I was standing in the middle of the Dongjak subway station not knowing where to go. I had about 35 minutes before my class starts, and I was stressing a lot. The online company I work for has strict rules about being late for the classes: if you don’t log in 5 minutes after the class starts, they blame you for not showing up, fine you for a missed class, then calculate the number of no show-ups and terminate a contract if the number exceeds 6.
I knew it would roughly take me 30 minutes to get back home: 15 minutes traveling by train and 15 minutes walking uphill from the subway station to my house. I knew I didn’t have enough time to get home, but I also knew there was no need to stress. But I just couldn’t figure out where to go in all that rush and stress, and Korean characters do seem a little confusing when you are in a rush.
The subway was empty. These days, not many people take the subway due to the Coronavirus COVID-19 that had killed 85 people and affected 8,162 people in South Korea.
I came up to an only woman in her 50’s who was standing on a platform waiting for the train. Just like me, she had an anti-viral mask on her face, and the only thing I could see was her eyes, that seemed quite kind and aware at a glance. “Line 9, where do I need to go? O-di-ye Ga-yo?” I said in my broken Korean.
She responded something in Korean, and from her gestures, I understood that I needed to go to the opposite side. “Thank you, Gam-sa-ham-ni-da”, I said and rushed to the opposite side.
To my great surprise, shock and anxiety, I still couldn’t find the name of the station I needed to go once I crossed the side. I came up to an old Korean man with earphones stuck in his ears. I started waving my hands in front of his face to attract his attention. The man raised up his head and looked at me with a question mark on his face. “Line 9, where do I need to go? O-di-ye Ga-yo?” I asked.
“Gi-da-lyeo, gi-da-lyeo”, I heard someone yelling. I looked at the stairs and saw a woman running in my direction saying something in Korean. A few seconds later, I recognized the same Korean lady who tried to help me earlier.
“What happened?” I thought to myself “Why did this woman run all the way from the other side, upstairs, then cross the hallway, then downstairs risking not only her time (as she might have been late for her own train) but also her health – it’s not easy to run upstairs when you’re after 50”.
“Did I lost my phone while running ? Was it my wallet that I dropped? Maybe she wanted to tell me something important that was the matter of life and death? In any case, there must be an good reason for her to run all that way to me”.
“The other side, I’m sorry!” she said trying to catch her breath looking all sweaty and tired, as if she was trying to win a $5000 prize running a marathon . “Let’s go!” she took my hand and made me follow her, all the way up again, upstairs, across the hall, then downstairs towards the platform.
As I was following her, I couldn’t help but thinking how dedicated that stranger was, how responsible she felt about helping me, as if I was her family member or, at least, her closest friend. She took me to the Seoul subway map and showed me the station I need to transfer to get to my destination.
I knew how to get to my final destination once I get to the right platform, and, to be honest, I wasn’t even listening to what she was explaining. The only thing that was running through my mind was that I really wanted to erect a monument to this wonderful woman, who, risking her own time and health, came to help a stranger like me, just because she felt responsible for giving me the wrong directions.
I was just in time for my class, feeling grateful to the Universe for showing me that in this world of selfishness and isolation, in this IT and AI era where cell phones have a higher value than morality – there are still some individuals who don’t match the crowd, because they are different, and helping someone is much more important for them than their own comfort.
What would you do if you gave wrong directions to a stranger?
Diana's Travel Gateway 