Lasik in Korea

I still remember when I was first diagnosed with nearsightedness. I was 8 years old. My parents were asking me to look them in the eyes, and they saw that my left eye was drifting away to the side – a lazy eye. I went to see the eye doctor and was put into my first pair of glasses, these big ugly nerdy red ones. I looked at my transformed face in the mirror and I cried. The vision in my right eye was perfect... why did I need these ugly things? My father took me outside, handed me a baseball glove and started hitting balls in the air for me to catch. All of a sudden I was catching every one... I finally had proper depth perception.

My final bicycle ride in Seoul with glasses

Flash forward 25 years and my dependence on vision aids had grown considerably. A couple years after starting glasses I learned how to use contact lenses, then my right eye's vision started to decay while the left continued its downward slide. By university time my vision had stabilized at bad in my right eye and worse in my left. But when my contact lenses cooperated, which was most days, everything was crystal clear.

My mother was pushing me to consider Lasik by the mid 2000s but I was not ready. You can always find someone's Lasik horror story on the Internet and I wasn't comfortable with the small chance of considerable downside given what I thought to be limited upside – I already had good vision with contact lenses. Besides, I didn't know anyone who (openly) had tried Lasik.

In Korea my mind shifted and I slowly became open to the idea. For one thing, Lasik seems to be much more commonly done in Korea compared with the US... it seems to fit in well with Korea’s plastic surgery culture. If you can fix your eyes, why not go to the clinic and do it? (after all, you probably already fixed your double-eyelid, and maybe extended your nose, and sharpened your jaw, and...) There are many clinics in Gangnam and the price is quite a bit cheaper than the US... about $1,000-1,500 for both eyes.

Several of the foreigners I knew who worked in Samsung had tried various clinics and all had a positive experience. Armed with some user testimonials from real people that I actually knew, I contacted one of the clinics to set up my initial examination...arranged by KakaoTalk, of course!

Korean celebrities went here ... so it must be safe!

I needed to ditch my contact lenses for a couple weeks before the exam and caught my work colleagues by surprise. "Why are you in new glasses?" they would ask, and then I discovered that many of the Korean colleagues on my floor had also tried Lasik and were happy. I had coffee with my tax accountant to discuss a financial issue... she recommended Lasik. A Korean friend told me she and her siblings had all done Lasik and that she could refer me to her doctor. Everyone was satisfied... 100% of my sample size (maybe 20 people) all recommended Lasik in Korea. Certainly it was not enough for scientific certainty but it was enough people to give me comfort. Some people had less than perfect outcomes, but nothing debilitating, and all said they would do Lasik again.

I chose the B&VIIT Eye Center next to Gangnam Station for my examination. The facility is very clean and modern and the nurse assigned to me spoke pretty good English. I went through a long battery of tests for over an hour, was told that my eyes tested well for Lasik (particularly the corneal thickness), then I saw the doctor who would be performing my procedure and he confirmed the results. I felt good... I set a date 2 weeks later for the surgery and I helped arrange a plane ticket for my girlfriend to visit from Vietnam to aid me with the postoperative recovery.

Then the anxiety started...

I started reading more about Lasik on the Internet. The more you read about Lasik, the more scary outcomes you find...pretty much guaranteed. One thing I observed is that it's extremely difficult to get objective information about Lasik from unbiased sources. Compared with before, I was less concerned about the low probability of blindness or something serious and far more concerned about the moderate probability of persistent side effects after surgery such as dry eyes or halos at night. Some people on the Internet complained that they could no longer drive at night after Lasik... after reading those testimonials I really thought I might be taking a terrible risk! I worried that the luxurious-looking clinic from my checkup was a facade and that the actual operating area was dirty. I worried that maybe my doctor was covering up some terrible outcomes in his record and that maybe he was poorly qualified to treat me. All sorts of paranoia cropped up in my mind.

I contacted many of my reference cases repeatedly and peppered them with questions about their outcomes, but they suggested I didn't need to worry based on their results. I flooded my doctor with questions via KakaoTalk. It was hard to reconcile my 100% happy sample size with what I was reading. After all, Lasik is surgery on the only eyes that you will ever know... you need to get comfortable with the fact that the procedure will cut your eyes open!

Finally my logical side overcame my anxious emotions and I agreed to do the surgery. On a Friday morning, I took off work and went with my girlfriend to the clinic at Gangnam Station. When my name was called I waved her goodbye... and hoped I would see her when I came out! "Are you nervous?", asked the nurse? Yes!

The goofy looking goggles that I wore to prevent myself from rubbing my eyes

My eyes were sedated with some numbing drops, then the doctor examined my eyes one final time. Everything normal, it seemed. I was then escorted to another room, sat in a chair and was asked to close my eyes for a few minutes. It was the operating room, and another patient was sitting under the laser. I was really nervous and was trying to breathe deeply. I could hear the laser and the doctor and nurses at work. I tried not to open my eyes. Once the other patient left I was instructed to take her place lying on the operating table. Super nervous now.

