Mr Han

Mr Han is the security guard at our apartment building. Although how much more ‘secure’ he makes our building is debatable. He’s certainly not the most intimidating man you could ever seen. Not that you can actually see him because the bugger refused to be photographed! It's unfortunate there is no image of the creature that is Mr Han, so you'll just have to conjure up a mental picture yourself. In a nutshell, he looks like a decrepit version of Mr Miyagi wearing a kid's policeman uniform.


Maybe, his appearance is a fallacy, though. After all, Mr Miyagi, Daniel Son’s sensi from the Karate Kid franchise, barely looked like he could lift those chopsticks, but all those evil-doers that crossed him soon found out that the old man could more than handle himself. Maybe Mr Han’s the same, they certainly bear some similarities (what? they are both old and Asian – well done racist) and maybe he’s just waiting to flying kick some malevolent David Hasselhoff lookalike into submission. He must be over 80 (I don’t think the Korean government’s too big on pension plans) and he is so small he makes me seem like an imposing giant, a feat previously unheard of. He really is a sweet old man and the soppy thing is whenever we have one of our frequent interactions a little bit of my heart goes out to him. Sarah and I are forever yearning for a pocket-Mr Han, so he could be all snug and cosy in your top pocket, ready to be plucked out and looked at whenever you need a bit of cheering up. Truth, is I could probably just pick him up and perch him on my shoulder and have a parrot-Mr. Han, which would also be great. I wonder which would be better. . . . . . . . .

As well as his physical appearance, Mr. Han is a great guy. He always tries to initiate conversation, although his English is very basic (but somewhat better than my Korean!), Despite this we have polite and smiley, if somewhat brief exchanges, which I’m sure are mutually enjoyable for both parties. It’s nice to see a friendly face when Mr Han’s working his shift, which is a stark contrast to the other grumps that also work the door at our place. Obtaining a modicum of humanity from these guys it seems is an impossible task and I actually bore the brunt of one of these curmudgeonly crabs in the recycling area. Korea is BIG on recycling which is great, but I didn’t realise quite how seriously they took it until I accidentally placed a plastic milk bottle amongst the other plastic bottles (can there be a more grave error?) One of the these guys happened to be present and after I made this mistake gave me a hard, cold glare. He then looked away and made a loud, almost sub-human sound, which I can only liken to the noise a maternal dragon might make if one attempted to steal her unhatched offspring. It was that scary. I made a swift departure and vowed never to be so laid back when it comes recycling in Korea again.

Anyway back to the main man. Although our conversation rarely gets beyond pleasantries, it is Mr Han’s cheeky, boyish nature that is his real charm. He is like one of my students whenever we return from the corner shop, he always curiously rummages through our shopping bag. Maybe he’s just fulfilling the security aspect of his job, making sure we haven’t purchased explosives from the grocers and are planning to take down the apartment block. He certainly does have a good root through each bag, but I think it’s just because a) he’s incredibly bored (those solitary 24 hour shifts he pulls must really dull the grey matter) and b) he wants to show off the fact he has a surprisingly good English vocabulary. The great thing is and much to mine and Sarah’s amusement he often pronounces words with an almost flawless English accent. Unfortunately, due to our lack of mutual understanding we have not been able to ascertain how Mr Han acquired this Received Pronunciation. Maybe the Queen’s speech is broadcast in Korea every Christmas and Mr Han hangs on her every word, Kimchi replacing the traditional sprouts on his roast dinner plate as he watches. Who knows? Another great thing about Mr Han is that he always tries to chat up Sarah when I’m not about. The old charmer often compliments her on her hair and tells her she’s beautiful. The other evening, Sarah was wearing a pair of rather short cut-offs and he pointed at her legs, gave a little chuckle and said “very good, very good!” Subtlety ain’t his strongpoint and he’s getting bolder, I was actually present during this shameless bout of womanising. Maybe there’s life on the old dog yet.

