Burn Treatment

By Sarah Safsten

/ Nonfiction /    

It was rush hour in Seoul on May 28, 2016, and at Guui subway station, a platform screen door was broken. At 4:58pm, the subway manager started a work order, promising the door would be fixed within the hour. At 4:58pm, the clock started ticking. 

Mr. Kim and Mr. Jeong(1) were the technicians assigned to repair the door. At 5:20 p.m., Mr. Kim was 30 minutes away from Guui Station. Mr. Jeong, 50 minutes out, lagged behind. 38 minutes left.

Per the Seoul Transportation Company safety regulations, Mr. Kim needed a buddy on every job, but he knew that Mr. Jeong would not arrive within the promised one-hour time slot. Rather than risk his job (and his chances of becoming a full-time employee) by arriving late, Mr. Kim chose to fix the door alone. He arrived at Guui station at 5:52pm and started performing the repairs. Five minutes later, at 5:57, a train rushed toward him. 

If Mr. Kim wasn’t a 19-year-old child, maybe he would have been more afraid of what might happen; if Mr. Kim’s team of six technicians wasn’t solely responsible for maintaining 49 subway stations with sliding screen doors that malfunctioned an average of 30 times each day, then maybe he wouldn’t have been assigned to Guui station at all. And if Mr. Kim wasn’t an underpaid part-time worker trying to prove he deserved a full-time position, maybe he wouldn’t have felt so desperate. But Mr. Kim was a 19-year-old child. He was one of only six technicians responsible for those sliding doors. He was an underpaid part-time worker. He was on the train tracks at 5:57pm. 

And at 5:57pm, he was struck by the speeding train. 

That night, thousands of sticky notes covered the subway screen door, left by passengers who mourned him: “You’re in heaven now.” “You were only a 19-year-old child; why did you have to die?” “His death was not an unexpected accident.” That night, hundreds gathered at Konkuk University hospital, bringing chrysanthemums, bowls of instant ramyeon, bottles of water, and packets of bread to his altar. They held signs that read, “Human lives before money,” and “We have a responsibility to change society.” If I had been there, I would have left some ramyeon and held a sign too.

* * *

One day when I was seven years old, I sat at the kitchen table with my sister. In front of us was the first meal I’d ever made all by myself: two cereal bowls full of steaming, chicken-flavored ramen. We twirled our forks in the curly noodles and slurped broth from the lip of our bowls. We were unaware that these noodles were bought by our single mom’s food stamps. We were delighted to eat ramen every day for the entire summer. 

It’s now 20 years later and I’ve fallen into a habit of eating ramyeon for lunch at the construction company where I work. I have a stash of ramyeon cups in the trunk of my car, including spicy chicken, miso, vegetable, spicy beef bone, tonkatsu, and carbonara. On the days I’m too overwhelmed to write one more email, on the days I’m so irritated at every single person who passes my desk that I have to wrestle my snarky comments into silence, I eat ramyeon at my desk, taking long drags of its spicy steam.

I’m not alone in using ramen as my security blanket; just look at any ramen subreddit for five seconds and you’ll see what I mean about workplace ramen stashes. One of my favorites is Reddit user @geekyengineertype, who ate ramen for lunch at work every day for a year, photographing each bowl as proof and later compiling all 365 photos into a collage. Two of my friends add mayonnaise to their spicy ramen to take the edge off the heat. My cousin likes it with everything bagel seasoning. My sister sometimes pours in milk to tone down the spice. If I’m feeling fancy, I make it with sesame oil, dried lily flowers, miso paste, green onions, and shiitake mushrooms. A lot of us eat it dry with the seasoning sprinkled on top. 

One of my favorite brands of ramyeon noodles went viral in 2014 with a YouTube spicy foods challenge. The video showed several different British civilians eating a bowl of Buldak Spicy Chicken Ramyeon. The original Buldak ramyeon is at 4,400 Scoville Heat Units, and the 2x spicy version goes up to 10,000 SHU. (This isn’t extremely high on the SHU scale, but it’s still quite hot.) The contestants in the challenge were in obvious pain—fanning their tongues, panting, crying, and in between gulps of milk, gasping “it hurts so much;” “it makes your lips go on fire;” “it just keeps getting hotter;” “how do you eat this?” The bravest of the contestants finished their bowls, but some only managed a few mouthfuls. Now, ten years after that viral video, I’m eating spicy ramyeon not for a dare, but for a comforting snack at work.

