Today I’m going to try something new on request from several readers. Instead of just giving advice or explaining situations, I’m telling an actual story of something that happened during my time dating around here in Korea. If I get a favorable response from these, I’ll continue telling my other stories as well. Some will be of success, some will be of failure, and some will just be of the notably weird, but all will be true and show a part of the dating life as a foreigner in Korea.
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Anyone who dates around a lot is bound to have some pretty weird first date stories, and I am no stranger to bad first dates. This particular girl however even surprised me with how incredibly weird and awkward she made our first date.
This story happened back in May, when I was not drinking for a month as an experiment to see if I could still get laid completely sober. I had hooked up with an airline stewardess who lived nearby on a Tuesday night and the next morning we took my dog, Simba, out for a walk and she was heading home. A few minutes after parting ways with the stewardess, I saw a cute girl also walking a dog.
Simba, being much like me, ran up to the other one and started trying to hump it immediately. The girl and I both laughed and started talking. After about a 15 minute chat, she asked for my number (a huge signal of interest) and we parted ways, agreeing to meet up on Friday for a date.
She immediately began messaging me regularly with great enthusiasm, always a good sign. We banter back and forth for a couple of days and she seems genuinely excited about the date.
Now before I get to the date, let me tell you a little about the girl. She’s 22, very cute but not sexy, exactly the style I normally go for. Probably a 6-8 on most guys’ scales, depending on how much you like the cute factor. She speaks minimal to no English, so we’re communicating entirely in Korean. Because of these factors, I can immediately rule her out as being a Foreigner Lover. She tells me that she doesn’t drink at all, so she’s not an Attention Whore or an Alcoholic, and she just recently broke up with her first and only boyfriend so she’s likely not a Slut. I narrow down that she’s probably a mix between a Prude and a Friend.
Now Friday comes around and she messages me in the morning saying that she has a family obligation at night and asks if we can meet for lunch in a couple of hours instead. I didn’t particularly mind, since that just meant I would call another girl for the night date and double dip. I agree and she says she’ll come over to my neighborhood at about 11:30.
Being the kind of guy that I am, I’m constantly thinking about what I can do to get her back to my place. Before or after lunch was unimportant, but getting a girl to cross that threshold into your apartment increases your odds of getting laid by around 70%, so that was my main goal. Since she already knew Simba, I decided to bring him out with me when I went to meet her. In doing this, I guaranteed that we would have to go back to my place together to put him away before going to lunch. I was hoping we could stop in and work up an appetite as well.
She calls me and tells me that her dad is driving her over because apparently it was too far to walk, so I give her directions to a nearby café where she can see me waiting. A car pulls up and she hops out, so I go give her a hug and Simba starts humping her leg. I wave to her dad (awkward moment in Korean culture), then take her by the hand and start leading her away asking what she wants for lunch. Smiling, she looks at me and asks me to wait just a minute…
** At this point it is worth reminding you players out there that we are speaking entirely in Korean. While my Korean is strong, it is far from perfect and I miss out on a lot of nuance in the language and certain implications. **
I just keep talking with her about what we’ll have for lunch and how I’m starting to get hungry, just letting my chatter run full steam ahead while Simba pees on everything in sight. Suddenly, from the corner where he had just driven off, her dad walks around and waves at us. I’m taken aback because I can’t for the life of me figure out why he’s here.
Her dad is dressed in a full suit and tie, but clearly not at work because it’s 11:30 on a Friday. I don’t know if she invited him along or if he has invited himself along, but either way this puts a big kink in my plan of taking his daughter to my apartment for purposes of carnal fornication. (Cue Chili Peppers song)
Unsure of what to do next, I take the girl by the hand and start walking to the nearby park with my dog hoping that Daddy-O would get the hint and leave, but instead he jogs up next to me and hits me with the very last question I expected in this situation:
“Hey Jack, do you believe in God?”
Not only was this question strange and unexpected, as we hadn’t even introduced ourselves, but it was also surprisingly in English! I was entirely taken aback and gave some response about not particularly thinking about that topic a lot, and he responded by beckoning me over to a gazebo area with benches to sit on.
We all sat down (except for Simba who was still humping legs) and he pulled up something on his phone and handed it to me. He said it was some kind of test and I took his phone out of pure morbid curiosity. This date was already obviously not a date but some kind of weird set-up, and I was really interested to see exactly what the end game was here and how exactly the two of them thought this would turn out.
I take the phone and start watching this video that begins playing, showing volcanoes erupting and violent storms destroying trees, and after about 30 seconds of video a voice comes up asking “Do you believe that there are dangerous catastrophes in the world?”
Actually laughing out loud at this point, I click yes and kept going. I noticed in my periphery that both Daddy-O and the girl are watching me intently with wide smiles on their faces. Not at all weird…
This contrived piece of propaganda continues for another 2 or 3 minutes, pausing every 30 seconds to ask a completely inane Yes/No question. Some of these included, “Do you want your friends and loved ones to be safe?” “If you knew a way to escape these disasters, would you tell your friends and loved ones?” and my personal favorite, “Do you want your friends and loved ones to be happy and safe for all of eternity?” Each question is some kind of ridiculous simplification that all but demands a Yes answer.
At this point, it was very clear that they are aiming to either ascertain my religion or get me to join theirs, but either way I’m not too interested. I hand the phone back to Daddy-O and he happily exclaims that I passed his test, which made me curious exactly what I would have had to do in order to fail it.
