As you might imagine, I was a bit astounded at this news, and in the confusion said something like, “Wow, you’re Miss Korea?”
“Well,” she replied, evidently thinking I was questioning her obvious beauty, “I look better in bikini” (sic).
Silence settled over the van as Peter and I considered this. I had never been invited to undress someone mentally. Moreover, this begged some important questions: was she coming on to us? And more importantly, which of us was she coming on to?
A few moments later, Peter asked the obvious question: “Errrrr…can you prove that?”
(In retrospect, I’m fairly certain that this was simply a reassurance of professional competence, in the same way that one would say, “I went to _____ Law School” or “I majored in _________.” Sadly, I don’t think that “I’m an English major” has quite the same potential as the original statement).
We drove north of Seoul for about an hour, pulled off onto some dirt roads and rumbled past greenhouses for about a mile before stopping in front of a house where we went over a few last-minute details. As it turned out, our shirts without writing on them were too dark, and the only shirt they had for me was at least one size too small. It squoze me around the shoulders and rubbed under my armpits, while the too-short sleeves jutted out at odd angles. This was just the beginning.
Perhaps you have, at some time or other, had one of those recurring dreams that involves you standing on a platform in various stages of undress with hundreds of cameras pointed at you, ready to preserve your words to the last syllable of recorded time. You look out at the faceless, expectant masses. The imp in your mind scribbles furiously. You open your mouth, and all that escapes is “ghaaaaaa…”
It was like that all day.
We began by singing a Korean song (badly) about a man who leaves his lover to serve in the army (roughly the equivalent of “Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier”), then greeting our “sansangnim” (teacher), Miss Korea, who entered driving a tractor (badly) while wearing high heels, designer clothes, and a broad-brimmed farmer’s hat.
Following some prep work from the director/cameraman, we introduced ourselves, looked excited, made the obvious statements and asked the obvious questions (namely, “You are beautiful!” and “Do you have a boyfriend?”). We jumped up in the air, said things like “Wow!” (a two syllable word in Korean, pronounced “Wa-oo”), “Pighting!” (the Korean version of “Fighting!,” used for anything from “Cool!” to “Keep it up!”), and shot love-stricken glances at Miss Korea before proceeding into a greenhouse. There, we began picking yawlmu, a Korean radish, and talked to the Korean adjumas (grandmas) about life, food and the field songs about yawlmu kimchi that went something like, “Yaaaawlmu kimchi, yaaaaawlmu kimchi / blah blah-blah blah blah).
Now, when I say that I “talked” with the adjumas, what I really mean is I would ask a simple question, nod as the speaker rattled off in heavily-accented, quick-fire Korean, and smile. I would try to “ad reeb” (ad lib), as the producer was continually exhorting us, but usually to no avail—I was struggling with basic communication. Occasionally, when everything was completely lost in translation, we would call out “Sansangnim!” and Miss Korea would appear in the greenhouse in high heels and radiant smile, carrying a whiteboard to write out explanations—in Korean. We rotated from job to job, mixing fertilizer into topsoil, spraying insecticides onto plants, and all the other things one apparently does on greenhouse farms in Korea. While we did each activity, the cameraman would ask us, “Chemeesawyo?” (Is it fun?), to which we would invariably respond, “Ne, chemeesawyo!” (Yes, it’s fun!) like smiling, moronic automatons.
Although our “fun” picking of radishes and spraying of lethal chemicals reached into the ridiculous, it crossed firmly into the absurd as we sifted pebbles from dirt with a large, splintery-edged sieve. The imported Punjab labor rolled their eyes, hooted and guffawed as we delivered our panegyrics on manual labor.
Meanwhile, when she didn’t absolutely have to be on-scene, Miss Korea slept in the van and, whenever we began to drive from one place to another, whined about how tired she was. If there had been a pea under her seat, I’m sure she would have found it.
Finally, we left the fields and drove to a house built on a pang-su-ji-ri (a place which backs on a mountain and has trees and running water in front of it, considered an ideal place for living). There, we took the radishes we had picked earlier and made yawlmu kimchi out of the yawlmu radishes, which we then devoured in disgusting quantities for the camera (“Ok, one more time—big spoon…ok—just one more time, big spoon…ok, one more time…).
During the course of making it, Peter and I staged a water fight and, in the aftermath, tried to think of a dancing-ish acapella song to sing for the camera, and failed (somehow neither “Hazy Shade of Winter nor “Tangled Up In Blue” seemed fitting).
After the shooting was over, we went to a restaurant with the entire cast and the man who owned the fields in which we had been working and shooting. After leading the group in shots of Soju (the national drink that tastes like isopropyl), the owner asked the producer something about whom of the cast would be staying at his house.
The producer gestured at us and replied, presumably something like “Those two.”
The owner exploded with a few phrases (probably, “I don’t want those smelly foreigners in my house!”), then pointed at the place where Miss Korea, now primping her makeup in the bathroom, had been sitting and spoke again (“I want summa’ that!”).
Everyone laughed, the director nervously.
The producer said something else (“Errrrr, haha, no”), and the owner replied again, this time with a phrase I certainly understood: ”Han-shi gan! Da-man han-shi gan!” (For one hour! Just for one hour!”).
Dirty old men appear to be a cross-cultural phenomenon.
Instead of staying with the owner, we were put up in—no joke—the Hotel California (whence, contrary to popular belief, you can both check out and leave). In a final mix-up that added a last dose of hilarity, Peter and I ended up sharing the room that Miss Korea was supposed to have, and Miss Korea got our room all to herself.
From the moment we walked into the room, we knew that something was wrong. The bed was round, about six feet in diameter, with a panel that controlled various spotlights and mood lights just to the side. The ceiling featured a circular mirror, and large mirrors placed on the opposite wall gave added visibility. In case all these accoutrements were lost on the inhabitants, there were condoms on the counter.
It was…macabre.
The next day we shot a little more before driving back to Seoul and getting into work too late to make the first class. When my director asked me why I was late, I gave her the response I’d been storing up all day: “Hey—I’m a big star.”
Posted by Bruce 
Posted by Bruce 
Posted by Bruce 