This post will mostly be a map for my Friday journey to register to get my Covid 19 vaccination here in Korea. I was supposed to have registered in a one-week window (I think) between July 17 and 24th, but did not receive any notification to do so. I've been told I should have received notification through Kakao, text, even snail mail, but as yet - nothing. I even had not one but TWO Koreans on the administration staff at my university on the lookout for me and THEY missed the window too. During the window, I was teaching teachers and admin from my school, several of them in the same age category as I and we were talking twice a week about when we could register. None of THEM seemed to get the message either!
To be as kind as possible, even though the world lauded Korea as having one of the best Covid responses with masks, social distancing and whatnot, the vax rollout has been a hot mess. To put it as kindly as possible.
I have been getting 2-5 notifications every single day on my phone for over a year about Covid numbers, and updates and such. Almost all of them are in a form that I can't copy and paste into Google Translate. But I have seen ages expressed in numbers like, "55-60" with a curvy dash and I thought for sure I'd see my group, 50-54, when it came up. For the life of me, I swear I got every Covid update but THAT one! But there are other ways a guy can check too, none of which are working either. There's 1339, a Covid hotline that I've used before successfully. You may remember back when I was ordered to get tested for Covid IMMEDIATELY by my supervisor at Gongju U. in Cheonan. This was at 9:30 at night? Member? I called 1339 then and they told me I couldn't have gotten tested that late had I even tried, plus the testing centers weren't even giving tests to people without symptoms due to the limited number of testing kits. I had no symptoms, so they told me not to bother.
This is the same school. A year ago they're panicky and demanding that I get tested because I may have been close to an area in Seoul that had a pocket of cases. Now they don't even notice when my registration period for the vaccine comes up. It's quite something how Korea has changed in the last year! At any rate, 1339 is either automatically hanging up on me when I call, or tantalizingly getting me through the "press 6 for foreign languages" to the message (not in a foreign language) which says to wait till an operator picks up, and THEN ending the call before an operator picks up. I've called about 100 times and have had friends calling for me. Nada.
Another thing I tried and failed miserably at was the online registration. This is an old story too. I recently got my Personal Customs Code, which, by the end of this year is going to be mandatory if you want to order goods online that will be delivered from other countries, get packages from family or friends at home or things like that. It took forever and the sticking point was the name. Korean bureaucracy could significantly increase its efficiency with foreigners by using the foreign spellings of people's names instead of taking wild and varied stabs at them with the Korean alphabet. At least for people who use English to spell their names. That said, it's pretty common for Russian or Arabic or people from countries that don't use this alphabet you are reading at the moment, to have an agreed upon Romanization of their names. Anyway, when the name is needed in an English application, some of the transliterations back from Hangeul into English are atrocious! Daeebeet Mekkenaer. Dayvyd Meockaenur. The combinations are endless and if you don't match whatever some unknown bureaucrat chose as your official spelling (rather than use your actual official spelling) you are shit outta luck. Sometimes they even DO use the proper letters, they just mess those up. Like spelling them wrong or using given name MacCannell, and family name David. Mr. David. This is REALLY weird because they do this when my family name is given first, like on my passport. Here they actually say the family name first, but somebody has been given a rule that foreigners say their given names first and family names last. So thoughtlessly apply the rule. Don't ask or anything. I recently read of a brutal example of this phenomenon that occurs so frequently in Korea.
As people like me are struggling mightily to get the vaccine here in Korea, they're actually throwing perfectly good ones in the garbage. Why? Mindless adherence to a rule without risking any thought about the purpose of the rule or the greater good. If I've said this once, I've said it a thousand times, and it's still true: people in Korea are trained, not educated. They follow rules, they are told not to think. They're awesome soldiers, but horrible officers. The story is of many Korean clinics advertising leftover vaxes and starting waiting lists for people to claim them online. When they didn't have any takers from the people in Korea who hadn't yet had their first shots, perfectly good vaccines were trashed. There WERE, however, people asking for the vaccines who had already had their first shots. If they had waited long enough to get their second doses, why not give them earlier than scheduled? Because there's a RULE! Obey, obey, oh yay, obey!
