Christmas in Korea

Yesterday morning as I read the George Michael obituaries I reflected on the irony of the iconic singer of “Last Christmas” dying on Christmas Day.

The song is instantly recognizable even by my Vietnamese wife and has played on a loop outside many of the Christmas-themed clothing boutiques and coffee shops in Gangnam Seoul over the past few weeks. Turned out that this year is the first Christmas for me in Korea after traveling home to the US for the last 4 years. As I reflect like many people are on the year 2016 that was, I realize that I was afflicted by writers’ block for most of the year. I only blogged 3 times and I have, for the most part, run out of topics to write about. Christmas in Korea is actually new and fresh for me.

However, I probably could not have picked a worse year to write about Christmas here as for the first time in 5 years Christmas Day fell on a weekend. This meant that Christmas Day, along with New Year’s Day, was not a government holiday in Korea as Korea does not give the holiday for workers when it falls on a weekend … argh! So my usual December pilgrimage home would have cost 2 extra annual leave days this year, which was part of my motivation to stay put … I also saw my family this summer for my wedding so I didn’t feel obligated to make the long trip to see them again :)

Hence my primary observation about Christmas in Korea is how ordinary it felt – we worked on Friday, had a 2-day weekend for Christmas Eve and Christmas, and then back to the office again on Monday. Because Christmas is not a family holiday in Korea, unlike the US, people don’t travel or take time off to see family… this is done on Lunar New Year anyway. Most businesses were still open and even the construction workers at the site across from my apartment in Seoul were busy at work on Sunday morning! The Catholic church in my neighborhood had a lot of traffic but not substantially more than your typical Sunday… Christians in Korea (about 30% of population) seem pretty devout year-round.

Seoul Christmas-themed public bus!

The commercial drive around Christmas is more muted here too. Sure, a large number of stores and shopping malls took the opportunity to decorate their fronts in red and green, but only for 2-3 weeks before the holiday. The Hannam-dong Community Center near my apartment decorated itself for the first time in 2016, but I saw its employees erecting a tree and hanging decorations on the Sunday before Christmas… why put in the effort to only hang the decorations for 1 week? Seoul has no Christmas tree lighting ceremony and there is no Christmas market here. There are no crazy shopping days (thankfully) like “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday”, and not much gift-giving in the office. My director last year, a regular church-goer, did give me some nice dress socks but other than that I haven’t seen gifts exchanged at work. My wife commented that she saw more Christmas decorations in Ho Chi Minh City than in Seoul.

Yes ... I DID play Santa Claus!!

There were some Christmas surprises though. One of the public buses which passed my neighborhood was elaborately decorated in a Christmas theme – it was lit up and festive! Also, my family will be shocked to learn that I was asked to play Santa Claus at a friend’s Christmas party this year! My key qualities were that none of the kids at the party would know me, so they “believe” maybe that Santa is real, and my native command of English… I suppose “global” Santa must be an English speaker, haha! I definitely lacked the girth for the role but I did practice a hearty “HO HO HO” at home and studied up in advance on the names of Santa’s reindeer, just in case I was quizzed! As Santa, I gave gifts from the parents and read messages to the children telling them to be good next year and study hard. A couple children cried on Santa’s lap and one child couldn’t stop staring at me, but otherwise my Santa Claus was a success! Even some of the parents did not recognize me :)

Falling just one month before Lunar New Year, Christmas can never be a major holiday in Korea but I was expecting a little more… a day off from work would have been nice! If you’re not Christian or just tired of the overblown madness which Christmas has become in many Western countries then Korea would be a decent place to be in late December. You can’t quite escape George Michael belting out “oooohhhh ohhhhhhhhhhh!” but you will enjoy the relative normality and quiet of the holiday season here.

Taking the TOPIK

If you're a diligent student of the Korean language, as I once was, there is a test for you to brag to all of your friends how badass your ability is to spin 한국어: the Test Of Proficiency In Korean, more commonly known as the TOPIK. Similar to the TOEFL, it serves the useful function of certifying how skilled you are at listening and reading (and, later, speaking and writing) the Korean language. Or, if you're a little cynical... TOPIK at least assesses how skilled you are at taking a multiple choice test conducted entirely in Korean.

"Why wait more than 4 years to do this?" you might ask. Well, since my wife moved to Korea I have considered changing my visa status from E-7, which is something like a "special talent" visa but is tied entirely to my employment status at Samsung. By switching to an F-2 Long Term Residency visa I would be granted a 3-year stay in South Korea and could stay even if I decided to leave Samsung, More importantly, my wife would then also be eligible for the F-2 and would be able to work without needing an employer to sponsor her for a work visa, as her F-3 "companion" visa status does not permit employment.

The F-2 visa is a points-based system and people from my background get a lot of the necessary points based on a graduate degree, a high salary, and being in my 30s ... yes, there is age discrimination. To get over the points threshold I saw that I could qualify for F-2 just by passing the "basic" TOPIK I exam. I wouldn't need to be anywhere close to fluency ... which I'm not.

