Tag: Seoul

Angst For The Memories — What Do My English Students In Korea Remember of Me?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about teaching English in South Korea is you’re thrown into the development of young children who find you just as alien as you find them. And at the time I was teaching English in South Korea way back when, I was kind of burning my candle on both ends.

My fear is at some point in the future, one of my students will track me down as an adult and want to catch up or something. While that would be flattering, it would also force me to address how maybe I wasn’t the best teacher (I wasn’t, I sucked.)

I was such a doofus.

But that hasn’t happened yet and maybe it never will. This website will, on occasion, get random pings from Seoul which makes me wonder if there’s some sort of discussion about me taking place there still. I was lit back in the day. I was so nuts when I was in Seoul I got put in a book about crazy expats!

I’m so different than that now, however. I’m far more laid back and relaxed than I was back then. It helps that I don’t have access to cheap soju like I did back then.

But I do plan on going back to Seoul and other parts of Asia briefly before I drop dead. At some point in the future, I would like to go to Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia one last time before coming home and preparing to shuffle off this mortal coil.

A Return To South Korea


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

On or about July 24, 2004, I arrived in South Korea for the first time. I was a down on my luck drunk American at the time. Little did I know the adventures that would await me.

It’s fast approaching 20 years since that fateful day, and I find myself wanting to return to South Korea (specifically Incheon, Seoul and Busan) one last time before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

While I think I can pull it off, the whole issue of when it might happen is still very much up in the air. I’d like to do it in 2024 as close to 20 years to the date as I could get, but that’s highly unlikely. More likely, I’ll be happy if I can accomplish this goal a few years on either side of the exact anniversary.

My favorite ROKon Magazine cover.

If I did do such a trip, it would be part of a Japan – ROK – Southeast Asia trip of about two weeks. Now, one issue I’m well aware of is there both a lot of love and a lot of hate for me floating around Asia, even to this day. For every person who would flip out seeing me for a good reason, there would likely be two or three who would do the same but out of anger.

I was a very interesting person in Asia.

Anyway, it’s all very up in the air. I just have a general desire to return one last time to my old stomping grounds in South Korea. I’ve changed a lot — a whole lot — and know that but for the mutual distaste between myself and little Korean kids, I would still be there.

Sometime in 2004.

But there is always the very small chance that I will sell these four novels I’m working on and will make enough money that way that going to Asia won’t be that big a deal anymore for me. That, of course, is at the moment just another instance of me being very, very, VERY delusional.

One man’s hope is another man’s delusion.

I Miss Seoul So Much


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s time to, at last, put Seoul behind me. I may return to Seoul one day, but it won’t be the same. I went back to Seoul one last time about 10 years ago and everything had changed.

I need to look forward. But I would like to return one last time before I drop dead.

An old friend in Seoul / Image by Shelt Garner

A Most Interesting Person


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For some reason, I find myself thinking about the late Annie Shapiro a lot of late. I think it’s probably because I’m getting psyched up with a second creative track: that of a (fashion?) photographer.

Anyway, it was Annie who revolutionized how I saw myself. Before I met her, I was a drunk failed journalists. After I met her, I was a drunk creative person who realized I had a lot of untapped creative abilities.

The late Annie Shapiro / Photo by Shelt Garner

But there are some caveats to any romanticized depiction of Ms. Shapiro. She was very, very strange in her own way and she terrorized me on an emotional level. Yet, of course, in all honesty, I have to admit that I gave back as much as I got when ROKon Magazine came back without me.

And, yet, I also have to admit that Annie was able to pull of a hatrick when she got the magazine going again without me — in secret! I don’t know what to tell you. All I got is, things are beginning to fall into place on a creative level for me.

Do I miss Annie? That’s a very good question.

I think I definitely miss the lack of an opportunity for us to talk to each other every once in a while. But she was so mysterious and secretive that it’s dubious that even that would have happened if she was still alive.

Anyway. I need to stop wallowing in the past. Time to look forward.

A Brief History of The Late, Great ROKon Magazine In Covers


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that I’m beginning to get some sense of my creative future, I find myself thinking back at how I ended up in this situation. It all goes back to ROKon Magazine.

