a storm, while the girl is completely oblivious to his obvious lack of interest. The situation appeared as a caricature of similar situations that happen all the time.

Because of the new seating arrangement, M--- having occupied my old seat, I chose to sit on the other side of H---, next to J---. H--- continued to scan the room and occasionally make comments to M---, while I shared my observation with J---. As soon as M--- left to go to the restroom, H--- quickly turned to J--- and me and said, “She keeps trying to get me to kiss her.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I told her I was shy.”

I laughed and said, “You are not shy.”

“But I am.”

“No, you aren’t. I can tell. You just aren’t interested in her, right?”

He admitted to having been interested from afar, but upon closer observation he had lost interest. Regardless of why he suddenly lost interest in the girl, I was quite entertained by his extreme change in body language, and let him know that I could tell he wasn't interested in her because he was scanning the room.

While this exact scenario has not occurred again, I have run into H--- on other occasions, and observed him looking up from his conversations for extended periods of time to glance around the room. Because most guys are a little less picky or a little less obvious about their lack of interest, it has been quite entertaining to run into H---. It almost seems like a bit of a performance, and I have let him know how hilarious I think his interactions are.

Speaking Russian in Korea: A cure for homesickness

Sunday when I woke up it was rainy, dreary, and the leaves were beginning to change colors and drop from the trees onto the damp ground, creating a soggy mess of what should be fall. Homesickness began to bud, so I decided to dwell in it and make pancakes. By early afternoon this nurtured bud had flowered into a lump. Everywhere else but here, it seemed, fall is crisp with red and green and gold leaves. Recently, I saw pictures of Muscovites at the park with huge, dry, crisp, colored maple leaves. Imagining the smell of dry autumn leaves, the feel of the sun, warm on my face, and a slight chill in the air, I put on a sweater and almost heard the crunch of leaves underfoot. As I delved deeper into my memories and imagination and further away from Ulsan, I imagined hot chocolate, a fireplace in the evening, maybe a bit of vodka and some Russian. I was in heaven. When I walked outside into the mild, wet weather, reality hit.

My heart dropped.

This is not the fall I love. Missing Russia and Idaho, I sulked.

After my day of fighting homesickness and missing Russia I had an interestingly serendipitous moment.

As if I had stumbled into a dream.

It began with a search for material for my Halloween costume. I ventured over to Ulsan’s old downtown via bus. While on the bus, I derived brief satisfaction from understanding the Korean announcement of my stop, and I briefly compared it to understanding the metro in Moscow. I know I’m finally making progress with language skills when small battles like these are won. I hopped off the bus at my stop and began walking in the general direction of where I remembered seeing a fabric shop. I hadn’t walked ten steps from the bus stop, when I noticed a group of foreign guys. They stuck out, as we non-Asians always do. A bit nervous about the seemingly inevitable encounter, I momentarily entertained the idea of darting across the street to avoid talking to them. Again, this is the Kim that is shy and sometimes doesn’t make an effort to say hello to people she knows. My hesitation to make a run for it meant that suddenly they were in front of me.

With a heartwarmingly genuine smile on his face, a man I would later know as Dima said, «Ты русская?» “You’re Russian?” In shock, but on my game with the Russian that is always swimming in my head, I laughed and answered in Russian, «Ниет. Я американка.» “No, I’m American.” They gaffed and laughed and insisted that I was Russian. I laughed more and was so relieved after my day of homesickness to run into a group of Russians that felt so familiar and friendly that I felt in a dream. They were equally blown away and confused to find an American girl in Korea that spoke some Russian. Even after I told them I had spent two years in Moscow teaching English, they continued to follow the regular Russian line, which is that I cannot be American, I must be Russian because of my style and weight and my language skills.

As our conversation continued, I couldn’t stop laughing at how fortuitous the whole situation was. What are the chances? I enjoyed the familiar Russian accent of Yuri’s and Dima’s English, and while the two younger guys talked to me, the older men stood back and watched. Occasionally interjecting something amiable but generally indecipherable.

Due to our limited knowledge of each other’s language, my broken Russian and their broken English, our conversation was not as poetic as I would like to imagine, but the overall feeling was one of genuine relief and happiness. I could not believe that I was speaking Russian to people who understood it, and they seemed to feel the same way.

A great cure for homesickness, I only hope that I will run into Russians again, though hopefully they will be longer stayed than one day.

How to meet strangers in a strange land

The first Friday night in Ulsan, I had a choice.

A) I could stay in and start a routine of possibly not meeting people who may eventually become friends because of my theory. That theory is this: I would like to hang out with people like myself, but I have no idea how I would go about trying to meet myself.

Or B) I could go out to the foreigner bars alone in the hopes of meeting people and even if I didn’t make the best of friends, at least be social and adventuresome.

