Jenny+Choi-Lee

I am terribly afraid of certain people. They are everywhere, and appear and strike when you least expect them to, handing out new products/booklets/samples/religions for your convienience/pleasure/salvation/all of the above.

Walking in the mall? Just look out for that strange woman staring at you. Going to the bookstore? Well, you better try to avoid that man. He looks creepy. And he is holding up some kind of a sign, muttering to nobody in particular. Waiting on the subway platform, you might encounter (seemingly) homeless men shouting something about Jesus.

I'm actually on the ok side with the people who hand out booklets for new brand of school unifrom or something. They are annoying, true, but at least they give out candies sometimes. They usually don't stick if you express your disintrest-they would rather find someone else to talk to rather than waste their time on someone unconvinced.

The second type of people is the people that I truly fear. They are amazingly concerned with you, unlike those unifrom salesmen. However, their dedication puts them at whole new level of creepiness (and stubbornness). The Witnesses, the Christians, and several other weird Asian variation of the theme is enough to make anyone feel uneasy, religious or no. I am not against promoting a religion, I'm just saying that those efforts should not be so forceful or unsociable. Handing out packets with words like "if you do not believe, you will certainly go to hell"--especially to naive students or people who clearly are disintrested--is not a great example of things, I believe. Same goes for the missionaries on the subway and malls and shopping strips.

I once encountered a man in Coex, the well-known hub for everything cool in South Korea, and it turned out to be a pretty frightening experience. He was dressed like a hiker, complete with a hat and a heavy-looking backpack. Mumbling incoherably, he put a small booklet into my hands, and told me that it was a great read. I looked at the book, which featured a cover with two women in white dresses. They had scared look on their faces, with a creepy backdrop of broken windows. I flipped through the booklet, just to make him happy; it was in Japanese. I, for one, cannot read a word of Japanese. When I told the man, who had not moved an inch, about my unfortunate position (and attempted to return the book back into his hands without being too noticeable) he told me that it was in Chinese, not Japanese. At least, I think that is what he said. He was mumbling way too much to be sure. At school, though, I chose to study Spanish instead of newly growing Chinese, which everyone else was learning because it was the next global thing, and I told the man so. He seemed to think for a minute, before answering that I should buy myself a Korean-Chinese dictionary, for sole purpose of reading the booklet, because (as he repeatedly mentioned) it held great things. When he wasn't looking, I secretly dropped the booklet and ran.

Of course, that wasn't the first, or the last, or the most frightening of all the encounters; my scariest experience was when a strange woman, who was keep "surveying" my friend about her religion, reacted when my friend suddenly started running like the wind (effectively abandoning me in the process). The woman chased after her, running in **high heels**. And all the while, she was talking about some kind of "chosen seed".