Bent on Walking Straight Lines

 Not too long ago while coming home from Quiz night in Songtan I heard a girl who was descending one of the requisite calisthenically yo-yoing staircases in most transfers between Seoul subway stations trying to conceal her sobs and it caught my attention. Before we get to the girl, I recently read that Koreans walk 10,000 steps a day

and found in the description the partially satisfying explanation of why. The explanation included walking aps and hiking popularity in Korea but the real reason I vibed with was BMW. Bus, metro, walk. I had to put my own comment on the Facebook post, which has since gotten a few likes, that said something like go anywhere in Seoul by subway and if you have two or more transfers - there's yer 10 grand. And although there are escalators and even the moving sidewalks in many of these pilgrimages between subway lines, they are often under repair or just turned off. In a country so image-conscious I don't think it's a stretch to say that the subway lines are purposely made to involve superfluous stepping and when the average weight of Koreans rises above a certain level, ambulant assistance devices are "repaired" or turned off and worse still in summer the air conditioning on trains is turned down. Paranoid Uncle Dave again? Maybe... but if it's not already the plan, if someone shows this post to Lee Jae Myung, it might soon be. Transfers between subway lines will be lengthened and maybe scattered along them will be fitness stops like on the hiking trails with pull-up bars, sit-up benches, and other exercise equipment. Koreans will start a fad (and buckle up Adidas/Nike/Reebok/Puma/Under Armour and Lulu friggin' Lemon, you're about to get Korean fadded!) and transit takers of all sorts will get decked out to the nines in their fitness attire. Speaking of the Korean hiking popularity... they are something to see! 

There is no gadget, or accessory that the avid Korean hiker won't buy, for double its worth, just in case they might need it on their next hike. I've been on 2K fun walks in the park and seen ajummas and ajoshis like the ones pictured with their backpack radios playing bongjak music and their tin cups tinkling while carabinered to their Everest-worthy packs along with other supplies or the latest Labubu. They don't go halfway. So get ready Korea for subway sweatin' to the oldies. Leotards, pony tails, spandex, headbands, and leg warmers that'll make Seoul Station look like a 1980's Bally Total Fitness. 

And I'll get no credit. The person who read this will claim it as his/her own patriotic idea, be paid millions to become minister of fitness in the country, and Korea will show the world how they cleverly keep their citizens slim and trim. It wouldn't be the first time I've made other people rich...

But back to the girl. I tried not to let her notice I noticed. It's something I see more frequently than I'd like and being pretty close to the very real suffering adolescents go through in Korea, I have a soft spot for them. Most countries start piling on the pressure for PISA tests when the kids are around 14. Here they are trophies to be compared to others by competitive parents their whole lives. Trophies to be shown off, or failures. Overworked and underplayed was the very first impression I got of the kids in this country and it's the same in Japan and China. Everything is better when you run it like a business, right? So how 'bout raising kids that way? Spend, even OVERspend, but only if the shareholders get good ROI and always stay ahead of the competition. 

Of course there was no way I could have known that this was what the girl was crying about even though the dreaded Suneungs had just taken place and this year's were exceptionally evil! The suneungs are the college entrance exams, an 8-hour test that basically decides if you were worth giving birth to and if you should bother to try to succeed any more. EJU's in Japan, Gaokao in China. Suicide statistics are hidden all over Asia so as not to have these educational abscesses excised like they should be. And if you think you've seen cheating... like the hyper-capitalist system that inspired them, these "standardized" tests are LOUSY with cheating. And why not when the exams are the epitome of difficulty for difficulty's sake? And, of course, it's always the kids of the wealthy who can afford instruction not in getting smarter, but in how to BEAT these diabolic exams that have an unfair advantage. The English part of this year's suneung is a good example:

If you watch the above video, read the comments. I read one from a Korean guy that said this test just made the multi-billion dollar after-school industry sometimes called the "shadow" education of Asia, a lot more money. 

As Fate would have it, I stopped on the subway platform right in front of a bench and waited by the doors. The crying girl sat on the bench and I heard her sobbing, sniffing, and tapping away on her cellphone. Then I got on the train and she sat directly across from me. Now I could SEE her face. Her face was not pretty by Korean or any standards but she reminded me of many students I had had in Korea who were not the beauties this society provides with so many advantages. This made me empathize even more thinking of the bullying some of my favourite female students had to put up with from the popular kids and wondering if this wasn't part of her sorrow. She convulsed with a fresh sob and I saw impossibly large and lava-like tears slide down her cheeks before she covered her shame with her hoodie hood and fought back the next round of convulsions. I sincerely wanted to sit beside her and squeeze her with an avuncular arm softly consoling her with wise placation spoken in Korean but language deficiency and social mores about "creepiness" prevented me. 

She got off the train before I did. I will never know what caused her heart to break that day and she will never know I even cared. Neither sat right with me. For the rest of the night and even in my dreams that night I questioned whether I was right to do nothing. I questioned whether society should put so much pressure on such young kids. I questioned whether we should really call ourselves "civilized" when we have created such a fear of UNcommon sexual deviance that it precludes common courtesy and compassion. I thought of parallel stories I could write in which I just gave her a silent hug and she went on to a happy life or I did nothing and she lost all hope and spiraled into depression. I also thought of how I would never know if she would live a happy life or not. Worst of all I wondered if she might become one of the hidden suicide statistics of Asia. 

Just yesterday I found myself walking down a narrow Korean sidewalk in the anodyne, give little offense, stranger in a strange land being a good ambassador style that I have found necessary in streets, grocery aisles, subway stations, hiking trails, bike paths, roads, pretty much anywhere Koreans move themselves from place to place. It's a constant source of annoyance and it has graced the pages and posts of my railings before that Korean people, and to be fair, most people in Asia, seem bent on walking in straight lines. (self chuckle) Bent on walking straight lines. That is just subtly contradictory enough to be a book title or a sweeping statement that could be used to sum up a large group of people like the kind George Carlin described when he said, 

An old couple, one that might don untold fortunes worth of hiking paraphernalia to go for a hike and see the colours on one of the mountains of Korea on a fall weekend were walking a trifle straight-linedly toward me. As is my still unabashed proclivity, I got out of their way. Now, the sidewalk was not even wide enough for two but they did not abandon fully abreast formation as they advanced on my position. I could see no sign of that changing. So I did not just move over on the sidewalk, I had to move over to where the telephone and lamp posts were and actually put one foot off the curb and onto the street that was bumper-to-bumper with automobiles. As I did so out of fantastically unacknowledged courtesy my shoulder bumped against a lamppost. On the lamppost was a sign that had been hung with a metal clamp and the clamp was tightened with one screw. The screw held the two razor sharp sides of the clamp together. It was a cold day and I had on my newly purchased winter jacket the left shoulder of which now has a gash that will either have to be sewn or will get larger and larger until the jacket needs to be thrown out.