I've always been sensitive about my weight and in that sense coming to Korea was a huge mistake. Koreans are small people in all sorts of ways -- particularly their waistlines.

Case-in-point, the film "200 Pound Beauty" which we were required to watch as part of our Korean educational training. It was an extraordinarily popular romantic comedy about a large young woman with an amazing singing voice. Because she was fat, the record producer (who she was secretly in love with) has a slimmer woman lip sync the large one's songs. Eventually, the large girl has all kinds of plastic surgery making her just as skinny and beautiful as the lip syncer. Great story, eh? Did I mention that the fat girl is a phone sex worker in her spare time?

But the comedy in the movie is almost completely surrounds this 200-pound girl; a weight unimaginable for most Koreans, especially for a woman. While 200-pounds is heavy, the physical comedy in this film would make you think the character was played by the mother in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape." There are your standard jokes like a chair breaking under the girl's weight, and some really extraordinary moments such as four men failing to jointly lift this woman on a stretcher.

And it's not relegated to the movie screen. Nearly every day my students, the people at my gym or some Korean I know looks at or pats my stomach and either sighs with disgust or asks me, "Why?"

What I want to tell them is that any extra weight around my middle is a product of Korean culture, not despite of it. Koreans gorge at meals, eating what I'd assume are 1000-2000 calories in a single sitting. And they aren't even particularly healthy calories; mostly things like white rice, grilled meat, fried bread and lots and lots of sugary alcohol.

One man suggested that Koreans have a longer intestinal track than Westerners and can therefore process food better. But I know I've read that Koreans also suffer more ulcers than most because of all the spice they consume.

Long story short, one of these days I'm going to deck someone who pats my belly.

I am not the Buddha!

... yet.

Today I was invited to have lunch in what is usually the 'Women Only' room at my school. They had a TV on, turned to what seemed to be a MTV or VH1 knock-off. Here's a recap of what they were watching during the 15 minutes I was there:

1. Ten minutes of footage of a male Korean swimmer taking off and putting back on various shirts.
2. A segment about two pop-music groups bowing before and putting envelopes into a severed pig's head.
3. A scene of children in Africa with a Korean.
4. Back to the pop singers with the pig head.
5. A commercial featuring a beautiful woman with two small children at her side, sexily sucking the juice out of a plastic container of tofu.

I've taken to correcting my students' posture in class. They hunch over their papers like child-laborers picking through coal. I have a thick wooden rod, a coffee table leg I believe, that I'll lightly poke into the curvature of their spines. Then I'll pull back on their shoulders, forcing them to sit up straight or be jabbed.

The amazing thing is that they all sigh in relief afterwords and thank me. Considering how long some of these kids are in school chairs in a day, all that hunching over is likely to shrink their size by age 30.

One strange repercussion though, I've found that the more students' postures I correct in a day, the more pain I feel in my own back.

Konglish vocabulary for the day: When using English to express how one holds his/her body, Koreans replace the word "posture," with "attitude."