Sign!!

I was reminded today of a peculiar situation that often happens to expats living in Korea (and I would assume probably in several other countries around the world). I'm sure all of the NETS here can relate to this.

So I got home from the gym, and noticed this open binder in the foyer with all of our apartment numbers on a paper inside. Beside the apartment number paper, were several other sheets in the binder, with what appeared to be a novel-size memo of some sort concerning our building. I looked at it, was like meh, and hit the elevator 'up' button. Now, I study Korean with a colleague, read exhilarating children's novels featuring green elephants, and try to practice with shopkeeper ajummas, but there's no way I can read all of those documents. Before I could escape to the confines of the elevator, our 80-year-old apartment security ajosshi (safety first!) halted me, and escorted me back to the paper. He pointed to the paper and motioned to the pen.
"Sign?" I asked.
"Sign," he replied.
"Sign what?"
"SIIGGGNNN!!" He picks up the pen, and pantomimes what signing is. Oh Christ. I KNOW what sign means. I'm the one who said it to you in the first place.
"이게 뭐예요?" (What is this?) I finally say in Korean and point to the paper. He just pointed again to the number of my apartment and said sign. Alright, fine. I will sign this piece of paper if it lets me get onto that elevator. My school deals with my apartment anyway so I'm sure that if something is life or death, I'll find out about it eventually.

The above little anecdote I suppose is kind of a lead in to what I'm actually talking about here. I can't count the number of times I have been presented a legal document and told to sign. I know we're in Korea and the language used here is Korean. Yep, makes perfect sense. However, there's just something inherently ridiculous about signing things that you can't even understand. The whole point of signing something is to indicate you've read and understood it. I may as well sign my name McSchlotzin because it doesn't really matter anyway.

I think my favourite example of this phenomenon is when you open a new bank account here. They hand you about 6 different papers, all Korean front and back, and just circle all of the places you have to sign. You throw down your name and voila! At least when I open up a bank account at home, I can semi-skim the legal jargon, think to myself sigh...this is boring, and then sign anyway.