First the doctor used a plastic device to hold my eye open, then I was pointed to a black space to stare at as the device which cuts the flap with a laser was lowered. There is suction and you cannot see anything. When the suction device comes off and the flap of your cornea is removed, your vision goes from blurry to super blurry, but you are grateful that you can see again! Finally comes the laser that reshapes the eye. The doctor asked me to stare at a fuzzy green light and I put all my focus into not looking away. There was no pain. No turning back now. The doctor returns the flap over the eye and I was then helped to a recovery room with comfy chairs to lay down. There were definitely some blurry parts of my vision, but other parts looked pretty good. Maybe the surgery had worked.

After about 20 minutes of rest, where I did everything to just sit still, I then was given an appointment to return the following day and escorted out to where my girlfriend was waiting. I could see her!

We left the facility and went outside to catch a taxi. Everything seemed super bright and I could barely open my eyes. My girlfriend didn't know the way home but I was able to open my eyes enough to direct the taxi. The anaesthesia was wearing off and my eyes were starting to hurt. Don't rub your eyes! In my apartment, my girlfriend helped me lay my mattress on the floor in the darkest part, and I laid down on my back wearing plastic goggles to help prevent me from touching my fragile eyes. My girlfriend thought I looked like an owl.

One of my final days at Samsung Digital City with glasses

My eyes had become rivers gushing with tears. I could barely open my eyes without the tears rushing out. I laid down for the whole afternoon. By evening the discomfort had subsided and I could eat dinner with my girlfriend... with sunglasses on I looked like a movie star in my own house!

More or less I could see 20-20, but with frequent dry eyes my vision was inconsistent. When my eyes were drier my vision was more blurred. I could tell the clarity was there but my eyesight didn't quite feel like it belonged to me yet.

Now I am on the long road to Lasik recovery. There are so many drops to administer and you can't help but think about your eyes constantly. In the mornings my eyes have been very dry and sometimes I go through a whole day without being able to see great. Other days I wonder when I should take out the contact lenses which are not in my eyes! The night halos are still there a bit but they are quite a bit better at 3 weeks after Lasik than before.

One late evening I was talking on Skype with my girlfriend and I felt very tired. Without thinking, something entered my left eye and I rubbed it. "Don't do that!", my girlfriend scolded. I felt bad that I forgot one of the cardinal rules of post-Lasik recovery. Then the next morning my left eye was considerably more blurred than my right eye. "Have I rubbed away the 20-20 vision in my left eye?" I feared. My vision in my left eye has mostly recovered but it is still a little blurry compared to my right eye.

Yesterday I returned to the B&VIIT clinic for my 1-month post-Lasik checkup. The clinic was very busy...it is like a factory with the number of patients it processes in a day, but a luxurious one at that. I had a couple tests and did the test to read the letters with both eyes. My right eye could easily handle the 20-20 line! My left eye struggled more... the letters were a bit blurry but I had enough vision to guess correctly at the letters on the 20-20 line. As my vision in my left eye was -6 diopter before Lasik (right eye was -3.5), I should expect a longer recovery time with my left eye compared to my right. No doctor can guarantee you 20-20 vision with Lasik and the further you start from clear vision the less likely you are to have a 20-20 outcome. An important part of being a Lasik patient is having the right expectations... your vision may not end up perfect, you may have months of dry eyes and you may want to become a shareholder in Allergan Corp. with the number of artificial tears that you will be putting in your eyes. I am 1 month out – my vision is pretty good and continues to improve. Though still recovering I am tentatively happy. Lasik recovery requires a lot of patience and you need to trust the process. My eyes do seem to be healing.

Bottom line: if you are a foreigner considering doing Lasik in Korea, I think your chance of a successful outcome is as high here as anywhere. The doctors have a ton of experience, the facilities are good and you should be able to find a clinic that speaks enough English to communicate with you. If you are not comfortable taking any risk then Lasik is not for you, regardless of whether you try it in Korea or your home country.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone!

Going on a Korean Business Trip

Samsung Germany

Working as a foreigner in the HQ of Samsung, a company with a major global presence, I travel a lot for work to overseas countries. The year 2015 has had a different feel for me … for the first time since I moved to Korea in 2012 I have been working in a Korean-dominated team. My Korean colleagues speak English but certainly my boss is far more comfortable in Korean. Emails and documents in Korean constantly pass through my inbox, and unfortunately my Korean proficiency has not improved this year. Samsung Mobile does not offer Korean classes for foreigners, I was shocked to learn…

With a Korean team comes Korean business trips, which are considerably different than the business trips I am used to. I went on 5 business trips this year to many corners of the world: Western Europe (twice), USA, Brazil, and India. My trips ranged from 6 days to 3.5 weeks and were focused on improving the management of Samsung Mobile’s B2B channel partner network.

