Exercising, Korean style

Warm weather is here, which means it’s time for our hero to check out the Seoul sporting scene. Gotta drop that kimchi gut in time for swimsuit season. As you might expect, exercising in Korea is not as pleasant as it could be. Seoul is mostly a massive, disgusting, concrete shithouse - practically devoid of public spaces and certainly low on sporting arenas. Nonetheless, intrepid athletes can find fields and courts if they’re willing to travel, but don’t expect access to be easy or friendly.

Two weeks ago me, my shorty and my boy Alfonso Izquierda went to the river to rent bicycles. The Han River is where almost all outdoor activity takes place in town, unless you can make the hike to the outskirts. The fetid flow spans the width of Seoul, so there are a number of different parks. However these are almost invariably hard to access. Our first bicycle outing was a harrowing experience. We took a cab to the river, spotting the bike rental spot as we drove over the bridge on a highway. Even though we knew where the bicycle rental place was, our taxi driver had a hell of a time getting there. Now this in and of itself is not that unusual – I’m sure my DC readers know how absurd it can be to reach public places in a metropolitan area. But our taxi driver took a unique approach: he stopped in the middle of the highway and left us to hop the guard rail and scramble down a hill to the street below just as he peeled off to avoid getting hit by a bus.

Once down the hill the bike ride was fine enough, although the ever-present oblivious attitude of the Kims often reared its head in the form of people crowding the lanes.

Most Koreans don’t play sports (especially young Kims). Furthermore, the Kims who are not terrified of physical activity have a rather comical conception of what constitutes exercise. Thus one will often find a strange array of useless equipment installed alongside the river, including spinning discs that you are meant to stand on and twist from side to side, and other devices too inane to describe. Received Korean wisdom seems to indicate that shaking around like an idiot must be good for you.

These ridiculous machines are ubiquitous in my new gym, which I am now using to supplement my trips to the river. The most popular machines are ones on which tiny Korean women can be vibrated for hours on end without expending any actual physical energy. Remember the old vibrating belts they sold to fat Americans in the 50’s? They still have those here – jiggle it off while you chew a kimchi flavored Twinkie, fatties!

The Kims often don’t really have anything resembling sports etiquette. This, added to the fact that Koreans are generally lacking in etiquette in all areas, can make for some frustrating athletics. My gym is tiny, only possessing a free-weight area big enough for 4 people at a time to work out. Normal people would recognize this limitation and behave with heightened awareness of their surroundings – but not the Kims. People here routinely take over one of the two benches in the weight room and hang out on it for hours. While they may occasionally lift something, they spend most of their time looking at themselves in the mirror, or doing pointless little exercises that do not in any way require the use of one of the only available benches.

Yesterday I headed to the bench press to find it occupied by a large middle-aged Kim. After watching him finish a set and proceed to sit on the bench for 10 minutes, followed by a 5 minute session of air karate chops (he was sparring with himself in the mirror I guess), I asked him how many more sets he had left. He said one. After he finished his next ridiculous routine I moved in to take his place. I’m not sure what he said next, but the asshole’s general message was that I should wait until he was good and ready to get off the bench. I pointed out to him that we could easily share this bench – and also attempted to indicate that we should be mindful of the dearth of equipment in our gym. The old douchebag was completely baffled by the idea of sharing the equipment. He also seemed oblivious to the crassness of his routine and its air karate chops. Couldn’t he fake fight himself somewhere else? Of course not.

He is not alone – none of the Kims with whom I’ve tried to communicate in various crowded gyms have ever grasped the concept of sharing. It’s simply not done here. What is done resembles some kind of farce: there’s not enough room for everyone on the equipment, so the Kims waste as much time as possible doing imaginary “exercises” that aren’t having any effect whatsoever. It would actually be funny if it weren’t happening to me – but I guess that’s par for the course here.