Waiting to Inhale

Originally published in The Groove, April 2007

by Tracey Stark

A guy I know, let’s call him ‘Don,’ came to Korea five years ago. It never occurred to me to ask him why he left the States, thinking he would give me one of the three basic reasons people most often give for coming to Korea: “I wanted to try something different/experience a different culture,” “I needed a job,” “I was running from the law/bad relationship.”

And then a week ago I saw Don puffing away on a cigarette, as he is known to do, so I sat down at the bar next to him for a beer and a chat.

“So Don, why the faraway look?”

“Just thinking about home,” he replied then exhaled a lungful of smoke at his reflection in the mirror across from us.

I waited for more. I learned as a reporter that you will often get more information from not asking questions than you will from asking them.

Within a few seconds he gave in, sighed, and said, “I was remembering the times when I could do this back home.”

“Do what? Drink a beer in a bar?”

“No,” he said, “have a smoke in a bar.”

I nodded silently. I don’t smoke and don’t have much sympathy for displaced smokers who find themselves huddled out in the cold because the law has turned against them. This is the case all over North America, Europe, Australia and now Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand, where smokers must leave restaurants and bars to get their fix.

“So is that what brought you to Korea? So you could smoke in a bar?” I joked.

“Yeah,” he said earnestly. “That, and the price. I was paying about four bucks a pack.”

Don was completely and utterly serious. He had left California in 2001 because he felt forced out. The cost to manufacturers in the U.S. had risen, partly because of litigation, to the point where one pack costs as much to make today as it sold for in 1997. Add in the taxes on cigarettes, which are partly used to fund anti-smoking campaigns, and smokers in the States are paying twice as much now as they were 10 years ago.

I was dumbfounded. I had heard of a few people coming to Korea to get away from drugs and the bad crowd they were hanging with, but for cheap cigarettes and the freedom to smoke next to children at the internet cafe? This was new. It took a minute to digest, and while I sat there thinking Don lit another.

I leaned closer toward him and in a whisper asked, “Are there more of you people?”

He smiled. “You have no idea how many of us there are,” he said, then leaned back to give me a clear view down the bar.

I saw a sea of blue-gray smoke and contented looking foreigners. Some of them were just watching their cigarettes burn down to the filters, because they could. One man was staring at the red glow on the end of his Marlboro and moving his lips, as if in prayer. But they were all smoking. It was surreal, like a scene in a Fellini film, or worse, an R.E.M. video.

“You do understand that smoking is bad for you, and since I’m sitting next to you, bad for me too?”

He nodded sagely. “It’s a choice we’re both making right now. Not just me. You too.”

We sat in silence for another few minutes, sipping our beers, watching our reflections and listening to an old song by Mental as Anything. It was me who finally broke the silence.

“You know, Korea will eventually become enlightened on this issue and ban smoking in bars and restaurants.”

“Look around you, man,” Don said, nodding at all the smokers. “Korea is enlightened.”

Then he chuckled and added with a shrug, “Anyway, if it does happen, there’s always China.”