I previously posted about my first week in Korea and finally getting assigned to a unit. But before I could even get to my unit, the company ‘Radar’ whose name was Jim, took me on a joyride through Itaewon-Dong. I babysat the jeep, not that it needed babysitting, while he disappeared to ‘get some afternoon delight.’ Yeah. Go figure. I guess you gotta have your shit straight and your priorities in order. Anyway, this lady came over to the jeep while I was waiting and wanted to take me to meet her ajumma. That right there, ‘I take you to meet my ajumma,” is code. That’s right. I didn’t stutter. That right there is bonafide code. You can do all kinds of things with ladies, and you can make all kinds of promises you aren’t going to keep. But when you go home to meet a lady’s ajumma, something changes. It sort of gives the greeting ‘yobo seyo’ a whole new meaning. Take those little words ‘yobo seyo.’ You think they mean hello, right? Well, in most innocent circumstances you would be right, but not in this instance. In this instance, ‘yobo seyo’ means yobo say… they’re going to take all of your money and there ain’t a goddamn thing you can do about it. Think I am wrong? Guess again. You have just crossed some magic border that you cannot cross back over the other way. I almost made a super-colossal mistake, and I almost crossed over that border to never, never land. Except, maybe I should say that border is something like forever land. That would be a closer approximation to the truth. It’s not marriage. It’s not even a promise of marriage. But it’s the next closest thing to that. Those ladies are like leeches sucking the blood (money) of the soldiers they hook. A lot of dumb greenhorn newbie soldiers don’t even know that. For the lady, it becomes a steady source of income for as long as the soldier is in country. She milks the soldier’s wallet until it is so dry every month that it squeaks. Can you hear the squeaks? Squeak, squeak. Squeak, squeak. But it doesn’t stop there. Oh no. That poor soldier’s wallet actually has to crack and bleed, and then it still isn’t enough. Slowly the ajumma, through the lady, gets other hooks into the soldier. I didn’t know any of this, of course. Why? Well, I was just a dumb greenhorn pilgrim, myself. But when I told the lady I couldn’t go with her; I just might have if I didn’t have to stay and watch over my worldly possessions while Jim was off doing whatever. So, I sat in that parked Jeep looking like an idiot and making promises that I didn’t later keep. Why? Well, it’s like this. As I was acclimating to life in the country and getting to know my colleagues, I naturally talked about the lady who wanted to take me to meet her ajumma. Two guys in particular who had been in the country for almost a year and one who had been on his second tour in the country gave me the low down. I was talking with John, a colleague who bunked next to me in the barracks. I said, “So, if I got this straight, I would pay the ajumma for the right to stay with the lady?” “That’s right,” said John. “But it doesn’t end there.” “It doesn’t?” “No. See, what the ajumma does is she “sells” your yobo everything. Her clothes, her furniture, her dishes, everything. So, your yobo then owes her a shitload of money that you are on the hook to pay back.” “But it isn’t my debt. Why do I have to pay it back? Wait. Does the ajumma actually even sell the would-be yobo anything?” “Does that shit really matter? What matters is that you’re on the hook for the bill. That’s the way shit works. You no pay, you no play. You no pay, your yobo gets hurt.” “What? What the hell kind of shit is that?” “Oh, it isn’t serious at first. Just enough to get your attention. But if you don’t play ball, the shit gets worse.” “That shit ain’t right. This all sounds like a really bad 3rd rate mobster movie gone wrong.” “Listen, Masters, you’re a tenderfoot. You’re still wet behind the ears. Yeah, I still see the water dripping from your earlobes. These people mean business. The whole thing is a racket to get you into the black market. They start you off slowly at first just using up your entire liquor ration, your entire commissary ration, and your entire cigarette ration every month. But all too soon, that isn’t good enough.” “Not good enough? How much is enough?” “There is never enough. You can’t satisfy a monster. It consumes everything in its path. It’s all about money, greed, and status. Soon enough, they want you to graduate to the big leagues.” “The big leagues?” “Sure, you know that the commissary bullshit is just penny-ante bullshit to them, right? They can’t make much money off of that bullshit.” “Really?” “Jesus H. Christ! You really don’t know shit! You’re as dumb as a box of rocks. The real money is in the big-ticket items like stereos and golf clubs and TVs and VCRs. Shit like that. Shit that you can only buy one, sometimes maybe two of, ever while you’re in-country. That’s where the real money is in the black-market and that’s what they want. So, they want you to orchestrate a huge haul from Japan or Okinawa. You know, straight from the source of the good shit. That, my man, is how you pay for your yobo.” “Man, that is some kind of cash shit. There is no way that can be true.” “Hey, you don’t have to take my word for it. You can experience it yourself, if you’re really a box of rocks, like you seem to be.” Needless to say, I never did end up going to meet the lady’s ajumma after the pep talk in futility.
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