My partner and I are used to these workplace ramen meals, and we’re used to working multiple jobs (along with one-third of our fellow Americans). One job alone isn’t enough to cover his autoimmune treatments or the medication I take for my chronic depression, so we both work for the same construction company; he officiates ballroom dance competitions on the side; I teach ballroom dance lessons and work as an adjunct English professor. Our human shells require treatments, and treatments cost money, and money requires work, and work requires health, and so the cycle continues—a Möbius strip of necessity. 

Still, we always seem to have ramen.

* * *

People have been using capsaicin, an alkaloid found in the fruits of chili pepper plants, since 1816 as a homeopathic remedy for burning nerve pain, itching, and muscle strains. Capsaicin tricks the body into fighting fire with fire. When I set fire to my mouth with Buldak ramyeon, my body believes that I’m in danger. In response, it floods me with endorphins, with dopamine, with the same adrenaline rush that follows a hard sprint. 

I haven’t yet tried the capsaicin powders, patches, and creams that ease topical pain, but I do know capsaicin helps me after a demanding day at work. The day’s tension doesn’t always leave my body—it lingers, settling into headaches, sore muscles, and waves of nausea. My therapist says this means my stress cycle is incomplete. Some people complete the stress cycle through physical exercise, shaking their arms, or by screaming into a pillow. I prefer capsaicin. 

Lest you think I’m a total badass with a high pain tolerance, I should tell you that I didn’t always love spicy ramyeon. At first I had to work hard to keep a straight face, and the fact that I drank almost a gallon of water just to get through one bowl usually betrayed the cool aura I was trying to project. When I lived in South Korea a few years ago, I often ate ramyeon with Min-Jae, a 19-year-old boy in my neighborhood. We’d meet at the convenience store down the street, buy a bowl of instant ramyeon for 2,000 won, and slurp it on stools at the counter. I remember the way Min-Jae teased me, telling me that gomtang ramyeon was made from bear meat (I believed him, because the Korean word for bear is gom, and the word for soup is tang. I didn’t realize until later that gomtang is really just beef broth soup, and the bear joke is a friendly way to haze new Korean-speakers). Over the few months I spent time with him, we kept eating ramyeon together, and my spice tolerance grew.

I imagine Min-Jae’s face when I think about Mr. Kim. I’ve tried to find pictures of him but his image has been scrubbed from the internet. The news reports don’t even say his first name. On the day he died, Seoul Metro didn’t know where Mr. Kim was stationed. He was invisible before he was gone. So I do what I can to see him—to meet him (or the version of him I can find through news articles) in my mind. To imagine the 19-year-old kid with a backpack holding (according to the newspaper) a wrench, screwdriver, wirecutter, writing supplies, a stainless steel spoon, disposable chopsticks, and a cup of instant ramyeon. 

* * *

A few months ago, my construction team fell behind on a project—a ski mansion in the Wasatch Mountains—so everyone was pulled in to help meet the deadline, even those of us who usually worked behind a desk. Each morning, I drove over mountain backroads, passing through security gate after security gate after security gate until I arrived at the homeowner’s estate. I hiked up the steep custom-stone driveway and, after pulling white plastic covers on top of my muddy work boots, started vacuuming sawdust off one of the three spiral staircases. In the weeks leading up to the deadline, I scrubbed baseboards, wiped fingerprints off champagne glasses, peeled tape off door jambs with my pocket knife, sponged stains out of premium wool carpet with paper towels and distilled water, hauled barrels and barrels of debris to the dumpster. One night, after unpacking dozens of boxes filled with glassware and stocking all the bathrooms with toiletries, I drove down the mountain feeling irritated that the homeowner would never know I was the one who filled their soap dispensers and organized their wine glasses. 

Now, months later, I’m fine with the fact that the homeowner doesn’t care about me. I don’t care about them either. I don’t care about their feelings, their families, or their fancyass towel bars. And even if I could meet them in person, shake their hand, tell them my name and show them the places I organized in their house, I wouldn’t want to. I don’t even tell my coworkers about myself. Most of them don’t know that I’m also a writing professor, ballroom dance instructor, essayist, and ramen obsessive. And if they knew, would they even remember, understand, or care? The skeptic in me doubts it. My inner skeptic asks, why should I care about the I.T. manager who knocks over my water bottle and scatters my papers and says “you’re slouching”? Or my coworker who greets me by saying “working hard or hardly working” in the chipperest of voices? Or the secretary who wants to hug me every day, or my manager who gossips about me to his peers, or my desk neighbor who uses my phone charger and switches my chair with hers?

