A BOY NAMED SOO

I am an emotive response unit posing as one of you.

It has taken nigh on forty-seven revolutions for my noodle salad to register the fact, to the great dismay and not un-slight relief of my early-to-mid life partner in the rocket science, more humanely known as the mind.

Socialised for solitude. Hard-wired for socialisation. A single parent of the collective individual. A lone volubility in search of self-seeking validation. One of many mewling voices clamouring to be heard from inside of Lenin’s mausoleum. An only child of the forest of inner space in dire necessity of solicitude and solidarity.

But such neediness is toxic. Neediness is a risky jeep ride into the demilitarized zone (DMZ) where ideas plague wakefulness, as rats jumping a Sang-O Class submarine (300 tons) so as to join a sinking ship, SS Depressive Mania. I long for the fuzz of stupefaction.

The man whose name I forget each time we stop to chat thinks I know what I am about, thinks I’m genius, thinks I’m the funniest he ever met, thinks I got it all taped. His sort fill me with grand designs they call megalomania.

His head jitters and his eyes look down when I name it. DMZ. BPD. IWW.

- What’s all that then?

They never know. They’ll never know the power of the force that turns the tornado inside that is merely normalcy. I know storm like they know lull. They know not how I unleash the updraft: a quadruple espresso macchiato straight to Nervous System Central. These days it is a daytime requirement in the absence of something a little more proscribed. That and the twin sticks of a double biscuit of caramelised sugary fatty cocoa powder with unintelligible Arabic on the wrapper, masquerading as fair-traded confection. Till dusk and alco-twilight kicks in, in insensible immoderation, as the orb dances over the yardarm and the rodent’s snout lusts for herbal highlights. They call it coffee, Twix, a pint and a spliff.

They don’t know the dark of the flipside: the leadened feather that descends into a pothole coated in self-pity and adjectives. The steady inexorable plunge lower, lower, lower still, till the rock encasement bottoms out and movement only serves to quicken the slow sands. Bunker down, dip boy: it's going to be a while. Once a depression gets a-hold, you need your full trick-bag of wedges to uplift that little pock-marked fucker out of the fine grains of despair...

But this is not about me. This is about a boy named Soo. Park Yung, Soo: a 23-year-old South Korean (twenty-one in Western currency) whose anticipated self-immolation due to an intense, intensive 17-hour-a-day study programme on the back of the Puppet Republic of Korea’s strict military conscription regime and semi-compulsory cosmetic surgery, all designed to improve English pronunciation and optimise life choices, has left him so set for let-down that his soo-icide is a matter of course, an ever so gentle subversion in unfocussed emulation of this very sentence…

Suicide?


"I think he’ll make a meal of it myself," puns the celebrity master chef, himself a waste of unfossilised fuel, a mélange of tissue and bone, a crudity that might conceivably heat several hundred pensioners' homes for at least an hour during this harsh autumnal August of limited dissent and damp Oktoberist miserablism, problematised as British Summer Time.

Meanwhile, I'm clucking for revolución anarchista like a Thai broiler chicken relishing the liberation of Kentucky fried freedom, like an indie dance hedonist addicted to the re-remix, like an entire population of necromancers trapped in a rule of three: Kim the Fatherland, Kim the Sung and Kim the undead. AAARRRGH!!!

Bring on the EMF. ECSTASY MOTHER FUCKERS!! Calm down. Calm down. Paragraph break.

Be still. Flower up. Be calm. Calmer. Smell the Stone Roses. Calmer. Karma. Chameleon. Don't colour the mood with volatility. The Soup Dragon don't take kindly. Keep your zygodactyls on the ground. Be still.

Still, NO EXCUSE for infantile disorder. I'm sorry Lenin, still working on that one. Apologies Angel. Less me (singular), more you (plural).Yes. I’m truly blessed with Angel. Her giant metal wingspan protects against the inclemency of the North. She is Angel in every sense of the word. Guardian. Graceful. Wondrous. Beatific. Breathtaking. Transcendent. Fallen. Arch. Predictable. Devil. Detailed. An underground stop in a transport link just north of Finsbury, at the foot of the most unfathomable escalator in Western Europe. Jesus Kim I miss her...

Q: What do you call a manic depressive in the Arctic?
A: A bi-polar bear, daddy.

Kid’s jokes penned by adults are as cycle lanes planned by motorists: as funny as a spastic colon.

Q: What's the capital of Korea?
North A: Pyongyang.
- Nope.
South A: Seoul.
- No.
DMZ A: K.
- Gerrit? What's the capital of Ko...? Never mind.

Soo doesn't like. My daddy and mummy don't get it yet either. Though they do know, they just don’t know they do. Dee du doe, don’t dee doe. Karm down. Karm down. A, A, A!

The condition, though inexplicable, is explainable: the thyroid, the fibromyalgia, the overbearing aggression, the overweening narcissism, the pervasive museum of fear. We tick all the boxes that make me unlike them. A bi-product. Suspiciously, the paranoiac in me suspected all along.

