One of the things that DW and I noticed, while we lived in Chŏnju, South Korea, from 1997 to 1999, was that businesses came and went. Especially so, with the economic meltdown that had gripped Southeast Asia. This crisis led to the director of our hagwon (teaching institute) to financial ruin and forced him to close the language school without paying us for our last month of teaching.
I wrote about Korea's financial crisis in my novel, Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary.
Over the past month, I've spent my down time planning my return to Korea and revisiting Chŏnju, virtually, through Google Maps. While the area surrounding my hagwon has changed very little, as far as construction is concerned, I noticed that many of the businesses with which I was familiar were gone.
The convenience store that was next door to my office—where I used to buy snacks and candy for my students and packages of ramen for emergency dinners, for me—has been replaced by a travel agency. Indeed, even the building seems to have either been replaced or has undergone a major transformation.
I was saddened to see that, in the side street that was behind my office building, the hole-in-the-wall restaurant, where the office secretaries, DW, and I often went for lunch, was also gone. (Again, I wrote about that place in my book.)
On one of my virtual drives in Chŏnju, I followed the Google Maps street view from the apartment in Dongsan-dong to the hagwon. For the most part, it's a straightforward drive, following Girin-daero, the main street that starts in the northwest end of the city, near the Honam Expressway (now, where the 2002 World Cup stadium lies), and runs southeastward, through the heart of the city. It's a long drive that, in 1997, ran through rice fields and industrial parks before hitting central Chŏnju.
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| Photo courtesy Google |
Great underwear, by the way.
As more and more buildings emerged, I found it hard to remember where the 1997 city began. I felt I was getting closer to my hagwon but didn't know where I was in relation to Youngchin Building and everything before it.
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| Photo courtesy Google |
I saw signs for Chŏnbuk National University, which eventually gave me my bearings, but buildings seemed different, as though they had been torn down and built anew.
I finally found Dokchin Plaza, further down from where I remembered it to be. My memory had failed me. But when I looked at the plaza, it didn't appear as I remembered it. Roads in and out of it had been widened. Structures were placed in its centre, including a covered parking lot. The bus station had been made to more than a simple stop, with its own lane. New buildings had been erected.
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| Photo courtesy Google |
I continued down Girin-daero, which, in 1997, was also considered to be Paltal-ro (another street that technically started at the split by my hagwon and continued a different southeast path) along this part of the city, and stopped at a street that I immediately recognized: it was a narrow lane that lead northward, toward Chŏnbuk N.U., where, back in my day, the ex-pat bar, SE, was located.
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| Photo courtesy Google |
Kim's Hair.
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| Photo courtesy Google |
About six weeks after arriving in Chŏnju, I was in desperate need for a hair cut. But because my fellow teachers were women who either hadn't needed cuts since arriving (she was growing out her hair) or had had a cut in Seoul, they couldn't give me any recommendations. It wasn't until I discussed my dilemma with one of my adult students from my morning class that I received help.
Mi-gyeong spoke exceptional English, compared to many of my other adult students, so much so that I wondered why she felt the need to take my class at all. While her grammar was far from perfect, she never had trouble making herself understood, nor did I have to repeat myself with her. To make our morning class more useful for her, I would introduce her to common idioms and everyday jargon so that she could expand her already vast vocabulary.
Though I wrote differently in my novel, our relationship was always professional and never extended beyond the classroom.
On occasions when she was the only student in my class—she worked in an office just down the hall from the hagwon; often, other students wouldn't show up even though they had paid for the lesson because it was so early and they would sacrifice the class for more sleep—we would often spend the lesson time conversing about her life and mine, before Korea. On such an occasion, I explained that I needed a haircut and asked her if she could help me find a place to receive one.
That's when she introduced me to her stylist at Kim's Hair.
That day, on our lunch break, Mi-gyeong took me to the second floor of the building across from the narrow lane to Chŏnbuk Dae (U). The salon was above a clothing store, Roem, which also remains to this day (or as late as September of 2015, according to Google Maps).
Surprisingly, at that time of day, the salon was deserted apart from the staff. After our class, when Mi-gyeong had gone to work, she called her stylist and made my appointment. I had wondered why it was so easy to get a lunchtime appointment and now I knew why.
