The "MT" is one of the most common events in Korean culture.  For the few of you who have never heard of it, an MT (membership training) is basically a weekend retreat for university students or company employees.  Participants usually leave on a Friday night for a resort or campground outside of town and return home late Saturday or early Sunday.  I have often heard about MTs and when I ask what takes place the common response is “lots of drinking”.  Surprise, surprise!

A couple of years ago an ex-girlfriend told me she had to attend an MT with her co-workers.  I gave it very little thought and simply told her to have a good time.  That weekend, when I mentioned to some Korean acquaintances that my girlfriend was on an MT, you would have thought that I had told them I had cancer.  In a very concerned tone they asked me why I allowed her to go.  I answered that she would only be gone a couple of days, I trusted her, and besides, I had no right to tell her she couldn’t go.  To which they responded, “A Korean man would NEVER allow his girlfriend to go on an MT.”  Naturally, I came away from this conversation feeling a bit unnerved and, sure enough, within a couple of weeks of the MT we broke up.  (I must mention though, that this could have been purely coincidence.)  Since then I have always had a strong curiosity to experience firsthand the atmosphere of an MT.

Last weekend, I finally had a chance to quell that curiosity.  I was invited to participate in a retreat for English majors from a local university.  I couldn’t refuse.  The mysteries of the MT were soon to be revealed before my very eyes.  What follows is an account of the weekend's activities.

I met a small group of foreigners in front of the university early Saturday morning.  We boarded a chartered bus and headed for the Muju Ski Resort.  The students had left the night before, so there were actually more foreigners on the bus than Koreans.  Three hours and two rest stops later, we pulled into the resort.

(Note: Muju Resort is a beautiful place.  I intended to take photos and write a separate post on it, but it rained the entire weekend and I wasn’t able to get out and explore.  I’ll just tell you that there are a large number of Swiss-style chalets and mini villages strewn along the mountainside, lending a sort of "Disneyland meets the Shining" feel to the resort.)

The bus stopped outside of a cafeteria.  Our group got off the bus and went inside.  I expected to see students swilling soju and hurling kimchi at one another, but I was disappointed to find that the cafeteria was empty.  The head of the English department instructed us to grab a tray and get our food.  We ate our bulgogi and kimchi chigae, quietly wondering what shenanigans the students were up to.

After lunch we were taken to our quarters.  We stayed three to a “room”, but the rooms were more like small apartments.  Each consisted of a decent-sized kitchen, a large living room, two bedrooms and two separate bathrooms – more than enough space for three.  I later learned that the students were separated into teams of eight or nine and two teams stayed in one apartment.  Young men and women!  Together!  Egads!!

We learned that many of the students were sleeping off a Friday night full of activities and so we had some time to kill before events got started.  I asked the veterans in the group what they did on these retreats in previous years.  Their answer?  You guessed it: drinking.  Someone fetched a few beers from the mini-mart and we sat around drinking Hite and watching Spiderman on OCN.

Late in the afternoon the department head put each of us in charge of a team of students and instructed us to help them put together an English skit and a song and dance routine for a show to be held in the evening.  Though some groups mixed in a little alcohol consumption with their rehearsal, my group was particularly diligent and worked until dinner to perfect their routines (we took first prize in the song and dance – largely due to my singing; I’m sure of it).   Finally we wrapped up our preparations and feasted on more bulgogi.  Foreigners like bulgogi, you know.

After dinner we gathered in a large conference room for the evening competition and sat through three hours of quizzes, singing, dancing, and incoherent skits.  I asked the students on my team if this was normal for an MT.  They told me that it wasn’t.  This was more like an English camp.  Drat!  I suspected I would never get to the heart of the MT culture.  Hiding my disappointment, I found pleasure in watching the teams who had been drinking before dinner stumble through their dance routines.

At around 11:30 the competition mercifully came to an end.  Now it was back to our rooms for the main event.  Younger students sat on the floors of their rooms while the older students retrieved boxes and boxes of soju and beer.  The amount of alcohol carried into the rooms was staggering.  I got the impression they thought they were catering a Las Vegas convention.  For about an hour people remained with the other members of their teams, sitting in circles and playing drinking games in rapid fire succession.  After a sufficient amount of fuel had been consumed, the floor of the hotel where we stayed turned into one massive all-night party.

I wandered from room to room witnessing young men and women playing drinking games everywhere.  In each case I noticed a common theme: certain members seemed to be specifically targeted to drink.  One girl informed me that she was trying to “kill” a guy (with soju) because she hated him.  With her friends she challenged him to a drinking contest.  The catch: the girls were drinking water from soju bottles.  Fortunately, the object of her hatred was still alive in the morning and seemed to be on good terms with his would-be assassin.  In fact, there seemed to be quite a few more couples in the morning than the previous night.  A few of them severely hung over.

While riding back to Yeosu on the foreigner bus, I had time to ponder what I had learned.  On the surface, MTs are set up to bring “the group” closer together through a shared experience.  Anyone familiar with Korean culture would not be surprised by that.  There are plenty of activities that members are "encouraged" to take part in.  But on an individual level, these weekend getaways are seen as an opportunity to bond with that someone that you’ve been eyeing at school or work.  And what better way to do it than a couple of days (and nights) in a room together with a truckload of alcohol?  There really is no mystery in that.