But he’s best left in a para-graph all to himself.

Soo says (writes actually) that he wants to speak. But he never does. Soo says this is not about me. This is about teacher. Teacher must to write story about me now. About Soo. Or so he say so.

Soo wakes again at 7 am o’clock sharp, despite my telling him time and time and time again about the redundant am, and despite the comparative lateness of the 9.10 am o’clock start at Western schools. It is the third time he has woken up this morning, as he does every morning. Except on Sundays, when he takes full advantage of a collective rest day from study slavery to commence an even earlier session. His iPad alarm has plucked him out of R.E.M slumber. He is like an irritable toddler rudely woken for a budget night flight. For reasons known only to Soo, he simply has to prioritise his time memorizing an arbitrary quota of random phrases that he won’t ever understand: that's to say he is fluent in Mute English.

Soo’s propensity to rote learn during the memorable dream phase means he is accruing sleep debt at an unsustainable rate, and ultimately to the detriment of the world’s 15th largest economic miracle. A free-market factoid every bit as mythological as our Great Comrade Leader Kim Sung-Il’s eternal presidency.English language imperialism, prepositional and multi-word verbs, definite and indefinite articles, and the perfect aspect of the tense system cause severe downturns in students. Young people in Preston are five times more likely to be killed by a Chelsea tractor than those in Kensington & Chelsea. Readily available vaccinations against pneumonia and diarrhoea could save the lives of millions upon millions of children. Yawn. Hegemony, bloody hegemony.

Soo stops paying heed to comrade teacher’s tedious middle-age wisdoms as he cannot comprehend the rapidity of Northern speech patterns, aka gobby scouse patter. In any event, Soo intuits he can garner no new information, so switches to internal learning mode.

To fall down on, (v. trans.) to be unsuccessful in the accomplishment of a task and, horror of horror shows, lose face in public. Model sentence: Teacher fell down on job and had nervous breakdown, again.

So that it doesn't eat into study time, Soo's breakfast is pixelated. He supplements his virtual diet with a brain food muesli of cereals, fish, minerals, kimshi and ginseng which he washes down with hemp milk or, more often, an elixir, known as Dear Leader’s Mountain’s Dew, made from a blend of secretive herbs and the teardrops of babies. I let the unusual collocation and the rogue Anglo-Saxon genitive pass without comment.

Nervous breakdown (n. phr) (euph.) near synonym for psychotic episode due to manic phase of mental disorder. Model sentence: Teacher had nervous bleak down and felt down on job.

He pauses to bag his Khoa Shong Wasabi green peas, a present from his study partner at his sixth-form crammer pupilled by Hong Kongese and Taiwanese students, not to menshevik the sons and daughters of corrupt Chinese government officials, who have embraced the tainted pig of mixed economy politics with all the gluttony of an ascetic monkfish turned land-lubbing trougher. In the North, such a lack of purity would be suspended across three bullet points and left mid-sentence to...

To eat into (v. trans.) to consume time or money or grey matter or spirit in an adverse way. Model sentence: The provision of thigh-length socks in the uniform ate into the budget of the school Soo was expelled from for up-skirting cock length under the girls' pinafores.

Soo’s iPad bings. It signals the allotted before-school time in which to dress, to ablute, to masturbate and to skype virtual good mornings/evenings to his mom and his dad, currently +9 GMT on public transit in the direction of his native satellite city on the fringes of the Seoul periphery, and oblivious to the Uliji military invasion plans being hatched by his puppet meisters under the codename The Manchester Guardian.

South Koreans are exempt from military duty if they “act distinctively bi-polar”. Not true. I made it up. But that’s what we’re doing here. Making shit up. It helps pass the workers' playtime in Arbroath, Khartoum, Pyongyang, Romsey Town, Busan, Montserrat, Inishowen, Betsy Coed, Croxeth, while we deal with the everyday fictions of the real world. Soo believes everything teachers spout is gospel. I’m working on him, but he's tough going.

But this is not about a boy named Soo, this is about me: estranged husband, father of one, purported manic depressive, Johnny Cash fan and leftist curmudgeon to the community. We are Korea, working title. Me and the boy. Me and Angel. Me and my big North and South.

I really must talk less and write more, more on my relationship with the boy, with Soo. Tough though. Soo has no interiority to speak of. Suppose I’ll carry on making it up. Can’t say he’s noticed. Yet the pull of the first person narrator is strong. I, me, mine. I, me, mine. I, me, mine. Not very Buddha.

In the DMZ, I miss the grimmess up North: the elation of collaboration, the commonality of purpose, the pornography of choreography on a bed of blissed out beats and deep-fried unity. We Come One. From the beautiful South, I long for the phat boyz slimmer sound, I crave the slothful self-indulgence of the sinner, I ache for the re-charge of my lead acid till peaks trough again and again and again. I want more. I want more. And then some.

Flashback: another Friday, another school. Same piss, different psychosis bottled up.