But even if some of my coworkers are irritating, I can’t deny that I’m partially to blame for my lack of friends at work. I can’t deny that I haven’t done anything to change this. I’ve just spent plenty of months feeling emotionally detached, apathetic, and fatigued, and I’ve eaten plenty of bowls of the spiciest ramen I can handle.

My sister lives the gospel of workplace apathy even better than I do. She is an accountant who proclaims the benefits of apathy with the zeal of a newly converted missionary, but she was not always this way. Once, she was a social worker and she cared so much she cracked. On every home visit, she met people who needed miracles but all she could offer them were lists of government assistance programs. She couldn’t keep watching without the power to ease their suffering, so she quit her job and became an accountant. “I had cared myself into not caring,” she told me. “I cared so much for so long that I didn’t have any more tears to give. I didn’t have any more yearning or striving left in me, and I was all cared out. As much as I wanted to care, I couldn’t.” 

I feel cared out too. At least in my case, nothing serious will happen if I don’t give a shit about mountain mansions for millionaires; no one will even notice if I give a C+ effort at work; my apathy will not cause suffering. I have the luxury of going home at the end of the day, burning my mouth with Korean chili pepper powder, and (in my mind) showing both middle fingers to my job.  

But maybe I’m wrong. 

How much did Mr. Kim’s coworkers care about their jobs—or care about Mr. Kim? Did they ever wonder if they could have prevented his death had they been more present—if not to his emotions, then at least to his location? I ask myself these questions because I too am complicit in the same cycle of detachment. 

* * *

Every time I work in a mansion, I think about the night I watched the film Parasite. The story follows three families in a social hierarchy. On top: the Parks, the residents of a country mansion; in the middle: Ms. Gook Moon-Gwang the housekeeper; on the bottom: the Kim family who live in a basement apartment and scrape by on whatever they can make from odd jobs. The main conflict unfolds when the Kim family invent a con in which they all become employees of the Park household. I nodded along with the Kims’ resentment toward the Parks as I watched, amused with their con. I cheered on their small daily rebellions, their glee at getting one over on the ultra-rich. Like the Kims, I’ve perceived the wealthy as parasites benefitting from my life force. I’ve called them entitled and selfish and used these labels to justify my bitter list of complaints against them. And it’s not just my perception; I’ve had dozens of painful interactions with people like the Parks.

And yet. I stand in their homes, working, being paid with money that exists because of them, money that would not reach me if not for the structures that allow them to exist in the first place. Even when this system is deeply unfair, and even though I hate it, this system sustains me just as it sustains the ones I view as parasites. And people do not easily dismantle the systems that sustain them.

There’s another aspect of Parasite that I haven’t stopped thinking about. Halfway through the film, there’s a scene where Mrs. Park calls Mrs. Kim and tells her to immediately prepare ramdon (a quick aside: ramdon is a common dish in Korea made from two different types of instant noodles: ramyeon, and udon. The term itself, a hybrid of "ramyeon" and "udon," was invented by the film’s subtitle translators because no direct English equivalent existed). Mrs. Park wanted her ramdon prepared with  chae-ggut—an expensive cut of beef similar to wagyu. Having never made this upscale ramdon before, Chung-sook scrambles to finish in time and barely manages to have the noodles ready when Mrs. Kim arrives.

The reason this scene stuck with me—and not just because I’m always thinking about noodles—is this: after Parasite was released, Korean instant noodle exports grew exponentially. Scholars Yin-Hwa Qwan and Jeong-Bin Im, researchers in agricultural economics at Seoul National University, conducted a full academic study—an interrupted time series analysis—and found a direct link between the film and the surge in ramen exports. Gwan and Im suggested that as instant noodles continue to increase in global popularity, their inexpensive cost and long shelf life could make them a good choice to combat food insecurity and global hunger. Now, thanks to Parasite, 70% of Samyang’s ramyeon sales come from exports to the U.S., and you can find it stacked high in Walmart and Costco, right next to the bulk cans of tuna fish and twelve-packs of macaroni and cheese. 

In 2023, the U.S. ranked #6 out of 56 countries in ramen consumption, trailing behind China & Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, and Japan. In total, Americans ate 5,100 million servings last year. Japanese instant noodle giant Nissin Foods recently reported, “middle-class consumers who didn’t eat instant noodles before are now incorporating them into their everyday lives.” A polite, corporate way of saying: food prices have skyrocketed, incomes have not, so people are learning how to like these cheap noodles. On one hand, I’m delighted to be one among millions of ramen lovers. On the other hand, I wish that instead of (or at least in addition to) selling more ramen, companies would focus on addressing the systemic causes of income inequality so people could buy ramen out of choice, not necessity. 