Anyways, countless foreigners are putting the letters of their name into randomizing programs, writing them on Boggle dice and rolling a random spelling, or just coming up with their own convoluted misspellings of their names and hoping to match the misspellings that will match the ones being used for the vaccine registration. When you enter any proper spellings, or the wrong misspellings of your name, you get the annoying message that says your name doesn't match your alien registration or you are not a registered foreigner in Korea or, more often than not, some message in Korean. Here's one of MY many attempts:
Isn't that an absolutely awesome nose thumbing? "The Korean Disease Control (and prevention) Agency says, "FUCK YOU waygookin! We're not going to give you an English message on our English website!" That's not what it says, but it might as well. This happens at every bank machine in Korea and countless other "English" websites. It's something that has gotten worse in Korea leaving little doubt that it has been intentional. You think they also don't know that transliteration of our names back and forth several times between Korean and English completely messes them up? Of course they know! It's all part of the foreign fuckery I've blogged about so often. And how many times have I warned that it will come back to bite them in the ass? Well here we are. Foreigners want to get vaccinated here but can't. You just KNOW this will lead to a general perception that foreigners are causing numbers to go up. You also know that Koreans bringing this on themselves with xenophobia will not be part of that perception. Well, way back in the spring there were mandatory tests ordered by the government only for foreigners. What message do you suppose THAT sent to the general populace? And further reports of the recent delta variant originating in a cluster of foreigners, and the delta detection rate being "especially high among foreigners," whether real or imagined leads to heightened anti-foreign sentiment here. Like that was necessary. But now that even Koreans want to get foreigners vaxxed up as soon as possible, their electronic booby traps are biting them in the arse.
Like most foreigners, I tried phone, I tried online and I failed outright to register for my shot. I needed an alternative. I emailed the two reps from the school to help me find a place in Gongju where I live that I could go to in person and fill out a non-electronic piece of paper that Korean bureaucracy was less likely to mismanage. I haven't heard back from them. I also texted my friend, Rob. He works for the same school and has had the same experience here in Gongju trying to register electronically and failing. So he went to:
Dat dada DA! The Gongju City Health Center. He said he went to the 3rd floor and registered in person on paper. BOOM! Exactly what I wanted. So I got the Naver Map of this location and figured I'd take a cab there on Monday.
The best way I know of to catch a cab in Gongju is to go to the bus station. There's always a lineup of them there. It's about a 20-minute trundle from my place to there. Even in the 31 degree sun, that wasn't going to be so bad... he thought foolishly. Did I sweat profusely? Nope. Did I get a wicked sunburn? No. It wasn't actually the weather that made my little walk a pain in the ass, it was the prevailing winds of anti-foreign sentiment. I didn't get to the grocery store next door to my apartment before I was accosted, in fast and not very carefully enunciated Korean, by a teenaged boy. I couldn't understand every word, but I have been panhandled in many languages before and I know the drill. I even KNOW the word for money in Korean and heard it in his spiel a few times. So I went with ignorance. I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Moolah," which means I don't know, then continued walking. When I got far enough away, the kid shouted, "HEY! MONEY!" I thought to myself, "Maybe you should have led with that?"
This was a first. Never before had any of the people of Gongju asked me for money. It wasn't the last first of the walk, however. No more than 100 yards later two boys riding double on one of those pay scooters passed me going the opposite way, The one boy said, "Hello!" Now you may think I'm being oversensitive here, but I've also been helloed many times in Korea and I know the difference between the genuine ones and the ones intended to impress friends with patriotic discrimination. This was clearly the latter. It's almost always a dead giveaway when the hello is from a group, not an individual. For example, on my latest riverside hike, a Korean man I've seen a few times on his bike or reading a book on one of the benches in the art park shouted, "Anyong haseyo," to me. I immediately smiled and yelled back, "Anyong haseyo," with a little bow cuz he's older than me. The kids on the scooter? Just having fun hassling the foreigner. That actually happened to me ANOTHER time from another kid on a scooter! First and second time since I've been here in Gongju that any kids walking (or scootering) in groups have done the infamous Korean cattle call. I call it that because if you say hello back, they laugh their asses off like when you moo at a cow and it moos back. I didn't give them the satisfaction. Little buggers.
