Ye Dental Clinic - Chuncheon, South Korea

In what was one of the best mornings ever, Michael had one of his wisdom teeth extracted and I got to relax and  mooch off of Ye's free WiFi and food.

For the past couple of weeks, Michael has been complaining about pain in his mouth from his wisdom teeth. One , in particular, was poking him in the cheek and causing a permanent canker sore. He finally broke down and agreed to get them out in Korea instead of waiting until he gets back to the U.S. A good thing too, because we have dental insurance here and it costs next to nothing.

In Korea, there isn't a lot of bureaucratic red tape to go through. Every doctor and dentist is a clinic. You don't schedule an appointment, you just walk right in. The owners at our hagwon know the head dentist of the dental clinic, though, and called to make sure there would be an English speaking personnel on site the day we went. They told us there was two options: Saturday or Sunday. That's right, the dental clinic is open every day of the week.

We were told to go as soon as it opened on Saturday, 9:30. Because of a little snafu with our alarm clock, we got there around 9:40. Uh oh, there are a lot of people at the clinic on Saturdays. It really didn't matter though. The staff was nice and there wasn't a whole lot of waiting. They had the English translator help Michael fill out paperwork and then took him to get pictures (x-ray). Then there was a 30 minute wait for the doctor, so they sent us up to the 6th floor to hang for a bit.

The director of our school told us that maybe I would get to go up to the 6th floor to wait and acted like it was the coolest place ever, and it was. The entire 6th floor was a cafe with cushy chairs, 3 computers and a bar with 3 baristas waiting to take your order. I perused the menu at our table and decided I would just make some coffee at the water station, but then a barista came to our table to take our order so I asked for a caramel latte.

It came out looking like this.

Michael and I hung out for a while and then I went over to the self-service station and picked up some snacks/my breakfast. Upon reading the menu, I learned that today from 10:30-1 they were serving bagels and from 2:30-4:30 chocolate chocolate chip muffins. Also located throughout the clinic were bowls of clementines, free for the picking. So I grabbed some pieces of bagel (they were all cut up) and a clementine and sat down to dig in. Of course this is the moment that they called Michael back down to the 5th floor. Oops.

I said goodbye to Michael and finished my food. I came back down to the 5th floor and waited for about 10 minutes before the dental assistant came to find me. She led me back to the room where Michael was in. I got to watch!

They took an x-ray and found that the one of his teeth is coming in completely sideways. That one he is not going to be able to get taken out here. The two on his left side are not poking out enough to be taken out yet. So, just the one today. When I came back, Michael was reading some instructions for him in English. He had already been given the topical anesthetic and shots, so he was having a hard time talking. The dentist came in after a few minutes, grabbed a wrench thingy, twisted for a couple of seconds and then he said, "finished!" Michael couldn't believe it was over. The dentist showed us the tooth and pointed to the x-ray where the tooth was and said "Gone!" He left and the aide said, "See, professional guy!" 

A few seconds later we were paying for the extraction (a whopping 9,600 won/ $8.62) and the nurse gave Michael some extra gauze. We went down to the first floor pharmacy and waited 2 minutes for his meds. He has to take two pills three times a day. So that's 12 pills for a total of 1,400 won/$1.26. Michael was feeling so good that we walked home (about a mile). We arrived home at about 11:30.

A few hours later, Michael is feeling fine. He ate a little and took his first round of pills. Bad news is that on the x-ray, they found two cavities so he has to go back in to get those filled in a couple of weeks. Since our experience has been so cheap (who pays only $10 to get a tooth pulled?) I plan to go in as well for a checkup since I am pretty sure I also have a cavity. So, Ye Dental Clinic, highly recommended.