* * *

I visited another mountain mansion in the final stages of construction last fall.  This client had given us permission to come and go as needed (they were living in one of their several other country estates), so when my boss asked me and a fellow team member to organize plumbing fixtures at one of the other mountain projects closeby, we stopped here for a visit. We turned off the security alarm and wandered into each room as if sneaking a glance at an off-limits exhibit in a museum. We passed the pool, the sauna, the home theater with ten plush recliners, the glass elevator, the custom stone sculptures, and the light-up art strip (worth more than $10,000, according to my coworker). In that house, I felt as I had in the Palace of Versailles—aware that the owner had constructed this mountain palace with someone like me in mind. They would never know me, but I would know them, and my awe would hang next to the bespoke artwork on these walls.

I wasn’t the only invisible presence in that house. I thought of the tradespeople who had passed through before me—designers, project managers, site managers, carpenters, stone masons, glass artists—visible only in the rare chance that the homeowner might someday mention their names. They could point to this house and say, “I helped build that,” and in doing so, find dignity in being seen, even from the margins. I’m still thinking about that house all these months later—and I’m thinking about the fact that sometimes I crave the protection, access, and opportunities that visibility can offer, even while I take pride in being invisible.

* * *

Around the time that Mr. Kim died, Seoul Metro executives were trying to reduce the Seoul Transportation Corporation’s 1 trillion won deficit by outsourcing safety work and hiring the lowest bidding subcontractor. Many Korean citizens protested this system which prioritized money over safety. At first, their protests seemed to be effective: at the five-year anniversary of Mr. Kim’s death, the mayor of Seoul commemorated the tragedy by stating he would prioritize citizen safety. But two weeks later, the mayor reneged: he shifted full-time workers back to temporary workers and reduced the number of safety-related employees to solve Seoul’s debt. 

I feel the burn of indignance about this broken system not just for myself but the people I love and people I wish I could protect like Mr. Kim. I’m angry that I have to show up to a job I hate every day, that my friends and family members struggle even more than I do with unsafe working conditions and few employment protections. My anger at the injustice and absurdity of it all often spirals into panic that makes me feel trapped; there’s nothing I can do to change the systems we live in. 

Even if I could change this system—the proud proletariat part of me wants to make one thing clear: it does not envy millionaires. It doesn’t need its own mountain mansion to feel recompensed—just a healthy work environment and fair compensation. 

But I have to admit that there’s another part of me— a stuff-lover—that’s rolling its eyes as the proletariat writes a manifesto. This part of me is a compulsive shopper (with a particular weakness for shoes and excellent jackets). Even though I’m trying to be, I’m not immune to wanting things, or to blaming society for my money problems. Really, my inner skeptic scoffs, what do you expect to do? Blaming the system won’t change anything. You’ll still be here, circling the same frustrations, wanting, buying, complaining—just like everyone else.

Maybe the skeptic’s right. Maybe I’m giving the system too much credit for my own shortcomings. But this is the same skeptic who doesn’t want to admit that I’ve only got about a teaspoon of energy left after years of wearing my company polo and feigning friendliness even as I have panic attacks in the bathroom. So right now, that teaspoon of energy is going into washing my dishes, texting back friends who probably think I’ve ghosted them, and showing up for my three jobs.

* * *

“I can’t keep doing this for 40 more years,” I told my therapist last month. “Even though there are aspects of life that I enjoy, they don’t make up for how much it sucks to be alive.” I was on my lunch break, sitting in my car in the construction parking lot. I held my phone between my knees and hugged my arms tight around myself, listening to her say, “where do you feel this in your body?” I felt my muscles tighten, my hands sweat, and my heartbeat quicken. I felt agitated and restless, bouncing my knee, fiddling with my pen, and drawing cartoon characters on the inside of my wrist. My therapist responded with a question: “what if this is what you have to do for the rest of your life? How will you cope?” I didn’t have an answer.

Except for this: after work, I went home and started boiling noodles, slicing green onions, dissolving miso paste, soaking shiitake mushrooms, and stirring in a packet of red pepper powder. At the kitchen table, I alternated between slurping the steaming red broth and cooling my mouth with ice cold water until my lips were red and my nose was running.

* * *

Can I be cynical about the capitalist system and still show up to jobs I hate, hoping that something might shift? That someday I might be able to turn one or two screws in the system machinery to make living more bearable? I don’t know, but I’m trying. I’m carrying ramyeon in my bag and looking for a buddy—someone to keep watch for oncoming trains.

_______________

(1) Mr. Jeong is a pseudonym. Mr. Kim’s assigned partner is unnamed.