Last year, along with a long-time Korean friend and fellow
student, I attended a Hanyang University alumni breakfast where Gyeonggi-Do Governor
Kim Moon-Soo spoke about future provincial development plans. After the
meeting, I went up with my friend to meet the Governor and we exchanged a bit
of small talk and business cards. We also greeted his private secretary and
chatted for a moment, during which time my friend made the suggestion that they
give me a role of some sort in promoting Kyeonggi-Do Province, which the
secretary politely agreed would be a great idea and that he’d get back to us on
it… which of course, he never did.
Fast forward to today….
My friend has established a small non-profit organization in
Ansan which is working to provide various social services, and they’ve just set
up office in a spare office building on the “campus” of a small hospital in town
and are planning to work together on some projects with the hospital. He invited
me over to see the new digs, and unbeknownst to me, scheduled for me to arrive
at, well, right in the middle of a meeting he was having with a director of the
hospital. As we were talking, he just happened to mention the situation in the
first paragraph above and, lo and behold, the director exclaimed, “Oh! The
older sister of my close friend is the wife of Governor Kim Moon-Soo!”… To
which my friend replied, “Um… Do you think you could check with the Governor
about having Steven be a spokesman for the province? After all, his secretary
had already agreed to the idea but didn’t follow-up with us.”… The Director got
on the phone straight-away, called the Governor’s wife and set up a meeting on
Saturday morning for the three of us with the Governor and his wife at the
Governor’s residence…
The Korean word for describing the feeling in a situation
like this is “황당하다” (though you’d never know it from the dictionary
definition).
I’ll post an update over the weekend about how the meeting goes! J
