Last week we were in a pool hall in Manila playing 9-ball with our favourite old salt. At a table next to ours were a Korean couple in their 20s. The sight of them suddenly reminded us of how affluent South Korea has become, so affluent that its young citizens can go on pleasure trips to the Philippines. You see them shopping at the local malls and boarding flights at the domestic airport for some R&R on the beaches of Boracay or Bohol. The hot-blooded males, of course, come for sex.
The Filipinos are also world travelers but relatively few go out as legitimate tourists. In 2009, 1.42 million of them left the country to work on foreign soil as nannies, housemaids, welders, doctors, nurses, computer programmers, singers and what have you. Almost a quarter (300,424 to be exact) went to toil at sea. We saw a big crowd of seafarers gathered as usual at the Luneta Park on our way to the pool hall. No billiards for the fellows. They were waiting for shipboard slots, Luneta being the de facto recruitment centre for Filipino crew.
South Korea has vastly fewer seafarers than the Philippines. A Cardiff University study placed the total number of Koreans employed on the world merchant fleet at 18,000 in 2002 compared with 206,000 Filipinos. But what does it matter? As the world’s fifth largest shipowning nation, controlling a total of 44.4 million dwt as of 1st January 2010, the Koreans are the ones giving jobs to Filipino seafarers. They also continue to build enough ships to trail behind China as the top shipbuilding nation for the first half of 2010.
The young Korean couple hardly spoke a word as they played. After they left, we glanced at the young locals inside the pool hall. They were bantering and chatting in their school uniforms, some puffing away in the smoking room. South Korea may never produce a world pool champion like Efren “Bata” Reyes or Francisco “Django” Bustamante. As it’s often said, playing billiards well is a sign of misspent youth. But the Koreans at least can travel to Manila for a round of 9-ball. Never mind their being a maritime nation, which the Filipinos claim to be but are not quite. ~Barista Uno
