Tuesday February 26
 
15:26
 
Korea drives me NUTS, but I still adore it

Korea is a country that sometimes drives me NUTS - like today - but it’s also a country that I cannot help but adore.

Underneath the insanity, the people have a heart of gold, and they will break rules and go out of their way to help you. They are human. I remember seeing two guys get into a fight during the world cup - and when the police stepped in, the police just stopped the fight, helped the guys calm down, and then told them to move on. If that was Britain, those guys would have been banged up (and probably buggered).

When faced with a crazy situation in Korea, you can reason with people, explain to them how silly the rules are, suggest strange ways around things - and they will go out of their way to help you (with the exception of Immigration, who seem to be on a planet of their own). Well, they will go out of their way to help me - but maybe that’s because I know how to give as good as I get in Korean.

It’s the complete opposite situation in Japan. Japan is a totally rule based society. If there’s a rule that even makes no sense, Japanese will still follow it to the letter - unless there’s a rule which allows them to break rules.

Today was a classic example of Korean craziness.

Before I left Korea, I switched my phone to KTF. With KTF it’s possible to sign up for the 문자메신저Plus service and be able to send and receive SMS/MMS messages via the KTF internet site, and via an application you can download to your PC. The important thing is that your phone doesn’t need to be switch on to do it (unlike the service from SKT).

For the last 18 months, it has worked swimmingly. When I’m in Japan, I can exchange SMS with my Korean friends from my PC. When I visit Korea, I just switch on my phone and use it as normal.

Yes, for the last 18 months it has worked swimmingly. Until today.

Today when I logged in I was told I needed to receive a confirmation number sent to my phone before I could continue to use the service (인증번호). Why? God knows - no actually, this being Korea, probably he doesn’t know either. It doesn’t even seem to be related to the KTF move from “Magicn.com” to “Show.co.kr”, because that happened last month, nor the KTF Message Manager up(down)grade. It’s just random. Fuzzy logic. It’s Korea.

To my astonishment, KTF have English customer service. For anyone needing the number (and for my future record), it is: +82-2-2190-1180. From inside Korea: 02-2190-1108.

At first, they didn’t help much. I was told by the English speaking woman that there’s “no way” to get around the confirmation number. I explained that the point of the service is to be able to send and receive messages without a phone being involved, hence it doesn’t make sense to block all the international customers use the service. Still “no way” around it - and when I asked to speak to her manager, I was told “I don’t have a supervisor”.

“So you run the office yourself, do you?” Of course she doesn’t.

Lots of pursuasion later (”I’m paying money for this service and you’ve blocked me from using it” / “We’ve not blocked you” / “Yes you have, because it’s impossible for me to login” / “There’s nothing we can do” / “Well the number that I have to enter must be in your system, so tell me it so that I can continue to use the service” / etc), and after numerous comments that there’s no way around it, she agreed to look further into it and call me back.

Which she did. To ask for my password. It makes me laugh that Koreans give out information like that so easily - African scammers counld make a fortune if they just learnt Korean. I didn’t tell, of course.

We did eventually come to a solution though (by this time, we had resorted to her speaking in Korean and me speaking in English): She transferred my number to a spare phone she had, then I requested the confirmation number to be sent, she read it to me, I typed it into the website, and then she transferred my number back to my phone.

So now I can send and receive Korean SMS from my PC again, and I’ve lived through another crazy pointless farce. But the good thing is that it reminded me that crazy as Korea may be at times, because of that craziness, Koreans have some flexibility. It will probably always drive me NUTS, but today it made me happy that I took time to understand how Korean people work, and to understand the country.