It’s embarrassing how long I dwelled on what went wrong a half-assed attempted at a magazine that only lasted a few months. But it was the one moment in my life — to date — when I was cool and people, like, actually fucking listened to me. Or, put another way, I told Annie Shapiro what we needed and people listened to her.

Anyway, the whole story is so romanticized in my mind and I’ve attempted to tell it in so many different ways, that, lulz, there’s not much more to say. But here are a few of the covers I’ve managed to save.

This was the first cover. We were all so naïve. I think my brief relationship with Annie lasted about the duration of production on this one — less than two weeks.

The above issue was a few months later — or maybe it was the second issue? It was the first issue where our vision for the magazine began to take shape, regardless. We were still very broke. But we were catching people’s attention. Again, no one cared at this point so things went well.

This was the first issue where there were obvious cracks in my relationship with Annie. I think this may have been the first issue when we were the only magazine for expats in Seoul. Everything that went wrong with ROKon Magazine was my fault because I was the one who started it. But it was fun, still at this point. I think this is the October issue when we decided to take a break so we could come out on the first of the month.

Below was one of the later issues. It’s a pretty good cover.

We Were Young Once, And Drunk


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I hope to return to Seoul before I drop dead. Everything changed when I went to Asia. Or, should I say, everything changed when I met the late Annie Shapiro. I have a very romanticized recollection of those years of my life. I mean, Annie was no saint and I was so crazy that they put me in a book about crazy expats. (That was fun, let me tell you.)

The good old days in Seoul.

In more than one way, the bolts popped off my sanity while I was in Asia. And I was so kneecapped on an emotional basis by what happened with ROKon Magazine that I pretty much was in neutral for a decade. But I can feel things beginning to change now.

Now that the novel series I’m working on is beginning to take shape and I have my potential “second track” of (fashion) photography, I’m beginning to get my emotional sea legs again. I think back to how I was a man on fire in Seoul and how I was “famous” and overexposed within the expat community for being everywhere and nowhere at once.

A lot — A LOT — could still go wrong. But the reason why photography, specifically is so appealing to me is it makes me the protagonist of my personal story again. Something has to change in my life for me to use the camera I want to buy successfully. I can’t just stay in neutral. I’m going to have to hit the pavement and see if I can crack some doors somewhere.

I remember how exciting it was in Seoul in late 2006 when Annie and I were changing the world with ROKon Magazine. I would do it all different now, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

I loved being a DJ in Seoul.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that fashion photography is, like being a rock DJ, a sweetspot in my personality. And it was in Asia that I realized I was not a journalist, but, rather a creative person. In a way, being a DJ and fashion photographer are same same but different in my mind. I’m using a similar part of my mind to tell stories, if you will.

But, as I keep saying, I’m about 20 years too old to start a career in (fashion) photography — or any creative career for that matter. They say “age ain’t nuthing but a number,” but “they” lie. All I can say is I have a native, organic talent with it comes to a few things and photography is one of them.

Getting into photography, if nothing else, elevates my serotonin levels.

Seoul On My Mind


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I was in South Korea for about five years total. It was a very unique situation for a number of reasons. I grew up a lot while I lived in Asia and it was there that I fully began to understand how creative I am.

But one thing they don’t tell you about living in South Korea as an expat is there is something akin to an Event Horizon. If you become a long-term expat (longer than, say 1 year) you never really ever leave the country. There comes a point when some how, some way you’ll continue to get the occasional ping from South Korea to remind you that you can never, ever really leave.

One reason this has happened to me now and again many years after I left South Korea is I was definitely a larger-than-life character within the Seoul expat scene. Add to this the fact that the Seoul expat scene tends to strip mine any creative ability you have and you have a recipe for me being remembered long after I physically left.

Every once in a while, I wonder if any of the many young Koreans I taught English to over the years will ever try to look me up as adults. That is going to be very surreal if it ever happens. Existential, even.

Having said all that, I have a general inclination to return to Asia one more time for a few weeks before I drop dead. It would be fun to simply show up in Seoul and see if anyone noticed — and what their reaction would be. Almost all the long-term expats I knew are long gone, but I’m sure there are a few extreme long-term expats who would remember me, not to mention the odd Korean here or there.

But all of that was long time ago. I’m not the person I once was. I have a lot more wisdom and humility, for starters. And I’m also well aware that I have Romanticized my time in South Korea and it’s come to represent my lost youth. Yet, that’s life, I guess.

