On: South Korea

South Korea wasn’t my jam. A diatribe of my issues with it filled a few pages—along with a nickname for the country I thought to be very clever—but when I read it off to my friend Naan (of whom I finally got to meet in real life in Jeju), she kind of went “Oof” and her expression was one of “That’s kindof mean” even though she kind of laughed and just said “That’s kind of harsh.” And it was that exchange that got me thinking: Not about Naan’s reaction (she’s not Korean), nor yours (you’re most likely not Korean), but I suddenly thought about what Joe—the bicycle designer who not only came to my rescue when needing a spare tyre, but put me up in his spare room, took me to dinner, ordered a passport to “make some nice memories”, checked in with me along the way, sent tips and translations and then called his family who owned a very (very) nice hotel in Busan who wouldn’t take a dime from me for staying there (and even were disappointed I only stayed two days). I thought about what they’d feel if they read my complaints and I think, even though I didn’t know any of them well, their hearts would break just a little, knowing that the person they showed so much kindness to still felt the need to write that.

It was the second time in a 48 hour period where my selfishness reached depths I didn’t know existed and I spent a good few days wondering how I even allowed my thought process—much less my placing value out of a strong article over the feelings of kind people—to even enter my mind.

It wasn’t my jam. Fine. But I met some amazing people, and was shown kindness not just from them, but by the dozens while on the bike trail.

And so what if it’s not my thing? I read something somewhere that said something along the lines of if you say something like that, IE: “This art/music/place/food/person wasn’t great”, it suggests that they only exist to be relatable to you… which only adds to my recent blight of unkind actions. Plenty of people love South Korea. And look, what place wouldn’t be found wanting after Hanoi?

So here’s to the power of kindness to a stranger(s) —Joe and his family, without knowing (and hopefully they never will) it, took a distasteful and ungrateful few thousand words and made the author rethink them… and his own way of looking at things.

Will I ever go back to South Korea? Probably not.

But I’ll always jump at the chance to go back and see them.