Reflections on Weekend in Seoul

I originally intended to write this as an analysis of what exactly I said and did in order to get phone numbers from the girls I talked to, but I think that won’t actually be as useful as a broader analysis of the situation and thoughts on what to change going forward.

The first thing to note is that because I’ve lived here for so many years, there is nothing really new or exciting about any of these places in Seoul that I visited.  With the exception of meeting people at the wedding, it was just business as usual.  Go to Hongdae, scope the scene, find the girls I like (or don’t), and go into the regular old song and dance.  I also wasn’t as hungry to find someone new that night because I had already had sex earlier in the day, which takes away the feeling of necessity on a Saturday night.  I think that will be different when I visit other cities around Korea, but I’m not actually sure that my original plan of trying things and analyzing them is what will be most beneficial to me.  The good news is that I can always come back and revisit Seoul if the new plan works out in other cities.

My new plan is to make my writings more observation and information gathering rather than in-field experimentation.  There are a few of reasons for this.  The first is that, like this last weekend, sometimes things just don’t pan out.  Not enough people out, nobody interesting, girls are all with their boyfriends, or any other variables that can’t be planned for and predicted.  I also make no secret of the fact that I am not a pickup artist, nor do I aspire to be.  While I have had hookups and one nighters, it’s not really my style and it’s usually not the style of the types of girls I’m most attracted to.  This may be different as I travel to other cities, but likely not.  I’ve been to almost all these places before, have contacts in them, and I prefer to pipeline girls by using Skout, Blendr, and OKC to get a decent idea of the local talent before I even arrive.

The top reason I’m choosing to change my style is that I feel like it doesn’t provide me enough information to share with my readers.  Best case scenario, I have short 10-15 minute conversations with various girls, doing the same dancing bear act where I wouldn’t learn anything about them or their habits, until I find one girl who has a mutual interest with me, we get drunk and go to a motel room together.  This doesn’t give me much information to actually share about the city, local girls, and places to hang out in that given city.

Instead of my initial idea, I’m going to try to make this more of an information gathering expedition in each city, with a side benefit of possibly meeting girls and hooking up.  I’m making a list of questions to ask them specifically regarding their dating and partying habits as it relates to foreigners.  I think that this kind of information will be much more helpful to people trying to decide which city to live in or which style of game and approach they can apply to meet the kind of girls they want.  These questions will start off a bit innocuous and innocent, then get more sexual and risqué throughout the conversation if the target is receptive.

I have a couple of concerns with this method though, so we’ll have to see how it actually plays out in the field.  The first concern is that the girls I talk to might not be willing to share details like this in person, even if it is anonymous in that I won’t know their names.  Even if they do share some information, there’s a very high likelihood that it won’t be completely honest.  To counteract this, I may have to create some sort of online survey, though I like to think I have a better chance of getting people to actually answer questions if it’s in the form of a regular conversation.

My other concern is that I may wind up only getting answers from one type of girl, which would heavily skew the results.  If I only talk to girls who are at a well-known foreigner bar, chances are good I’ll be getting a lot of Foreigner Lovers and Alcoholics without much from any of the other girls in a given city.  In order to preempt this problem, I’m going to try to hit up different city centers and heavily trafficked areas of each city during the day time, and basically day game different girls to get them to answer me.

Since I haven’t tried this yet, I’ll have to see what kinds of reactions I get and adjust my plan accordingly.  This coming weekend I’ll be hitting up Bundang on the south side of Seoul Friday night to meet a friend and also do a test run on some of these questions before I take it to Daejeon for its first test in the field.  I’ll report back next week with my findings and a recap of the events of the weekend.