The Japanese toilet cleaner salesman with the nervous laugh who talks with his eyes closed sits opposite the French-speaking Swiss gyroscopic science PhD with the shaved balding head who is next to the Korean tobacco company engineer who lusts after the girl from Lille who has only just too much acne to be too attractive to have to fight off men with a shitty French stick she fills with bacon and egg and sausage cooked by a Polish girl with glasses who hates her boss a Turkish speaker with a short curly penis and an overdraft who on a Friday devotes his evening to a 91-year old great aunt who doesn’t do the egg but will always go a bit of bacon and a sausage and tomato and grapefruit and toast every morning without fail or commas.

The teacher asks the class if they’ve made their homework yet so as to test them. Friday is a testing day. He is being watched.

China is spouting state propaganda about lonely child policy. Spain is arguing with Catalonia again about spelling mistakes and weather it is one-child or only child. But not in English. Never in English. The Azeri sea cadet with the academy hair cut and the joke about the 71-year-old woman and the cucumber says do a mistake, do homework teacher who says yes and no and have you made a faux pas Amid? No, never mind, don’t mention it teacher. Better late than ever comments the anti-American French femme fatale in the gold-flecked scarf who believes Dubya is an imbecile not the 23rd letter of the alphabet because WW3 already starts and WWW have six more than worldwide web so why is an abbreviation?

- Teacher. Never not ever.

Never ever have I ever felt so low. Take me out of this black hole.

The observing director of studies with the long blonde hair and the boots notes that the French sandwich maker from Lille’s English is better perhaps because she listens pop music and works in un shop de sandwich pour £5.85 an hour instead of paying £650 pounds for a week of intensive English with a chalk-and-talk merchant on the cusp of a hypomanic crescent who knows too many men called Dave, Mao, Dan, Tse-Dong, Bertrand, Mick and Kim.

Never hardly ever sometimes often usually always have I been so embarrassed in my life than when no sooner has he left than we through a party. He come to the house again by walk and open the door to find us wearing no closes except the gorgeous young Italian woman with the curvy body and the dark brown eyes the whole reason he is THROWING the goddam party in the first place who refuses and leaves without taking off a stitch.

It is business English Dress Down Friday (fixed expression) but she isn’t buying it even at 1.5 Euros to the pound. Bare arse to the class and mid-life crisis (noun phrase) on the whiteboard.

- Ah well back to the lesson plan. Yes, Pierre?

- Closes, teacher.

- Closes, closes! I’ll put my FUCKIN’ closes back on, if you fermez your FUCKIN’ God almighty bouche and get your FUCKIN’ grammar book out, capice? frog spawn!!

Last day at that school.

Back to school, this school, this August Friday 13th am o’clock in the DM Zone. I tell the class. I tell Misun. It is a novel strategy for me. Misun wishes me a happy Friday and I hug her; an alien Americanised act for a man from the North, without the benefit of disco biscuits, empathy candy and lager, lager, lager. Misun winces a temporary flinch, before embracing the embrace with studied abandon.

Coffee and compassion break over. Back to busyness. The Anglais bizniz. Executive suite. Just like regular classrooms, but for the extra fifty a day they get fresh cut flowers and a FT thrown in.

For the teacher, it means putting on a tie and pressing the button on the DVD player: Survival English For Arms Manufacturers available for $21.95 at all good bomb shelters.

Survival English for the busy business person, pour l’homme d’affaires surbooké. What to do in le meeting when le chef has asked you to do a presentation impromptu pour le combine militaire-industrielle? Ce pack is designed for le self-appprentissage.

Bob and Sonia Cheeseberry, two personable Yankees from Connecticut, are hosting a Business English For Arms Manufacturers book launch at King Arthur’s Court Conference Centre near Hatfield, just off the A14, and less than two hours' flight from Baghdad by F15E Strike Eagle. Bob combines the easy-going New Englandness of a Noam Chomsky with the British-savvy of Bill Bryson. Sonia handles the technical side of things – Bob, adept at networking, is hopeless at multi-tracking. Typical kinaesthetic mind, according to Son, as Bob usually calls her, even in public.

A meticulously accurate Swiss-German Goldman Sachs investment banker, who would never in a million use his pet name for his wife al fresco, has been wanting to ask a question for some time. Sonia keeps him online with regular eye contact recognition. His patience pays off and he gets to make his enquiry.

- How to break off friendly business relations when your regional contact is a fanatical tyrant who is - how is said - unfit for porpoise?

Sonia glanced at Bob as if to say, I’ll field this one hon’.

- Well, if you download the MP3 we uploaded to our website http://www.falloutbunker.com/...

- It’s the name of our cottage in the Cotswold’s, adds Bob, tilting his head down in deference to his spouse having the floor. Sonia purses her lips into a half-smile of recognition

- …you’ll get the….

A mobile ringtones Beethoven at a deafening volume in a briefcase somewhere in the hall.