One time my director did get to go
shopping on a Sunday

The first thing I noticed is that there is a ton of pre-trip reporting…first to your VP, then to other VP’s who might be effected by your travel, and maybe even the head of the department if he is interested. Because my department has a mixture of Korean and non-Korean executives, the reporting was done in both Korean and English, which slowed us down a bit. Many Samsung trips are hurriedly put together at the last minute, and sometimes you are scrambling to get meetings to fill the calendar which you are required to present for approval to travel. The pre-trip time can be quite hectic.

I learned in the pre-trip planning process that the South Korean passport is quite possibly the best to have in the world. I don’t know what the exact criteria are for those passport freedom rankings you see from time-to-time, but in terms of countries you would actually consider visiting the South Korean passport offers all the freedom you would need. Chile is the only other passport that has visa-free access to all G8 countries. Also, I fly to Vietnam frequently now on personal trips and I am jealous when I need to shell out $60 for a single-entry visa in my American passport while the Koreans all get off the plane and just walk to the immigration counter. The effect of this policy is that Koreans can depart for last-minute business trips on a whim. For instance in August, when my director unexpectedly and suddenly announced that we were heading to Brazil for 3 weeks, I needed to raise my hand and say “Just a moment. Americans need a visa.” My Egyptian colleague also needed one, which was not surprising since he needs a visa to visit just about anywhere in the world. (the upside of this is that it does force my director to do a little trip planning in advance!)

Once you have finally secured all of the executive approvals that you need, you pack your luggage and you’re off to modern Incheon Airport on a plane to somewhere far away (I have never traveled on business to anywhere within 6 hours of Seoul). You go through whatever pre-flight rituals you have and brace yourself for a long trip in economy class — Samsung doesn’t fly its manager-level employees in business class unless they happen to be lucky enough to visit Brazil…over 24 hours from Korea! Fortunately we often fly Korean Air or Asiana, which are nicer to fly than Western airlines. When you land, hotels are also ordinary in developed countries, but you to get to stay in nice 5-star properties in emerging markets. You strictly cling onto every receipt you can and pray that your Korean Samsung credit card works the whole time … otherwise you’re in for a long fight when you return with the robots that sit in Accounting.

Samsung India - Delhi branch

When you land it’s often straight from the plane to the hotel to the Samsung subsidiary office, where the hard work begins. Korean business trips mean long hours and a lot of Korean food. I feel like I am on a world tour of Korean food this year … I have eaten it on 4 continents. I could understand if we shared a couple Korean meals a week with each other, but Samsung Koreans eat Korean food in over 50% of non-breakfast meals abroad (and over 90% in India). Samsung cafeterias worldwide serve both Korean food and local food, and my Korean teammates ate Korean food most days for lunch. When you descend upon a Samsung subsidiary there are the many introductions which must be made promptly to all the Korean expat executives in the subsidiary, and then these expat executives all will treat you to dinner at various times, the majority of the meals being Korean food, often with a lot of soju drinking. I’m not impressed with the way Korean expats have adapted to local tastes.

Being forced into eating Korean food can be frustrating, especially as I had several dinners where I was the only non-Korean and the whole conversation went into a language which I can only partly comprehend. In many meals I simply sat at my plate and quietly ate my food — when the host of the meal wanted to speak with me he would switch to English. I was sad that we passed over churrascarias in Brazil and all forms of Indian food in India — my teammates did not eat Indian food once!

With many team dinners and late nights in the office and some Saturday work, there is very little time to oneself for sightseeing. As the executives in Samsung Korea say, “You’re not there for shopping.” There is an intense focus on daily reporting, showing every day that you are getting work done to justify the expense of you being away from HQ. There is a lot of stress generated from “showing off the performance” to the Korean subsidiary head, and you often get pulled away from work at a moment’s notice for dinners with Korean expats.

I enjoyed working with friendly counterparts in Samsung Brazil

That said, despite the perils of Korean business travel it is good to get out of HQ from time-to-time to “see the real world” — it sometimes feels in Suwon that we are sitting on an island trying to understand what is happening day-to-day in the rest of the world. As Korean culture is quite distinct from the cultures of the markets which generate most sales for IT companies (USA, China, Western Europe, Brazil, India), a company like Samsung faces greater challenges in developing products suited to local tastes than competitor companies based in those countries. At HQ we can benchmark best practices of other IT companies and develop what seems like a sensible channel program from our ivory tower, but the real learning comes from being on the ground in subsidiaries around the world and trying to implement our programs — you quickly see what won’t work when you face reality. I have been fortunate this year to experience a sample of local business cultures worldwide and see the challenges of integrating these cultures with Samsung Korean business culture. I would just appreciate if my teammates could diversify their palates a little … and maybe leave Saturdays for sightseeing :)

Life of a Road Warrior

Working in an international-facing role at a Korean company for the last 3 years has not only forced me into a lot of late night and early morning conference calls, but also has put me on the road a fair bit. I also have had a long-distance relationship with a lady in Vietnam for over a year — Skype cannot fully bridge the gap between us. And, living as an expat in Asia means I am tempted by the many travel opportunities.

