So you’ve signed on for the emotional roller coaster ride of your life, been admitted to the financially floundering Southeast Asian theme park commonly known as Korea.  Watch out!  Because developing a taste for Kim chi and successfully ordering a round of maek-ju isn’t solid proof that you’ve shirked culture shock unscathed and deftly adapted to the Korean way of life.

 

I survived another day of mindlessly infantile kinder-chatter at the hagwon and then, having finished H. S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, embarked on my next paperback journey to The Land Where Big Words Rule.  Fittingly, the book was titled ON BEING FOREIGN: Culture Shock in Short Fiction-An International Anthology, by Lewis and Jungman (editors), and included a comprehensive introduction to the six phases of culture shock.  Overlooked I’m sure by Oprah’s Book Club researchers, this nifty resource and an invaluable Silly Putty Egg were inherited following the departure of another teacher who, when initially coming to Korea, traded his meth spoon for a soju glass.  Thanks, dude.  The book hit home like a heat-seeking sledgehammer.
 
The experience of being a foreigner, of being an expatriate on an extended sojourn, is the bond we share here in Korea.  Although each situation is unique, a basic pattern has been shown by social psychologists to underlie the experience of being a stranger in a strange land.  Research indicates that most sojourns are marked by six dynamic phases, which are accompanied by drastic and profound emotional and personal changes.
 
The first, or Preliminary Phase, includes the decision to leave home, preparations and going-away parties, and the initial effects of the journey from home to host culture.  During this period, emotions run high as tremendous anticipation of what is to come is tempered by regret at what is to be left behind.  You may be viewed as both a fearless cultural adventurer and a celebrated western failure but, nevertheless, your bravery is revered and courage envied by lackeys who seldom leave their living rooms for anything beyond the all-inclusive interior of a travel brochure.

 

Next, the Spectator Phase begins with the traveler’s arrival in the host country.  Emotions rise further and careen erratically as the foreigner is struck by the monumentality of the new surroundings.  This crucial stage simply overwhelms the ill-suited and weak-hearted travelers, many of whom subsequently take flight.  Hanging on for the roller-culture ride, more-flexible foreigners become largely passive but intensely alert spectators during this stage.  It feels like being the only nine-year-old in a pre-calculus class lectured in Laotian; you’re damn proud to be there, and sure, the numbers are familiar, but what the fuck are those strange symbols and that garbled language everyone’s using?  Like motion picture reels spliced indefinitely and unnoticeably together, life in Korea seems to never relinquish momentum.  You’re only reprieve is restless sleep among the non-stop neon, yipping taxis, and yowling drunks naughtily thriving in the twilight of the metropolis just outside your window.  This phase ends as the intensity of the new impressions subsides and the spectator becomes more of a participant.

 

During the Increasing Participation Phase, the foreigner finds himself taking a more active role in the new setting.  As difficulties inherent to the cross-cultural situation are realized and accepted, the individual’s ability to adjust and overcome is put to the test.  For many foreigners, this phase highlights a turning point in the experience of living abroad.  An extreme clash of cultures and values may occur resulting in resistance to adaptation and a swift descent into the nadir of culture shock, the next phase.  Or, for the flexible expatriate, a series of challenges and maladjustments are gradually overcome giving way to a growing sense of satisfaction and self-confidence.  But as the ability to tolerate and cope improves, the expatriate begins to gradually internalize the host culture’s behaviors, values, and beliefs.  This subconscious acceptance of ideals different from those instilled by the homeland results in a kind of crisis of identity.  It is as though the sojourner’s awareness of the ability to function well in a host culture has triggered a stark realization of the completeness of separation from the home culture.  It is at this stage that life can seem artificial and pointless; that life’s deepest values are just a grand fabrication supported by the vast majority and perpetuated under the guise of contemporary culture.
 
Thus the Shock Phase strikes those who achieve success in initial adaptation as well as those who struggle to acclimate within the host culture.  Usually the expatriate, who has been getting along quite well for some time in the new setting, will sink unexpectedly into a lethargy or depression for no immediately identifiable reason.  Marked by both an indifference to and frustration with native hosts as well as fellow foreigners, this state of culture shock can persist and develop into crisis proportions: violence or paranoia, unbridled bouts of blinding drunkenness or a lack of any desire to drink or socialize whatsoever.  Every expatriate, each in their own time, must face the abyss of meaninglessness that separates the two internalized cultures. After the effects of peering into this netherworld of the social mind have subsided, the next stage begins. 

 

The fifth, or Adaptation Phase, is the end point of the experience of being totally foreign, the final step of voluntary assimilation.  For some foreigners, full adjustment occurs with the learning of the host language, a feeling of belonging solidified by friendship with locals, and a sense of “shared fate” or identification with issues and events in the host country.  Yet other expatriates, having never fully recovered from the depths of intercultural nothingness, spend the remainder of their sojourn only tentatively involved in the host culture, surviving on its outskirts and relying heavily on the solidarity and support of fellow foreigners.   Not all bad, this half-hearted stance may in fact lessen the negative effects of returning home after completion of the sojourn when reverse shock is often felt.
 
The Re-entry Phase is the sixth and final stage of foreignness and occurs when the expatriate returns home and experiences culture shock in reverse.  Because this is the least expected phase, it can be all the more uncomfortably awkward and confusingly traumatic.  Following the initial period of intense excitement at being home again, the returned traveler may feel surprise then disappointment at not being able to communicate the sheer uniqueness of the experience to others.  Time has marched on back home, and not only is the traveler a changed person and thus misunderstood, but family and friends have changed too and are no longer the same as remembered.  Feelings of being disoriented and unwanted may result in a period of rejection of the native culture.
 
Anything and everything here in Korea can jade an expatriate and skew their view of life on this peninsula.  From a swindling hagwon director, all the way to Korean Pizza Hut’s preference of Tabasco instead of zesty tomato sauce (paramount to a proper pie), there always exists the potential to flip us foreigners over the edge.  Around my third month in Korea, I noticed the classified ad in the Expatriate for a “free mental health assessment by a trained social worker” and scoffed.  By my fifth month, I had heard stories about or personally met enough whacked-out foreigners to keep that social worker booked up like a Vegas hotel during a Tyson fight.  And now, well into my seventh month in this metropolis top-heavy with populous, I’ve unwittingly tapped into my own personal funk.  And it has slammed me to the mat without warning.  Suddenly, my students are unruly brats, my girlfriend can’t do anything right, and at the sight of every fake smile squeezed across my director’s smug face, I wonder if I really could get away with burning her hagwon to the ground.  I’m convinced there are snake-like scales hidden under the fancy suits of most Korean recruiters.  The GI’s are sickening, brainless and shirtless, as they run amuck in the Dallas Club and Hollywood Star Bar.  Even other teachers have never before bore a greater resemblance to a freak sample of westerners injected into the East as some kind of sick socio-cultural experiment.  And to the gawkers on the street, I just wanna scream, “What the hell are you staring at?!” 

 

But hey, there are always free samples of cheap wine and ox knuckles at Mega Market.