Joining the Peace Corps: When We Were the Good Guys

By Amy Lennard Goehner / Hudson, N.Y.

The author and a teacher during a picnic

Joining the Peace Corps after graduating from college was my only plan. And when the acceptance letter arrived early in 1974 designating South Korea as my post, my first reaction was, "Lemme get my sunscreen, I'm heading to the tropics!" "Moron!" was the reaction from my friends, reminding me of that new TV show, M*A*S*H, with wintry scenes of snowy, frigid South Korea. Within days, I boned up on my geography —raising it to a 4th grade level —and learned that Korea has four seasons, including brutal winters, just like Newton, my Massachusetts home after leaving Brooklyn. Only in Massachusetts during winter there is heat.  And in summer there is air conditioning. And year-round, there are indoor bathrooms.

Summer, 1974: The author (see red arrow) with the group of Peace Corps Volunteers she trained with in Cheongju along with the Korean language teachers and staff. In 2024, the vols celebrated their 50th anniversary with a Zoom call

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Not knowing these details, back in 1968, I had hatched the plan all the way back in high school to join the Peace Corps, the same year I and my classmates marched down Commonwealth Avenue from Newton to Boston,  protesting the Vietnam war,  led by anti-war activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. I felt so cool during that march. That is, until we reached the corner of Walnut Street, where my mother was having her hair colored at the beauty parlor. And outside, there she was, this frantically waving woman with purple hair sticking up in shiny, tin-foiled spikes—a metallic porcupine—hollering my name. “Not now, ma, it’s the revolution,” I remember thinking, but of course, I discreetly waved back.

The author and one of her besties along with the master instructor of the Taekwondo gym where they studied

Remember the  Peace Corp’s slogan? “The Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love.” Well, nothing tough about my first nights in the Peace Corps, though. Our group of 35 or so, many of us fresh out of college, met up in San Francisco just a few months later and were flown to Tokyo where we stayed in a lavish hotel with toiletries galore and plush, terrycloth bathrobes.  “I LOVE the Peace Corps!" I remember thinking.

Twenty-four hours later, we were in Cheongju, Korea, the site of our three-month training. As we toured the building where we would all be staying, three of my new girlfriends and I crowded around the only sink in the building, calculating how long it would take to wash our hair in a cold-water faucet dripping one drop every two seconds. Washing with hot water would have to be done at the nearby public bathhouse. As we leaned in and stared at the sink, I looked at the girls and held up two fingers, silently mouthing the words, "Two years." The length of Peace Corps service.

Surprisingly, I adapted pretty quickly to what felt like one long camping adventure. That first summer in particular is seared in my memory for the sheer magic it brought of learning something new every single day—customs, like, never plant your chopsticks upright in your bowl of rice; never write someone’s name in red ink; never blow your nose in public, especially while eating. Always use two hands to give or receive any object; always remove your shoes before entering a Korean home; always wait for the eldest person at the table to begin eating.

Mistranslated signs in Korea still abound:

Weekdays at 6 am., a few of us would hike on dirt roads to a nearby gym to study Taekwondo. When our master instructor, our sabumnim, wanted to say something to us in English, he would leaf through a dog-eared paperback of Everyday, Common English Expressions before responding with some cockamamie uncommon expression. One Friday, as we were leaving the gym, we asked if he had weekend plans. He grabbed his book with an "I-thought-you'd-never-ask" sense of urgency and enthusiastically replied, "I have no PLANS, PROJECTS or SCHEMES!"

Similar English mistranslations could be seen on signs throughout the country. The funniest were dire warnings for innocuous conduct, such as this sign I saw by a park: DO NOT PICK OR SNATCH THE FLOWERS!

Perhaps the most powerful memory of that summer, our final together as a group, was a day trip we took. After traveling for miles by bus on dirt roads, surrounded by rice paddies and mountains, we arrived at a watermelon patch. Acres and acres of watermelons, and right in the middle was a very tall, thatched hut on stilt-like legs. It was where a lookout would perch to watch for poachers.  I remember feeling that I was light years away from anyplace I had ever been. A place where time had stood still.

The author and her fellow middle-school teachers at a school picnic somewhere in the mountains

The guard was a young man around our age. We approached the hut, prepared to greet him using our rudimentary Korean phrases, as few Koreans in the countryside spoke English. The guard looked right at us and asked, "What do you think the implications of Richard Nixon's recent resignation will have on the rest of the world?"

Huh?  Not a copy of Everyday, Common English Expressions in sight!

Not long after that outing, our group was dispersed to our respective sites throughout the country as middle school English teachers. For a then-Third World country, learning English (even from a Brooklyn native) opened future doors and the Koreans were so grateful for that opportunity.

I was always treated with great warmth and kindness by the Korean people. I, in turn, for the first time, learned love of another country. I don’t think I ever felt as proud to be an American than I did during those years. Proud to call America home.  Home of the good guys.

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The author and Daisy, the family's rescue pug (2023)

Amy Lennard Goehner has always had Lady Luck on her side in landing dream jobs — after college as a Peace Corps volunteer in Korea and years later as a reporter at Sports Illustrated, covering boxing and horse racing. That luck continued with reporting jobs at Sports Illustrated for Kids and at Time magazine. She currently is a contributing writer to AARP’s Livable Communities and is grateful for the opportunity to write about people who are making life better in their own communities.