- … on the website you’ll be able to download the most useful phrases, which we call “chunks” – Sonia does air quotes with her fingers - in the book. Those phrases from Mr Hussein’s internal monologue which we have taught you today have been highlighted in bold. Some classic mistakes have also been included. If you click on box six, the yellow box, top left-hand corner of the screen, you’ll access a key lexical chunk. For example, if you’d like to read Jurgen… It’s key phrase B on the Facile Anti-Americanism worksheet.

The Swiss investment banker obliges.

- The CIA-sponsored Ba’athist Party thug, recently hung by the neck, was responsible for the assassination of most of the Iraqi Communist Party in 1968. The details of the people to be killed were provided by the US intelligence.

- Can anybody spot the two mistakes in this example? Sonia elicits from the small lecture theatre audience, before quickly supplying the answer herself. A technique she’s been using all morning. Jurgen, disappointed, has noticed an incorrect past participle and a rogue definite article.

- The problem, of course, is “CIA-sponsored” (air quotes again) which should be deleted from your wordbanks. A phrase from the Useful Organizations lists can be used to replace “US intelligence” (no air quotes this time). I’d suggest Mukbharat – Saddam’s notoriously brutal secret police force. Pronunciation… Sadd– Arm.

Bob rises spritely from his seat.

- Turning to the stream of consciousness of the immoral monster himself, we have been able to re-produce the last two minutes before the “botched” (air quotes) execution. This has been provided by a man who works for the American government in Boston, ex-CIA I might add. The part was played by a friend of mine, Marco Galileo, who teaches bio-chemistry at Oxford. The grammar errors, which are genuine, are The Beast of Baghdad's and not Marco's.

I…. I …. I … I … I … tick like my watch. My watch is silent. I’m ticking away. East. West. East. West. My direction is the gallows. East. West. East. Wes. It’s waterproof. Shock resistant. It have a split reset and light. My soul is shock resistant. Allah will all see. He know I had the good faith. Not like the Americans. They who hang me are more guilty. Allah know who have the most blood on hands. He will show no mercy. I will not be weak man. I will die like a good Muslim. I.. I … I… I… I…. am strong. East. West. East. West. Allah know they are the really bad men. Just one more minute. Another 60 seconds of time to pass before the rope is putted around my throat. 50 seconds…40 seconds….30 seconds…. East. West. East. West. 20 seconds to go, don’t count. I won’t count. I can’t stop it…10, 9, no more.. 8, 7…Allah is merciful.. 6..5, 4, 3, 2...

Saddam's dead. Dubya's gone back to his crayons and golf swing. And our Glorified Comrade Leader has changed his mask again. Now it is black. No, African-American. Not the first African-American stooge of big business ever, but the first one with a White House. Newness is not change. The benefits of the new are to be weighed against the newly acquired Noam Wisdom of just how friggin’ dumb I’ve been for 47 years. Forty-ninth in Korean. The “I’m glad I know now” soon becomes the “how come it took me so long”. The initial up downsizes. The drawback from the elevation of liberation is sharp.

One-to-one with Soo this afternoon. I'll take him out. It's Friday. I need to breathe. And then some.

To stand out from the cloud (v. phrs.) to outshine oneself due to excessive elation, deemed counter-revolutionary in an end-of-history consensual model. Model sentence: To put the end of capitalism before the rescue of the biosphere is to stand out from the cloud of normalised drabness.

Teacher say, under communism there will no bicycle lane because there will no private car owner so only we will to have cycleway and walkway. Cycle lane in Cambridge are get confuse. I look, left than right like teacher say but I get kneel accident still. Misun tell me teacher is no.1# favorite. He send to her text. This not good. Too personal information. Use only first name. And say sex word. This also is too much individual. He take off cloth in crass. One time people say. This is crazy. But he good teacher. Other teacher are boring for me. They every time say open book. Turn to pp1953-4. Ignore the 38th parallel. Complete gap exercise. Operation Glory. You must to fill the gap with exchange of dead or you fail. Armistice fail. Nuclear war start.

Misun say teacher say when separation wife go away and he get SAD. Seasonal August Disorder. Misun say teacher is more funner than shopping and football. I like to shopping in Cambridge. I have buy Avatar – Legend of Burning Earth today. Pre-owned. Teacher say pre-owned is capitalist lie for old. I say no PrayStation2 is antique. But he don’t understand. Teacher funny. He have cassette tape recorder. Very very antique.

Also my family every August send to me away. In Cambridge I meet very many Spanish. Next week I go to visit friend. Maribel. She have sallow skin and white teeth. Host father say Maribel have good bazooka. She kiss more that Misun. She say she will make me chupada if I will go to Palencia.

Today I speak with Maribel. ¿Horá cómo estás? De puta madre Soo. De puta madre. Today teacher is in bitch mother mood. But Misun say this is just happy/sad Friday feel. Teacher is communist. He like DPRK. In DPRK, every day is bitch.

