P arrived in Seoul about 5 hours ago and is looking forward to spending 6 days here, most of them working, sadly. However, Seoul always has a habit of bringing it home to her just how foreign she is. Maybe this is due to its highly homogenous population and the fact that Pretensions doesn't read Hanggeul (I can read Chinese, albeit badly, so find China and Japan easier to get around in).

Don't misunderstand, P likes the food (love Bibimbap!), the merchandise (great designs) and even most of the people, but then she runs headlong into problems similar to those described below.

Pretensions basically wanted to go see an avant-garde Canadian performance circus show called Nebbia (italian for fog) on one of her free nights. The Seoul performances begin on Wednesday, so she logged into the venue website and was told that there was no english booking form. Right, she thought, fine, P'll ask the concierge to book them, since she's staying at a five-star well-reputed hotel. After 2 hours of trying, the poor zealous concierge eventually throws in the towel. Essentially, every ticketing website in Korea seems to require either a membership number or an alien registration number to issue you a ticket. They're also pretty much Korean language only. Also, they charge only to the person whose membership number is keyed in; so you can't get a Korean friend or colleague to book the ticket for you and charge it to your credit card. They would have to pay first and have you pay them.

The only way to get a ticket without having any numbers is to go direct to the Concert Hall and book it there. No phone bookings/no internet bookings, even with a valid credit card. Possibly a tour agency might be able to sort this out, but P wouldn't want to bet on it.

As far as P is aware, booking concert tickets seldom leads to high-security breaches and many countries allow you to book from beyond their borders. Why not Korea? Especially with their passion for musicals and acting! Someone out there needs to start a ticket agency for foreigners (if it's not illegal); they'd clean up!