Tracey's Top Ten, er, Top Five Things He Likes About Korea

Originally published in The Groove, January 2008

A Stark View
By Tracey Stark


My wife complains that I have nothing good to say about Korea. After five years, she says, I should be able to look around and see things I really like about this country. So for this month, if you will indulge me, I am going to come up with things I really am happy with. (This list will NOT include any of the following: spitting, littering, noisy eating, criminally-insane bus drivers, Saturday traffic jams, motorbikes on the sidewalks, the smell of garlic and soju on the subways and public smoking.)
Typically, a “Best of” list contains 10 items. Since I am constrained by both space and the number of things I am actually pleased with here, I am only going to get to five. So, here we go…

1. If you have ever had a conversation similar to the following before, you will know the sinking feeling I had at the beginning and the complete elation I felt by the time the call was over:

“Yoboseyo?”

“Yes, hi. I left my cell phone in your taxi. Can I get it back, please?”

“Yoboseyo?”

“Yes, hello. My hand-u-pone in your tak-shi. Please, I get it back, juseyo?”

“Yoboseyo?”

I don’t speak Korean, so I passed the phone to a Korean friend and let him take care of it. In the end, the taxi driver was willing to drive back to where I was (for a small fee) and return the phone that I had so carelessly left on the seat.

This is not a one-off occurrence. In fact, I have left my phone in taxis five times in five years. I have gotten my phone back four times. It isn’t just phones that I have lost and re-found. I frequently forget to take my pool cue home with me when I leave a bar as well as books, keys, clothing, umbrellas, unpaid bar tabs, my wallet and even my wife. Overall, the odds are 10 to 1 that I get my stuff back (the odds are slightly higher for my wife). Those are much better odds than anywhere I’ve lived in the States.

2. Speaking of taxis, I love the fact that you can catch a cab at any hour and pay a fraction of what it costs in, say, Washington, D.C. or Tokyo. Sure, the doors on the cabs here don’t open automatically for you like in Japan, but I don’t think it’s worth paying a 50 percent premium.

3. Safety. Yes, aside from the fact that motorcycles tear up and down the sidewalks and everybody is talking on their cell phones when they drive, it is still among the safest places I have ever been. I hear stories from time to time about an attack or a burglary, but overall your chances of being a victim of a crime in Korea are pretty slim. There are few neighborhoods in Seoul in which I would be reluctant to walk through in the dead of night. Koreans are, for the most part, respectful of other people’s property and physical well being. If you pass out drunk on the side of the street, you will have your money in your pocket when you wake up. If you leave your keys in your car there is little reason to worry about it getting stolen unless, and this is a sad unless, it is parked in a neighborhood full of foreigners.

4. Deliveries. Let’s set aside the fact that the guys making the deliveries would sooner run you down on their 100cc scooters than swerve to miss you and concentrate on the fact that you can have anything delivered almost anytime. If you order something on the internet from any of the major Korean websites, you can expect to have it within a day. If you order food, you can expect it within an hour. This is something you won’t find anywhere in the West.

5. Finally, I must say something about Korean food. Love it or just merely like it, you won’t get a more filling and cheap meal anywhere. The side dishes alone would cost you $10 in the U.S. Take for example my favorite meal here, Bibimbap. That with four different bowls of, for lack of a better word, side stuff, would run you $15 or $20 in any decent Korean restaurant in the U.S. Here? The equivalent of $5 or less. You can’t beat that.

So there you have it. If I had to give five reasons why I am still here, these are the ones that would mean the most to me. There are other things I like about Korea, but these are the top five. Hopefully my wife will stop referring to me as Mr. Negativity from now on.