How to Entertain Yourself

Before I get on to "Integration Part Two: Fill in the blank with something smart", I figured I should educate the masses on the many ways to entertain oneself while in Korea. First of all, let me remind you that Korea is a country that, in the short space of about sixty years, has developed a freakishly successful economy and an unquenchable thirst for consumerism. America, you think you know how to consume? Korea will zerg-rush all over your pitiful Terran base before you've even started building space marines. (Hm...I think I got lost in my metaphor there. Whatever. Korea's good at Starcraft AND at buying things.) Here are a few novel ways I've found to entertain myself while in Korea.

1. Go to the movies. Okay, movies here are pretty much the same, but if you have a significant other, you can rent a couch at the back of the theater and snuggle your way through the latest American action-thriller. Or the latest Korean psychological-thriller. Just don't expect any subtitles.

2. Karaoke. I've probably talked about this before, but I cannot emphasize how much I love karaoke in Asia. (Or noraebang, as it's called in Korea, which literally translates to "song room".) Unlike the horrible narcissistic experience that is karaoke in America, in Asia you can rent a small room with only you and your friends and drunkenly serenade each other (which, I might mention, is as it should be. It is never okay to sing "A Whole New World" or some other monstrosity to a bar full of strangers.) Depending on the place you go to, you can either pay by the hour or pay by the amount of food and booze you purchase. If you want to keep singing after several rounds of somaek (soju + beer), all you have to do is order more fried food and more beer, and you can keep going. The fun never ends and most places are open 24/7! So maybe it's 3 am and you want to go home, but the trains and buses have stopped running and that taxi driver looks suspiciously drunk. Instead of giving up and sleeping on a bench, just go to a noraebang and prepare for the next round. In two hours, you can get on the train and go home. Never give up.

3. Multi-room. So maybe noraebang isn't your thing. Maybe you hate singing or maybe those unsophisticated rice-eaters don't have your favorite Florence and the Machine song. Never fear. There is the entertainment monolith, the multi-room. Inside each multi-room you will find karaoke, many many movies, and the latest iterations of playstation, nintendo, and xbox. All of this is situated around a comfy couch in your own private room. It's like being at home, except you don't have to pay the massive electricity bill and snacks and drinks are available at the push of a button.

4. PC room. So maybe you don't feel like using the multi-room. Maybe you just want to get your Diablo III on in a place where no one can yell at you to get off the computer and go play outside. And maybe you also want to be able to quest without having to get up for those annoying snack breaks or cigarette breaks. And maybe you're also too poor to get your own top-of-the-line gaming PC and pay for the internet and electricity bill that comes with it. The PC-bang is for you! These places are everywhere and they're ridiculously cheap. It's something like $1 per hour and at the push of a button, they'll bring you whatever snacks you desire. My students frequent these places because it's a good excuse to avoid both school and parents, both of whom make you study instead of getting that top League of Legends score. Whenever I discuss games with my middle school students, by the way, I discover that some of them are actually ranked LOL players, and they spend their free time practicing rather than studying. Park recently told me that he and his friend set out to beat Diablo III in 5 hours, but were disappointed when they beat it in 12 hours instead. America, do you still wonder why Korea dominates online gaming?

5. Korean television. I could probably devote an entire post to the wonders of Korean television. I can't even understand it, but it's still beautiful. Korean television thrives on what they call "variety shows". Basically, they take comedy, fuse it with a talk show, then film it like a reality show. Many shows exist on the premise of making celebrities do embarrassing things or feature comedians trying to pass "missions", which involve things like piling ten fat people dressed as 80's-style mafia into a minivan and then making another ridiculously-dressed person pull the car for a certain distance. One show, called "Shinhwa Broadcast" features the k-pop group Shinhwa and has no other purpose than to dress the bandmembers in funny costumes while making them compete against each other to earn points that don't matter. Such challenges involve dressing as women, screaming for extended periods of time, and eating terrible food without showing emotion.

My favorite show is a masterpiece called Gag Concert. It's like SNL except consistently funny. Basically, the show is divided into a series of skit segments, all of which feature a "gag". For example, they have one right now called "The Tired Family", which features a family doing ordinary tasks...all while carrying people on their backs. Normal things like eating or picking up the phone become almost impossible. For example:
Dad: "Grandpa, Mrs. Kim is on the phone for you!"
Grandpa: *emerges carrying an enormous fat man on his back* "Oh yay! Mrs. Kim is my favorite person! Where's the phone?"
Dad: "It's on the second floor."
Grandpa: "...Tell her I'm dead!"

Poor grandpa.

"Son, if you can do three push-ups, I'll give you more allowance."

Here are some other skits.
1. "The Selfish Patent Office", in which caricatures of the CEOs of Apple and Samsung compete for patents. Most of their inventions are super ridiculous things like the t-shirt that transforms from office attire to clubbing attire or the pants that transform into a blanket for your girlfriend to sit on.

2. "Father and Son", in which an overweight father and son obsess over eating. The comedic timing is brilliant. You never quite know what the punchline is going to be, but you know it's going to be about food.

3. "Brave Guys". Brave Guys is one of my favorites. It starts off with a guy getting dumped, at which point his misery is interrupted by the intrusion of the fictitious hip-hop group, Brave Guys. They then proceed to show the audience how brave they are by insulting the director of the show, insulting various celebrities, and making incredibly un-PC statements about world politics. They then launch into a song about male and female interactions as a way of explaining how the dumped guy messed up.

The spirit of hip-hop.

4. "Four Men". Four Men has to be my favorite. It's pretty simple, really. Four men appear, each of whom has a trait that women don't like: unpopular, unsophisticated, short, and fat. They then each take a turn standing on a podium and ranting. Each rant concerns an event from their lives and ends with the statement, "So please don't misunderstand me." It's the ultimate in self-mockery for the sake of humor.

The four men of Gag Concert.

If you want to check out Gag Concert for yourself, here's a link to the subbing site I use.

Finally, here's a video that the Korean Air Force made. It's a parody of Les Miserables, and it's far superior to the recent movie. It also makes you wonder just how bored these guys must be during their two years of required military service.