The Patio

So, let’s talk about Friday night, shall we?




Friday night ended in a calamity that is present at the end of a bad night that should’ve been cut short. At 1 am an older Korean man stumbled over to our table, smacked my shoulder and showed me an ID card and his police summons or citation. What it was in truth, I don’t know. Instead I stood up, said “nope, not doing this one again,” and walked home with everyone else at the table.

From the beginning: I met a few people at the Patio. The Patio is exactly that. It’s a big wooden deck outside of a big convenience store in Chundae (the place I was calling Downtown for a long time). It is nothing much, but it has plenty of tables, a few umbrellas and an unlimited supply of cheap alcohol to be purchased alongside snacks and toothbrushes. It’s location makes it a nice place to start and end a night out.

“Ok, sure. That sounds good. Meeting at the Patio?” is probably spoken by Cheongju waygooks at least once a week.

I met up with a couple of friends who happened to be in that area of town anyway and we planned on a couple of drinks. A low cost and non-commital sort of night. I had to attend a seminar at 9:30am that would tell me how to adapt to the culture shock of landing in Korea. This was about 6 months late, but I was told there wasn’t an option to sleep in.

This guy came over right away. He was an old Korean guy, a bit past middle-aged and well past sober. He tried to talk to us. This is a fairly common occurrence: a Korean sees a few foreigners sitting around and he tries to talk to them. It is all in good fun. Usually they will try out a few English words if they know any or invite you to drink with them. Generally it ends with laughs, and bewilderment as to what anybody is saying, and a tip of the glass.

If this particular guy stayed a bit longer than is usual, we didn’t think too much of it. After 10 or so minutes he seemed to give up and move on to some other waygooks on the other side of the Patio. We then continued doing what we were doing which was nothing really worth mentioning. It was just a last minute Patio meet-up.

Some time went by and Tim, Amanda, and I were joined by Robyn from South Africa. We talked for a while until that guy came back. That guy. That guy might have ruined the Patio for me for a while.

Again, he was harmless. He kept trying to talk to us and we kept saying that we didn’t know Korean. We laughed when it seemed he was looking for a laugh and we took on the mannerisms we all take on when talking to a Korean curious about the foreigners sitting at a table drinking beer.

As for him, he had left an opened bottle of soju at another table which was probably for the best as he was trashed.

So, for a while he stood over us and we looked up at him not really sure what the crap was going on. We tried to reiterate the fact that we did NOT speak Korean. Whatever language we spoke didn’t seem to matter too much as he kept on with a steady flow of one sided conversation.

He then pulled up a plastic chair to the end of the table, next to Amanda and I.

I would say things deteriorated quickly, but it actually took an absurd amount of time to reach what might have been the inevitable conclusion of the night for this guy.

He consistently jumped into our conversation. Fine, we didn’t want to be disrespectful. He would grow quiet for a while and then jump back into the conversation and laugh when we laughed. We reminded him again that we did not speak Korean and added that we didn’t know what he was saying. After particularly long speaches on his part we would look at him so as to make no doubt that we didn’t understand.

Still, the guy didn’t leave.

At a certain point, when an older and drunker Korean is hovering over you trying to get you to spontaneously understand Korean, the atmosphere changes. After 30 minutes or so, the only thing we could really talk about was that we were getting a bit uncomfortable. Still, we really didn’t say too much until he started grabbing at us.

It started with shoulder taps, moved onto the typical extended-length Korean handshake, and that sort of thing. What was more was that he was starting to get into our faces and what we once took as overly friendliness was quickly turning into obnoxious drunkeness.

We were growing tired of our nonexistent conversation being taken over by this guy. We tried to make it pretty clear that we didn’t really want to talk to him anymore by not saying anything and not incessantly smiling when he started to babble. We told him in plain English (which means nothing) but with a tone that should have meant: “please, no offense but go away.”

He was too far gone to take a hint. At a certain point my inability to be anything but passive bit me in the ass. He seemed to take particular notice of me. He started pawing at my arm and my belly. He would clasp onto my arm for long stretches of time and tap my shoulder every now and again.

Anyway, this went on for an hour or so before we got too fed up to even pretend to be polite. We told him in English and broken Korean to stop touching us. Eventually “you should go,” became “you need to leave.” The guy was immune or blind to all of us putting our arms into the shape of an “X” and telling him “no” in Korean.

I don’t think he meant anything malicious or to be anything but a friendly drunk. He kept pawing at me and would grab my arm now and again despite my pulling back. At this point we were openly telling him to get and he was openly “shhh-ing anyone who told him to stop. Then his taps on my shoulder got harder and harder and he grabbed my wrist tighter and tighter and Robyn didn’t have to say anything to the clerk before he was dragging the guy away.

The two argued and tussled for a while in Korean. We didn’t know what was going on but it seemed obvious that this guy would be on his way to wherever he was going to go. They argued for a while until the clerk went back into the store.

For a moment, as the guy tried to shake my hand again and we yelled at him, I was worried the guy would be left alone because of his seniority. A short time later security showed up and we watched with every other foreigner as the rent-a-cop dragged him to a table a bit further off and argued for a time until the cops came and legitimately dragged the guy across the street, into a car and out of our sight.

We sat and talked for a while.

“Someone’s wife is going to kill them,” Tim said.

Probably true. Guy could have been a respected business man but we couldn’t tell. We put up with more than most people would have but in the end he just wouldn’t leave us alone. He probably would’ve been told to go home if he hadn’t gotten into it with the clerk, security, and cops; but he did.

All seemed to have worked out until someone groaned and the guy sat down again, mumbled and held his ticket in our faces.

No drunk tank here, apparently.