Comment by yongjik
5 days ago
Umm... I'm not sure I follow. You were casually asking prices in English and the shopowner jumped to the conclusion that you were trolling him by using English when you were fluent in Korean?
If it was around that time, most Koreans were not good at English, and it's not exactly hard to tell a native English speaker from a Korean who learned "I'm a boy, you are a girl" in middle school.
Sounds like the shopowner was just a jerk and was mad for some random reason.
It was in the early '90s, sometime before South Korea broke out as a dominant economic force. Yes, I'm convinced he thought I was a western educated Korean brat prancing around in his shop and was having none of it. Looking back, I still feel a sense of relief I didn't get beaten up.