Korean St. Patty's ☹

We were pretty surprised when we heard that there was going to be St. Patty's festivities in the Insadong neighborhood of Seoul with food booths and even a live band.  Seoul celebrates St. Patrick's Day, who knew?  Never being too big on the holiday in the states, we weren't too interested in celebrating it in Korea, but since we had nothing better to do that day, we decided to at least check it out.

As we were walking through Insadong, about 25 yards away from where the St. Patty's party was going, we encountered a strong alcohol/booze breath scent, that got stronger with each step we took.  We could smell the booze stench before we could hear the live band, that's how thick it was.  "Wow, these Koreans must really understand St. Patrick's Day!" we thought.  When we turned into the area, we immediately noticed how wrong our previous thought was.  There were no Koreans in sight.  Koreans weren't the ones celebrating.  The wasted, screaming crowd was made up almost entirely of other foreigners.  It was a frightening scene.  It was maybe 1PM, if even and already people were stumbling around, pouring straight soju down their throats.  We were far too sober for the situation, so we just snapped two photos and got the hell outta there.  Not our scene.

Koreans have a lot of stereotypes of foreigners and alcohol that stem from things like that.  While we have, without a doubt, promoted those stereotypes more times than we'd like to admit, we try to avoid doing it by the hundreds, and so early in the afternoon.  We also just feel uncomfortable when surrounded entirely by English speakers.  It's hard to explain.  The English speaking community here is miniscule compared to the Korean population, so whether it's true or not, it often feels like we're just lumped into one category, where any single individual can represent the rest of us, which isn't the case at all.  Back home in The States, you see an idiot and you think, "look at that idiot," but here it's, "Koreans look at me and think I'm like that."  Again, this assessment could be entirely false, but it's how we feel sometimes, especially with large groups. 

So, instead of hanging around and partying with our fellow 'foreign-folk,' we made our way to the next, more Korean neighborhood and celebrated St. Patty's where we were comfortable and once more among the minority!