Goshitel Style

When all is said and done, and this whole affair with the slow, sinking demise of Jung Chul Jr. is over, Alix, my Canadian coworker and I are forced from our apartments.  For a few days we relish in our fairly luxurious Gangnam apartments.  Then, one night I bump into Alix, Phil, and their buddy Jason.  They are towing a few oversized pieces of luggage.  On the side of the road at Bang Bang Sageori I see Aliz as my neighbor for the last time.  A few days later her apartment is bare; it doesn’t even have a bed, something our landlord is fairly pissed about.

Then, I am gone.

I live, at this moment, in a goshiwon.  I have been in this place since September 9.  It is now September 26.  I will stay here until October 1.  I have done quite a bit in this forced vacation.  I have gone south to a small town called Andong.  I have wandered around an old folk village, eaten fish, and drank copious amounts of beer.  I have run a lot.  I have climbed a mountain (and been scared totally stiff on said mountain).  I have also spent a decent amount of time visiting Che in the hospital.  My final memory of Gangnam is Che tearing her ACL in triumphant fashion.

So, some of my plans for this free time were altered. 

A goshiwon, or goshitel, is a kind of place where people who have nowhere else go.  A Korean friend told me that they are good places to concentrate, as noise is frowned upon.  For my first few days here I would only speak if I had a blanket over my head to muffle my voice. 

They were originally meant for people who need solitude to study.  Each room is equipped with a vomit-yellow floor, a shelf that actually covers a good 2 feet of the end of the bed, cabinets, a TV circa 1991, a tiny fridge, and a bed (if you opt out of the floor mat, called a yo). 

Now, I didn’t mention a window.  Some rooms in this goshitel don’t have them.  The people in these rooms almost always leave the doors open; unfortunate because their depression spills out into the hallway with their trash and dirty slippers.  My window had a window once.  For a while, the only thing ineffectively keeping the bugs out was a swatch of blue mesh held in by match sticks that were pushed into the wall.  When the bugs came in just the same I made some spikes out of soju bottle caps.  It did the trick.

Then a typhoon came and a giant storm-window came down and I haven’t had fresh air since.  This is a problem because Korean food is a touch smelly by nature.  Half of the foods eaten here, by myself as well, are fermented or are coated in something fermented.  One of the benefits of these places are an unlimited supply of rice and kimchi (until the kimchi runs out and isn’t refilled again until after your hospital-bound girlfriend complains via messenger). 

To make matters worse somebody down the hall has been eating something that smells like that flaky food you feed fish in a tropical aquarium.  This smell is piped into my room by a tiny vent window until I am drowning in it.  If it doesn’t smell like fish food, then it smells like cigarettes.  On the rare off day when the one giant fan in the giant, dark-as hell, firetrap of a hallway blows the odors from the communal toilet (something which constantly overflows) it actually smells like shit. 

So, when the air is a little heavy and smelly the rooms can become a bit overbearing.  With my luggage there is not enough room to do anything more than stand.  I live in a place no bigger than an American prison cell. 

The people in this place seem to run on both sides of the track.  No, that’s not right.  I think everyone here is poor.  The price per day at this place is less than $10.  It is economical.  While a negative picture is painted above, it is really not bad.  However, if I had a bunch of money I probably wouldn’t be here.  On the one hand there are a lot of kids who seem about college age.  Since we are close to Dongik Univerist I can guess this is their form of a dormitory- a comparison that really isn’t too far off.  They never speak to me.  Nobody ever seems to speak to anybody here.  There’s a general sense of shame and mistrust here. 

There are business men.  These men are all older.  If they are successful or not, I don’t know.  I would say no, but with a lot of people in Korea working long hours and commuting long distances it would make sense to just foot a $10 / day bill for a place to crash during the week.  These are the people who surprise me. 

The only people who have spoken to me here have been two older guys.  One of them came up to me while I was cooking ramyeon in the kitchen.  He handed me his business card and tried his hardest to give me a message in English.  The jist of it was that he was in room 30.  If I ever needed help I should knock on his door or call him.  Then, he turned around and was gone.  He comes in at about 7pm daily in a sharp suit.  The goshiwon is his weeknight home. 

There is another man, a bit further on in years.  For the past three nights he has knocked on my door.  His English is broken but this guy always gives me food.  He has given me a peach, 4 eggs, and just 5 minutes ago a croquet from a fake French bakery called Paris Baguette. 

There are these guys who make me really love the experience of staying here, and then there are others.  There’s the dude covered in tattoos who never wears a shirt.  He is incessantly smoking in the bathroom.  Everybody does this, but he does it even at the urinal.  There’s an old lady who more or less runs the hell away whenever she sees me.  Then there is a younger guy across the hall who never leaves, and never puts on clothes.  EVERY time I have walked by he has been laying on his floor mat in his boxers, watching TV.  As far as I know he doesn’t own a single shirt or pair of pants.  He is basically the poster child for the depression brought on for living too long in a windowless room in a goshiwon.