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Sang Huin had been on the bleachers at a stadium with his new Pocket PC when a foreigner looked down upon him. "Anyong Haseyo," said the man. "English, please. I'm an American still getting used to kimchee with every meal." The man chuckled. "So am I. From what state?" "The Midwest mostly but I've been all over born in Missouri but my father had to travel a lot." "You look a bit agitated."

It was a nice respite from eating too much of the dumpling snack of kimchee maundoo. The thought of eating meat did not agree with him. He shoved down some aspirin with his chocolate frosty and stared out of the window. It was past 6:30 and this area of Chongno Samga was already riveting in youthful crowds.

Then a man came out with a baby in his arms. He wore an undershirt and boxer underwear. The women cooked. Then, after they served Sang Huin a second helping of kimchee maundoo, they put breakfast on a table for the family. They all ate together. Like Yang Lin at Toksugum Palace seeing newlyweds and the wife he should have been, Sang Huin saw his alter ego in the man. His life was probably limited.

'Do you eat rice? asks Seoul Tiger. 'No, I eat unleavened bread, says Tamil Tiger. 'Here are some Rotis. Tamil Tiger passes him the plate. The plate has rotis on it. Seoul Tiger holds the unleavened bread in his palm wondering how to eat it. Then a stew, called a curry, is put upon his plate. 'Do you eat kimchee? asks Tamil Tiger. 'What is kimchee?" asks Tamil Tiger.

One certainly could never part a Korean from his kimchee. Here women strapped babies behind their backs but even in a rural town like Umsong many carried cellular telephones in their purses. Koreans' love of making their country into a high tech Mecca was only secondary to their continued devotion to their obsolete pagers.

Earlier he had been so certain that the accused had perpetrated the act but then a jury had acquitted this person or quasi-person and as time went on he did not know anything. He went back to the making of kimchee maundoo. The flour had already been made into dough that he had cut into pieces.

The taste of sauerkraut and hot dogs was in his thoughts and the boiling, bubbling surge of his saliva but he would have eaten kimchee or someone's dog being as hungry as he was. It became fully dark and he would have known entire blackness were it not for the speckling of stars, the moon, and a fire at a distance. He walked over to the fire. He saw four whores seated around a bonfire.

His life was a stunted one. Still, back in Chongju, he made the call and cancelled his classes. Then, near the bus terminal, he went to a restaurant. He ordered some bogum bop, a thick mixture of rice and vegetables that one mixed into a thick brown gravy that stood off aside on the plate and the appetizer of kimchee maundu.

Now he inserted the cooked pork and the kimchee and pinched the dough of these cabbage dumplings into shape. He boiled a little bit of hot water in his rice cooker and set them in there to steam. He felt so restless. He wanted to be raptured from lonely nights that followed hard work in this convenience store or for Seong Seob to call.

The fact that no family members were able to keep him restrained in their homes gave credence to the speculation that his intractability from psychosis had caused his transience. Not eating one's kimchee, refusing to pour hot water into a bowl to consume every grain of leftover rice in an insipid soup, or not taking off one's shoes at the door: these were slight infractions of cultural norms.