Soju come here often?

“Do you want to have a beer?” It was the hostel owner standing outside my room. After using the bathroom a few minutes earlier, I noticed that he was sitting in the main living space of the guesthouse with another man, eating meat and vegetables and making their way through a plastic bottle of soju. I had retreated to my room for some quiet time. I was the only person staying at the ‘DMZ Stay Guesthouse,’ less than two kilometres away from Civilian Controlled Zone, a military-controlled stretch of land bordering the South Korean side of the Demilitarised Zone, itself a two kilometre stretch either side of the North-South border. Essentially, I was only a few kilometres away from the border. I was in the last guesthouse until North Korea.

Paju was only an hour away from the centre of Seoul on the local metro. Arriving at Munsan station at the climax of a thirty-six degree day, I hid under the cover of an umbrella stationed next to the tourist map outside exit number one. I’d been told to wait there by the guesthouse. They’d pick me up there - it was all part of the ‘DMZ Stay’ service. Not used to this level of service from the liquorice allsorts of shitholes I’d stayed in in the past four months, I forgot to ask who was actually picking me up and how to identify them. I made a mental note to enquire more about this if I was offered a pickup in the future.

Soon, an unmarked pickup truck pulled up in front of the tourist map at exit number one. A man got out of the driver’s seat and waved at me. He was a lanky figure in three-quarter cargo pants, a long sleeved t-shirt and plastic sandals. A netted, wide-brimmed hat covered his long, flowing orangey-brown hair. He said hello and shook my hand. This was the time to check, at the very least, that he was from the guesthouse. But I just stood there. The words didn’t come out. I put my bag in the tray of the ute. He opened the backdoor and I sat in the backseat. The moment had passed. I didn’t ask. The timing had gone. It seemed that I was willing to be kidnapped if it meant avoiding the social embarrassment of a badly timed question.

He soon pulled into a petrol station. “Wait here.” He began filling the car whilst I started planning my escape route when the inevitable, which I had now come to terms with, would occur. I looked into the side mirror and watched him clasping the petrol nozzle. This was clearly just a way to distract bystanders whilst a series of men would come out of the mechanic next door and attack me. I would have to leave my main bag in the ute and run off with only my hand luggage. Why hadn’t I brought my main bag into the backseat with me? It didn’t matter. I began envisaging the conversation I’d have with the police later that afternoon. An officer would ask, confused: “Wait so you just got in the car without asking who he was?”

After filling up the car, we continued on for another few minutes towards the North Korean border. For the first time in my life I was thankful the North Korean border existed, if only to provide an artificial barrier limiting my wilful participation in my own kidnapping to a small, designated area. This would make it easier for rescuers to find me. Thankfully, though, the man was who he said he was. After a few minutes we arrived at the empty hostel where I was given a room to myself.

A few hours later I was sitting at a table with plates of lettuce leaves, chilli, garlic, chilli paste, roast meat, beer and soju spread out in front of me. Mr Yoon, the name I learned belonged to the guesthouse owner, poured cold beer and soju into a glass for me. Another man sitting opposite me watched on with curious eyes. He didn’t seem to approve of my outfit of pale, pink shirt and beige shorts. Nevertheless, once Mr Yoon had finished pouring, the other man took a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks, snapped them in two and tapped them into the bottom of my glass. “Tornado!” He exclaimed as the beverage began fizzing in the unique alchemy of beer and soju. This, it turned out, was the full extent of the man’s English. I turned to Mr Yoon to find out what the man’s name was. He explained that this was also Mr Yoon, the second Mr Yoon was the first Mr Yoon’s cousin. He was The Other Yoon.

Mr Yoon and The Other Yoon raised their glasses and I followed as we cheersed. Mr Yoon led the charge, “To making new friends. Geonbae!” I gulped down my glass with an eye on the other two men, unsure if this was a sipping situation or a down in one situation. I didn’t want to drink the whole thing in one go but I also wanted to do whatever was culturally appropriate. Earlier in the day I was willing to be abducted to avoid a faux pas so going against my regular drinking habits was nothing by comparison. I maintained eye contact as we each drained our glasses in one gulp.

Promptly, The Other Yoon began refilling our glasses. He swatted at mosquitoes with a plastic fly swatter whilst Mr Yoon took me through the food on the table. He packaged the meat, raw garlic, raw chilli and chilli paste into a lettuce leaf he had grown in his backyard. As I began chewing on the stuffed leaf he explained that generally this type of food was eaten in one go. There was a competitive aspect to not just the drinking but also the eating. I was happy to oblige when it came to the competitive eating but less to the drinking side of things. But this didn’t seem like the type of situation where I could be selective. I wasn’t going to be the person asking for a vegan option at a steakhouse. Like an easily-swayed pelican, I swallowed another lettuce-meat package. The Other Yoon refilled our glasses. The cycle of eating and drinking began. We quickly ran out of beer and went to pure soju. The cycle continued spinning and my head began spinning to keep in time, spinning and spinning and spinning like a washing machine at the very beginning of a new cycle.