After a small debate I decided on B. The pros far outweighed the cons. I knew what bars I should hit up. I knew how to get there. I wanted to go out, just not alone, and I’m independent, awesome, gorgeous … Oh, sorry, that last part was purely self-motivational talk. It takes a lot of self-motivational talk to decide you are going to go meet new people in a strange land where you don’t know the language of the majority of the people, and you don’t really know a soul ... AND you aren’t on vacation but rather trying to start your life in this land, so you don't have that much anonymity.

After all this talk, I got myself on the bus, ready to meet the world, got downtown and wandered around trying to decide which bar I should try out. But when I finally landed at the first bar, my nerves began to kick in …

"How the hell am I supposed to meet people? This was a stupid idea. Maybe I'll just have a drink and go home."

Ok, so I’ve traveled to several countries alone. You think I should be tough. This should be no problem. A breeze. Heck, I’ve introduced myself to a bunch of new people before. But there’s a catch, on the inside, I am still the same, shy, socially awkward Kim that used to hide behind her mother when relatives visited. I’m still the girl that used to cry before my school pictures because I couldn’t stand the spotlight and pressure of meeting an absolute stranger, that’s admittedly kind of creepy, and having to smile on command …

Anyway, my nerves kicked in, so being an adult, I did the adult thing. I sat down at the bar by myself and ordered up a Black Russian. I'll give myself some liquid courage and a time limit. If I don't meet anyone by the time I need a second drink, I'll call it a night.

As I sat at the bar, drinking my Black Russian, I started to feel a little strange. For starters, this bar seemed basically empty. On a Friday night. True, there were a few people. To my right a couple foreign men about 40 or 50 years old having a beer and chatting away. To my left an older Korean man had just sat down and seemed to be boring holes through me with his eyes. I really have no idea if that’s what he was doing. I did everything I could to keep my body language from suggesting that he come talk to me. So, I didn’t look at him once. Basically, I came to the conclusion that somehow I had gotten a crumby tip. This wasn’t a good bar for foreigners, at least not ones my age, and there were no girls, which is actually who I wanted to meet.

Finally, I noticed a group of four younger guys walk in the bar and up the stairs behind me. No one really looked my way, so I couldn’t just follow them. That would have been creepy and weird, making me even more socially awkward, but deep down that’s really, really what I wanted to do.

Run after them.

Despite my urge, I continued to sit downstairs at the bar, being shy in a very unshy way. By which I mean, I had gotten myself out to the bar on a Friday night, which is not shy, but I wasn’t sure I could follow through with actually meeting people, which is definitely shy. I knew that in order to meet people I needed to be approachable, and in order to be approachable, I needed to wear a smile and keep my inner cool, but because of the situation around me … awkward 40-50 year old, trolling men, I couldn’t let myself be approachable. It would have been asking for something I really didn’t want. I’m sure this inner debate was showing on my face because after about five more minutes, the bar tended came to talk to me. She had sensed my painfully obvious discomfort. Very politely, she said, “There’s another bar upstairs. With younger people. Maybe you want to go up there?”

On her suggestion, perhaps too hastily, I took my drink and walked up stairs.

“What’s the game plan?” I asked myself.

I had no idea.

So I took the stairs slowly.

When I saw the bar, I walked up to it and set my drink down. I was about to sit on a stool and cling to it like a life preserver, but instead, I looked around. There were several groups of younger people, and I made eye contact with the first foreigner who looked at me.

“Jump in, Kim!”

Like getting into cold water, meeting new people is way easier if you jump quickly, without over thinking it. In fact, without thinking at all. So, I grabbed my drink, which I had sat down on the bar for 2 seconds, walked over and said hello.

My self introduction started a series of introductions, which lead to a series of questions verging on conversation but interrupted by the game of darts that these for guys were playing. And yes, they are the same four guys I had seen walk into the bar not ten minutes prior. Basically, the conversations when something like this.

Guy 1, “What’s your name, again?”

Me, “Kim, what’s yours?”

“Where are you from?”

blah, blah

“What are you doing in Ulsan?”

“Teaching English, before this I was in Moscow for two years.”

It’s Guy 1’s turn at darts, and Guy 2 strikes up conversation, “What’s your name, again?”

Me, “Kim, what’s yours?”

“Where are you from?”

… blah blah I was in Moscow for two years.

Guy 2 is up at darts and Guy 3 starts in. At this point Guy 1 and 2 are having their own conversation as they are hanging out. Basically, I’ve interrupted guys’ night.

Guy 3 is up at darts and Guy 4 starts the conversation over.

I ended up having 3 or 4 conversations and repeating myself a lot. After the game ended, we regrouped, grabbed another drink, and eventually headed over to another bar where one of the guys was meeting up with friends. Surprisingly this has been the smoothest, least awkward introduction to date.

Two thumbs up for embracing social awkwardness and kicking shyness to the curb.