The pride of Incheon Airport — Korean Air

This entry will not reveal anything unusual for someone with a career in consulting or sales, but for me moving to Samsung in 2012 has kicked my life into travel overdrive. Every expat I know here has developed his own system for coping with the physical torment of overseas travel. This is my story.

Unlike for consultants, Samsung flies its employees below director level in economy class on all international travel (except for Brazil, which requires 23 hours flying time and is about as far away from Korea as you can get). Thankfully, we are usually (although not always) flying one of the two Korean carriers (Asiana or Korean Air) which offer more leg room and better service than most airlines (especially United and American … yuck!). Yet, flying 13 hours to reach New York or 11 hours to reach London is still quite a chore. There is only so much you can do when your seat bends just 10 degrees and you are trying to catch some sleep.

My glasses go on before a long flight

On top of that, I have walked off the airplane at JFK Airport in New York and traveled straight to a meeting — my counterpart looked at me like I was a zombie about to collapse. Alternatively, on my last business trip to the UK the Samsung Korean dispatchers insisted on taking us out for Korean food and drinking the night we landed at London Heathrow. My body did not know where it was and the soju shots compounded my narcolepsy.

Trying to mix business and personal travel can prove even more problematic. In late March, I flew from Germany to South Korea, leaving Saturday evening and arriving Sunday afternoon. Then, straight back to the office on Monday, jet-lagged and having lost much of my weekend to transit. I already had a trip planned to Singapore with my girlfriend departing Wednesday night — I unpacked, re-packed, ran out of the Samsung office in Suwon at 4:30pm to get to Incheon Airport (10 minute taxi ride + 70 minutes by bus from Suwon). Needless to say I was exhausted when I finally saw my girlfriend at 1:30am in Singapore’s Changi Airport. I enjoyed 4 days with her, then back to Seoul on a Monday morning red-eye. One can only push his body like this when he is young.

Everyone has their own coping tactics and I am no exception. For long intercontinental flights, I prefer the aisle seat on the inside of the plane — I like having the flexibility to walk around whenever I want, and by sitting inside you are less likely to have someone next to you. However, on red-eye flights from Southeast Asia I want the window — please don’t bother me! I put on my eye mask and headphones in my ears to block out the noise … if I do this right I maybe get a 4-hour nap before landing at Incheon Airport. Then, I head to the airport sauna — yes, Incheon Airport has a sauna in the basement! — take a shower and head straight to the bus for Suwon. I can usually take another 1-hour nap before arriving in Suwon, catch a taxi and plow through a workday… with plenty of coffee, of course.

For jet lag ... well, I still have not unlocked the secret to beating that. A couple things I try ... no napping when I arrive at my destination — this usually allows me to sleep well, at least the first night. I have tried taking a sleeping pill in the airplane but did not like it, it did not settle well in my stomach and actually prevented me from sleeping effectively on the plane. Some expats here swear by Ambien on the airplane, but that has some scary side-effects (Google it). I usually carry melatonin and feel safe taking that for a couple days after landing.

I curse United, but the Tokyo Narita to Washington Dulles flight is not bad

Traveling in Asia is certainly easier than in the USA — better airports, better airlines, fewer nerve-wracking flight delays and connecting flights, fewer strict cabin baggage policies, less crowded planes, and looser security policies. Nevertheless, I still yearn for the day when I can fly business class, or at least figure out the frequent-flyer game enough to get upgraded once in awhile :)

MERS and My Experience with Korean Health Care

As MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) cases continue to be reported in South Korea — at last count, 9 deaths and 108 cases — the community here is on high alert. Masks are flying off the shelves and schools have closed. Citizens are avoiding malls, sports arenas, and other public places. Some of the emergency policies enacted border on ridiculous — for instance, my colleague’s 2-week forced exile from the office for visiting Egypt (a MERS-free country) recently — but as you would expect the C.Y.A. policies come out in times of mild panic. My home country’s response to Ebola last year was similar.

People here are asking the natural questions: How did this happen? Will it get worse? The most important question to be asked is: What went wrong? In a country still stained by the Sewol ferry tragedy last year, local citizens are rightfully questioning the farcical initial response of government officials (which thankfully is improving).

