Of Saints and Soju

Saint Patrick’s Day came early this year: about noon! The Irish embassy in Seoul put on a public concert and street parade complete with free Guinness, clowns on stilts, and a few genuine drunk Irishmen. Needless to say it was full-on lame. The park was boiling over with an especially rank 외국인치깨 of super-sized Canadian girls, unshaven English teachers, old green T-shirts, and lines for free Guinness long enough to persuade an Irishman to drop the sauce. We stayed just to snap a few “yes I was there” photos and then headed for the dark safety and musty comfort of a Hof. That’s when we saw it—a message from St. Patrick himself. It was scrawled in cheap golden thread and branded to the ass-end of a large, fuzzy, walking pint of Guinness.

Go forth and spew unto the multitudes a Soju-scented message of imprudence and foolery

Its sheer lunacy stopped us dead in our tracks and converted us instantaneously. And so began what would end up being a thirteen-hour-long, spiritually-inspired Hof Crawl and whirlwind taxi tour.

As a tribute to the legendary story where St. Patrick miraculously banished all snakes from Ireland, we decided to visit as many Korean Hofs as we could find in the Hyewha area and rid them all of these nasty serpents. I’m happy to report that our snake banishing powers are obviously of an exceptionally high quality, as we didn’t see a single snake. Our mere stumbling presence and thick Soju stench was enough to drive these wretched creatures out of every Hof we entered and possibly off the entire peninsula. Even we were pleasantly surprised that we possessed this magical power.

Intoxicated by our own recently recognized celestial greatness, we set off to minister to the entire city of Seoul. We promptly hired two taxis and flew across the river to spread the message of St. Patrick and share the healing power of 참이슬 to the misguided residents of Konkuk, Sincheon and Daechi. Our mouths soothed the tormented hearts of drunken, sexually-ambiguous old Korean businessmen with poorly pronounced Korean words; our fingers itched for cheap stuffed animals imprisoned in coin-operated glass cages; some of us even learned to crave the biting flavor of cigarette ash covered chicken.

Thousands of Soju baptisms and a multitude of embarrassing inebriated street-side genuflections later we felt satisfied that our work was done. After several overly enthusiastic embraces and a round of slurred and unrecognizable utterances we retired to our respective homes with swollen hearts and bladders. While our amazing feat may never be celebrated or even recorded (thankfully) in any Korean media, I’m satisfied that our day-long ministry was responsible for saving both lives and seouls.