Mook Vocabulary

Mooks everywhere you look. Mooks relentlessly exercising in the park across the street. Mooks crowding the sidewalk and reacting with dismay when you put your shoulder into them.
"Uh-wey!?"
Mooks standing around in doorways, oblivious to others edging around them to get in or out. Mooks hocking up their lungs and spitting on their own country. Mooks driving their cars into, around, and dangerously close behind the other guy who HAS TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY NOW!!!!
Mook? Was is das "Mook?" Whence came this word mook?
I picked it up from some mafia/gangster movie somewhere, maybe even that great old police drama "Crime Story." "NYPD Blue?" Anyway, I used it to describe any great shambling, dumb, bovine faced moron who happened to lurch across my path. I used it back home in Canada for years before I even thought of coming to Korea, and continued to use it here. There are no shortages of mooks anywhere you go.
There is a variety of things that mooks here do that are unique to Korea, however.
Just off the top of my head, for instance, is their use of car alarms. They just love to play with their car alarms.
I live in Habukdae, a district that contains a couple of night clubs, innumerable hofs, and many, many love/business motels, so there's no shortage of mooks and mook activity for Flint and I to laugh at and mock.
My con-apt is on a side street, a couple of blocks off the second main drag, and it's fairly quiet. I have no complaints. It's one of the best con-apts I've had in Korea.
There're a few loudspeaker trucks, but they don't come past my place too often. For some reason, their windshields get splattered with eggs. I don't.. know... what it is....
But the car alarms! They go off and on at all hours. It's like they get off on the sound, and have to do it a few times just to prolong the pleasure? Or are they suspicious the things aren't working properly, and they do them over and over again just to make sure?
I knew this one mook, he was the only English speaker at my hagwon, so he had to deal with me quite a lot. Which was too bad for him. My recruiter had lied to me about the hagwon, telling me it was in Cheongju. It was actually in a small town a half hour north of the 'ju. A small town I now refer to as the Junkpile. Guess why.
So I wasn't too happy there, and I took it out on him whenever my temper got the best of me. He was a pretty simple fellow, totally dominated by his wife and our director (another woman), and sometimes I feel guilty about the shit I heaped on his empty little head. But not too much, and not very often.
Anyway, he drove this piece of shit Korean car (redundant, I know). I think it was an "Atoz." One of those tiny little things that look like you could blow over with strong onion breath.
This mook, whose English name was "James," would drive this car to work whenever his wife wasn't using it, and he sometimes drove me around to do various errands.
I used to ask him why he didn't have a baby chair in the vehicle, for his two year old daughter. He said she was fine roaming around the car, as he never had to drive very far in the Junkpile. I guess he thought it would be too much trouble buckling her in and making sure she was safe just to drive five minutes to eat sam gyup sal.
Sheesh.
After a while, he told me he couldn't take me to do any more errands, as the front passenger seat was "broken." I had laid into him pretty good a few times by then, so I can understand his reluctance to have me around any more than was necessary.
But one thing he never failed to do was put the car alarm on whenever he parked the car. Never mind that the alarm remote was malfunctioning, and he had to try it more than a few times before the alarm was set. Never mind that this car was a piece of shit that nobody in his right mind would want to steal. Never mind that this was a Korean car that nobody in his right mind would want to steal.
What country am I in?
He had to set the alarm. Another thing that I would try to talk logically to him about, and receive one of those maddening Korean-style answer non-answers that deflected the logic with deliberate obtuseness.
These fucking mooks and their fucking car alarms.
Have you ever listened to mooks talk? Flint and I were reflecting on this one day, and Flint remarked that it was like every other word out of their mouth was "shepal," one of their curse words.
It was a while later, when fall was getting on, that we remarked on their constant use of the word "cho-ah," (which means "cold"). As in, "I'm cold," "It's cold," "I'm cold," It's cold today," "I'm cold," "The weather is cold," "I'm cold," "Fall is a cold season," "I'm cold," "Winter is a cold season," and "Boy, am I fucking cold!"
Mooks don't seem to "converse" as westerners understand the word. One person will talk, almost in a monologue, and the other will stand there hypnotized, occasionally uttering "ung" to show they're following the "conversation," and haven't fallen asleep.
One side of a phone conversation is either one or the other. It's not strange to see a person holding a phone to their ears and just saying, "ung" every once in a while. The other side of the conversation is easy to hear, as the average mook will not consider anyone else around him, and fail to keep the "conversation" at a lower, more polite volume.
I used to work at a hagwon in Changwon. It was my second school (much better than the first) and my desk was next to the head Korean teacher's. She was a fairly typical Korean hottie, and easy to get along with to boot. Whenever she was on the phone, her "ung" was more like an "mmmm." It was a kind of a purr, soft and low. I used to love to listen to it, and imagine I was the one provoking such sounds. Mmmmmmmmm.....
Ahem! Ah, where were we... oh, yes...
Now, whenever I see a particularly mookish bit of behaviour, I usually mutter, "Mookity mook mook mook."
Like when I saw one young mook standing in the exit door area of a bus I was riding. He wasn't getting off. He was using the convex mirror above the door to carefully... arrange... every single hair... on.. his.... head.
Mookity mook mook mook.
I was once walking in the park next to my conapt, came around a corner, and caught another mook doing exactly the same thing. He was sort of embarassed, and walked off like he wasn't doing anything at all, officer! Nothing to see here!
Mookity mook mook mook.
Have you ever noticed Korean "sideburns?" Their facial hair doesn't grow in that area, so they grow their hair long, and style them into what look like sideburns. I used to wear a beard, and it would amuse me to see Korean men look at it, and finger their pathetic excuses for manliness. (No, not their dicks, their "sideburns.")
Mookity mook mook mook.
Or the mook who came across Flint and I sitting on a bench in Habukdae, smoking cigars, sipping Scotch, and shamelessly ogling the hotties going by. "You are cold! Go home!" he said, no doubt uttering the only English he knew.
Mookity mook mook mook.
After a while the words "mook," "shepal," and "cho-ah" came together to form the basic structure of mook vocabulary.
Flint and I imagined a typical mook conversation, and came up with:
"Mook mook mook shepal mook shepal cho-ah mook mook mook."
"Ung."
"Mook shepal mook cho-ah mook mook shepal cho-ah mook mook mook."
"Ung."
Shepal mook mook cho-ah mook shepal cho-ah mook mook mook."
"Ung."
And so on.
Winter is passing us by, and yesterday morning was so nice, I started to think spring-like thoughts. But now I wonder what the mooks will do once spring does arrive. It won't be cold anymore. They won't be able to say "cho-ah," thus losing 33,3% of their vocabulary.
Will they replace it with "ttu?" (hot?)
Whatever it is, you can be sure the sheer mookishness of it will be related in future posts.
G'day, eh?