Here's the passage that I wrote of that appointment, in Songsaengnim (with a few cuts—no pun intended—to avoid any possible spoiler alerts):
Kim's Hair was a bright salon with large mirrors and a big window overlooking Paltal-ro and the narrow street that led to the old gate of Chŏnbuk University. Bee-bop music pumped through a sound system and all of the employees were dressed in black, skin-tight clothes; the men in polyester slacks and turtlenecks, the women in t-shirts and mini-skirts. They looked more like they were about to go to a nightclub than to cut hair. Their outfits were a sharp contrast to the wedding dresses on display. This was a place that was frequented by bridal parties as well as the general public. Mi-gyeong was immediately recognized by the receptionist, who then ran to the back room, presumably to call my stylist. All eyes were on me, and some of the women whispered to each other and giggled.I used Kim's Hair during my first year in Chŏnju. At my first visit, Mi-gyeong and I learned that the salon's receptionist was the cousin of one of the hagwon secretaries. When my stylist discovered this fact, he immediately invited me out for an evening of drinks, for me to be accompanied by my receptionist as a translator. Her cousin, the receptionist, would join us, as would DW.
"Have they never seen a waeguk before?" I asked. Everyone laughed at my use of waeguk—foreigner.
"See, maybe. Cut hair, never."
A man in his mid to late twenties stepped out from the back and came towards us. He looked like he could have been clipped from a GQ magazine. He wore a bright red silk shirt with a large pointed collar, a loud, multi-coloured tie, and a black, silk suit, which he had rolled the sleeves to his elbows. His hair was slicked straight back, and he wore thick rimmed glasses that perfectly finished off the look he was trying to achieve. He was obviously the manager or owner, as everything about him stood out from the rest of his colleagues. He was openly effeminate, marked by his high voice and squeaky laugh. He walked towards Mi-gyeong but his smile was aimed at me. They talked for a bit: Mi-gyeong explained the situation and gave the hair dresser my name, without a formal introduction.
"What do you want him to do with your hair?" Mi-gyeong finally asked me. I explained the simple style to her and she translated for the hairdresser. Neither seemed sure about what I wanted so I picked up one of the fashion magazines that lay on a nearby coffee table and leafed through it. Naturally, almost all of the models in the magazine were Asian and weren't sporting the style I wanted. There were some western models, and after a while I found something similar to what I wanted. I pointed to the picture and the stylist gave me a big "Ah."
I was taken to a chair and Mi-gyeong followed. I felt like my mother had taken me to the barber and was going to supervise to make sure the barber did what she wanted. But I knew she was there in case I needed any translating. "What time do you have to be back at the office?" I asked her. The staff of five, all circled around the chair, laughed in unison. It was clear that this was their first time hearing English spoken.
"I told my boss I have appointment. No hurry."
The hairdresser did not cut my hair: he sculpted it. Every snip of the scissors was precise and dramatic, and twice he grew a little overanxious and snapped his hand back before he had fully cut through the hairs, and the scissors gripped and yanked the hair out. Often, he would stand back and reflect on what he was designing, folding his arms and supporting his chin. Five assistants stood around him, and once and awhile he would hand them his scissors, only to be replaced by a different pair. He was a surgeon of sorts and this was his operating arena. He also relied heavily on electric razors and had every kind at the ready, from larger shearers to a tiny one that looked like an electric toothbrush, which he used for my sideburns and the back of my neck.
Once the cutting was finished, I was led by a pretty, thin woman to the wash station, where she shampooed and rinsed my hair. The woman touched me so gently that at times I wasn't sure she was doing anything. She had placed a small cloth over my eyes to prevent any soap or hot water from temporarily blinding me. She was quite thorough in getting any loose hairs off me, and when she dried my hair with a towel, she even dug into my ears—something that I almost considered personal, but was surprisingly relaxed and trusting, as she was so delicate. She was shy, though, as I was the first westerner that she had ever touched. I thought that having my hair washed after the haircut was much more logical than having it washed before. After all, my hair was clean and any stylist would use a spray bottle to moisten my hair before cutting it. But washing my hair after the cut got rid of the loose hairs that would otherwise fall onto my clothes, and ultimately end up all over my pillow, tonight.
From the wash station, I was put back in the stylist's chair, where he was waiting with a hair dryer. Again, his moves were choreographed and he spun the hair dryer like he was wielding a six-shooter at a rodeo. A little dab of styling gel finished his sculpting and, after a surprising hour, I was done. By far, the longest haircut that I had ever experienced, but certainly the most entertaining one.
(After that get-together, in a Korean nightclub, we quickly discovered that the stylist and I had nothing in common, that the hagwon secretary and her cousin did most of the talking, most of it amongst themselves and on topics that were unrelated to our party. Though it was a nice evening, my hairdresser and I limited further interaction to the salon.)
For my return to Chŏnju, in May, I had already planned to return to the lane that led to the university, to find the old locations of SE, Urban, and TwoBeOne (which is a setting in my next book but hadn't opened until I was teaching at Jeonju University). But now that I know that Kim's Hair may still exist, 21 years after I was a client, I'll have to check it out.
My stylist will be in his 40s: if he's still there, will he remember me?
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