title: Late to Bed, Late to Rise
author: Kakareka, Ken J.
description: The snake bitten peninsula of Korea manages to obscure its alcoholic lust and debauchery-filled night life from the rest of the world, until now. Jack Danowski is an expatriate American teacher living in South Korea. He is fully immersed in the exotic culture of K-pop music, hofs, and jimjilbangs, and enraptured by gleaming neon lights, where vivacious night life thrives and rambunctious clones of global superstar, Psy, roam the streets daily. Jack is entangled in a passionately wild relationship with Sunny, a free-spirited Korean woman ten years his senior. The combination of her lust for soju and her independence from bachelorette life both work against Jack's insecurities, and his longing for her to be a "family" woman. Dealing with recurring health issues is tough enough for Jack, not to mention the language barrier that disables him from fully communicating with Korean doctors. Gradually, Jack and Sunny find they have to decide between their lust for drink and their love for each other. The fact that Jack's group of expatriate friends swill down cocktails and Sunny's friend Sue, a cranky, middle-aged alcoholic, despises Jack doesn't exactly make things any easier. Korea is exposed, which becomes Jack's own tiny sliver of paradise, and ultimately leads to him trying to decipher what the future holds.