Jan 24th, 2001
PC Bang
Earlier that day I had asked Jake if there was any way I could get access to the internet, in order to send an e-mail back to my family, telling them that I had arrived safely. So after we left the school that evening, we headed towards the Star PC-Bang. This was my first venture into the world of Korean PC-Bang culture, a strange sort of phenomenon that snatched me into its grip, condemning me to countless hours of Internet chat, video games, and mindless web surfing.
The PC Bang in Korea is a sort of technology age church, in which tens of thousands of young Koreans indulge in all manners of online interactions. The generic PC-Bang is a single room equipped with an average of about twenty computers, a coffee vending machine, a snack bar stocked with Ramyen and a Korean version of Slim-jims that tastes like fish.
Behind the front counter is a selection of about 10-20 video games that the PC-Bang patron can choose from, which is really ornamental in nature, seeing as how Koreans only play three computer games: Warcraft, Diablo 2, and Lineage. There are also a wide variety of internet-based games that Koreans play such as Fortress (which Koreans pronounce “Portress”) and Tetris.
In the United States, there is an image of the stereotypical video game aficionado as being a teenage male with acne, who really has no alternative but to play video games. In Korea, this image is non-existent. Although the majority of PC-Bang fanatics are males, there is normally a sizeable minority of females present at any given time. With regard to age, the youngest patrons are about five years old and the oldest tend to be in their mid to late twenties.
We walked into the Star PC-Bang and a young Korean man with a genuine smile greeted us. Blake told me that his name was “Pak-chal,” but somehow I heard “Puckchuck,” and this was what I ended up calling him for several months.
There were about five or six people in the PC-Bang, all smoking cigarettes as they clicked away to their heart’s content. There was a Caucasian male seated near us and Blake approached him and laid his hand on the man’s shoulder. The man exclaimed and turned around in surprise.
He had wild blue eyes, a brown pony tail, and an overbite that reminded me of how a shark’s mouth looks when examined from underneath.
“Oh man, you scared me,” he said. “You got to watch it, it’s a good thing I caught myself because half the time I would have busted the person by now. Don’t ever come up from behind me like that again.”
This was Bill. He was a thirty year old from Manhattan who had taught at my Institute for six months before quitting and returning home. After realizing that he didn’t really have a whole lot going for him at home, he returned to Korea and was supporting himself by teaching private lessons. He lived in a small one-room apartment near the airport, which he described as being roughly the size of a closet.
As I grew to know Bill, I became aware that he had two main hobbies: telling crazy stories and playing video games for obscenely large amounts of time. He also happened to be a passionately loyal friend and probably would have taken a bullet for Jake if presented with the opportunity.
