box of Jack

The scene: a little pocket of shopping nestled in Insadong, one of Seoul’s many busy districts. In front of us are some food stands selling Korean sweets. Locals and foreigners are milling about, watching a man with a large mallet take huge dramatic swings to pound some dough. Around the perimeter are four floors of shops selling cute accessories and stationery.

The guy with the mallet was shouting excitedly and getting tourists to have a try. First a teenage white girl. Then some kids pushed their mother into doing it. Then a gaggle of Korean girls. Diana and I went up the stairs where I basked in the sweet hipster glow of the stationery store. Cute little robot stickers and funky sketchbook designs. I am very much into the clean, minimalist, fobby look.

As Diana and I were browsing through the adjacent stall, I heard a lady excitedly run past. Our storekeeper squealed something in Korean and ran out too. I thought she was chasing down a shoplifter or something but she had this big grin on her face like it was Christmas morning and someone had taken a bite out of the cookies she left out.

Diana says, “Oh there’s some celebrity down there. Look at the crowd.”

Sure enough, there’s now a tight circle of people gathered around where the mallet guy was. Diana’s told me before that we might see celebrities and I’m a huge fan of just unashamedly gawking at them but this is Korea, after all. The best I could hope to see is some pretty young thing with a brilliant smile and everyone would tell me they are famous and I would just have to take their word for it. On the bright side, this was an opportunity to study other people going ga-ga. No harm in joining in on the fun.

We look down and I see a man, his back towards me. I see a cute girl in a blue top buzzing about in front of the camera. She’s chatting with the man and the mallet guy. The mallet is passed to her and she can barely lift it, I’m afraid she could drop it on herself. They trio are surrounded by camera-phones snapping away.

“Is it the girl?” Nah, she looks like she’s the host. But maybe she’s just doing some cutesy roving reporter shtick; running around and picking up huge mallets and stuff. It certainly can’t be that guy with his back to me, I can tell from his outdated hairstyle that’s he is probably quite old but still trying hard to look stylish.

“I think it’s the guy,” Diana says.

And then he turns around.

Holy. Fucking. Shit. Get the camera. I can’t zoom with my camera. He’s too far away. Here, I’ll hold your drink, you get your camera. Holy shit. Did you get him? The camera guy is in the way. Oh shit, he’s going around the corner. Fuck fuck fuck. Damn it we lost him. Wasn’t that exciting though? Wow! Yikes, I’m shaking.

Did you get a good photo? Me neither.

The squeaks and squeals start again. We can see a group on the move up the stairs towards us. I see a bodyguard. I see the camera guy. Diana works herself into a frenzy. I realize she’s too far gone to get a photo of this so it’s up to me. All she can do is hit my arm and demand I yell something in Chinese to get his attention. I’ve seen enough red carpets to know that if you want to get a photo of someone, you just yell their name. I will score extra points here because I know his Chinese name and that would certainly stand out amongst the steady hum of Korean all around him. I take a breath, he’s literally inches from me now.

“Jackie!”

This is my grainy, underexposed photo of him. More pictures here: 1, 2, 3, 4

That got his attention. He looks a little surprised and then he smiles and waves. I feel like I’ve been electrocuted. My God, I love this man and I would let him fly-kick me a hundred times over.