Comrade Teacher’s Guide To Liberal Debate.

Collect ammunition: expletives deletives, obscene hand gestures, offensive stencils, bad breath, half bricks, chalk, filled condoms, venom, vitriol, juvenile fart noises. On no account use facts, or attempt reasonable discourse. Never permit a right (sic.) of reply. Shout BOLLOCKS loudly and frequently. Have the term made up into an adhesive label in upper case bold. When your opponent turns away from you, stick BOLLOCKS on their back and flip them the bird. Go into their bags, remove their bourgeois newspaper and replace with joke turd.

Remember deluded brainwashed doctrinal neo-liberals cannot be converted. Do not tell them that they are dupes. They think their opinions are theirs. They are not. They have merely internalized them as their own. Do not tell them that either. They will only hate you. Instead shout BOLLOCKS loudly and frequently. Then they will simply think you have left communist infantile disorder and look upon you more favourably, should you decide to seek refuge in the demilitarized zone.

Once pigeon-holed as a loud-mouth Northern yob with anger management issues, relax. Your work is done. Find quietude. Stillness. Be at one with nature. Commune with the Chomsk. Adopt his slow, calming, lugubrious, sedate tone as your own inner voice of libertarian socialist conscience and breathe deeply. Internalise his counter-intuitive yet illuminating remarks and relax. Analysis is done. Relax. You have now entered the DMZ. The Chomsky cult of personality is safer than most and has far fewer side effects.

Repeat as often as necessary. Till the next day. And the next. And the next. Caution. If neo-liberal panic disorder returns, remember: this liberated consciousness does not go back into bottle. Enjoy your genie. Have a nice day. You want fries with that?

During lunch al Tesco, I point to the memorial to our fellow workers who died in the Great War. Men like Sydney Barret, Albert Basset, Urban Chapman, Arthur Dent, Kim Sung-Il and Karlheinz Liebknecht. In this day and age, few are the references to fellow workers in the West outside the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). But the Wobblies peaked in 1923. And woman? Where is her story? Another time, another planet. Now men and women, workers and soldiers, we are all service providers, human resources, consumer fodder, commodities or clients, like the South Korean state itself. Yawn. Heavy dude, heavy.

To lighten up I try Marx on Soo. Karl or Groucho? Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains, your gold sovereigns, your pit bulls and your prison white trainers. Nada. Zip. Ni patata. Too culturally loaded. Public school is called public, but it is private. An elite conscious-raising stud farm for the state managers and captains of post-industrial capital. I try to suppress my own anti-chavista elitist tendencies and re-place the toes squarely behind the Maoist-Leninist line. Yawn. Soo anticipates an on-coming rant; his eyes glaze and focus inwardly.

Is he dwelling on the unnecessary second comma? Form over content as usual. Or fantasizing about Misun again? Or perhaps he is revising vocabulary he'll never actually use in speech. His internal voice is breaking up again. I'm losing my hold. His resistance is guerrilla-like. The reactive glare of his spectacles pierces my skull and leaves an exit wound in the nape of my neck I can place my index finger into. It is a technique he learnt in the military. Misun claims all the South Koreans in upper-intermediate can do it.

To get laid (pass. constr.) (v. phr. incl. pp of lay) to perform the sexual act, esp. in a braggadocio male context. Model sentence: The imperialist venereal diseased dog Clinton gets laid in the Oval Office as cruise missiles shed their load over the Sudan.

I talk about that August 20, in another decade, in an unimportant Muslim country, Third World in old money. Yet the bombing of the Al-Sharifa pharmaceutical plant and the deaths of non-children by the Washington butcher merits less interest than that semen stain on Ms Lewinsky's prom frock. His thousand metre stare says, Monica who? He saves face with a tight grin of compliance. However, I sense internal dissent to the North.

This is not about me. This is about teacher, again. Teacher like Misun too much. He want to take her to DPRK to perform mass wedding in choreography in sports stadium gymastic propaganda with children of dead dictator. Teacher not well. But he is good teacher. He deliver me good vocabulary to excel in exam and special hint to achieve pass grade in master in business. So I must respect.

- Soo! Soo! Hello Soo. Are you in there?

I break into dialogue in an attempt to penetrate his Korean wall. The measured response is merely to raise his hands to his glasses and replace them slightly higher up his bridge.

- Soo Yung Park!

I cut across his 38th parallel at a jaunty angle and fire an unexpected salvo of R & R in a gesture of rapprochement twixt obnoxious Northern socialist scum and soft Southern shandy-drinking imperialist lackey.

- How about we watch a DVD? It's Friday after all.

I'm not sure it'll work. The DVD is old and, worse still, political. But it's been re-mastered into Blu-Ray and, besides which, it contains a secret weapon: Major Margaret J. "Hot Lips" Houlihan and her koshered pubic hair - uncountable noun. I point out that the adjective blonde is extremely rare in English in that it declines to the feminine form: in this case comrade Loretta Swit's curvy voluminousness.

