There were not many differences between American and Korean lifestyles from what he could see. Korea was like living in the Ozarks with high hills everywhere. He had lived in both Missouri and Texas depending on the needs of his father's work. They had homes in both places. Both countries seemed to be arrogant and fortified within their cultural expressions. 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. Pagers were only slowly becoming obsolete. Koreans' love of making their country into a high tech Mecca was only secondary to their continued devotion to their obsolete pagers. When a college student's pager vibrated with activity he or she would still run into a coffee shop to call his or her friend on the table phones and wait for that person there. There were video pangs (VCR rooms); table tennis rooms; noripangs (Karaoke singing rooms); outdoor vendors and restaurants; crippled singing beggars and vendors who crawled down pedestrian streets like worms as they pushed their carts that blared traditional music from small speakers, and sang into microphones; more mom and pop stores on each block than one could count; and tight department stores with small supermarkets underneath. One could find in Chongju a McDonalds with an Internet caf? underneath, Pizza Hut, and Baskin-Robbins Ice cream shops. One could always find M&M chocolate candies and shirts displaying American university logos. One could find American and Hong Kong movies, which intrigued Koreans with their violence. Koreans lived under the insecurities of North Korea and their students always found a subject for protest but the country did not foment and fray in violence. Sang Huin did not know why he was thinking this. He had always hated Chongju and Umsong in particular. And yet rural scenes (like the traveling markets in Umsong) were sort of sweet and real. The only vestige rural traditions in Seoul were the traditional weddings at the Korean Folk Village and traditional dancers no longer on the street corners but contained in a theatre. He thought about once when he and Yang Kwam were shopping for clothes in Itaewan Dong of Seoul on that same street where he worked at a convenience store. It was raining and cold and his sickness was getting worse. Yang Kwam was wearing a shirt with the American flag on it. Dizzy and disoriented, Sang Huin had followed that American flag in subways, underground transfer corridors, exits, and sidewalks. He was acting the same way now only he wasn't sick. He was following Seong Seob into a relationship blindly to have concrete experiences and happiness that could only be obtained in shared experiences.