Best of Ulsan – 2012 – Miscellaneous

Some things about the last year or so in Ulsan were just too … sparkling… to have a category of their own.  But that doesn’t mean they escaped our scrutiny here at UlsanOnline.com.  Here are a few items that we thought worthy of mention.

• Worst Criminal – Late in 2011 an English teacher from Canada mailed himself a container of hashish to the school at which he worked. As if bringing drugs into the one place Koreans fear the corrupting influence of drugs the most wasn’t bad enough, this clown just couldn’t stop there.  The police trailed him in an effort to determine if he was selling and who his network of deviant teachers were. Realizing he was simply a pot-head smuggling for his own personal use, the police arrested him while he was smoking a fattie in a very public place along side the Taewha River.
• Best Admission of Guilt – When asked about the origins of some particularly nasty rumours regarding UlsanOnline.com, Dan Gauthier let loose with a stream of invective, bad spelling and poor grammar, “I did mention once in passing the first year you started your website to one perticular person that was my photographer that you did use his photo…  <name removed>  is a fucken ASSHOLE.   …As for <name removed> I don’t know what her problem is.  … tell your friends to get a life and be careful what they say about me. You are them have no fucken idea who I am and how much weight I carry in this City.”  [sic] That last line  is a quote worthy of Most Egotistical. After that conversation, Mr. Gauthier promptly blocked his facebook account from further access. Since then, UlsanOnline can no longer access and  report on when his volunteer group, T-Hope, will visit the Eonyang Orphanage.  We hope the orphans will appreciate the adult attitude.
• Best Place to be felt up by a Russian Sailor – Jake Corre informed us of this winning entry.  Apparently Beat Bar in Samsandong is the place to be for this type of activity. No word from Jake on how he knew the other party was a sailor but apparently somebody got a handful of somebody else’s south seas.
• Worst Case of Sibling Rivalry – When the Ministry of Education (MOE) decided they wanted to get all the dirt on foreigner teachers, they decided not to play nice with the Ministry of Justice’s Immigration Department.  Native English Speaking teachers were, in order to work at a school,  required to supply the MOE with exactly all of the same material they had just supplied to the Immigration Department in order to get a visa to come to Korea. The MOE did not want to get the information from Immigration and would not deal with them.  The MOE later softened their stance and now accepts photocopies of the documents rather the a second set of originals. But teachers must still visit the Immigration office and obtain copies to give to the MOE or simply obtain two official copies before coming to Korea. This makes sense,  because with Korea being the most wired country in the world there is no possible way to share that information between the two departments.
• Best Korea Tourism Tag line – overheard in a noisy bar in Samsandong:

  she: Korea’s new tourism tag line is ‘Korea Sparkling.’

  he: Oh, what was their old tag line?

  she: Dynamic Korea.

  he: What? I didn’t hear you. Did you say ‘Goddammit Korea’?

  she: yes, that’s it.

• Worst Case of Misplaced Priorities – When an angry drunken Korean got thrown out of Cima Bar as he tried to pick up a chair and use it as weapon he claimed he was kicked and scratched in the process and called the police. The Nam-gu police then sent two beat cops to investigate which took over an hour. Then two detectives and a translator became involved and, with a pair of foreigners, spent several hours at the police station explaining again and again what happened.  Meanwhile,  pick any intersection in the entire city of Ulsan and watch half a dozen cars run red lights, make illegal turns, threaten pedestrians on crosswalks, endanger cyclists  and generally ignore every traffic law there is. Or worse, watch TV while driving and kill someone.
• Best Self Promotion – there had to be one. With few controls on how the voting was regulated, spam-proofed or idiot-proofed, it was inevitable someone would get through and pepper the polls with their favorite whatever regardless of the category. The Best of Ulsan 2012 Poll came off with few real problems, but one voter just could not help him or herself.  With a vote for Cocky in just about every category, an anonymous supporter (was that you, Anece?) wins for best Self Promotion.
• Worst Voters – some of our readers apparently weren’t quite sure why we would ask all these questions. We asked, of course, so others could find and visit the best shops, restaurants and bars in the city. But not understanding that, they submitted votes that  were vague,  ambiguous or less than helpful. Submissions such as “the galbi place on the hill in Seongnamdong” (as if there was only one hill or one galbi place) were common in the polls  My personal favorite was for the “Best Jiggae in Ulsan” in which one voter listed “Ajumma in Guyoungli by the grocery store.”  She may make some wicked fine jiggae but the rest of Ulsan will likely never find her. And if she really is good enough to tell others, then that voter did her a disservice.
• And finally from our voters, we asked for the Best Sparkling Moments in Korea. We pulled these directly from the polls:

  For me unfortunately that happened couple of times now.

  First time I reached Busan by KTX to busan station. I had to go to “Nopo-dong Station” to catch a bus for Ulsan, I asked for the direction just find myself at “Nampo-Dong Station”. 🙂 , there are few more such experience which I would like to forget .. 🙁

  and this one:

  I was singing in a norebang. A Korean man opened the door, ran inside, and punched me in the face.

  and

  the Bi-bo-ho traffic lights. They mean absolutely nothing, green or red

  And finally, to sum up what many us of here feel about Korea in general and specifically Ulsan:

  Ulsan Rocks. I love living here. I’d live forever I could. The most memorable things are the great people I met. Korean and other.

And there you have it. The Best and Worst of Ulsan in 2012.