“No, I want it on this card,” I said, exasperated and glancing at the clock. “On the back, here, in a little chip! I’ve seen it!”
The teller looked at me in helpless embarrasment, carefully maintaining the friendly smile on her face – but I could see underneath she was desperately trying to work out what the crazy foreigner was ranting about. FInally, she tentatively ventured, “T-Money card not here, only convenience store!” She also crossed her hands in an X gesture, in case I couldn’t follow.
I sighed. “No, not a T-money card, I want a bank card that I can use – look, I know this is possible, I’ve seen other people with these cards!”
Another helpless stare for a few seconds. Finally, “…not for foreigners!”
“But I’ve seen foreigners – people I know 100% to be foreigners, they’re my friends – with this card, and….and your English isn’t nearly good enough follow me, is it?”
The teller looked at me in bewildered good cheer (and a hint of terror, as if I were going to lunge across the desk and attempt to throttle her in my frustration). I sighed again, and gave up.
As I settled into Korea, many things became easier and part of my daily routine. Other, smaller annoyances remained, perpetually exacerbated by the language barrier (which I am slowly but surely chipping away at). One such inconvenience was the bus system – either I had to have a couple of thousand won in small bills ready, or I had to use my transport card. Now, the card was easy enough to refill at any convenience store, but I needed cash for that as well, meaning if I was going to get around I needed a perpetual supply of ready cash on me, which I hate. Not a great inconvenience, in the grand scheme of things, but one I didn’t necessarily have to put up with. Some of my friends had transport cards built right into their bank cards – one swipe of the debit card and the fare came right out their account. Super easy, barely an inconvenience. So I set out to get one of my own.
Only to bounce off a brick wall at the bank.
Korean banks keep, well, banker’s hours – 9-4 every day, and no weekends. Since I work from 8 – 4:40 every day, getting to any bank is difficult. There are small branches everywhere, of course, but most serious business needs to be done at a center, and those can be hours away by bus. Not practical to get there without taking a full day off.
I am lucky, however – NH Bank, my local bank, happens to keep a center in the Gwangju metropolitan government offices, right across the street from my school.
So one lunch break I slipped in, intending to obtain my card and get out. Things did not go so well.
My first attempt – As I approached the building, hundreds of well-dressed Koreans flooded out and started milling around the sidewalk. I glanced around in confusion, but there were no alarms ringing, and the front doors were open. A pair of policemen intercepted me in the lobby.
“No,” one of them growled. “No building.”
“Not even the bank?” I said, haplessly gesturing across the lobby to the center’s doors. He shook his head.
“No. You come back later.”
“Do you know how much later?” I said. Blank stare. “Er…hang on, uh…” I dug around in the recesses of my brain. Korean verbs aren’t conjugated according ot person and number, like English verbs, but rather according to other bits of essential information like the relative social status of the speakers, one’s attitude toward the recipient, relations of cause and effect to other parts of the sentence, and of course the word’s own status as something one IS doing, something one NEEDS to do, something one is doing IN ADDITION to something else, and so on.
I often need to write my verbs out on a bit of paper to make sure I’ve got it all right before I dare say it aloud, but no such luck here.
“몇시에 돌아와야합니까?”
“30 분 정도.”
“Eh?” I said. I recognized the phrase “sam-ship” at the start, which meant “three-ten” or “thirty,” but nothing after that.
“Oh, uh…twenty, thirty minute?”
“Okay. Gotcha.” Shrugging, I turned around and went outside. It was a pretty day and I had another hour left before I needed to teach again, so I took a walk.
Thirty minutes later I returned, this time made it to the bank, where I was directed to the lucky teller in front of me – the only one in the bank who spoke even a passing measure of English and so had drawn the happy duty of dealing with the foreigner, a task she was clearly thrilled with.
With no bank+transport card on the table, I would have to just settle for a normal bank card, so I could stop using cash all the time like a peasant. Her English was more than competent enough to handle this, as she handed me several forms and then showed me where to sign. Trusting that I wasn’t actually indenturing myself to Nonghyup Bank for the remainder of my natural life, I obliged. Smooth sailing for sure now, I thought.
haha of course not.
As we finished up and I nervously eyed the clock, she slid the large sheaf of papers back across the deck at me one last time. She gestured at a box filled with incomprehensible gobbledygook* and said, “Name?”
“Oh, uh…Brad. Brad LaPlante,” I made to scrawl it across the box again. Scowling, she snatched the paper back.
“No, uh, cahdu name?”
“Card name? Uh, just mine. Just Brad LaPlante.”
In helpless frustration, she pointed at my name on the paper. “Which one, uh…which one first name?” I glanced down. LaPlante, Bradley Thomas was clearly throwing her off. The Korean custom of family name-personal name is sometimes confusing, mostly because you don’t always know which convention people are following right away – sometimes Koreans will “helpfully” render their names Western-style for you, which more often confuses me as I promptly execute the usual mental flip-flop and get their names all scrambled again. By way of example, it’d be as if you knew the Dear Leader of the DPRK as Jong-Un Kim, instead of the Korean-style name of Kim Jong-un. Not super hard to overcome, but sometimes a bit irritating. Now the banker woman didn’t know which was my family name and which my personal.
“LaPlante, family name,” I said, pointing. “Family name.” I pointed at Brad. “First name.” I pointed at Thomas. “Middle name.”
She hesitantly picked up the paper. She pointed at Thomas. “Personal name?”
“No, no!” I said. “Bradley is my personal name.”
“Which name on cahdu? LaPlante Thomasu?”
“No, not Thomas,” I said. “Just Bradley!” Another look at the clock. I had to teach in five minutes.
“Just Bradley?”
“Yes, just Bradley, please. Not Thomas.”
“Okayokayokay, not Thomas. Just Bradley.” She nodded and bustled away to print my new card.
I leaned back in the chair and heaved one final sigh, this one of relief. My lack of Korean is a pain in the butt a lot of the time. The simplest things become much more difficult when you don’t speak the language. Please, be kind to any immigrants you meet, especially if they’re struggling with English.
Still, though, I thought we had done pretty well, all things considered. We had successfully concluded a business deal, and, difficult thought it was, I had worked with the kind teller to bridge the language gap and we had both made ourselves understood. She returned and handed me my card. I nodded in gratitude, shoved it in my wallet, and dashed out the door to get back to work on time.
Later that night, in my apartment, I pulled out the card to take a look at it – where I learned that they had, indeed, put just Bradley:
*Not Korean, just my handwriting.
Gwangju Dreaming 