He opens his mouth as if to voice his first ever lexical item in my presence, other than Uh? ... the fifth commonest utterance in spoken English - but then closes it again. Instead he reaches for his iPad and blue tooths his consent.

As we watch, his frowns and glances askance betray a lack of comprehension as to why it looks as if it might’ve been filmed in Thailand during the Korean War, but is really about the Great Satan’s invasion of Vietnam and pre-liberationist American male bonding.

I dip. Into me again.

Now I know, nothing has changed and everything has changed. Mood swings and roundabouts are as the English weather to a Brazilian on a FE college summer school course: inevitable and hopelessly mismanaged. Now I am learning to guestimate the provenance of the prevailing winds of change, but must I always take full-blown personal/social responsibility for the micro-climate?

Sectionable, unsectioned. Drugged up, or undrugged. The temptation is to blame it all on the bi-polar boogie. Self-diagnosis doesn't give poetic licence to self-indulge in bad behaviour. The choice remains mine. I can choose to succumb: to be or not to be centred. Take control of the up/down switch - an AC/DC running through a Black & Decker inverter on a 12-volt live/dead lead acid battery on the leakiest narrow boat in consensual politics - or throw the challenge changer into the river and to Pyongyang with the consequences. That is the central question as I plan my route across the DMZ like a South Korean pig farmer fleeing an assault charge. Must keep the paranoia at E-bay.

My fellow travellers over the borderline know how it works. The chemicals. The personality. The disorder. The endorphins. The serotonin receptors blocked. The persecution complex. The permanent dissatisfaction. The plans for world domination. The whingy self-absorption. The intense intensity. They know because they met me in the know. Illumination arises when the Korean won drops like a stoned penny. I did it. I said it. I meant to. It is my responsibility, but not mea culpa exactly. It’s... It’s complicated, little man.

Shouty and impatient daddy. Daddy is a grumpy no-care bear. I’m sorry. My head is filled with chemistry. No excuse. It is easy to mistake personality for chemistry. While altering personality with chemistry is contingent. Too much elation creation. Too much backwash on the comedown. In the North the prescribed panacea for substance abuse is 100% efficient and cost effective. The price of a bullet. Mao-Dse Dong was right. Change comes through the barrel of a gun. Now there's an idea

... It’s been a long, long summer and August has turned into October, again. TFI Friday, thank fuck. I tell Soo another. The one about the TIFL tutor in Middle America: Teacher of Irony as a Foreign Language. But it loses everything in the transition from West to East, ironically. He fundamentally doesn’t get it, though normally he is excellent at acronyms. I test him on some. His scrawls his answers with his iPad stylus.

- MASH?

Misogynist American Sexist Humor.

Correct. I let the American spelling pass. We are after all in the 51st State, if we don’t count Israel, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Taiwan, Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chihuahua and South Korea, though Soo, the Taliban and Gabi Ashkenazi might take issue with the list.

- NATO?

North American Terrorist Organisation.

Correct. I had trouble getting that one past Soo’s internal censor at first. I detect a cheeky smirk of irreverence me thinks, though it could be projection on my part. I am after all tutor, mentor and progenitor.

- CIA?

Clandestine Invasion Army.

Incorrect. Though I like your motzi kid. Let’s call it an acceptable variant, it is after all Shabbat eve.

- No, Soo. I was looking for Cocaine Importation Agency, I state flatly while I maintain fierce visual contact till his eye line droops.

He amasses no brownie points for imagination. It would only be frowned up anyway. Correct is correct. Incorrect is incorrect. There is no American gray squirrel. Black or red only. Life for him in the fortified border of the DMZ is not contemplatable. Words cannot be made up. That is poetry, not grammar. Rules cannot be broken either North or South. Seoul Coca Cola or Pyongyang Pepsi. You order your casket and you takes your choice. Besides, too much encouragement can engender empathy and Buddah knows where that’ll lead us. However, I can’t resist. So I offer up the kimchi of acronyms as a final Friday afternoon treat. It’s the best I can do. I have no soju (22% proof), though Kim knows I could murder some Afghan black.

- DPRK?

There is static charge coming off his stylus. It shows not tells. But what does it show? Pleasure, excitement and an energy he hasn’t demonstrated since breakfast brain muesli and Misun cum. Bad boy, Soo.

Dicktator Pussy Regime of Kommunists.

- 10 out of 10 korrect. Good man, Soo.

He arches his eyebrows in exaggerated Dick Dastardy manner. I think he’s showing me his victory over the North. My silly liberal Western feminism is to be offended. But the sarcastic mis-spelling kontinues to konfuse.

His Koreaness is becoming increasingly Japanese-like. He’s beginning to lose all semblance of credibility as a discrete individual. He is nothing but a caricature. A perfect foil for the Northerners. But in the South he’ll need to grow some character.

Change is the price of survival, says our Great Comrade Leader, Kim Church-Ill. Change comes from within, teaches the Buddha. Change is issued below the scanner, self-checks Tescopoly’s automated teller of normal wisdoms.

