He's 88 years old..never lived abroad..

Today, I went into a restaurant underneath our school and ordered some Ddok mandu gook. It's has rice cakes in it with some handmade dumplings. You can see them make it and it's really tasty stuff. I guess it's a popular place because it's always busy in there. After I ordered, an older man started talking to me, asking me if I am alright eating the spicy food and I said that I was ok, and that the food I ordered isn't spicy. He spoke with almost no accent! Everyone in the restaurant was surprised and saying to each other in Korean that he could speak English so well.
So I asked him where he learned or studied or if he'd ever been or lived abroad. He said that he's never lived outside of Korea and that he studied himself.
I thought that was pretty amazing considering that he is 88 years old! When he was born, Korea was under Japanese rule and in schools only taught Japanese! So for him to learn even Korean would have been difficult!

So sometimes it's really cool the kind of people you can meet anywhere. After he left, the restaurant owner started speaking to me in perfect English too! He said he was amazed at the older man's English ability and said he was probably in the military when he was younger. I wish I could have talked to him longer. First, to listen to some of his stories and second, to let him know that I was going to put a blog on about him!