This is the story of a man. Not a smart man, it is freely conceded. A simple man. A man who likes Korea.
No, not likes. This man loves Korea. Not just likes, loves… To the extent that he wrote his MA thesis on Korean issues. To the extent that he pursued the dream of, and succeeded in becoming, the first western foreigner to live and work on Ulleungdo. To the extent that he went to Dokdo. Twice. To the extent that he is the editor of a major North Korean information and democratization website, a task he undertakes for no notable remuneration. To the extent that he is, in short, a poster child for the feeling that Korea is, indeed, sparkling. Or he would be, if they made posters for that sort of thing.
Although it’s probably best that they don’t.
In any case, now this man is moving his love up a step. This man, you see, is hoping to do a PhD. He has received interest from Cambridge University, among others. Yes indeed, he is going to thrust forth and do what Korea really seems to like seeing non-Koreans do; STUDY KOREA! YAY!
Or do they?
You see, our man has a problem. You see, he wants to take the Korean Language Proficiency Test this April. We shall call it the KLPT, for that is its name. He registers, keenly, upon noticing a poster advertising the latest round, which is on April 19th. It isn’t hard, despite the abject lunacy of a foreign language test registration system for which the business end is only provided in the target language. No matter, he doesn’t much care; his Korean is plenty good enough in any case. He moves on, and tries to pay by credit card. That doesn’t work out so well. Korean payment system, no love for our friend’s web browser. Bit of a mess. Enough said, move on.
Our man is not disturbed though, and is not dissuaded. Next he tries to pay by check card, and seems to all intents and purposes to have been successful. He certainly doesn’t get any negativity from his browser on that score. He walks away, thinking all is well, and sets about studying hard. A happy man with a happy plan.
Great! A nice story! A happy ending!
Not so much. Only the ghosts in the machine really know the truth, and they are not telling.
For today this man checks his registration. Payments just closed the previous day, apparently. Without our man’s contribution, obviously.
But all is not lost. Surely a late payment is going to make everything ok for him, right? No doubt; every time our friend runs a marathon in Korea he runs the risk of such errors, and he always solves them by a happy phone call and a swift chat with the powers that be. So, buoyed by such experiences, he calls the people at the KLPT.
He begs, pleads, and notifies them of his intent to do what Korea really seems to like seeing non-Korean do; STUDY KOREA! YAY!
But no. No love whatsoever. No movement at all. No acceptance that a website in Korean for people who study Korean might not be a wise idea. No recognition that mistakes with payment might be made, by both customer and website. No interest in the fact that many browsers get along very poorly with Korean websites. And absolutely no interest in the fact that this test could be the difference between our good friend starting a PhD in Korean Studies and, well, not starting a PhD in Korean Studies.
Makes you think about how much Korea really wants people to study her, after all…
… it ain’t worth going to.
Great Britain has a troubled relationship with islands. Aside from being one, and deporting people it didn’t like to one, and abusing some fairly innocent farmering communities on a nearby one, Great Britain also “owns” some right up to this day.
Which is not to say that Great Britain actually wants to be a colonial master anymore. Apart from the cutely-named British Indian Ocean Territory, apparently necessary for the defence of the World, and the Falklands, which presented Margaret Thatcher with an attractive opportunity to put the Iron in the Iron Lady in 1982, Great Britain has tried pretty hard to offload most of them.
Benign neglect is not so benign if you live on Pitcairn, for example. A small group of four islands with less than 50 permanent residents and no airport, the people of Pitcairn are hardy sorts descended from the mutineers on the Bounty. Not swayed by such toughness, Great Britain spent a good 20 years ignoring Pitcairn, in an ill-fated attempt to get the islanders to give up, pack up and move to “civilisation.”
Unfortunately for Great Britain, the people of Pitcairn didn’t think much of the argument that their island group half-way between New Zealand and the Panama Canal was not viable. So there they continue to sit, waiting for passing vessels, enjoying a life only marginally tainted by a sexual scandal that raises important questions about how easily the laws of Great Britain can be applied to a small island group thousands of miles away….
No such scandal on Tristan de Cunha, meanwhile. Officially the most remote inhabited island in the world, home to 250 people descended from just 7 families, it does however have a substantive problem with the size of its gene pool, which has given rise to an asthma epidemic. It is presumed that the previous answer to this problem, that of giving a bag of potatoes for every woman from Saint Helena who would come and marry an islander, is no longer likely to work.
Tristan de Cunhians were also “lucky” enough to get a chance to live in the motherland, after a volcanic explosion left the island, which is almost exactly the same size as Ulleungdo, uninhabitable. Evacuated to Britain, it was largely presumed in Whitehall that they would never return. Guess what; 90% of them did. There is a message in that for all of us.
Ah yes, to Saint Helena. 4,000 people, a veritable thriving metropolis. Home to Napolean, who was apparently not all that enamoured of the place, site of Jacob’s Ladder, still in use today, and soon to have an airport, or so it is said (although that is also said of Ulleungdo, which is a whole other story…). Served by RMS Saint Helena, the last remaining Royal Mail ship, an old-school cruising opportunity.
See? An interesting relationship with islands. Especially ones without airports…
… when people would have been keen to read what I wrote. For you see, once upon a time I lived and worked on Ulleungdo. That, I guess, was momentous. Perhaps not to a Korean; the girl I convinced of the necessity of the idea was less enamoured than I, I now realise, but it seemed worthy of note, a footnote in the anals of English teaching in Korea.
It was also happy. Blissfully so, actually. So I’ll return to it, now and then, sneak in a little bit here, and a little bit more there. Perhaps the odd photo, maybe when I am feeling melancholy, and perhaps a story. Look out for it….
The first white man in Dodong…