Korean Train Card

Riding the trains in Seoul is a generally pleasant experience in my opinion. For many years I swore by the train system here and used it to basically get me anywhere I was going. I think I went a solid 3 years without ever taking a bus. However, since my move 6 months ago, I've found that I am always taking buses and rarely hop on the train anymore. I guess I'm a bit nostalgic about the whole thing.

Unlike some of the stories you may hear from people who ride the train in Seoul, I can only think of one bad experience while riding them and it involved an old drunk guy at 9am. Outside of that I can count a few weird experiences and perhaps a few interesting ones but most of the time being on a train here meant I was in for a pretty mundane experience.

One of the interesting/flat out funny things I ran into on the train, and the center of this post, is a little card that I found a guy hanging up in the corners of posters one fine Tuesday morning while I on my way to work. I've actually had this card for probably about a year so I guess posting about it now goes hand in hand with my general level of procrastination when it comes to this blog.

In any case, here are pictures of both sides of the card:

For those who lack Korean abilities, allow me to translate the important portions of this card. First, the big letters in the middle read "Marry a North Korean (Woman)." Some of the other important parts read "We guarantee they'll have strong home values and attractive features." They also repeat a phrase at the bottom left "남남복녀" which is an old belief (I'm not sure how prevalant it is today) that the best marriages happen between a South Korean male and a North Korean woman. Finally, we end with the fact that you have the option of picking woman between their 20s and 60s.

Now this isn't too strange to me to be honest. I've seen these kinds of advertisements before and not just for North Korean woman but also for Vietnamese woman and Cambodian woman. What made me pick up this card and keep it in my wallet for the last year is the back side of the card which looks like this:


Basically the top just reads "Believe in Jesus our savior!" and the line underneath it reads "..and you and your family will secure salvation." I won't get into translating the block text as its just a quote from the bible but here is the funny part. Look at the phone numbers from both sides of the card. It's the same phone number!

So basically, you can call this one number and either get yourself a hot, spankin' new North Korean wife or get some Christian consultation. Maybe you can do both at the same time? I'm working up the courage to call this number and see what its all about but I don't think I could contain myself from laughing as soon as they picked up. What could their company greeting be?

"Hello, you've reached Jesus's North Korean Wife placement service. Red or repent department?"

Make up your own.