I was comfortable when there was no MERS in the ER

In my opinion, the reason South Korea now has the largest MERS-infected population outside of Saudi Arabia is partly down to bad luck, bad management by the health system, and a bit of Korean culture. First, bad luck: unlike the Middle Eastern countries, South Korea is densely populated, making it easier for a virus to spread to new hosts. However, this doesn’t explain why the initial carrier went misdiagnosed for a week and visited 4 clinics in the meantime, or why a disease which only spreads in hospitals has found its way into so many (29 at last count).

The initial lack of transparency was appalling and certainly contributes to the spread of the virus. South Korea failed to learn the lessons of SARS, a far more transmittable but less deadly disease, by practicing the same censorship as the Chinese authorities did back in 2003. For two weeks, the hospitals were not named, creating a vacuum filled by all sorts of crazy rumors. In my 3 years of working for a Korean company, I have also often seen knowledge withheld between groups and by executives, leading to all kinds of false information.

In the meantime, many people unnecessarily and unwittingly visited hospitals carrying the disease, which brings me to my next point about Korean culture. In Korea, family members are far more involved in the care of a hospital patient than in Western countries, often sitting for days on end as their lived ones recover. In most cases, this is a rather pleasant practice — the community helps to heal its sick, so to speak. But when a deadly and unannounced virus is plaguing hospital emergency rooms, this leads many of these caring visitors to become afflicted with the disease. Also with proper infection-prevention practices failing to be applied, such as isolating the MERS patients, this has led to many more cases.

I personally had a rough spring this year with my health and spent more time in Korean hospitals than I certainly wanted, thankfully before the arrival of MERS. In late February, I gashed my shin after failing to complete a “box jump” at the gym, which I unwisely treated alone for a couple weeks. Finally during a business trip in March in Europe I visited a local clinic and received a cream, which did not work particularly well … so I started with the Korean medical system.

Fortunately Samsung has an on-site health clinic where I could see a general practitioner that referred me to a specialist at the local hospital. The level of English was not great for the doctor or the staff, but between their broken English and my broken Korean, and a helpful staff member on my team, I was able to schedule my next appointment.

I visited Ajou University Hospital in Suwon, a nice-looking and modern facility. Fortunately this hospital had an “international help desk” where people like me could call in advance for appointments, show up and be guided to the right place. The help desk also facilitated payment, and their English skills were quite good — I was happy to interact with them. With the doctors themselves, communication was definitely a mixed bag. The specialist doctor, an older man, was good at communicating with me and put me at ease. However, I interacted mostly with his group of younger staff, probably interns, who surprisingly could not communicate well with me. For instance, one of these interns instructed me that I would need to clean the wound daily on my own for 5 days before my next appointment. When I asked him for instructions on how to do this, rather than speaking to me he just typed them into his computer, and seemed surprised when I asked him to write down the names of the over-the-counter items in Korean. Bear in mind that these are some of the most highly-educated members of Korean society, and people who were in school learning English not so long ago. A sad reflection on the state of English-language education in Korea…

The treatment at Ajou, though, ended up being quite good, and inexpensive compared with the crazy American health care system. I only have a small scar on my shin which is fading over time.

Soonchunhyang Hospital, a well-known facility within walking distance from my house

Shortly after completing treatment for my shin, I noticed swelling in my foot. It was a Friday night and I panicked, so I limped over to the emergency room at Soonchunhyang (SCH) Hospital, walking distance from my apartment. Like most emergency rooms, it was not a pleasant place — I could hear a lot of crying from one room, and despite feeling fine except for my foot I was given an I.V. needle, which seemed excessive. A blood test was conducted, which thankfully found no infection in my blood, though I did have an infection in my foot, and I was prescribed antibiotics. The ER doc communicated very clearly with me, but left me with a huge wrap over my entire lower leg, leaving me unable to clean the shin wound that still needed some ointment.

I returned on Saturday and same drill as Ajou — see the international desk, speak to someone in English, then was directed to see a specialist. Like Ajou, SCH hospital was also very crowded, but I was able to get a few minutes with a guy who didn’t speak much English. He cut off the leg wrap, took a look at everything and told me to return on Monday, but didn’t do anything to clean my shin wound as I had asked. On Monday I returned, and he told me I was okay to walk with little explanation. Given his lack of communication, I wasn’t confident in his diagnosis, but thankfully it was the right one.

In short, for foreigners visiting a hospital in South Korea, you will probably be fine once this nasty MERS virus clears. But for those with children or anxious about your ability to communicate freely with doctors in a language you understand, research your options carefully in advance if you can. From talking with my expat colleagues, I have observed that Korean doctors tend to prescribe pills and treatments with little explanation, so tread with caution. In my experience, these treatments have generally worked, but others’ experiences vary. Korean doctors are not accustomed to being questioned by patients, and transparency about your treatment may be less than what you are used to. I think MERS will pass over the next 2 weeks, and I am hopeful that Korea can take the lessons learned from this episode to improve its health care system further.

