As I wrote in my last post, I went to KoreaTown which was a disappointing experience. There is more to what I mentioned last time.

Actually, I have this senior at the adjacent company to the one in which I’m working, who went to South Korea for his post PhD. And he had to leave in between because he couldn’t adjust to their culture. Now that he knows I’m inclined towards the place, he keeps telling me stories about his experience. Initially I used to think that may be, maybe it was just the culture gap. I have seen enough dramas to make out that people are very strict towards work and are very competitive (I hope I’m right). Because, you can’t dismiss everything in k-dramas or any dramas of the world, as a matter of fact, as pure fiction. You can learn a lot about the culture and many a times, general behaviour of the public (saying that by experience 😛). So, I tell him that he must be unlucky to find only such people.

But guess, I was wrong. I met this group yesterday. Two older men and one young girl (may not be as young as I think her to be). They were speaking Korean and I got all excited to see native people from South Korea. Now, I had read in some very interesting book that if you meet some native person of the language you are learning, try to gain as much as possible from them. Though I’m very shy to approach strangers like this, even so, I did-

Me – Umm…..Are you from South Korea?

Lady – Yeah

Me – Hi, I’m from India and I’m very big fan of Korean Culture……

Lady (Interrupting) – Yeah, but you see I’ve to go. I’ve got some company.

Me (Taken aback, don’t know what to say) – Oh, ok. Just wanted to say that I’m very excited to listen to real Korean. Thanks. Bye.

She walks away laughing and telling the uncles about this. I couldn’t hear anything further nor did I want to. I had to go in same direction because I wanted to go to JapanTown too. But I was so shocked that I went to opposite direction, crossed the road for no reason and went to a small book shop in hope to find some Korean books. There also, found only Korean to Thai books.

Ah! My attempt failed. It, kind of put me off. I was thinking of taking admission in some good South Korean university for my higher studies. But now, subconsciously or not, this place will probably go to last country in my list of countries where I was thinking of applying (I will still apply though coz I want to have first hand experience of the culture).

After that, I heard a lot of people talking in Korean and Japanese (which, trust me, has never happened before), but I couldn’t gather enough courage to stop and talk to anyone. I’m not saying that everyone is like that. I haven’t known any real Korean people (I mean personally, I do want to though) and I’m not trying to disregard anyone. I know one or two people can’t represent the whole country. But you are a foreigner here and I’m too. I get it that there are a lot of K-pop fans in Thailand and that’s why there happen a lot of concerts. But at least stop for a moment to listen to me, even if you are in hurry. Am I wrong in expecting that much?

I just know that if some stranger approaches me or tells me that they loved my country when they went there (even though they found a lot of bad things too), I feel so proud and give them a big smile and thank you. Am I overthinking over this whole incident? What do you think?

I just hope that this doesn’t happen again……