Ghosts of Christmas Past – Seoul, 1990

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

If you’re one of those people who won’t be making it home for Christmas this year, whether you’re serving in the military, studying or working overseas, the holidays can be a rough, emotional stretch of time to get through.

On the other hand, if you are newly arrived to some foreign destination, the sheer excitement of being overseas in some dynamic, alluring, or exotic location might dispel some of those holiday blues.

That’s how I felt back in December 1990, two weeks after I arrived in Seoul.

Just two months earlier, when I got a phone call from a recruiter informing me of the teaching position in Seoul, she asked me if I wouldn’t mind traveling to Korea before the holidays. I told her I didn’t and she said, “you’ll probably be so excited you won’t even feel homesick.”

She was right.

The first week I didn’t have time to feel homesick-settling into my new home in a housing gulag a stone’s throw away from Olympic Stadium, going through a weeklong orientation, and having to buy new underwear, or as male underwear is called in Korea, panties, on a busy Sunday afternoon in a crowded Lotte Department Store in Chamsil. Although the way Christmas was celebrated in Korea in 1990 pales in comparison to how the holiday is celebrated today, it was a festive and exciting time.

You didn’t see as many Christmas trees, decorations, and holiday sales like you do now, but you definitely knew it was Christmas from all the Christmas cards on sales, Korean versions of popular holiday tunes, and Christmas cakes (which was also how many Japanese celebrated the holiday). At ELS, the language school I taught at the first two years I was in Korea, there was a Christmas party for the staff and the students. One of the teachers knew someone on one of the military bases and managed to get a spread of food for the teachers. Until I had the chance to go on some of those bases years later, that Christmas feast was some of the best eats I would have those first two years in Korea.

On Christmas Eve, students gave many of the teachers Christmas cards, even new teachers like myself, who had only been their teacher for one week. I’ve never seen anything like that again. Students back then just seemed to be friendlier and more outgoing. Maybe it was all about numbers or the lack thereof: in 1990, besides the US military in Korea, there were not too many foreigners. During one of the classes in the evening, one of my colleagues/roommate, Bill Gibson brought his guitar and many of the classes got together and sang Christmas carols.

Outside of the language school that ate up 30 hours of my week in the classroom, I explored a bit of Seoul. There was this diamond in the rough appeal that Korea had in the 1990s, that was evident my first weekend in Seoul when I explored Insa-dong-with its quaint teahouses and traditional antique shops and art galleries for the first time.

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The following weekend, a student invited me to a movie in Shinsa-dong-War of the Roses-and later, after dinner with her friends at Coco’s a California-style restaurant that was oddly enough, a Japanese franchise, it was a bit of jazz and blues at All that Jazz in Itaewon.

One could hear plenty of Christmas carols playing everywhere you went in the city, but they were no match for all the street vendors playing “Unchained Melody” -the year’s biggest pop sensation thanks to the movie Ghost. Hear that song today and I don’t think of the movie that made it famous, again. Instead, I think of the cold, drafty Kangnam Subway station in southern Seoul, stopping in at Paris Croissant for eggs, toast, and coffee in the morning before I started teaching.

A week after Christmas, on a road trip to Pusan, I passed a vendor selling bootleg copies of “Unchained Melody”-but he had spelled it wrong on a sign advertising them. He had written, “Unchanged Melody.” The vendor didn’t understand why I burst out laughing when I read his sign.

Not once did I feel homesick during those first couple of weeks I was in Korea.

Sometimes though, over the years, I have found myself waxing nostalgic for that Christmas 20 years ago when I first came to Korea when I was filled with so much, hope, anticipation, and excitement.