Long Bike Ride Day in Okcheon

It sounded like a great idea… signing up for the Okcheon Riding Festival … “Falling in Cherry Blossom~” it was advertised. A work colleague on my KakaoTalk bicycle chat (I occasionally join for casual weekend rides along the Han River) sent out the notice — sure, why not sign up! I had already wired money to the organizers before I read the fine print: 73 kilometers. Or, as one of my colleagues put it, “So: I am in for the 73km Road. I am officially going to die.”

Yes, it was going to be a long way, but I have a good road bike, and have comfortably knocked out 40km rides along the flat Han River trail, so I was hoping for a longer, sunny version of what I was accustomed to, riding through dense thickets of cherry blossoms.

I had 3 colleagues joining me. We met at Seoul Station at 8:30am on Saturday and joined a group of 270 riders on a specially outfitted train with bike rack cars — including 30 foreigners: in Korea, the number of foreigners joining an event is always tracked! The train took 2 hours 20 minutes to reach Okcheon in the center of the country, and we rode 14km as a pack to the lunch stop. Not so beautiful a ride, some cherry blossoms had emerged, but it seemed like we had visited 1-2 weeks early. Most of the ride was through small-town Korea, and grey. However, it was a side of Korea one would not see from the city, sort of like a foreigner to the USA visiting Alabama.

The best of the blossoms

Lunch consisted of a Korean lunch box with some chicken, rice, kimchi, bean sprouts. Definitely could have used some more water — I’m glad we weren’t cycling on a hot day. In fact, the weather had turned downright chilly and dark clouds threatened. A brief mist passed and we carried on.

Cycling warmed us up again, and greeting us after lunch was a long, winding, switchback road up what felt like a never-ending hill. Marathon training in my old life (long since past!) had taught me the importance of keeping my legs moving, not stopping. Thankfully I had a cyclist in front of me pedaling at my pace, so I could track behind her for motivation. Just… one more push… and finally the top, then wind blowing by me as I bulleted down. I almost cramped coming off my bike at the rest stop.

Hill #1 took all the juice out of my legs, and steep hill #2 just wasn’t conquerable. I felt a sad sense of failure as I walked my bike up. And hill #3 was just torture… the steepest and highest of the 3, about a 300m climb or so. These hills were not well advertised. I felt my body giving up on me.

Finally at the top, another rest point, and the dark clouds that had threatened all afternoon finally opened up. Thankfully there was a small Korean gazebo there for all of us to cram into. There would be no more bicycling today. A bus came to pick us up to drive us back to the train station, and our bikes were loaded onto a truck. We had only made 42km of the planned 73 … but honestly I don’t know if I could have completed the rest of the ride in time to catch the evening train back to Seoul.

A little more truth in advertising would have been nice prior to this ride, though I did feel a sense of accomplishment in completing what we did. And I felt completely exhausted. I could have slept 12 hours like a baby at home afterwards, and would have had I not met a friend in Seoul from out of town Saturday evening.

So, a good first ride for the year. If you’re moving to Korea, a word of advice: bring your own bicycle! Like consumer electronics, bicycles are a lot more expensive in Korea than what you would find in Western countries. Some Koreans spend $5,000-$7,000 on a high-end bicycle!! There are some good trails and groups to join (foreigner or Korean) to fill any cyclist’s weekend appetite. Happy riding!

Yongpyong Ski Resort: Korea Best, Not World Class

Two weekends ago my friends and I checked off one of my final to-do’s in the ROK — skiing in Pyeongchang, home of the 2018 Winter Olympics. We headed to the Yongpyong Ski Resort, which will be hosting the alpine skiing events in 3 years time. For my friends, many of whom will be leaving Korea when their employment contracts expire at the end of March, this was one final chance to experience the slopes of South Korea.

I had been skiing in Korea before, but never to Yongpyong as it is more distant from Seoul and really doesn’t make a good day trip. My friends and I set the alarm super early on Saturday morning to catch a 6:10am bus from Seoul’s Jamsil station … even without traffic the trip took 2.5 hours. Thankfully I was prepared to sleep the entire bus ride with my eye mask and noise-blocking earbuds. Offsite ski rental was a bit of a hassle, and all the ski shops were pretty humdrum, but at least we received free transportation to and from the resort. The morning was cold… -12C (10F) … and I was glad that I wore my extra warm sweater underneath my shell and my fleece jacket.