Before I knew it, I was in a taxi. The Other Yoon had left and Mr Yoon and myself were off to Korean karaoke. I don’t recall exactly when I agreed to do that. Going through the last few minutes in my head, I realised I may have also agreed to go with Mr Yoon to a fish market the next day to eat live, squirting octopus and soju (I don’t eat octopus and I, certainly at that point, did not want any more soju) which was to be followed by a stint at a local Korean spa (I knew that the amount of clothes worn in Korean spas was less than my usually accepted level of ‘some’). All I wanted to do was see the DMZ and I was still unsure of exactly how I was going to do it. Anyway, I knew those were problems that could only be solved the next day. At that point, sitting in the back of a taxi in north-west South Korea, I had to focus on the fact that I was about to sing pop tunes with a man who, only a few hours prior, I had genuinely considered was out to kill me.

The karaoke room was similar to those I had been to elsewhere in Asia and back home. The room was large with enough space for about eight off-key singers. There was a large couch sweeping the edge of the room and multicoloured lights casting colourful shapes all over the walls. Mr Yoon and I entered the room, led by a female karaoke attendant. I began queuing up early-eighties ‘Queen’ songs on to the karaoke system and quickly realised that the lady was not leaving. This was part of the ‘service’ it seemed. Similar to certain places in Japan, groups of middle-aged men would hire a karaoke room and a female attendant would stay with them, encouraging them and saying what great singers they all were (I hoped that was all). Whilst I wasn’t looking for a one-on-one bonding session with Mr Yoon, I still felt a bit uncomfortable about the situation. But only by the time I had reached the end of ‘Radio Gaga’ did I realise what the whole arrangement was.

Mr Yoon put some drinks down on the table. There were some cans of beer, a plastic bottle of cold, black tea and a clear water bottle that he told me had been filled with soju. Why the soju was in a water bottle, I was not sure. Needless to say, at that point I had no interest in having alcohol of any kind. I sipped slowly on a cup of cold tea, trying my best not to spill anything on my clean pink t-shirt. About half way through our one-hour session, Mr Yoon and the karaoke lady both happened to leave the room. I was thirsty. I really wanted some water. I looked around the room and focused in on the plastic water bottle on the table. I recalled that Mr Yoon had said it was soju. But then I read the bottle’s label. “Natural Spring Water,” it read. Maybe I had misheard him? We had had plenty of soju already, why would we need more? I took the cap off and smelled the contents. It didn’t smell of anything. Surely I had misheard him. It must be water. Why would a karaoke bar have soju in a disposable water bottle? With my thirst growing stronger I decided that I must have misheard Mr Yoon and took a big swig of the liquid. As it filled my mouth I quickly realised my nose and brain had deceived me. It was definitely soju. I spat it straight back into the bottle, tainting the contents of the bottle in its entirety. I ran to the bathroom, put my head under the sink and gulped as much water as I could.

I returned to the room, hoping no one would go for the contaminated soju. Mr Yoon sang a few songs before putting the pressure back on me. The karaoke lady clapped along. Midway through the ballad section of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ I had an epiphany. What was I doing? I was with a man who was old enough to be my father and a woman who I was paying to clap at me in a karaoke bar only a fifteen minute drive away from a totalitarian regime. Is this what freedom felt like? In trying to be positive and agreeable I had fallen deep into a ditch of what someone else considered to be a good time. I thought I was Anthony Bourdain - getting to know the locals, embracing their culture, tasting their delicacies - but I was merely an unsure tourist in brightly-coloured clothing, afraid and unaware, lost in his own sense of self-importance. I was Michael Portillo.

When Mr Yoon suggested that we rent the room for another hour I declined, deciding that the experience had gone on long enough to fill a two-thousand word blog post. He suggested we split the bill in half but I insisted on paying, expecting a nominal fee for a midweek, one-hour session in a local karaoke bar. Financially, this was a bad decision. I expected that Mr Yoon’s payment of the cab rides to and from the karaoke place would equate roughly to the cost of the room hire. It didn’t. Even if we had split the bill, Mr Yoon’s share was well in excess of the two nights accommodation I had paid for. He was losing money. If Mr Yoon did this with every guest who stayed with him he would go bankrupt. Mr Yoon clearly wasn’t the most financially-savvy person I’d met. Maybe this was why he needed to kidnap people.