By Ahn Jung-hyo

"I used to find so many advertisements about the Hell’s centers in Korean newspapers that I finally decided last week to pay a visit to one of them," Rev. Youngblood Kilpatrick, or Father Kil Yong-ho by his adopted Korean name, told me, when we met again at another conference for translators.

I beamed despite myself, for I smelled a misadventure for the priest with natural curiosity, who apparently had not known what kind of a Hell they had at the Hell’s centers.

"Korea is supposed to be a very religious country, isn’t it?" the priest asked. "You have a church at every corner."

Father Kil noticed my squinting smile and burst into laughter himself.

"Now you know, I guess," I guessed.

He nodded and explained, "I knew a ‘Hell’s center’ was an English expression romanized into Korean. But I really had had no idea it was a ‘health center’ until I actually made the trip to one of them."

"Most Koreans can’t pronounce ‘th’ sound in English," I said. "That’s why they say ‘I sink I rub you’ instead of ‘I think I love you."’

"And they eat lice instead of rice," Father Kil said. "Well, I went there anyway, and asked the receptionist at the door in my modest Korean what they did do at this ‘Hell’s center.’ I had to ask because I had not taken a look at the inside of the Hell yet."

"So the receptionist gave you the answer," I said.

"Not quite," the priest said. "When I asked this girl at the desk what they did in the Hell’s center, she said ‘They do diet here."’

I know what ‘diet’ means in Korean English but Father Kil apparently did not at the time of his visit to the Hell.

"I was really curious what kind of diet they did ‘do’ at the Hell and asked her to please show me what kind of diet they had in their building," the priest said. "We entered inside, and she showed me a ‘learning machine."’

"What did you learn about diet from the learning machine?"

"It was a ‘running machine,’ not a ‘learning machine."’

"Well, how fast did the machine run?" I joked.

"The machine didn’t run. The people on the treadmill kept running."

"By now you learned that a Hell’s center is a place where people do workouts on treadmills."

"But I still didn’t notice anybody doing diet there," the priest said.

"I had to ask the Hell’s tour guide what kind of diet they recommend there for workout or slimdown or whatever."

"The girl pointed to a man ‘learning’ on a treadmill and said, "He’s doing diet." Puzzled, I decided not to ask any more. It was time for me to get out of the linguistic labyrinth."

"Do you want to know what ‘diet’ means in Korean English?" I volunteered.

"Oh, I know now," he said.

"Who told you?"

"The television," he said. "So many television shows keep educating the Korean nation about various ‘diets’ and I came to realize that it actually means ‘losing weight.’ All the evening news on SBS-TV, for instance, the newscaster said, ‘This hallucinatory drug is sold for diet.’ Meaning you take the drug and lose weight. The newscaster concluded his report with this remark, ‘They are known as diet drugs.’"

"A few days ago, I heard young entertainers discussing on TBS radio about the ‘diet video’ they had just produced," I tried to be helpful. "They were talking about workout video, of course."

"The SBS-TV evening news also introduced ‘Hell’s diet’ several weeks later," Father Kil Yong-ho said. "The newscaster probably meant to say ‘health diet,’ which still sounds Greek to me."

"Maybe what he really wanted to say was ‘workout for health,"’ I interpreted.

"On EBS-TV’s ‘Culture Center’ program the other day," the priest went on, "they introduced ‘a diet exercise’ you can do alone. And they called it ‘solo diet.’ EBS is an educational channel, isn’t it?"

"Well, I have to go now," I said, "but I will give you an education on Korean diet on our next encounter. I promise my diet education will be a better one than the EBS one."

Ahn Jung-hyo is a writer in Seoul.