I need to humanize him. I must stop recycling old jokes and focus. I allow him the space to speak. But the space opens up rumination. And like me mam used to say, I think too much. Focus hocus pocus.

The man whose name I forget is Adam today. And he says we're all a little alike anyway. He didn't say the anyway. Adam would never anyway me. He isn't like that. The other Adam might. The practical Adam. He'd've nailed the fucking apple to the tree with a slither of bamboo and let it rot there, without the need to violate Jehovah's edict or spike the serpent through the heart. Peace and war. It's all back to front anyway. The other Adam. The good-looking Adam with the high voice and the habit. He'd've laced it with K and Bacardi and made love to Eva the Evangeline until the holy cows came. Now there's another idea.

Sludgy blood thinned. Caffeine departed. Drink water. Deep breath. Smile. Look at the expanse of blue and green that holds the horizon together. And contemplate peaceful transition Angel. I'm back. I'm one of them. I've crossed the borderline. Emotive response functions normalized. Stop. Start. Emotive response units normalized. I've crossed the borderline. I'm back. Contemplate peaceful transcendence. Look at the expanse of green and blue that holds together the horizontal. Smile. Breathe deeply. Bathe in the departed lexis and relax. Gone has the attack of the squidge.

Here's another idea. Take an apple laced with genuine socialist rum and BZP and feed it to Eve for a change of direction. Stop. Again. For now.

- Do you like soju?

- Uh?

- Soju? Is that how it's pronounced?

Despite the latent intent signalled by the Uh? still not a salchicha. Even Spanish would be preferable than anguished Korean silence...

After nine months in Cambridge, the drive to record grammar rules and vocabulary items is neurotic, beyond neurotic even, but he is pathologically incapable of dialogue.Me too.

In the interim, the doomed attempt at physical description. I suppose he looks Korean. I know that. After nigh on a dozen years EFLing I can tell the difference between Korean, Chinese, Japanese dirty knees. Don’t focus on the eye shape you racist gap-toothed clot Ronaldo. But racism comes in many guises. I have the educated neo-liberal variety to hand. The generic ultra-straight black sensible hair, the regulation google chrome-rimmed bins, the casual high school sneaker, the meaningless capitalistic sloganised monetized polo shirt branded in McEngrish offers no individuation at all. I prefer the romantic orchestration provided by a Maoist-Leninist red-neckerchief, the kitsch glamour of the young pioneers of the Workers' Party of Korea. But Soo would object to all those genitives. And he’d be right.

Soo has no distinguishing features whatsoever. The homogeneity of Northern conformism vies with the commodified uniformity of the South and posits no trace of a scar, save the one on his tongue, which never leaves its oral confines. The more rampant the consumption by 21st century self-obsessives, the fewer unique individuals are formed, despite, or because of the concentration on conspicuous appearance. At least in the North, oneness is seen as desirable. In the South, conformity is carried through in the name of personal liberty and the fetish of private property, all achieved via the greatest propaganda system in human history, to quote a pearl from the brow of our Great Dead Comrade Leader. Dead and still President! How post-modernist is that.

But political sociology has replaced literary craft, so I drift Northwards in search of poetry again. As I borderline, I reach the headstate of the Democratic Nationbuilding of the Fatherland. I can see him clearly know. I can see through the thick gloss of his fringe which previously mopped over his distinctive appearance and fully-fleshed character. Encrypted in the barcode branded across his forehead, lurks a personality identity number (PIN) as individualised as DNA. Imprinted on his left calf muscle is a Nike swoosktika©, the no.1 # tattoo of choice for the youth of the free world. The ideology of no ideology. The message is identical, North and South.

- Would you like to visit the North one day? Do you think reunification will happen in your lifetime?

...

Still zip. So I decide to head for the DMZ and sit it out till Soo speaks. I wander lonely as a crowd. I seek solace in the meta. The only real I can do at times like these. I wonder. Me again. Sorry son.

To bang on, (v. intrans) to hammer home long after the nail’s head is well and truly beaten black and blue. Model sentence: Teacher bang on about capitalism is pants, but what he wear under trouser? The operation intended to loosen Soo’s tongue has served to impede verbal communication, it seems. But no matter. I have developed psychotic powers. Aural hallucination might be the only way to get to hear the bugger speak English.

- So, how is Misun? Have you seen her today?

...

Soo concentrates his as yet unspoken anguish on turning the pages of the course book we’ve never used. He resembles the boy in the Faithless video who, out of step with the red-blue book choreography, plays catch-up with all the graceless charm of the podgy. Bless.

