Back In The Day...The Korea Headache Story

Quick Background: I lived in Seoul, South Korea for 3 years from 1999-2002 with my now ex-husband and oldest daughter who was 2 years old at the time. He was stationed there with the military and I worked as an English teacher part time. Boring stuff outta the way, on to the story...

Having newly arrived in Korea, Ben and I wanted to set out on adventure for the day. We had heard about this amazing place called Lotte World (pronounced low-tay), so we hopped on the subway to see what we could see, Hey! Lotte World is a huge indoor and outdoor amusement park. Along with a huge mall. And food court. And ice skating rink. You could spend days there entertaining yourself. On this day we decided to browse the mall, grab a bite to eat, just take a look around. Soak it all in.

Ginger and Rocky at Lotte World


As we were perusing the various shops, I noticed Ben wasn't feeling so great. He kept rubbing his head and he had this awful scowl on his face. I asked what was wrong and he said he had a headache but didn't have his usual supply of advil with him. I knew if we didn't act fast this headache would be a total buzz kill to our day. I mean...we all know men have a very low tolerance for pain and a headache could mean a few days in bed and chicken noodle soup and could you go get me a movie and where's my coke and fluff my pillow, oh my! Yeah, the man needed to be medicated ASAP!

There was a pharmacy inside the mall but the military had mandated that US military members not enter Korean pharmacies. I suppose they were worried about people buying medicines in Korea that would be illegal in the US. Valid concern I guess, but we needed aspirin and we needed it now! Ben agonized over this...he wanted the headache to be gone but he didn't want to break the rules. We finally came up with the brilliant idea that I could go buy the drugs! I wasn't in the military anymore so clearly I was exempt from their silly rules.

Korean Pharmacy, pronounced kang yak gook. Yak gook is the word for pharmacy, kang is the name of this particular pharmacy.


I walked into the pharmacy, ready to impress the pharmacist with my Korean Language skills and to save the day with a box of aspirin. I looked at the pharmacist and said the following in Korean...well, at least this is what I THOUGHT I was saying.

Ginger: "Hello. My husband has a headache. Do you have any aspirin for his headache?"
Pharmacist: "What?"
Ginger: "My husband has a HEADACHE (louder...because that's what you DO when someone can't understand you.) Do you have ASPIRIN?"
Pharmacist: "What? What do you want?"
Ginger: "HEADACHE. NEED ASPIRIN." (No more polite talk, just blunt and to the point.)
Pharmacist: "Aspirin? Okkkkkk...." (That okkkkk was accompanied by a huge eye roll, by the way.)

I walked out of the store, aspirin in hand feeling totally dejected. All I wanted was to buy some aspirin and impress the Korean dude with my language skills. He didn't seem at all impressed and acted like buying aspirin was the most ridiculous thing in the world!

Ben asked what had taken so long and I said, I don't know I guess he just didn't understand my accent or something because it took forever for him to figure out that I wanted to buy a box of aspirin...all I was said was, "제 남편은 머리카락 있어요. 아스피린 있어요?" Ben stopped opening the aspirin, looked at me and started chuckling. He said, "Oh Ginger...Ginger Ginger Maringer, you just told him that I had HAIR and that I needed aspirin for my HAIR, ha ha ha ha!"

And that is the Korea Headache story...I still giggle about it and try not to be too harsh to the foreigners I meet when they ask ME for aspirin for their hair. I mean, it's the least I can do.