Then, as I was nearing the bus station, I started across a street. A car was exiting a main road at high speed and turning onto the street I was crossing. I stopped for the car. The car stopped for me. I waved and started across the street. Maybe it was the wave, or maybe it was the eyes, but suddenly the driver gunned it and cut in front of me forcing me to stop before getting run over.
So apart from the old guy in the park, I'm getting a clear impression that people in Gongju might be blaming foreigners for extended mask-wearing, staying at home and social distancing. And here in Gongju, we aren't on the higher lockdown levels that Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and most southern tourist areas of Korea are on. I wonder what it's like there.
To make a long story short, I got to the building pictured above and was met by resistance instantly. They almost didn't let me in the front door. But I managed to explain that I couldn't register by phone or computer and I just wanted to register at that place and time. They made me phone a number to verify my place and time, then I went to the 3rd floor. Two ladies sitting at computers tried their best to understand my bad Korean, read some government worker's bad Korean writing on the back of my alien card, and get me plugged into their computers. With great effort including my writing some things down in Korean (which I'm quite proud they understood) we got my name, address and alien number into their system. It only took 20 minutes or so.
Then they took me to a room down the hall where 5 other people spent at least half an hour arguing about different interpretations of the rules, changing the instructions the two ladies had written for me (and they changed them about 5 times) and landing on almost the same instructions. The ladies had told me to come back on Monday. The NEW instructions are to come back on Friday. For a government office, that essentially one day earlier since they aren't open on weekends. So half an hour of arguing for a day. Things are clearly not yet organized on this front.
However, assuming the rules don't change again on Tue, Wed, or Thu, I will be going back to that office and actually registering for my Covid shot! All I managed to do on Monday was register to register I suppose, but it's still a victory! I doubt I could have gotten that done electronically.
On that high note, the following will be pics I took on the walk home from the Medical Center. It was a lovely walk even if the temperature was a little hot for my liking. And I got some exercise while registering to get registered. So not a bad deal!
The bridge to take over the river. The "Ballbearing" statue bridge.
The bear statue on the OTHER side of the bridge. Go up the road and turn right at the palisade park entrance intersection.
Walk straight till you come to THIS cool bridge. There's a nice little waffle and ice cream shop on the corner where this pic was taken. There's a big school on the other side of the bridge. Don't go past the school. Turn left as soon as you get across.
You'll see this police station on the left. Keep walking straight. There are some nice houses with lots of flowers and veggies planted in the yards.
Keep going straight. Interesting coffee shop/store at this intersection and sign for the medical center. It'll be on the right hand side just ahead. You can't miss it.
So other than the Covid caper, I am half way through my vacation here and even though it's only summer vacation, which is my least fave, and even though I can't travel, I'm enjoying it so far. I have a few more visits with a few more people planned. No word yet on what going on next semester at work, but how surprised am I about that?
Addendum: I went back to the Health Center today (Friday, Aug. 20) and waited for quite some time for different people to decide what to do with me. They were shouting my name from cubicle to cubicle, my phone number, my alien number, and seemed a little like they might be trying the same things I tried to get me registered. And having the same luck. Finally one guy picked up a phone and made a short call. Then I opened Google Translate on my phone and a young girl who had originally taken my alien card when I got there, punched in, "Go to Baek Jae Gym." She wrote on a piece of paper Beak Jae Jae Yook Gwan so I could give it to the taxi driver. I went outside the Health Center and caught a taxi. We drove a little outside of town to a big building in the middle of the trees. I went in and finally filled out my paper, non-electronic, offline registration form. Yippee!!
But then I was hustled to a few people who asked me a few questions, one guy who explained in English what may happen after the shot and he sent me to get the shot! I said, "Right now?" He said yes. So I assumed it had to be one of the extra AZ shots or Sinovac or some welfare vax nobody else wanted. I asked what kind it was. "Phizer," he replied.
I am Phizerized! And earlier than expected. After 24 years in Korea (off and on) my luck is starting to change!!!
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