As
you may or may not know, I am an English teacher in South Korea.
And there are things you must know about Korea before you come here.Things
like how to say “thank you,” and “hello,”
and warnings about fan
death and the spring dust storms. But those are things you “need
to know.”
What
are the things you don't need to know? Let me tell you. There are
three important ones. StarCraft, Ajummas, and Handpones.
Fixing
the Crashed Alien Ship by Sheharzad Arshad
Let us
start with StarCraft, this being a science fiction magazine and
all. StarCraft, for all you n00bs out there, is a war strategy game
in which you fight battles across the galaxy as three different
races: Terrans, the Zerg, and the Protoss. Terrans are, of course,
humans. The Zerg are much like a cross between Alien and the bugs
from Starship Troopers. And the Protoss are a religious alien race
that's far advanced. Nothing out of the ordinary, but a fun game
to play. It was created in 1998, and it is Korea's unofficial national
sport. People swarm in the thousands to PC Rooms in every city and
town here to play StarCraft. They have televised matches. Teenage
girls worship the best players and throw their soiled panties...
well, maybe the panties thing doesn't happen. But people here are
obsessed with it. They have new games, better graphics, better stories,
but they still always return to StarCraft.
Ajummas
are mean, one-toothed old women who are pushy and sell weeds in
the subway stations, and boil silkworm casings in hubcaps that they
sell on the side of the street as food. They are the future of all
Korean women who don't bother to go to English Academy. Consider
yourself warned, children.
The last
thing you don't need to know about Korea is handpones. Say it out
loud. Hand + Pones. This is because f's are non-existent in the
Korean language and are, by default, p's. It's really “handphones,”
and those are really cell-phones (because . . . regular phones don't
use . . . hands?) They have cell phones here that put American phones
to shame. All the functionality of a PDA, along with the option
to watch TV, listen to mp3's, not to mention VIDEO CAMERAS built
it. And these are the phones that my 9-YEAR-OLD STUDENTS have. They
have cell-phones that cost more than a small home in Nebraska. But
. . . even though they probably have phones capable of parallel
parking their Hyundai remotely, it's nice to know that they're most
likely watching idolized computer geeks play StarCraft.
En
Taro Adun, Korea.
This
issue we have a great story about the love told from a microscopic
perspective, a funny one about opening e-mail attachments, a strange
one about the WTC and witches and something--
I'm not quite sure -- you'll just have to read it. Then there's
one about taking back the night, with a crushing, clamping vengeance,
and finally, there's a concise one about verbosity.
