Today I told the human resources fellow that I wanted to take four weeks off in September/October. He seemed to think this was possible, noting hesitantly that "it's very possible that [you] will not get paid." Well, of course I wouldn't!

It sounded promising when I talked with him, but as it's not really up to him, we'll see if they tell me not to bother coming back in October. I think, though, that since he doesn't want to take the trouble to find a new editor, I've got a good shot at keeping my job.
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Witch doctors and fortunetellers are still quite popular among older folks in Korea. There's the mudang, who communicates with spirits and can cleanse your house for you. I remember my mum hiring one in L.A. when I was young; she (mudangs are usually women) told my brother to get rid of all his red shirts. And there are also jumjengi, who take your birth year, month, day and hour and tell you your fortune based on these four factors. Parents of a couple who intend to get married may still opt to take the four factors (sa-ju) of both kids and ask a jumjengi if the match is advisable.

The funny thing about fortunetellers is how the younger generation has adapted this tradition. A friend of mine at work told me that there are sa-ju cafes, where you can pay about 10,000 won ($8 or so), enter your four factors into a computer, and read the results. Kind of like the old gypsy fortuneteller quarter machines at fairs and stuff.

I so want to go.

The friend who told me about this, Soonji, is planning to apply to business school in Singapore. She thinks that she probably will live abroad after going there, as job prospects for women over 30 in the Korean business world are limited (they're just going to get married and have babies and quit in the end, you see). Strangely enough, a jumjengi that her mother consulted some time ago did predict that Soonji was going to live abroad. Even stranger, her mother's a Catholic, but that doesn't mean much when it comes to superstitions that don't die; Soonji said that she'd heard of a Catholic priest who did sa-ju consultations!

[Aside: I read an article recently that described Korean Christianity as "this-worldly." Meaning that while Korean Christian leaders talk about the rewards of the devout Christian's afterlife, they also support the idea that being a good Christian has its rewards right here and now, in the form of good health and wealth. Much like Korean Buddhism, which combines the teachings of Buddha with a healthy dose of prayer-for-favors, Korean Christianity is quite practical. Personally, I gotta wonder how much God/Buddha/etc. cares about the minutiae of our lives, and whether G/B/etc. is really saying, "Hmm, I see that M just prayed for good digestion of her food [I've actually heard a friend pray for this]; make a note to especially encourage her small intestine to work hard tonight." In Buddhism, there is a Buddha of Compassion to whom many Korean Buddhists pray for favors. Wonder if the Big Three delegate prayer fulfillment to angels at all. Like, "Okay, Gabriel, your turn to answer the prayers for getting into first choice colleges this week." "Aw, I always get stuck with the college requests!" "Hey, I don't make up the schedule; you don't like it, you talk with the Big Guy." End aside, as verging into (too late?) blasphemy.]

Another friend, HJ, told me that when she saw a jumjengi, she was surprised at how accurate the jumjengi was about her personality and past (for example, the jumjengi knew how many siblings she had), but that she was less impressed by the predictions about the future. Apparently the jumjengi said that HJ would definitely get married at age 28. Like, positively and FOR SURE. Of course, HJ ended up getting married at age 32.

Vivian, a woman from Taiwan I met a few months back, is considering marrying her Korean boyfriend and living here. The whole story is far more complicated and weird than I can explain, but the fortuneteller part of it is that she wants to delay the wedding until the end of next year, because a fortuneteller in Taiwan said if she got married before then, she'd definitely get divorced. Unfortunately, her boyfriend gave her a deadline of next spring, so... we'll see what happens.

As for me, I asked my dad if a jumjengi had ever been consulted regarding me. He said that there was one time when the jumjengi said that people like me were unusual, going to so far as to say that for every 30,000 people born, there would be only one person like me. I really want to know how the jumjengi got those statistics. My dad, calculating quickly, said, "Let's see, so there are about 50 million people in Korea, so that divided by 30,000 -- so there are only 150 people like you in Korea!" So that means....? Absolutely nothing is right. But it's always nice to be told that you're one in a 30,000.