Koreatown Koreatown There are little pockets of Midtown that ...

There are little pockets of Midtown that make it a bearable place to be. Before the mutation of Times Square, I often found peace in an odd diner around 9th Ave. and 50th St., where I'd sit at midnight and watch an exiled African tribal leader receive stolen goods from his supplicants and countrymen. They would steal a suit in exactly his size and present it to him at his station in the grubby coffee shop. Later I'd sit and write poetry in Sbarro, knowing that nobody gave a damn who I was or what I was doing there, choking on the terrible food.

Now my peaceful little area is a small sitting area that doesn't demand a purchase at the corner of 6th Ave. and 32nd St. There's also the 24-hour Korean buffet joint, located in the one-block Koreatown, Woorijip. The food's amazingly cheap?eight shrimp dumplings for $3.50; tofu, rice, pork and kimchee available by the pound; soup with Udon noodles; and kimchee available from a special kitchen in back.

The food at Woorijip, says my friend Donald, is very bad, on a low, low scale of what would be available in Korea, where he taught for a couple of years. I can't tell, though, so I still love stopping by. I always look in on Pinkiy, a tiny shop full of strange decorative items that's open until 10. A customer actually said "I love cute Ppoya!" the last time I was in there. I thought the cartoony tchotchkes were keychains, but they're actually decorations for cellphone antennae. I guess cellphone antennae never really took off in this country, kerchiefs with brown tinted ringlet wigs dangling from them being another, on sale near the startlingly garish hair berets.

AM is a Korean store with Japanese and Korean pop music and DVDs. The owner of AM, Jay Kim, gave me a hideous CD of Korean pop, Solitude, with a grainy display of dew-moistened leaves on the cover?it was just as bad as you could expect. He has CDs of Japlishly named Japanese groups like Mr. Children and a DVD of Attack the Gas Station, which Donald says is a fabulous Korean movie. After noticing Donald's Korean, Jay Kim sent us to Wonjo, a Korean-Japanese-style restaurant with a new owner that offered the best food at the best price.

The waiter at Wonjo also cooed over Donald's Korean, declaring him a genius. Not to belittle his accomplishment, but Korean, which has an alphabet, is reportedly a little easier to learn than Japanese or Chinese. I'm a big fan of Japanese salarymen and have taught briefly in Japan, but I now also want to go live among these Koreans and get treated with fawning respect. It's a neat trick that I wish our businessmen would master?I have never, for instance, seen an American lawyer giggle.

I ordered the beef gobdol for $12. It came to me burning away in a bowl; the trick is to stir it right away so that it's not too burnt. In Korea they will do this for foreigners until they get the hang of it. According to Donald, it was burnt a little earlier than it should be, so they gladly brought back a new dish. Before the main course, an array of six items comes in tiny dishes, including the ever-present kimchee. I like it, but a lot of Americans don't. Supposedly, in Seoul it sits in a large pot on every balcony, fermenting away. I heard this from a dyke I knew who attempted a Korean marriage for $5000, something you can find out about if you can decipher one of the Korean newspapers and magazines that dot the street. She and this married businessman went on a well-documented tour of tourist spots, this frumpy dyke next to a furiously smiling man in a suit, to help convince officials of their unlikely little love match. She backed out after her first trip, and felt she had to leave New York in order to be safe from the rough entrepreneurs she'd walked out on.

The 24-hour Korean restaurant on the block, Kum Gansan, has a $7 lunch and is famous for its weak waterfall and dangling piano. Next to it is a massage place, SPAdium, that's open until midnight. A 55-minute massage is $75, and there's a jacuzzi, resting lounge and steam sauna, as well as a hot salt room. In Korea, when you go out on a date, you don't just do one thing; you do icha-samcha, which translates into two things-three things. So if you were on a date in Koreatown, you'd go to have a $4 coffee at Koryodang (31 W. 32nd St.) and then maybe on to Chorus Karaoke (25 W. 32nd St.), which is open until at least 5 in the morning. You have to get into a tiny elevator to reach it?Korea is so populated that it sort of builds up, and most night-time activity takes place on 3rd and 4th floors.

Chorus Karaoke is shoddily decorated, with old American albums stuck into portholes on the wall for decor. The album covers themselves ruin any space-age effect the silver bubbles might have been reaching for?a Melanie album was right next to Billy Joel. You know, Melanie: "I've got a brand- new pair of roller skates, you've got a brand- new key?" Office parties and couples were partying away in the private rooms, and a waitress scampered around delivering snacks. The door to the women's bathroom was jammed halfway open, and Donald explained that this kind of lousy construction is typical of Korea: "No group of people has ever planned more poorly?Japan built nice orderly roads during the invasion, then the motherfuckers tore it up!"