Read Online Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" by P. J. O’Rourke - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: P. J. O’Rourke
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Seoul Brothers
DECEMBER 1987
When the kid in the front row at the rally bit off the tip of his little
finger and wrote, KIM DAE JUNG, in blood on his fancy white ski
jacket-I think that was the first time I ever really felt like a
foreign correspondent. I mean, here was something really fucking
foreign.
It wasn't even an act of desperate protest. Opposition candidate Kim Dae Jung hadn't lost the Korean presidential election yet.
KDJ was just giving a small pep talk to a group of well-wishershalf a million of them. They spread in every direction out over the
horizon, packed flank to flank and butt to loin, all standing at
attention in a freezing Seoul drizzle with serious, purposeful expressions on their mugs.
When a Korean political candidate does a little stumping, a
little flesh pressing, a little baby kissing, he puts on a sour face,
mounts a platform and stares at the crowd. He's surrounded by
Samoan-size bodyguards, his chap-sae, or goons, (literally
"trapped birds'). A couple of the goons hold an inch-thick Plexi glas shield in front of the candidate's face. The shield has handles
bolted on both ends like a see-through tea tray. The crowd shouts
the candidate's name for half an hour, then the candidate yells at
the crowd. Korean sounds like ack-ack fire, every syllable has a
primary accent: YO-YO CAMP STOVE HAM HOCK DIP STICK
DUCK SOUP HAT RACK PING-PONG LIP SYNC!!!! If the candidate pauses, the crowd responds in unison with a rhymed slogan or
with a precise fifteen seconds of waving little paper Korean flags.
There's no frenzy in this, no mob hysteria, and it's not a drill or an
exercise.
I'd never seen spontaneous regimentation before. And I don't
hope to see it again. I was standing on the platform, a couple of
goons away from "The DJ," as the foreign reporters call Kim Dae
Jung. And I was looking at this multitude, and I was thinking, "Oh,
no, they really do all look alike,"-the same Blackglama hair, the
same high-boned pie-plate face, the same tea-stain complexion,
the same sharp-focused look in 1 million identical anthracite eyes.
They are a strange northern people who came to this mountain
peninsula an ice age ago and have kept their bloodlines intact
through a thousand invasions. Their language is unrelated to Chinese or Japanese, closer, in fact, to Finnish and Hungarian. They
don't like anyone who isn't Korean, and they don't like each other
all that much, either. They're hardheaded, hard-drinking, tough
little bastards, "the Irish of Asia."
There was a very un-Irish order to that crowd, however, an
order beyond my comprehension-like nuclear fission. There is
order to everything in Korea. They call it kibun, which means, to
the extent it can be translated, "harmonious understanding."
Everything in Korea is orderly, except when it isn't-like nuclear
fission.
The speech ended, and every single person in that audience
pushed forward to be with Kim Dae Jung. I looked down from the
platform and saw the kid in the front row wiggle out of his white
parka. He was a normal-looking kid (but in Korea everybody is
normal looking). He had a sign reading, in garbled English, MR.
KIM DJ ONLY BECOME THE 1ST PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD, on one
side and the same, I guess, in Korean on the other. Then, with a
can-do smile, he nipped the digit and began his calligraphy.
The DJ, in a goon envelope, descended to meet his chanting
admirers. I tried, without goons, to follow him. I was cross-bodyblocked and stiff-armed and went down in a second. I was a oneman zone defense against a football team of 500,000. Squat, rockhard Korean bodies surrounded me in three dimensions. I was
squeezed and heaved and, most of all, overwhelmed by the amazing stink of kimchi, the garlic and hot-pepper sauerkraut that's
breakfast, lunch and dinner in Korea. Its odor rises from this
nation of 40 million in a miasma of eyeglass-fogging kimchi breath,
Seoul Brothers
DECEMBER 1987
When the kid in the front row at the rally bit off the tip of his little
finger and wrote, KIM DAE JUNG, in blood on his fancy white ski
jacket-I think that was the first time I ever really felt like a
foreign correspondent. I mean, here was something really fucking
foreign.
It wasn't even an act of desperate protest. Opposition candidate Kim Dae Jung hadn't lost the Korean presidential election yet.
KDJ was just giving a small pep talk to a group of well-wishershalf a million of them. They spread in every direction out over the
horizon, packed flank to flank and butt to loin, all standing at
attention in a freezing Seoul drizzle with serious, purposeful expressions on their mugs.
When a Korean political candidate does a little stumping, a
little flesh pressing, a little baby kissing, he puts on a sour face,
mounts a platform and stares at the crowd. He's surrounded by
Samoan-size bodyguards, his chap-sae, or goons, (literally
"trapped birds'). A couple of the goons hold an inch-thick Plexi glas shield in front of the candidate's face. The shield has handles
bolted on both ends like a see-through tea tray. The crowd shouts
the candidate's name for half an hour, then the candidate yells at
the crowd. Korean sounds like ack-ack fire, every syllable has a
primary accent: YO-YO CAMP STOVE HAM HOCK DIP STICK
DUCK SOUP HAT RACK PING-PONG LIP SYNC!!!! If the candidate pauses, the crowd responds in unison with a rhymed slogan or
with a precise fifteen seconds of waving little paper Korean flags.
There's no frenzy in this, no mob hysteria, and it's not a drill or an
exercise.
I'd never seen spontaneous regimentation before. And I don't
hope to see it again. I was standing on the platform, a couple of
goons away from "The DJ," as the foreign reporters call Kim Dae
Jung. And I was looking at this multitude, and I was thinking, "Oh,
no, they really do all look alike,"-the same Blackglama hair, the
same high-boned pie-plate face, the same tea-stain complexion,
the same sharp-focused look in 1 million identical anthracite eyes.
They are a strange northern people who came to this mountain
peninsula an ice age ago and have kept their bloodlines intact
through a thousand invasions. Their language is unrelated to Chinese or Japanese, closer, in fact, to Finnish and Hungarian. They
don't like anyone who isn't Korean, and they don't like each other
all that much, either. They're hardheaded, hard-drinking, tough
little bastards, "the Irish of Asia."
There was a very un-Irish order to that crowd, however, an
order beyond my comprehension-like nuclear fission. There is
order to everything in Korea. They call it kibun, which means, to
the extent it can be translated, "harmonious understanding."
Everything in Korea is orderly, except when it isn't-like nuclear
fission.
The speech ended, and every single person in that audience
pushed forward to be with Kim Dae Jung. I looked down from the
platform and saw the kid in the front row wiggle out of his white
parka. He was a normal-looking kid (but in Korea everybody is
normal looking). He had a sign reading, in garbled English, MR.
KIM DJ ONLY BECOME THE 1ST PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD, on one
side and the same, I guess, in Korean on the other. Then, with a
can-do smile, he nipped the digit and began his calligraphy.
The DJ, in a goon envelope, descended to meet his chanting
admirers. I tried, without goons, to follow him. I was cross-bodyblocked and stiff-armed and went down in a second. I was a oneman zone defense against a football team of 500,000. Squat, rockhard Korean bodies surrounded me in three dimensions. I was
squeezed and heaved and, most of all, overwhelmed by the amazing stink of kimchi, the garlic and hot-pepper sauerkraut that's
breakfast, lunch and dinner in Korea. Its odor rises from this
nation of 40 million in a miasma of eyeglass-fogging kimchi breath,
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