One of the younger teachers at my school invited me to a "disco" dance party last weekend. Being that not many people talk to me at school, I agreed to go on the spot. I then talked 2 of my friends into coming with me. I assumed it was one of those "silent disco" kinda things...only because she used the word disco. I was so wrong.
Once we met her and a friend at the subway station, she told us this party was for foreigners only. Her friend took out the ticket which had the title and name of the organization written on, "Mannam." I didn't really know anything about this group, but my friend had recently read about it. It is apparently possibly connected to some kind of religious cult in Korea, but is outwardly a volunteer group. Once I heard about that, things got awkward.
The event itself was fine and nobody tried to push any religious stuff on us. There were tons of Korean volunteers running about holding signs and telling people where the fun party for foreigners was. When we first arrived, they checked our bags saying they were checking for alcohol, but they didn't need to check the foreigners' bags. Then they asked if we wanted our faces or hands painted which we declined. Then we got some hot dogs and drinks and sat down at a table.
The only real thing they tried to push us to sign up for was some kind of "olympics" that is happening in September. The teacher from my school got one of the volunteers to come explain to us what it was about. We didn't get much information about the actual event except it will "basically be just like the olympics" and there will be 50,000 people there. She also said since they don't know how many people will come, they haven't chosen a location yet which is odd. My friend said we will decide later once we know about our plans on that date and the volunteer was like, oh well, we're telling you in advance so you don't make other plans and join us!
We stayed to watch some kind of best dressed/best dancer contest and then luckily, the teacher that invited us said she had a plan to meet her friends somewhere else. We let them leave and followed soon after. Overall, it was strange. Nothing was pushed on us and we didn't hear anyone saying the slogan (which I've read happens at other events). I think it was just a random event in order to get more people to sign up for the September event which I'm sure will be weirder. For now, I'm giving the teacher at my school the benefit of the doubt and assume she's not in a religious cult. I think some of the Korean people who volunteer really don't all know the details.