I politely thank him and tell him that it’s lunch time, so I take the girl’s hand and start walking away in a Hail Mary attempt to salvage the date. We make it two steps before the girl stops me and tells me that Daddy-O is going to take us to a lunch buffet instead of eating locally. After the weak conversion attempt that just occurred, I can already tell that this is some kind of trap and I promptly refuse the invitation, insisting that I know a great place nearby.
This is when the true purpose of the contrivances become apparent. She then reveals that the lunch buffet are actually taking place at her church and she wants me to come with her for lunch there. This was obviously not a date and she had never meant for it to be one, so I just said no and walked away.
I had no intention of ever speaking to this girl again as she had clearly not been interested in me as anything more than a convert for her church. She actually messaged me the next day and apologized for the weird lunch setup, but I still was not interested in meeting her again. She lobbed her own Hail Mary and sent me a link to her church, begging me to come check it out some time.
I looked up the church, known as the World Mission Society Church of God, and it is a completely batshit crazy cult even by religious standards. Apparently they believe that the second coming of Jesus was some Korean dude who died in the 80’s and that God the Mother (that’s a thing??) is a Korean chick born in the 40’s. I’m far from a religious scholar but that even stands out to me as nuttier than elephant shit.
Just so you know I’m not making this stuff up, here are a couple of links about this particular cult. Link 1 – Wikipedia Link 2 – Article talking about experience in cult
After I read about her church, I deleted her from my phone entirely and made a concerted effort not to return to the place where I first met her. If that means never meeting up with that stewardess again, which it likely does, then it’s still entirely worth it. No thank you, culties.
Koreans are mostly going out with foreigners for a purpose in the background. I never had a true friend or a girlfriend in Korea cause they always seeking for some interest. I will not judge all the people in Korea but, that is the major fact with very few exceptions.
I met some group of people on meetup application to hangout and it was the first time for me to try this kind of meeting. as the organizer she was very friendly and I thought she was looking to make a friends and she is happy to hangout with foreigners, it was all about church and searching for income as she making a favor by hanging out with foreigners and taking pictures as a proof then they would pay her for that.
There was a certain Korean people in the group did not know the plan as well. I became friendly with those people and they had no interest in the background. At least they just want to hangout together without any personal interest. That kind of friends I was looking for in Korea but it is very hard to develop such relations here. Most relations I have with similar foreigners who are a lone AF and searching to spend a good time.
I don’t want just to search for sex in korea but a nice relationship even if it is temporary .I think foreigners will not find this in here. Either sex or money, girls want that from you in Korea and later you mean nothing to them.
I am trying to learn the language in here without knowing if this is going to improve social field in here and get a better life or if it is a wast of time.
That was part of my opinion I wanted to share.
That’s an interesting take. I’ve had a very different experience myself. While there are certainly some people who will be looking to “gain” something from you, that has been far from the majority for me. I have some people I’ve been friends with for years, and many people throughout my years who I have made genuine connections with even if we later fell out of contact. I hope that you have better experiences with people the next time you’re in Korea.
I think they watch pick up artist videos and adapt it to Jesus Christ the Lord. I went through something similar but even more evil.
I met this girl through an app to exchange languages.
1st encounter: we meet at a cafe and she casually shows her Bible. She mentions it briefly but no brainwashing.
2nd encounter: she encourages me to learn Korean on a regular basis and tells me she knows someone who can help me
3rd encounter: she brings her cousin (?) for dinner and he unveils a detailed plan for me to learn Korean with him twice a week using the Bible as a textbook for Korean. He says it’s the best way to learn Korean, haha.
I obviously never meet the guy again and I stop seeing her for two years.
4th encounter: she contacts me after 2 years and we go for dinner near Gangnam. We meet at the station and funny enough right next to the station there is a group promoting an event. They target me out of the hundreds of people out there and encourage us to sit at the information desk they have to tell us about some event. I don’t want to sit but my friend seems extremely thrilled to hear about the so called “Peace festival”. There is a crazy ajjeoshi accusing the group of being the Devil. I thought he was just a random crazy man. Meanwhile, we are seated there and they tell us about this amazing Peace festival with thousands of visitors coming from all over the world.
They make me fill a survey with questions like “In a scale 0 to 10, how important is world peace for you?”. I think Miss America Bikini 2003 wrote it or something. They only want me to fill it while my friend shows a huge interest in this random event. “It’s just so amazing!!!” “I didn’t know there was such a thing in Korea”, “wow, look at the pictures, it’s in a stadium”.
Anyway… I leave my number, we go for dinner and she still keeps talking from time to time about that stupid world peace festival. I get home and the next days she follows the same approach in Kakao… 80% talk about something else 20% about the world peace cult. The Pareto principle, you know?
Until I google the freaking stupid World Peace festival in Korea and realize it’s organized by the infamous Mannam religious cult that target foreigners with fake events. Then I send my friend a very long text telling her how despicable that organization is and how very uninteressed I am in attending that stupid event. I never mention that I think she is actually a member of the cult but I attack the group very harshly.
She doesn’t reply. Never heard from her again.
Yeah…. They can be a bit overzealous. My first year in Seoul they got me in for a few events, but once it turned religious I just walked out. I had no idea who they were or that they were attached to the cult, but it didn’t take too long to figure out. Glad you dodged that bullet.