Finally sitting down to write about the past week or so has proven to be tough. I’ve been working and missing out on sleep in between work too much. Never mind. I’ve got a few minutes before I’m meeting Keith for lunch and then later flying off to Thailand for a week’s holiday. If you’re wondering why I need a holiday, in a life that seems to be a holiday anyway, well let me tell you that the past month of work has been a long one. Plus, I need to make a visa run so I may as well enjoy it.
But before I start blabbering on about that, let me take you back to Thursday. Not last Thursday, but the one before that. It seemed like another day at the Hyundai Summer English camp. All the teachers were there, the students were relaxing and having fun and spirits were high. Then some friendly chaps from immigration arrived. We were informed of this through word of mouth. It spread around before I even got to see them. Immediately I was on the phone to my recruiter, asking what the deal is and what I should do. I was told that it was ok, I had a visa however some of the other teachers might be in trouble. So, blessed as I was with a C-4 visa I continued working, while some of the others tried hard to look as un-teacherly as possible. This was probably my first big mistake.
At the end of the day, I wrapped up my teaching and got ready to satisfy the hunger pains that had been growing steadily since about an hour after lunch. Yu Nae, the exceedingly cute camp supervisor told me that I had to go to a meeting in the conference room with the immigration officials. I thought that this was a terrible idea. So as you would expect, I ignored it and erased the memory with food from the buffet. A great move on my part, given what happened next.
Shortly after, Yu Nae came running after me saying that “oh my god” I really shouldn’t be eating at a time like this. Dinner time? It seemed like the perfect time to be eating. Reluctantly though, partly because she looked so worried and partly because she is rather cute, I left the rest of my sweet and sour pork and followed her to the boardroom. On one side sat my collegues, a bunch of us besides the guy who ran. On the other side were a bunch of serious looking men, not saying anything. Naturally, given no indication as to why we were sitting there or what the hell was going on, we made idle chit chat which of course involved a few jokes and then some hearty laughter on our part. This didn’t go down very well with any of the serious men. We tried not to laugh so hard after that. Now Les, one of the teachers, has been in Korea a hell of a long time and he went over and asked the guy in Korean what was going on. The response was spat back with unmistakable contempt “Don’t ask!” I was starting to gather that this was a little more serious than I had first thought.
In my mind, there was no problem for me at this point, because I had a visa. I figured that as soon as I got the chance to tell them this, I would be able to go and find some more food back at the cafeteria, before they cleared it all away. Twenty minutes later and we were getting restless. We asked further questions. Finally, we were told that a bus was coming to take us to immigration. What? Why? Which law had I broken? When would I come back here? Would they drive me back themselves? Unfortunately none of these questions were answered, nor would any further questions be answered again that day. The bus came, we were escorted on to it and taken an hour away to the Immigration office.
After submitting to their questioning at the office and signing forms to say “yes I was working there” they told us that we were in violation of our visas because the location specified on the contract and the location of our workplace was different. A vague phone conversation popped into my mind with my recruiter. Something about a different camp visa and something not to worry about, as far as I recalled. I told them my employer was XXXX and that XXXX was right there, they were going to give me the money at the end of the camp. Fine they said. Oh but it was not fine. They escorted us to a room full of boxes and said “take off your clothes”.
We put on pajamas that felt like they hadn’t been washed since they were made and worn by numerous numbers of sweaty inmates before me. But mine were the envy of the others because mine had pockets. So here we were, a few hours ago independent, young and respected, watching movies on our portable video players in between classes, now we were marvelling over pants with places to put things. How life changes. We were taken into a room filled with about 50 foreign migrant workers from China Bangladesh and the Phillipines. The windows and doors had bars. There was no furniture. And the toilet smelled oh so bad. We took a spare seat next to it (the only place on the floor not covered by a migrant body) and thus began our day of incarceration.
On the bright side, we had phones. There were 5 public phones and phonecards could be bought easily. There were no ATMs unfortunately, but luckily I had a lot of money in my wallet. We started frantically calling everyone we could, asking them what the hell was going on and oh the injustice of it all. We were shocked, every last one of us. We vaguely made some conversation about human rights and lawyers, but somehow it all felt rather empty. We had been locked up and through the whole process there was such an overwhelming sense of compliance about it that it made me feel like an idiot. There hadn’t been a struggle, or a threat. I had just been asked to please come this way, sit down there, put those stinky pajamas on and go into that cell. I really thought that when I go to jail there would be some kind of scuffle with restraints and batons. I was, on the whole, quite let down.
Now I could probably write a lot of stuff about that night I spent in jail. We were there about 26 hours in total, during which time I had a chat with a few of the inmates. One had been there for 4 months and had no idea when he would be released because all he needed was one man’s permission, who didn’t want to give it. Another guy, a Nigerian, had been accused then cleared of drug charges, but nevertheless had spent the past 6 months in Immigration facilities. The word from them was simply that Immigration is a body unto itself and the normal laws don’t seem to apply. I was really glad to get out of there. As I left, I turned around and snapped a couple of pictures of the building.
Upon my exit, the next day, I was very grateful for the ability to made the choice between getting a beer with my fellow inmates/collegues or heading off on a pre-planned trip to the East Coast beaches with a bunch of people I didn’t know. In my mind, there was only one thing that could possibly cheer me up right now and that was sun, sand and sexy girls. I was guaranteed at least the first two by going on the trip, so I parted ways and made a beeline for the pickup point. I made it there in an hour, half an hour late, but it was ok. I said “hi” told them that Jamie, the guy who had organized my position on the trip would not be coming, nor would any of the other guys because, well it had been a long day. We climbed aboard the minivans and drove off into the night. And then, as I chatted and relaxed with some new people, I managed to forget about Thurday night and Friday and thought about the fun weekend ahead.
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