Finally by 10:30 we had reached the long line for what must be the world’s slowest gondola. The cable car was a bit snug for 8 people and the ride very long … maybe 15 minutes to reach the top of the mountain. At the top you are given only 2 choices: a long beginner/intermediate run that switchbacks down the whole mountain and a “double black diamond” run proclaimed “expert”. For my first ski run of the year, I wasn’t ready to thrust myself onto difficult terrain as I regained my ski legs, so we went down the easy path, which may have been a mistake… most of the easier slopes in Korea are overrun with people and this was no exception. Went through a bit of a gauntlet to get down weaving around the weaker skiers and hoping the super aggressive fast skiers behind decided not to run me over — like driving etiquette, skiing etiquette is lacking in Korea.

Fortunately, you can jump off the slow crowded slope part of the way down and explore some nicer (and more challenging) slopes off to the side of the mountain. None of the chair lift lines were particularly crowded. After a few hours of skiing my friends and I regathered for late lunch in the welcome center at the bottom, which seems to be the only place to eat a meal. The Japanese-style ramen restaurant disappointed — I think we were served spaghetti noodles instead of the real thing. Unfortunately, the long gondola line precluded much late afternoon skiing before the 4pm shutdown of the mountain, though we did make it down the “double black diamond” portion of the mountain where the Olympic downhill will be held. The difficulty level was highly overrated and I’m not sure how the Olympic organizers plan to make these slopes difficult for the racers. The snow was mostly manmade, due to a dry winter, and firm but not too icy.

One of my friends made a reservation at a nice pension house a bit away from the ski resort and the Pyeongchang town. A couple 4-bed houses connected to each other with the typical Korean stiff mattresses next to a little shack with a cozy common area. We enjoyed beers and a warm fire inside, then were picked up for a nice Korean BBQ dinner at one of the many beef restaurants in the area (yum!), then back to the pension for more beers and good company.

The next morning was an early start — 8am pickup — and not everyone had survived from the day before. Pension gave us a Sunday morning ride to the ski resort … how convenient! … and we headed up the gondola for coffee at the top before skiing down. Weather was again crisp but sunny on a picturesque morning … fog obscured some of the valleys below and the ocean was visible off in the distance … air quality was much higher in northeastern Korea! More skiing, late lunch at a decent Italian restaurant in the welcome center, dropped off the rental skis with the ski shop (who came to pick them up from the resort), and onto the bus back to Seoul at 3pm. At that time of day, returning to Seoul is an exercise in patience … the highways returning from Gangwon Province become parking lots. The 2.5 hour ride to Yongpyong stretched past 4 hours on the return trip.

My verdict on Yongpyong — it’s nice … for Korea. Definitely the best skiing I have experienced in Korea (my only other experiences being Phoenix Park and Vivaldi Park), but would greatly underwhelm a tourist expecting something grander like the Rocky Mountains or the Alps. Japan is a far better destination for the traveling skier and Yongpyong is only worth visiting if you happen to be in Korea for some other reason — there is no point in making the trip just for this. The mountain felt small and unsophisticated, dining options sparse and the snow quality not powdery (Koreans, I am told, prefer icy snow so they can ski down more aggressively). The accommodations around did not look very big or luxurious, and I imagine the Olympic time will be very crowded and uncomfortable around these parts. Maybe the Olympic organizers plan to dress up Yongpyong further — there is still time — but as it stands now the whole thing just does not feel “Olympian”.

Who to Keep in Touch With?

I returned home to the USA for 2 weeks during the Christmas and New Year’s holiday. The trip was my longest home for personal travel since moving to Asia, and it was pretty great. I brought my girlfriend from Vietnam for her first trip to my home country, and filled the time with seeing family and friends between Charlottesville and New York City. End of the year has the usual travel frustrations, and there were also unplanned tourist frustrations with taking my girlfriend around … 40 minute wait to buy tickets for the MoMA, are you kidding me?

Was great to see my uncle and aunt over Christmas

Now that I am back in Korea — with the cold dark weather and the long daily commutes to the Samsung complex in Suwon — my mind is drifting and I am already planning my next vacations. Ho Chi Minh City in February for the Lunar New Year with my girlfriend, then Singapore in March to see some old friends that I haven’t seen in several years — a colleague from business school and a coworker from my first job.