Mr Han has many an attribute and I feel fortunate that I can interact with him. He is, however, a confusing bugger at times. Predictably, this stems not only from the language barrier, but I think also the cultural and generational gap. He really does cause us the odd bit of stress. For instance, on the second day being here, we were escorted from our apartment by our employers and taken to the local hospital for the mandatory tests that every working foreigner has to endure in order to remain in employment in Korea, subject to the results of course. We were aware we would have to do this, but we under the impression we could do this at our leisure, possibly weeks after arrival. To be forced into doing this on our second day in the country when stress levels were already at an all time high, was certainly an inconvenience. We weren’t even sure what the tests involved and to have our employers there with us to hold our hands did not diminish our anxiety one bit. Anyway, the tests began, which started off nice and gently with hearing and eyesight. The Korean doctor appeared satisfied with this and then motioned for me to approach a female doctor sat behind a desk. A female doctor with a hypodermic needle primed and ready to extract my precious blood! All sorts of paranoid notions went through my mind as I imagined some militant haematologist stringently assessing my vital fluid, looking for any technicality to get me deported under a cloud of shame. We had also heard horror stories of samples getting switched and even though common sense urged me not indulge in such fantasies, the whole ordeal seemed rather unnecessary and was a tad disconcerting. After this, I then still had to deliver urine and have numerous chest X-rays. Wow, Korea certainly don’t want any old riff-raff in their backyard. We weren’t sure how long the results would take, but considering how efficiently we were processed at the hospital, we thought it would be days not weeks.

With this very much in mind, we went about our business that week, speedily becoming accustomed to our new teaching roles. The steep learning curve was being painfully ascended but overall things were going as well as they could in our first ever week of educating. That was until 2 days later that our new chum Mr Han really put the frighteners up us. We were exiting our building for work when a very stressed Mr Han wheezily approaches us and demands in very broken English that we call our boss, Mr Lee. “Oh shit“, we thought, “something has happened with the test results, Mr Han is really worked up about something, this is not good.” We explained that we going to work now and we could talk to our boss then. However, Mr Han was very insistent that we call right away So, there and then I call Mr Lee, thinking our Korean dream may be coming to a very abrupt end. To my surprise, Mr Lee’s first words were not “you’re fired, you must leave immediately”, in fact it actually seemed that Mr Lee was quizzing me as to my reason’s for making the call to him! This was very strange and also difficult to negotiate as Mr Lee’s English is barely an improvement on Mr Han’s and without the aid of body language the whole conversation was very confusing. Both parties were soon totally bewildered so I passed the phone to the still present Mr Han, who after the briefest of exchanges, hung-up the phone, gave it back to me and ushered us on our way with a hasty “Go, go.” Even more perplexed, we turned around and left for school. To this day we have no idea why we were supposed to call Mr Lee or even if we were supposed to at all. Crazy old Mr Han really got us rattled that day.

Weeks of pleasant exchanges sweetly drifted by and we had almost forgotten how Mr Han had nearly given us heart attacks in that first week. And then 2 weeks ago, he tried to pull another stunt on us again. Upon returning to the flat one day, Mr Han motioned us over to his little office and said “school telephone number” (once again with his spot-on accent, okay his use of grammar isn’t great but his pronunciation is top drawer). Obviously, we had no idea why he wanted this but we weren’t too perturbed at this stage. So, I found the number on my phone and showed him, anticipating he would write it down and pass it on to whoever required it. Instead, he snatched the phone from me, hit the call button and tried to ring the school there and then! However, there were two stumbling blocks to his plan. One was that I had no credit so a call other than to an emergency number was impossible. Also, not only was the daft fool holding the handset upside down but also back-to-front! Trying to suppress a massive grin I let him carry on until he realised he was getting nowhere. With annoyance, he handed the phone back to me we went on our way, still unsure why he wanted to call the school. We thought it possible we had been too noisy coming back late one night and another resident had complained. We decided the best course of action would be to try and avoid Mr Han for as long as possible until he forgot all about it. Simple.

This plan worked for a few days until I received a call from a very worried sounding Sarah who had just been cornered by the old codger on her way to work. He was apparently very stressed again and demanded that the school call him immediately. Sarah was pretty worried as our normally docile and friendly guard was pretty angry with us and it sounded important. As my director, Mrs Lee, speaks better English than her husband I decided to ask her to call Mr Han. After stressing it sounded important, Mrs Lee eventually called Mr Han after half an hour of fretting over what it could be this time. I wasn’t as concerned as the last time a similar scenario arose but I didn’t really want to get into trouble at the school. Mrs Lee phoned Mr Han from a shared phone in the office so I could hear (although not understand of course) what was going on. A fairly lengthy, almost heated exchange took place and I began to fear the worst. Mrs Lee finished the call, replaced the handset and turned to address me. Fortunately, she was smiling so I was able to sigh with relief. The old fool had got us again! He was stressed because of some minor parking infringement which had nothing to do with us whatsoever!! Cheers, Mr Han. 2-0 to you, but we won’t be letting him catch us out again. Hopefully.