'We ate, we drank, we played games': The St Patrick’s Day in Seoul I’ll treasure forever

The moment I showed up for my first day on the job in Seoul, South Korea, I knew that I was going to enjoy working with the team in SEV.

It was a camp-type experience, where we lived, worked (and occasionally partied!) on location. My colleagues were a lively mix of people from South Korea, the U.S, the UK, the Philippines, and South Africa. There was even one other person from Ireland (Spoiler: that person ended up becoming one of my closest friends, to this day.)

Everyone was there to teach English to Korean students via games, crafts and activities, so my first month was filled with lots of fun, laughter, and joy.

But that doesn’t stop you from being lonely when you’re 6,000 miles from home.

St Patrick’s Day was exactly one month to the day after I arrived for (what was supposed to be) a year in Seoul. Initially, I was planning on attending a little parade being thrown in Itaewon, but we were scheduled to work that day, and it would have been over by the time I got there, so I decided not to go. I remember being disappointed for the first time ever that I wouldn’t get to see the Paddy’s parade.

I guess I took it for granted, being at home all the years before, that it would always be something I could attend.

Luckily, my granny had sent a package with snacks from home and my mum had sent a package with some St Patrick’s Day decorations and t-shirts for myself and my new friend.

We decided to sneak into the teachers’ office the night before and deck it out in the decorations. We left a packet of Tayto, two Barry’s tea bags, and some Kilbeggan cookies on each desk. We had a sliced pan and some butter in the tiny office fridge, ready to introduce everyone to the delicacy that is The Tayto Sandwich.

When everyone walked in the next day, we had an excuse ready to tell the manager - along with a promise to take it all down immediately - but he was as excited as everyone else.

He quickly became a big fan of The Tayto Sandwich and would request his own multipack (and Curly Wurlys) every time I placed an order on the Paddy Box for the following years I worked there.

We spent the whole afternoon listening to Irish music, and my friend and I did a little presentation on Irish history and culture.

The team even ended up creating some fun culture-sharing classes for our students based on the things we talked about.

Interestingly, we learned that we shared a lot of similarities with Korean culture and Korea kind of felt like the ‘Ireland of Asia’ to me after that. Our history is surprisingly comparable, the size and shape of our countries, the fact we’re split into North and Republic/South, and we also have some very similar words in both our slang!

The main topic that came up was the difference between Irish whiskey and Korean soju. Because I didn’t really have much experience of either, we decided to take a group trip out to Itaewon after work to the Irish pub there, The Wolfhound, and find out. I may have missed the parade, but it turned out that I wasn’t going to miss the festivities after all.

Before we headed out to Itaewon, our manager said he wanted to show us his favourite piece of Irish culture and brought us all down to the movie theatre on campus. We all filed in, snacks in hand, as the intro notes of Riverdance filled the room and the projector whirred to life. One YouTube video of his favourite performance turned into five, which turned into videos teaching Irish dancing, which turned into everyone up on the stage, having our very own little cèilidh.

It is truly one of my most treasured memories: seeing all these different people, from different places around the world, counting - as Gaeilge - as they did their best impression of Michael Flatley.

We headed to Itaewon after that - like a little school tour. All of us in our green (I learned from the Americans that, if you don’t wear green on St Patrick’s Day there, you get pinched!), crammed into one subway car.

The Wolfhound looked like a tiny hole-in-the-wall when we arrived at its door but, when we walked up the stairs and into the pub, it opened out into this huge space that had green, white, and orange decorations everywhere, hurling and Gaelic football playing on the TVs, GAA jerseys from every county, and Horslips blasting through the speakers.

It smelled like home. Every server was Irish. The Guinness actually had a proper head. There was a full Irish breakfast on the menu FOR DINNER.

We ate. We drank. We played games.

Everyone taught the group their favourite drinking game from their country, and we ended the night by singing the National Anthem, with our colleagues trying to read it phonetically from a Google webpage on their phones.

It’s so funny to me how the first year I was away from home was the first year I was most connected to it, in a way. I’d never really been one to celebrate St Patrick’s Day before that, but that experience changed my appreciation for it forever.

That was almost ten years ago - wow. These days, there is way more going on in Seoul for St Patrick’s Day, including Paddy’s Green Gala (a networking event in the Mondrian Hotel), Paddy’s in the Plaza (a festival showcasing both traditional and contemporary Irish music) in Sindorim, Paddy’s Pub Parade in Itaewon (I feel that one doesn’t need explaining!), and Taste of Ireland, which is live music and Irish food served in the aptly named Craic House in Itaewon.

It’s amazing to see how many Irish people have taken some time to spend a year or two in Korea, and how Irish culture has spread in just the short time since I first went there.

This year, I won’t get to see the St Patrick’s Day parade, but instead will get to be in it, finally home.

Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin.