I’ve been in Korea for about five months now. I’m comfortable; on most days, the things I experience feel pretty natural. Between practicing Kyokushin at the dojo, learning Korean at another hagwon, and going to work at my school in the afternoons, I’ve shaped a routine that provides a pretty reliable sense of normalcy.
But every now and then—thankfully—Korea will throw me a curveball.
Being a part of the Kyokushin dojo in Seongnam has been an excellent experience. While I do not get to interact with many of the fighters there due to the fact that I have to train when most Koreans are working, training at the dojo still makes me feel like I’m a part of something greater than myself. Everything we do in the dojo, from rules of etiquette to basic movements, works together to establish a sense of ritual. Being familiar with the ritual automatically connects me to others who share the passion I’ve only recently cultivated. I find it comparable to religion; the dojo, like a church, fosters the growth of a community by maintaining the importance of ritual. I even feel guilty if I skip a scheduled training day, and if the testimonies of my Catholic friends have any truth to them, then the connection between church and dojo seem pretty strong. Like church, Kyokushin connects people regardless of differences in language, culture, or background. It also fosters some of the healthiest human interaction I’ve ever seen.
As one of the few foreigners at our dojo, most of the other fighters instantly recognize me even if they have never talked to me. I have been stopped on the street by a fellow fighter and saluted with the Kyokushin greeting of “osu!”. I have been in a diner at four in the morning and heard the same greeting chanted from a few tables down. In both instances, I dropped whatever I was doing and reciprocated with the greeting. Regardless of the language barriers that usually separate me from a Korean fighter, we both try to communicate with one another. Our conversation mostly consists of exaggerated gestures and whatever simple words and phrases we know from the other party’s language, but no awkwardness is felt; we are all too happy to hazard an attempt at dialogue because we both recognize that we share something.
Bundang’s a pretty big place, yet I’ve run into people connected to the Seongnam dojo several times. Perhaps that was by pure luck, perhaps it’s because people pay a white guy walking around with a rolled-up karate gi tucked in his arm more attention than other passers-by, but whatever the case, my frequent run-ins with fellow Kyokushin fighters has caused me to assume that the people on the street who start a conversation with me must know me from the dojo in Seongnam.
Last Wednesday shattered that assumption. It began as a typical Wednesday; I woke up at 11:00, ate breakfast, and hustled through the cold winter air to the subway so I could get to the dojo by noon. I had to transfer at the station in Moran. My eyes focused on a list of vocabulary words for my Korean class, I walked towards the stairs leading to the transfer platform after exiting my first train. Before reaching the stairwell, I heard someone say “American?” in Korean.
I looked over my piece of paper to see a Korean man in his late thirties staring at me with a big smile on his face. He swayed from side to side, but he didn’t reek of alcohol. His baseball cap hid what I imagined was a prematurely balding head of hair.
“American?” he repeated.
I tried speaking in Korean by telling him that yes, I was an American, and I asked him if he knew English. He lifted his hand and shook it from side to side to indicate that he did not. He looked at me for a few seconds before speaking again. In English.
“American, very good!” he said. He pointed to himself. “Korean, very good!” He pointed to the subway tracks. “Russia, very good!”
I hadn’t heard anything about the tracks being produced in Russia, but then the man clarified everything. “China, bad.” He frowned and pointed his thumb towards the floor. “Japan, bad. Mongol, bad.” He was declaring his political allegiances and prejudices.
“Iraq?” he asked. I started to say something, but then he pointed at something in the distance. “My son. Iraq.” Then, he pointed to himself, and said, “Me, Bosnia.”
Now, South Korean troops have been stationed in Iraq. In fact, effective December 5, Korean troops have begun their withdrawal from the country. But the Bosnian War? I wasn’t so sure about that one. But then, my new acquaintance convinced me once again by clarifying his story.
“Me, sniper.” He extended his arms as if he were holding a rifle. “Dragunov, you know?”
I did know. The Dragunov sniper rifle was developed in the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War, and it uses 7.62 mm rounds. Thanks, video games.
He laughed. “Russian Dragunov, very good. Ukraine Dragunov, very bad.” Ukraine just doesn’t make them like Mother Russia, I suppose.
At this point, I realized I was going to be late to the dojo if I stayed with this guy for much longer. I wanted to go, but my curiosity was piqued. This guy looked like someone who would be Duke Moon potential.
He pointed to himself again. “L.A. SWAT, I like. Me, second dan.” Something clicked in my brain. Dan is a ranking system used in martial arts, so I figured this guy knew me from the dojo. People who have reached the level of dan wear black belts in most martial arts. Disregarding his praise for the fine men and women of the Los Angeles SWAT team or perhaps that godawful movie with Colin Farrell and Samuel L. Jackson, I reached inside of my backpack to show him my orange belt from the dojo in the hopes of provoking more conversation.
Instead, I was given a roundhouse kick to my right thigh. Then, my sniping, black belt friend said, “Me second dan, you beginner.” He put his hands up, and he started kicking. He scored two or three more kicks on my thighs. I blocked a punch or two before I eventually punched him in the shoulder. He stopped.
“Heheheheheheh,” he chuckled to himself. “Punch,” he said, and he gave me a thumbs-up.
Moran is a busy subway station, and people were looking at us quizzically. I can only imagine what it looked like from their perspective. Some Korean mother of two was probably just trying to go somewhere for lunch. She didn’t have a care in the world—Korea’s subway is one of the safest and cleanest in the world—and here comes a disheveled adult Korean man who starts throwing low kicks at a twenty-something white guy who looks like Harry Potter with a serious case of bed head.
As Nick would later put it, “Dude, that only happens in video games! That’s level one, where you have to fight a random guy from the streets before you can fight the masters.” Awesome, my life is now Mortal Kombat 3.
Anyways, my opponent then shook hands with me. “You, me, drink. Now.” He pointed to the stairwell that led to the main street of Moran, which is flanked by bars and hofs for a solid kilometer. I told him, “Dojo, I go.” He shook his hand in midair again. “No. Drink.” I shook my head, and I insisted I had to go. It was only a few minutes before noon. How dedicated of a drinker was this guy? He must have simply stayed up all night; I don’t imagine he actively made the choice to wake up before noon to go drinking. But I also didn’t imagine I’d be taking a few roundhouse kicks in the legs before I actually got to the dojo, so who knows?
“OK,” he finally said as he relented. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his jacket, and he handed one to me. “Here,” he said. He shook my hand again, a big smile still spread across his face. I said goodbye, and I turned and walked towards the transfer line.
Part of me wishes I had hung out with him just to pursue a story, but ultimately, I’m glad I didn’t. Most martial arts have rules against starting an unprovoked fight in public—even if it’s only in drunken jest—so if he was a black belt, the guy wasn’t a very good representative of his style. Thus, even if I were to toss aside the myriad of other reasons why it wouldn’t have been a good idea to go have a few lunchtime drinks with the guy, I’m not losing any sleep over the missed opportunity. David posed a great hypothetical question that provided me all the closure I needed to feel satisfied about last Wednesday’s strange events:
“That’s crazy. What do you think would have happened if you met that guy and you hadn’t been training in Karate?”