I will be interesting to see if I ever get the chance to return.

My Experiences In Seoul, My Novel & ‘Write What You Know’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The expat scene in Seoul — at least when I was there — was an overheated caldron of creativity. And there were a lot — and I mean A LOT — of freaky weirdos running around. Myself included.

So many larger-than-life characters were roaming around that I often would look at one of them and say to their face, “You’re like a character in a novel.” Little did I know that many moons later I would make them characters in MY novel.

But here I am.

I find myself leaning into what I remember of those freaky expats as I develop characters in the latest version of this novel. My memory of those people is so vivid that when I find myself struggling to think up some colorful aspect of this or that character I just say, “Well, do I remember any expats in Seoul that would fit that bill?”

I’ve come up with a pretty direct way of being able to use these characters as well. One of the unique things about being an expat in South Korea is you’re always one disaster away from being kicked out of the country for good.

Anyway. Things are moving really fast with my revised vision for this story where it’s split into two novels, one story. Right now, I need to do a lot of reading and distract myself in some way so I can figure out how to fill up the second half of the second act before the sun goes dark.

Seoul Man 2024



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A lot can happen in four years — I could get snatched off the street by ICE and die in a camp, for one — but in general, I think I’m going to begin thinking about returning to Asia on or about the 20th Anniversary of my original arrival in South Korea in 2004.

I would just like to visit the old haunts on last time before I drop dead. So, I would go to Incheon, Seoul, Busan, then fly down to Southeast Asia to see some of the countries I didn’t to get see the few times I was down there. The thing is, not only has Asia changed a great deal since I left, I have changed a lot, too. I’m just not the man I used to be.

I’m a lot wiser, a lot more grounded and a lot more careful.

That’s the great tragedy of getting older. Once you enter a new phase in your life, there’s no going back. The worst part about it, of course, is there’s no ritual to help you understand what’s going on. When you’re younger, you have a number of important milestones that help you know you’re in a new era in your life. You go 16, 18, 21, 25, 30….then things become a lot more vague.

Of course, with “normal” people what happens is they exchange their own personal milestones for the personal milestones of their children. That’s the way it’s supposed to happen, at least. So when you reach 40-ish, there’s no official ceremony that tells you, “Nope, can’t date a 24 year old anymore, big guy.”

So here I am.

The older you get, the more you realize no one owes you shit and things don’t “happen for a reason.” Things happen for no reason at all and either you figure out away to give them value by taking advantage of them, or you don’t. I know on an existential level, any return to Asia would be me struggling to relieve my lost youth.

The last time I was in Seoul, things were very, very boring. This was in no small part to the changes in immigration law that forced a lot of the more balls out crazy people to flee to Cambodia. Now, things are quite calm in South Korea and, as such, I’m not going to find some sort of Fountain of Youth. I’m still old and there’s no going back.

But I would like, one last time, to see some of the significant places I remember from Seoul.

‘The Company’ & My Wild Days In Seoul



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is an instance of me either being extremely delusional (which is very possible) or sensing something that is true. Way back when, when I was living in Seoul, I was a man on fire. I was EXTREMELY CONSPICUOUS. So much so, that it’s probably reasonably likely that…uhhh…some spooks…in Seoul probably at least were aware of me.

I say this only because given where it is, it seems reasonable to assume that Seoul is crawling with spooks. Like a whole lot. And when I was there, there was a huge fucking military base in the middle of the city. And I was frequenting places like Haebangchon that probably had some military intelligence people living there. (At least in my fevered imagination about a decade later.)

Anyway, the only reason I bring his somewhat (ok, maybe a lot) bonkers idea up is I keep getting the occasional ping in my Webstats from people looking at this Website from Seoul. It makes no sense. None. I haven’t been in Seoul for about a decade now and, so, what? Why? I have been talking to the FBI for the novel and I even went so far as to mention “The Company” to the FBI PR guy.

I dunno. Just seems logical that some long-term spooky people in Seoul might have gotten wind of what I’m up to and thought they would take a look at my Website to see what was up.

I don’t think you can fully appreciate how insanely conspicuous I was in Seoul at my “height.” I was so balls out nuts someone even put me in a book about crazy expats.

All I can say is, I’m a changed man. I’ve learned humility.