“I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me”

I watched a lot of Youtube videos from people teaching in South Korea before I came here, so I was pretty cognizant of the fact that I would be stared at. But Holy HELL!

See, there isn’t much diversity here. If I had to make a pretty educated guess, I’d say 1% diversity. That means, in a country of 50+ million people, half of one million people are foreigners (foreigners = non-Korean nationals). But, wait…here’s the rub: more than half of those people are of Korean ancestry – so they look Korean, even if they grew up elsewhere.  Now I’m sure that brings with it its own set of problems, but I can’t speak to that.  What I’m taking forever to get to is that people who don’t look Korean are few and far between. Yeah, near the military bases, you see a lot more foreigners, and in the bigger cities, like Daegu (where I am), you see a decent amount in the downtown area. Oh, and by the way, a ‘decent’ amount is like an average of 10. Ten people who are clearly not Korean during an entire, hours-long wander around the downtown area. Not too many. And just so you know, Daegu is the 3^rd largest city in the whole of South Korea. So I’m not talking about a city the equivalent of a “hick town” in the USA. There are over 2.5 million people in Daegu. And downtown is literally TEEMING with people. I’m sure I’d see more if I frequented the foreigner bars, but I don’t. That ship has sailed for me a looong time ago.

 But I digress… My point is that, in a hugely homogeneous country, I don’t fit in.  I get stared at… a lot. I mean, A LOT, a lot. Like, every time I leave my apartment I get stared at several times by many different people. I have had older Korean men and women literally stop in their tracks, mid-sentence, to stare at me. I have had people driving their cars slow down to stare at me (yes, the car was still moving, and no, they were not watching the road). When I’m on the bus, bus drivers have stared at me through the rearview mirror while they should be driving the bus, and let me tell you, they’re scary enough drivers when they ARE paying attention! Teenagers and younger, school-aged kids do it with a smirk I didn’t understand at first. Then one of them works up the courage to say “Hello”, and I realized they seem to get a thrill out of  speaking English to a native speaker, and well, showing off around their friends. What completely surprises me, though, is that small children don’t stare at me. In my country, toddlers are NOTORIOUS for staring a person down if they look the slightest bit different, but not here it seems. At least, it seems this way to me.  And I must tell you, this staring that’s going on is in NO way malicious or threatening. It is simple curiosity. It’s even almost done with a sense of wonderment. Like, “Well, hey! Look at that! A foreigner!”  I have never had anyone hurl mean-sounding words in my direction (not that I’d know what they meant, but I’m just saying).

Back to the beginning so I can wrap this up… I knew before I came here I would get stared at, and I’m generally OK with it. I know I’m a foreigner and that there are simply not enough of us for that novelty to have worn off yet. I mean, I can go DAYS without seeing another foreigner, myself. I watched one particular video in which the girl said she has fun with it. She fixes herself up so that she looks good and when all the stares start, she pretends she’s a model on a catwalk. I like that. Usually I have my headphones in and am in my own little world. But sometimes I pretend I’m a celebrity and that I know exactly how Halle Berry must feel. Hey, it’s fun…and whatever you need to do to cope, you do it, right? Because I have to tell you, there ARE times when I’m not in the mood. Times when I just want to be anonymous. Times when I miss my hometown and my family and friends and don’t want to be here anymore.  Times when it’s early and I’m tired and the SAME old people stare at me as I walk past just like they do EVERY morning, and I want to scream. But mostly, I have the urge to start dancing right there in the middle of the street and really give them a show – you know, a REASON for staring. But I don’t. I take a deep breath and remind myself how lucky I was to grow up in a country with a ton of diversity, and I feel a little sorry for them. And besides, I’m sort of repping the United States…I can’t go around acting a fool now, can I?