My first time at the bus terminal in Incheon, the day I arrived in Korea, the woman behind the ticket counter made an interesting comment when I requested my pass to the town that would soon be home. "Cheongju? (chawng-joo)" No, I corrected her. She made a perplexed face, shrugged and decided the silly American could have his ticket to tiny town.
Cheongju, one and a half hours from Chungju, is only 3 times the size of it's oft-confused counterpart. Those extra 400,000 people make it the biggest city in the region- making it the only important place there. The clerk's one word implied a lot.
Here in Korea, bigger is better. Progress is improving the quality of life. The more money you have, the more you can be trusted. If you have a position of power, you are always right- at least when it comes to anyone below you.
This includes the relationship between husband and wife. So, as I sat in the immigration line in Cheongju, I wondered if the young Vietnamese girls knew what they were getting into. An older, pie-bald man with a sun-freckled face and deep-creased eyes helped one of the young females fill out her visa application. F2 family visa I assumed. The girl looked to be maybe 16 at the oldest, but she was now sporting some crisp, new clothes and properly thick Korean-style coat of makeup. No sense judging, much the same happens in America.
I was part of a fairly rag-tag assortment of out-of-place faces in an out-of-place immigration office. We consisted of two white-as-snow wayguks, one Korean-born-but-American-raised girl who spoke no Korean, a few chinese fellows, the Vietnamese brides, a man who looked like an islander by blood but dressed like an American and only spoke English. The building was surrounded by norebang clubs, 'love motels' and 'business clubs'. Business like business-time business. It's business, it's business club!
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