Day 91: Urban Legends

I noticed today that all day long all of my kids were especially hyper and frantic in each of my classes. There was an extra buzz in the school and they all seemed to be talking very quickly and excitedly amongst each other. I had no idea what all of this was about, but then one of them came up to me and started to practically hyperventilate about something about a 'Red Mask.' She seemed almost distressed about this and so I inquired about it with more students. Most of them were so excited they could barely get any English out - all I kept hearing was something about a 'Red Mask' and 'Japan' and then they'd make a scary face at me. I was totally clueless! I wouldn't find out the answer until later that night...

My day ended again at 5:20pm today - that makes 2 full weeks of work now where I only work 3 hours a day (because adult classes haven't started yet) but still get paid for a full day's work. Awesome! I came home and packed up my bag for everything I would need for the weekend. I was going on a roadtrip with Michael and a few of his friends to Sorakhsan National Park and the East Coast of Korea and I was so excited about it! MY FIRST ROAD TRIP IN ASIA! Actually my first road trip *anywhere* in ages it seems. I packed way too many clothes, as usual, and lugged all my shit onto the trains and went into Itaewon to meet up with Michael.

I actually made it to Michael's apartment before he did, so I camped outside his apartment door waiting for him to return. While waiting I got to meet his neighbour, which were interesting to say the least.... Michael's neighbour is a trans-gendered hooker (a man dressed as a woman, who I think has had surgery to remove his 'extra bits', and now prostitutes him/herself on the streets.) She was having 2 friends over (all very tall 'women!') and they all stared at me with confused glances as to why I was camped out in the hallway. Let's just say that there was mutual confusion traded back in those curious stares!

Michael arrived later, he packed up his bags, and it was time to go. His friend Eric arrived just then and the 3 of us drove out to Bundang to pick up Michael's friend Maeve. The four of us then made a pit-stop for ice cream and chocolate (what road trip is complete without junk food?) and then hit the highway out of the city. Traffic was light heading out of Seoul and we were making great time heading out east across Korea. I was surprised at how long it took to get out of Seoul's endless suburbia - over and hour and a half on the highway outside of the city and yet we were still in the city's 'fringes'.... Just how far does one have to go to escape this city? It was just love motel after love motel for miles and miles it seems.

Now what's a love motel you may ask? A love motel is an inexpensive hotel where men go to bring their mistresses or hookers or whoever they're sleeping with that's not their wife for a little 'alone time' away from their families. These gawdy-looking neon hotels are all over the city, but tend to cluster along the city's edges where the men can go and feel safe that they won't be discovered by their wives or friends. These love motels cater almost entirely to this market, and even have curtains that hang over the parking lot entrances so that you can't identify the vehicles that are parked inside...total privacy and anonymity (sp?) guaranteed!

Another hour later we were out in the dark countryside out in the rolling hills and it was really quiet and pretty. While chatting with Maeve I finally found out the truth behind what all this 'Red Mask' stuff is that my kids were so excited about. The Red Mask is a Korean urban legend, (but all the kids believe are real) and is quite the unusual story. Apparently it's about a woman who was rather ugly, so she went to go and get plastic surgery to make herself more beautiful. Well the surgery went horribly wrong, and she was left with a scarred face and a HUGE permanent grin from ear to ear - a giant smile that never disappears. Well I don't know if she died or if she killed herself, but anyways lets just say her spirit has a lot of emotional baggage leftover yet to be dealed with. She's apparently from Japan but what she does every year, on this one day, is travel across the Sea of Japan to Korea (float? swim? KoreanAir? I don't know) and between the hours of 6-8pm seeks out new victims in Korea. How she attacks is she appears to you in your home, or wherever, and asks you if you think she's pretty. If you say yes, she leaves you alone. If you say no, or if she doesn't believe you, she cuts your face open to give you a grin just like hers, and then hacks up your body or something like that. LOVELY!!!! (Now I can see why the kids get so excited and frightened over this! So gruesome!)

We made it into the small city of Inje near the edge of Sorakhsan National Park sometime between 2am and 3am. It was only about 4 hours that we spent on the road but it had felt so much longer - we were all so tired! We pulled into a motel and got a room for the night. We're fairly certain that this was a love motel for two reasons... The first one being that our room rate suddenly went up an extra 10,000 won as soon as they found out that there was a woman staying in the room, and not just guys.... Hmmm.... And the other reason was that when we got to our room and went to turn off the lights to go to bed, Maeve accidentally hit a different switch... Well the main lights went off but this red light glowing from the ceiling came on instead, lighting the entire motel room in a soft red glow, very a-la-porno movie! We kept waiting for the mirrors to appear out of the ceiling and the soft porn music to start up in the background! Oh those funny Koreans! We all had a good laugh about the red light and then went to sleep.