Mawwiage

I am chomping an Asian pear as I write. Brimming with juicy pear goodness. My dad and I went on a short hike on Sunday and bought 10,000 won (about US$8.50) worth from a farmer's market.

I had dinner with my friend M tonight, and got the lowdown on her current marriage crisis. She was set up by her parents with a guy in May, and to both her and the guy's surprise, they hit it off. So both sets of parents are really anxious that that they get married as soon as possible, since M's already -- gasp! -- 28 (Korean age -- I'll explain it another time).

The thing is, M's not 100 percent sure that she wants to marry this guy. As she puts it, she thinks he might be the one, but she's not sure, and she's not even sure if she would ever be sure -- about anyone. To complicate things, it's apparently an old superstition that if a man marries at age 29, he'll have a shorter life span than if he marries earlier or later, and since her guy is going to turn 29 next year, they'd have to get married in the next 7 weeks or wait until 2005.

Right.

In the more prosaic realm, M's whole life is now based in Seoul -- job, friends, alma mater -- whereas this guy is in a small city in the southeast, and has to be there for the next three years because he's fulfilling his military service there. So if she moves down there, she'll have to find a new job (not an easy thing to do in the current economy), new friends, blabbity blah. Or they live apart until he finishes military service.

Additionally, this guy would like a stay-at-home wife to take care of him and the kids, and M doesn't know if she wants to do that.

So while the happy couple is trying to sort out their feelings and figure out if their goals are compatible, the mothers, in the meantime, are scoping out wedding locations for next month.

I don't think this is necessarily a Korean thing; it might be a M thing. But it's not a scenario you'd run into in the States very often.
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Some people are just full of crrrraaap

Got a little story for ya.

Saturday, Oct. 20. DC. The night of Maggie's wedding in DC, after I'd made it back to Palace of Booboo and chasseed into Wendy's party wearing my pink bridesmaid outfit, I met a Korean foreign exchange student who looked at me, did a double take, and said, "Are you Korean?"

Yes, I said. Well, an overseas Korean (gyopo).

"Oh, so you were born in America?"

"No, but my family immigrated here when I was 8 months old, so..."

"Oh, so you're a Twinkie," she said, nodding her head.

"Umm," I hemmed for a second, simultaneously annoyed, shocked, and amused. Thinking that she probably didn't understand the connotations of that phrase, I replied, "Well, I do like white people!"

She smirked -- oops, I mean, "smiled" -- and nodded. She introduced herself as a Korean exchange student. "Nice to meet you," we said to each other in Korean. She condescendingly -- I mean, "approvingly" -- raised her eyebrows and congratulated me on my knowing the phrase.

The beautiful Aarti, who was sitting next to me, looked at me when the woman walked away and said, "I can't believe she just said that."

"What? Twinkie?"

"I can't believe she just called you that." Aarti sat silently for a second before turning to me. "I'm really offended on your behalf."

I shrugged. "Maybe she doesn't know what that means here," I offered.

"Then someone should tell her that's really offensive. I'm going to talk to her."

"You go, Aarti," I replied, bemused and wishing I had the courage to confront someone like that.

"Excuse me," Aarti addressed the woman. The woman turned to us again. "Hi," Aarti smiled. "A little while ago, you called my friend a Twinkie, and I was wondering if you knew what that meant here."

The woman looked warily at her. "Twinkie? That means someone who did not grow up in Korea, who grew up somewhere else."

"I see," Aarti responded. "Well, I thought you should know that here in America, it means something insulting, and that people might take offense if you call them that."

The woman shook her head. "No. It is not insulting. It means that you don't know Korea, you didn't grow up Korean. But it is not something bad."

"I understand that," Aarti said. "But here it means --"

"It means a racial traitor," I broke in.

The woman turned to me and repeated, "No. In Korea it does not mean that. It just means that you do not know Korea."

"I understand that," I said. "And in Korea I won't be offended if someone calls me that. But here it means something offensive, and so even though I understand where you're coming from, you should know that it can be hurtful here in America."

"No," she replied. "It is not meant to be hurtful. It just means that you do not know Korea. You see -- will you understand me if I use Korean slang?"

"No," I said.

"You probably cannot even pronounce my name correctly," she said.

"I'll try," I said.

"Okay, it's Gun-ok."

"Gun-ok."

"No."

"Gun-ok."

"No."

I shrugged, giving up.

Aarti tried: "Kun-ok."

"No."

"Kun-ok."

"No."

"Well, so we can't pronounce your name," Aarti impatiently said. "No one can pronounce my name either."

"But if you pronounce my name wrong, it means something different. Gun-ok means precious jade. Kun-ok means big jade."

Aarti steered the conversation back to the issue at hand. "As I said before, I just want you to understand that calling someone a Twinkie here means something offensive."

"No," the woman said for the 15th time. "It is not offensive. In Korea --"

"I've been living in Korea for the past year, and I've never heard that term," I said.

She looked at me. "Your friends would not say it in front of you," she said.

Totally stymied by this remark, I lapsed into silence. Aarti, as she explained later, decided at this point that the woman was merely stupid and unable to understand modification of social behavior to fit the surroundings, and turned to me: "Hey, do you remember any other Hostess products? What about those pink Snoballs, huh?"

I murmured something back. A few minutes later, I retreated to Wendy's bedroom, where I lay down on the bed, feeling winded. A little later, I heard one of Wendy's guests, a guileless and gentle Canadian, ask Wendy what that had been all about. I sat up, tucked my pink bridesmaid skirt under my feet, and tried to explain that this attitude of "you're Korean but you don't know Korea, shame on you" had been much more prevalent a few years ago, and that I sort of understood the resentment, if it had been that. Talking with Alex was actually quite soothing.

"So basically she was just crazy," he said at one point.

"No, not crazy, just... I don't know. Like I said, that attitude used to be a lot more common. I just didn't think I'd run into it here!"

Which is all true. But the worst thing about the encounter was that it made me wonder if my Korean friends do secretly resent me, or think of me as spoiled or unappreciative of the doors open to me because I have an eagle on my passport. Maybe they do call me Twinkie when I'm not around.

So on Saturday night, I told this story to my friend Hye-jong, who said, "I've never heard that expression used in Korea. I only know about it because I lived in the States for two years. She must have picked it up there."

I looked at her with something like relief. "So basically, she was full of shit."

"Well, maybe she was trying to apologize but she didn't know how -- but anyway, I've never hear anyone say that here. I mean, they might know about Twinkies, the snack, but not about the other meaning."

"She said that my friends wouldn't say it in front of me," I said, determined to see it through to the end.

Hye-jong shook her head. "Well, I'm your friend," she said, "and I would tell you."

I believe her. And I'm grateful. But good lord! That woman made me feel like shit, and for what? To save face? So she wouldn't have to say, "Oh! I didn't know that was hurtful, I'm sorry"? Either she was incapable of seeing that I was upset, or she didn't care, or she didn't know how to get out of it once she pretended that it was an expression used in Korea. I suppose, to be charitable, we can opt for the first or last. Otherwise, I'm forced to conclude that some people really are just shitbags.