weird

Last year I wrote a post, shortly after a former South Korean president killed himself, about Korean celebrities' predilection for suicide. Well, guess who's at it again?

I've seen coverage of this latest incident all over TV here. There's been a lot of coverage of the funeral in particular, of family and friends in tears walking into/out of the service, with fans outside wailing away. The press covers it here pretty shamelessly, with tons of paparazzi hounding the grieving family from every angle.

I went up to Daejeon on Saturday to visit my friends from last year. It was weird being back in my old neighborhood. I had a great time.

The biggest issue facing me at this moment is my lack of money. I only brought a couple hundred dollars with me because I expected being able to access my bank back home at ATMs and such. I'm fairly certain I did the same thing last year with success, however this year I'm getting nothing but error messages and rejections. My school has been nice in giving me an advance of a couple hundred thousand won off my first paycheck, but that will surely run out before I get paid. So, something must be done if I'm to avoid living off of Ramen for the next month.

One stray observation about Gwangju: people here seem to have a less than favorable impression of foreigners. I get a lot more funny looks here than I did last year. I just had a drunk guy at a convenience store look at me like he wanted to knock my teeth out.