"Professor, don’t use that restroom!” The student intercepted me just in time. I had just arrived at the main residence above the ATV park in Daedunsan―the destination the students in my department had chosen for this year’s MT. Apparently, the restroom in question, like the bellies of the students, who had arrived a day ahead of me, had been unable to contain the Malitovian overflow of the soju-beer cocktails they had ingested the previous night. I was about to go to my private professor’s quarters, a corrugated hut separated from the main building, but the arsenal of bubbly evening “bombs” scheduled for detonation that night still had to be unloaded from the room before I could move in. Thus, as the sun gradually sank closer to the western ridge, I picked my way through the tangle of still suffering freshmen bodies strewn about the ondeol floor to the private commode of the senior professor of our department―the last resort for all twenty-five of us.



Relieved, I joined a card game of a few of the less scathed as we awaited the cooling of the coals―embers for a barbeque feast whose aromas might already have been drifting through the air had the students not forgotten to take the meat out of the freezer. “Professor, do you have MT in Alaska?” asked one particularly precocious teenage card shark as she collected her winnings. This got me thinking, what exactly is the purpose of MT? How did it get started? Surely its original intent had not been merely to make Korean teens sick with alcohol poisoning.

※ 해당 기사는 유료콘텐트로 [ 온라인 유료회원 ] 서비스를 통해 이용하실 수 있습니다.