I drift once more. I want to ask Misun how many Starbucks an hour she picks up for rictus grinning and serving overpriced coffee with over-elaborate names in oversized cups to over-consuming neo-liberals with laptops, but it is considered taboo these days. I long for greasy spoons down the Holloway Road. I ache for solidarity and strikes and class consciousness and change. I see lines of Pink Floyd greasy spoons from The Wall (Korean import) marching in unison: an uplifting transcendent experience of choreographed faithlessness in the status quo. No God. No Beckham. No commodities. No barristas. Instead: Barricades. Collective purpose. Chanelled aggression. Productive conflict. Limited violence. Unlimited possibilism. Rapacious opportunity. Rampant unity. And then some.

This is not about me. This is about exam. Teacher is drunk too many coffee again. He talk to Misun about Maxi Jazz, Kim Jong-Il, King Kong, Hong Kong and Ho Chi Min and how 60p on the kilo is unfair trade.

To greenwash (portmanteau v & n.) a blend of the finest environmental-friendly sentiment with capitalist indoctrination, to re-paint exploitative commercial operations as beneficent and ethically righteous. Model sentence: BP’s bollocks about saving the planet is pure greenwash.

I must not confidence in teacher definition no more longer. This bollocks is taboo and not special hint helpful for exam pass in business master. Misun trust teacher. But Misun talk well English, enough to work in Starbuck. But in future when I have master in business I will be outstrip Starbucks with Soobucks. Soobucks is online student coffee club. I set up Soobucks in business class to maximize returns and invest for future project. I look forward to reunify of two Korea to be increased profitability. One future day I will be sell internet coffee to Supreme Leader, Kim Jung-Il. I will to call coffee Generalissimo machiatto in the honour of Korean comrade brother. North and South. We are Korea. We are one.

Misun eye are more Western then my eye. She has got operation. Also she has got more better tongue operation. This is the why English spoken good by Misun. This is why teacher like. This is not fair trade. I must stop to think about Misun. I must to go library for study.

To cram for exam (v. phr.) to push too much fact in head in night before exam. Model sentence: My brain is cram with so much think, so much coffee, so much energy drink. so much elixir. I must stop to thinking. Pain is great. I must...

Soo is still to utter a meaningful dicky bird to save his life. He looks even more wan than usual. I really wish he’d speak to me. Using the magic word might be worth a shot of soju.

- OK, Soo. Let me set you some...

I pause for full, measured effect...

- ...set you some ...homework, eh? You like, Soo?

He like. Soo’s reactive grin could illuminate Blackpool, Pleasure Receptors of The North. He smiles the smile of the child whose father has just been granted a furlough from the demilitarized zone due to isolation stress disorder, aka missing home. Hostilities with the missus have been suspended. A weekend armistice agreed; I issue instructions, which Soo laps up as a robotic Jewish kitten would a full metal challah. My power for metaphor is in decline. He’s not the only one who needs Friday night to meltdown.

- I want you to use the eight phrases we’ve studied today and put them in a story. Remember Soo your story. Not what you think I want to read, but what you want to say. Working title: We are Korea. Here’s the opening to get you started: I am an emotive response unit posing as one of them. It has taken nigh on...Soo opens his North and South to enunciate his first full English since breakfast nine months ago in Stansted, when a toddler pressed a fried egg yolk into his hands. There is no rupture in the space-time continuum. There are no Northern Lights. No shooting stars. No major environmental catastophes due to reckless corporate rapacity. He simply repeats the same four-word utterance he expressed in the airport arrivals area nine months back. It is as miserably inadequate then as now.

- Thank you very much.

He unleashed outer voice. At last. The anti-climax is bathetic. That’s when I decide it is time to give up teaching him and write about him. My subject not my student. I could only have developed the relationship with Soo that never was by writing about it. Only through writing does it exist. Language mediates reality: without the medium of language not much can be realised. The Armistice (July 1953- November 1954) is only real on paper. A state of war still exists in actuality, but on paper peace has broken out.
So it is in my Korea. On paper we’re still married. Me and my Angel. In printed form we’ve been married since 12 years ago, on August 26 1998, when we signed a book in a room in Finsbury Town Hall. Six days beforehand, with Lewinksy on bended knee, taking seminal vesicles on the chin, POTUS launched a cruise missile attack over Khartoum, as we planned to honeymoon in the Pyrenées Orientales in the ramshackled home of her window-cleaning, property-improverished parents in a Dutch stop-over for long-distance lorry drivers, where her mother and father squabbled the squabble of the throes of separation in a forerunner of the agonising slow-burn down of our own union, because Angels are/aren't as real as borderline personality disorder, however much earthly beauty and heavenly elation a pair of brown eyes looking down at an erect manhood about to explode its payload over a warm velvety tongue outstretched in selfless devotion, an act of love fetishised by internet up-and-downloaders the virtual world over, so as to end on, as always, le climax capitaliste: the money shot.

When Yung Park, Soo looks long enough and close enough at the Great Leader’s portrait, there appears a trickle of milky froth around the right bottom corner of his slightly opened mouth. He imagines it is machiatto, Italian for stained.

ETERNAL PRESIDENT KIM IL-SUNG WILL BE ALIVE IN THE HEART OF THE MANKIND FOREVER