Coming to Korea: Part One, or
The Career-strewn Road to the Land of the Morning Chaos
BY JL COPELAND
The topic for this post is at the request of a reader who wanted to know:
Why South Korea? What’s it like teaching in Korea in 2026 ?
If any of you have any questions or similar curiosities about horror, writing, Korea, raising a family abroad, effective haemorrhoid treatment etc., hit me with a reply.
(I beg you. The barrel is starting to get well and truly scraped for these regular missives).
Back to the question. Well, two questions, really. I guess I should break it up over a few posts (you lot and your short attention spans).
In the first two, I will deal with how I ended up in this clean, crime-free utopia/kimchi-soaked hellhole.
In the last, I’ll deal with what it’s like teaching the cream of Korean youth/best not, some of them might be reading this 😉 .
Here’s this week’s backing music as you read. You’ll see why I chose this a little later.
I studied law at university. I’d liked the idea of being a lawyer since I was ten years old.
The alternatives were an underwater archaeologist or Vanilla Ice Part 2.
What can I say, I was grounded.
I still know Ice Ice Baby by heart.
As a special bonus for my readers (& just in case anyone from Universal Music is reading), I’ve recorded my own version, just for you.
Ears recovered yet? Not bleeding? Good, back to lawyers.
I didn’t exactly know what lawyers did, but my parents said they earned bags of moolah.
My heavy diet of American movies also told me that they were always impressive—usually—respected, & sometimes in league with the devil.
I liked what I saw.
I was definitely not respected.
Nor impressive.
In league with the devil? The jury was still out on that one.
By the time I was sixteen, I was a straight C student who’d almost failed his middle school exams, with a temperament closer to a high chair than high school.
In the last year of middle school, I told my form teacher I wanted to be a lawyer.
She laughed.
Not even kidding. Encouraging stuff.
Screw you, Mrs R.
But in high school, I pulled my finger out, avoided the girls (read: was avoided by the girls) kept my head down and did pretty good.
I scraped into university.
My college years were uneventful: I worked hard and didn’t get laid.
So essentially a repeat of high school—and the rest of my life.
I entered law school in Manchester, and then I discovered a certain band from Detroit, and the wheels kinda began to fall off.
The band was The White Stripes.
Because of them, I picked up a guitar for the first time, dyed my hair black and formed a tribute band with my youngest sister.
I know.
We were called The Shite Stripes.
I know.
If you want more, you can read my blog post: The Legend of The ShiteStripes, which is coming soon(ish), so I’m going to keep this part brief.
I didn’t drop out of law school or anything. It was a tribute band. I’m not that mental.
I passed my exams (top scored in one of them—suck on that, Mrs R) and then it was time to find a job.
After five years of grinding academic slog, what did I choose to specialize in?
I specialized in waiting tables and washing pots at the Cavendish Arms, Cartmel.
The band thing again.
My parents expected me to apply to law firms.
I didn’t.
The summer passed. Application deadlines loomed.
I stayed on at the pub.
I’d practice all hours when I wasn’t at work, plotting world domination. You couldn’t move in my room for drum kits, amplifiers, PA systems.
Six months passed.
A year.
The application forms for the law firms sat gathering dust beneath the piles of guitar tablature.
We did have loads of gigs.
People were into us.
But we were still a White Stripes tribute band.
When I reflect on that time, I wasn’t completely delulu (to borrowGeneration Z’s catchy lingo). It wasn’t like I thought we’d be the first tribute band to ‘make it,’ (well, maybe a little).
I was simply having the time of my life. I loved the music. I loved playing live. For the first time in my life, girls looked at me.
Girls!
I know!!!
But I was becoming a little anxious. My friends all either had jobs in the City or were travelling.
You know, productive/character-building crap.
I was broke and stuck in Cumbria.
What was I doing? Like the song atthe beginning of this newsletter, was I wasting my time?
Then Alison emailed me.
I didn’t know it then, but that email would change my life forever.
Yes, I am going to leave you hanging.
If a 7-nation army couldn’t hold you back, read a few of my other blog posts in the meantime, you’ll feel better. You might even laugh (might—no promises).
Speak soon.
JL
PS: Is your email promotions tab/spam folder screaming out to be stuffed with something less ‘problematic?’
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