In my prime time of studying Korean, the first 18 months I lived here, my teachers were consistently urging me to take TOPIK but I never saw a need – after all my job didn't require Korean and I also didn't see myself working for any other company in South Korea besides Samsung. I figured the Korean obsession with tests was a factor, and also my teachers wanted some validation that I was actually learning.

Well, I completely ignored my teachers suggestions to take TOPIK. After leaving Samsung Global Strategy Group in  April 2014, where I had 4 hours of free Korean classes per week in the office, my Korean communicating skills have regressed considerably. Shockingly, given the number of foreigners recruited to work in Samsung Electronics, the company does not offer free Korean classes to employees – or at least the Mobile division does not (as officially told to me by HR). I'm given a decent budget for Korean instruction but I quickly discovered I didn't have the energy or motivation to dedicate my limited time outside of work to studying a fiendish language spoken nowhere in the world except the two Koreas (and overseas Samsung subsidiaries). Most of the non-Koreans I worked with share my viewpoint and weren't studying Korean outside of work either. I hired a private tutor to visit Suwon Digital City twice per week, but I found I wasn't getting any better and my seemingly ample study budget was quickly exhausted. I don't really understand how Samsung HR thinks we can function in a Korean-language working environment without giving us a convenient way to learn the language, basically telling us "sink or swim... not our problem".

I decided to sign up in August for the October test. For a test with an objective of spreading the motivation to learn Korean around the world, I was expecting a cleaner English website experience. But even signing up for the basic test required navigating forms and a payment system written entirely in 한국어... ugh! It was basically a Korean proficiency test just to register for the TOPIK exam. But given the awful user experience on most Korean websites I should have expected nothing less.
(I will given Korean Air and Woori Bank credit for pretty functional sites, but the rest of the website coders in this country need a retraining.)

Anyway, enough for my little rant – I was taking TOPIK. The test was in October. So I had two months to prepare. I went to the local bookstore and found a section on Korean language study with some TOPIK study guides. Surprisingly, most of the TOPIK study guides for sale, even for the "basic" TOPIK I were written entirely in Korean. I mean... come on study guide writers... I understand if this is the "advanced" TOPIK II test that I should be able to comprehend a Korean training guide, but for a test on "basic" Korean one shouldn't need to read complex grammar explanations written in a language he can't yet understand!

Thankfully I found the only two books in the store which actually had decent English-language explanations – one on TOPIK grammar and one with sample TOPIK questions and answers. I had my self-study books and a handy Android flashcard app that I could use to study words during my long commute time. I even had a little budget saved up from not studying Korean in 1 year to rehire the private tutor to drill me on TOPIK questions. I was taking practice tests on weekends and drifting right around a passing score for the exam.

Finally Sunday, October 16 came and I headed to Dongguk University for the 1 hour 40 minute exam, armed with the necessary identification as instructed by the all-Korean text message I received the week of the test. My test-taking place was a dim, windowless classroom. The fellow "basic" test-takers comprised a diverse array of nationalities, ages, and social classes, though I read that the "advanced" TOPIK consists mostly of young Chinese and Japanese students gunning for jobs in Korean companies. We were told that doors closed at 8:30am for a 9:00 exam – strange because we spent most of the downtime just sitting around.

Our mobile phones were taken away and I remembered that I hadn't taken a paper exam in the smartphone era – times have changed. We were given our answer sheets and even TOPIK-branded black felt-tip pens which we were told in Korean (I think) were the only approved marking instruments for the test. Other rules were explained in Korean and I dumbly stared at the proctor while pretending to understand. Finally the booklets were handed out and we started – 40 minutes for listening and 60 minutes for reading.

Lime my practice tests the beginning questions in both the listening and reading portions were remarkably easy, but after blitzing through those came the passages which separated the novices from the intermediates. I struggled mightily with some questions and patted myself on the back for at least thinking I understood others. Time management was a challenge on the reading section but I managed to get answers for every question – no penalty for guessing incorrectly. I definitely would have scored better in my Korean studying heyday. My ID was checked no less than 3 times, which was a tad distracting.

I still haven't received my TOPIK results as it takes 6 weeks to process all those paper Scantron answer sheets, just like the old SAT – but I'm cautiously optimistic that I passed. Having a goal to pass the test was a good motivator to cram on vocabulary and grammar, and I think I could see why my teachers from 3 years ago were pushing me to take the test.

Anyway, I doubt I'll dabble in this exam again but I think it was time and energy well-spent... well, I hope so!

<Postscript>
I received the result and passed the TOPIK I with the 2nd level! I blew away my practice test scores, so I'm glad I took those to motivate me to study harder. I now have a certificate that proves I can read and listen to Korean at the proficiency of a 1st grader!

Married!