Some time ago, a friend made a very prescient statement: “The social media age makes it much easier to maintain our weak connections.” This is absolutely correct. Just think… I live now in Asia… when I ride the bus to work in the morning and I click open Facebook on my phone, I’m seeing baby pictures from USA high school classmates of long ago. Those people are seeing my pictures of vacations in Cambodia or Thailand. Some are clicking “like”. Many of the people clicking “like” I haven’t talked to for several years, haven’t even sent an email to say “hello”. LinkedIn is worse… I have 500+ connections, some of whom I maybe visited once on a business trip or maybe attended my business school (I don’t even remember meeting some of my Darden connections). This week I posted an update on LinkedIn about my new job in Samsung — we went through a painful year-end re-org — and sure enough some of the random business connections were writing “Congrats!” If I met these people on the streets of Seoul I wouldn’t even recognize them…

As an Asian expat now for 2 and a half years, with potentially several years of living outside of the USA ahead of me, it strikes me as a bit odd that I keep these people in my web. Granted, there are a lot of people I haven’t seen in years who would bring a big smile to run into again. For example, an old work colleague of mine sent an email several months ago, asking if I could introduce him to Samsung — he is a patent attorney and well aware of my company’s legal struggles. This man lives now in Munich and I hadn’t seen him since 2008. But it was wonderful to hear from him, and when he came to Korea I took him out for BBQ in Seoul — what a great reunion! Another example: in summer of 2012 I went on a tour of several cities in the USA, to catch up with several people and say “goodbye for now”. The unanimous response from everyone I saw: “It was great to see you!” Certainly I was glad that I had Facebook as an encyclopedia to track where everyone had moved to.

Old friends are always welcome to visit Seoul

But, as life goes on and I continue to meet new people and link them on the “friends” list, I have to wonder if other people naturally fall off. Some people on Facebook brag about how they have gone through a spring cleaning of their friends — and how I survived the cut! — but I have never had the patience for this. I have tried. Inevitably, I feel I am making value judgments about people in my friends list and I am almost unable to distinguish non-friends from almost-friends. And so, I continue to hoard these people digitally, though most of them will never pass through Seoul just as I will never pass through Wilmington North Carolina or Essex Junction Vermont or Bergen Norway.

What do these people add to my life, really? And how could I really keep in touch with all of them? It would be exhausting! Malcolm Gladwell and other have written about the “rule of 150” — the idea (with science backing it) that a human can only realistically claim to maintain 150 connections at any point in time — and my Facebook and LinkedIn lists are several multiples above this number. I guess I have some feeling that one day these people will be “useful” to know, whatever that might mean, and maybe it will be good to meet up with them again.

Back in prehistoric times … by which, I mean 20 years ago! … a young man moving to South Korea like me would have had a very different experience. Probably the only sound of familiar voices would have been expensive calls home … with a calling card … to my parents. A few others would receive hand-written letters, which would take 1-2 weeks to cross the ocean. Maybe, maybe, I would have kept touch with 20 people or so. And that’s it! Everyone else would have been detached … those hometown friends and college classmates and B-school classmates and old coworkers and random friends of friends who I may have met at a party once upon a time. Certainly I would have been forced to integrate more thoroughly into Korean culture. I probably would have been more homesick. I wouldn’t know about all the marriages and babies or see the latest football scores — honestly, it would have been impossible to cling onto American life aside from the little conversations on the phone and the letters and photos which people would mail me.

A modern expat lives in a different world indeed. I see video of my girlfriend in Ho Chi Minh City almost every night. I send news articles to my sister in San Francisco, or maybe receive snarky messages when she has had just a little too much to drink. I watch NFL highlights on Monday nights when I return home from work — can even follow the live gameplay on Twitter when I ride the bus to work in the morning! An expat now can remain connected to old things, old ideas and old ways of thinking like never before.

Celebrating US Flag Day in Seoul last summer was great fun – but how many of these people will I be in touch with in 5 years?

Yet there remains no substitute for face-to-face contact. Hence why it was wonderful last month to eat a hamburger with my old B-school roommate in Charlottesville. Or great to hug my mom. Or to eat brunch with my old running partner. Maybe in another 20 years technology will have invented a way to simulate the touch of another person far away or communicate with someone who is asleep 10 time zones away. For now, however, being an expat still involves great loss. I have lost track of the number of weddings that I have missed while living in Asia — at least a dozen — and I will never meet the babies of many of my friends from my former life.

Once upon a time, humans all lived in villages and kept the same group of friends for most of their lives. Some people still live this way, but for a large number of people in this globalizing world of ours these times are gone forever. My old contacts from my old lives in Milwaukee, in Boston, in Washington DC, in Charlottesville, now in Seoul and in the future wherever I go next … who stays in my life and who fades away?

A true friend of mine, who I saw in New York recently, hacked together a great web app which collects all of the locations of your friends in Facebook and plots them on a world map. I click on this today and looked up my “friends” in Singapore for my March trip. An old classmate is there… yes I want to see him! Same with one of my old coworkers. But that other coworker now in Singapore, who I found really awkward back when we worked together … I don’t feel like ever seeing him again. One “unfriend” later and my digital friend web became just slightly less cluttered :)

4 of 9 people in this photo have left Korea since our August 2014 dinner, and I start to wonder how many I will see again