After 4 years as a single man living abroad, I finally married a really great young lady. There's a catch though... she is not Korean, nor did we meet in Korea, though we did meet through a common connection in Korea (more to come on that later). Time for my business school colleagues to settle their side bets on whether or not I would get married here!

With bridesmaids and groomsmen at our wedding in Vietnam

When I left the US in 2012 I told my friends that I expected personal considerations, not the work, would dictate the amount of time I stayed in Korea. Turns out this was prescient. Maybe I anticipated I would meet a Korean woman but that's just not how things worked!

I met Xuanhoa (pronounced "soon hwa") on my first trip to Vietnam in January 2014 when I was visiting a Samsung Vietnam manager who I had met on a Buddhist temple stay at Hwaeomsa in spring 2013. On my first day in Ho Chi Minh City my acquaintance and I met for lunch — I was also staying at her house at the time — and because my acquaintance was busy with work that afternoon she had one of her staff members show me around a few places in the city. That staff member, who introduced herself as "Meg", and I hit it off and later in my trip we shared a couple dates together. We said goodbye at the airport in Ho Chi Minh City and I returned to my life in Korea.

Four months later in May 2014 Xuanhoa made her first trip to South Korea. I showed her around Seoul and we visited Jeju Island together. After Xuanhoa returned to Vietnam we agreed to begin our "relationship" and the rest is history. After two grueling years of long-distance courtship — including 14 more trips for me to Vietnam, 3 more trips for her to Korea, 2 trips for us to the USA, and meet-ups in Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Philippines — we finally were married last month in a beautiful ceremony at a Buddhist pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City. I was elated to have all of my immediate family there and many of my friends from my Korean adventure were there as well. We were also elated to be done with wedding planning since this had been a yearlong project since I proposed in December.

One of our first dates in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

But the best part for us, of course, has been finally living together in the same place. Xuanhoa moved into my apartment in late July and she's a registered "alien" living in Korea now. No more Skype phone calls on shaky internet connections! No more "when will I see you again" and no more sad red-eye flights back to Korea after leaving Xuanhoa in Vietnam yet again. Except ... for this weekend ... Xuanhoa returned to Vietnam for a few days to tidy up some affairs at home and I am able to reflect on how my life has changed with her here.

For one thing, I am a very spoiled husband. Xuanhoa is a delightful cook, she enjoys whipping together breakfast and dinner for me every day. Also she is super excited to have a proper oven for the first time in her life and I am giddily asked almost every day to try some new baked good that she concocted. The Samsung cafeteria misses me now!  (you can eat 3 meals a day there)  Xuanhoa loves making things organized and my house has never been tidier. As Xuanhoa is a housewife for now (hopefully temporary), I am always greeted with a big smile when I come home from a long day at work.

One of many trips to visit Xuanhoa in Ho Chi Minh City, with her family for Tet Holiday

Also, watching Xuanhoa go through the difficulty of moving to Korea as a foreigner makes me reflect on my own first weeks in Seoul 4 years ago. At first Xuanhoa was fascinated by new Korean foods. She developed a kimbap obsession until one day her stomach turned and she realized that kimchi was upsetting her stomach. Xuanhoa had several confusing, mysterious foreigner experiences at the immigration office and at a health clinic which didn't speak any English for a tuberculosis check (even though it was a test center "designated" for foreigners). Xuanhoa has learned the subway system (relatively easy) and how to take a bus (not easy for a first-timer), and got lost while trying to find me in Gangnam one evening. Without a motorbike Xuanhoa is walking much more frequently now and her legs have been getting tired. Xuanhoa is always asking me where to find this thing or that and sometimes I frustrated how even after 4 years in Korea I don't have many of the answers for her, language barriers between me and Korean still being what they are. At least Xuanhoa is not stuck in a temporary extended-stay hotel by herself, as I was, and fortunately I live close to several foreign food markets where we can eventually find most, but not all, of the special ingredients that she is looking for in her special recipes.

Xuanhoa will start studying Korean soon so she can at least master the basics to survive here (as I have), and I am trying to help her build a social network here. These growing pains aren't easy to overcome, but it's very good to have each other every day.

Xuanhoa's first Korea trip post-wedding, to sizzling hot Busan

And last weekend I was able to show Xuanhoa a new place in Korea — Busan! It was a 3-day holiday weekend and Busan was super crowded ... and sizzling HOT. Xuanhoa didn't want to do too much sightseeing in the heat but she really enjoyed the Haedong Yonggungsa Temple along the coastline and the Nurimaru APEC house near Haeundae Beach. Xuanhoa is eager to visit the DMZ and the mountains in Gangwon province this fall.

As for me, I am delighted that serendipity has brought a wonderful lady into my life and that I can share myself with her. I will never quite have my freedom again like before, but I will happily trade that for avoiding lonely nights at home when there is no food in the fridge and I don't know what I will eat for dinner ... sort of like this evening! Honey, come back soon!