Back-alley, ramshackle, dirty Korea: the Korea that keeps you here.
Deserted Sunday.
Shady dealers?
"Doosan Electronics"
Taeguk sketch-artiste
Makkeolli and jokbal = content old men.
Gwangjang Shijang
Classic faces.
Soondae (blood noodle sausage) and jokbal (pig's feet) for everyone.
Dirty Korea. It’s homemade, crowded, a little shabby and worn around the edges, but still going strong, feeding hearts and bellies.
I’ve written surprisingly little about what’s keeping me here in Korea: teaching. Perhaps this because teaching is so repetitive and change in the classroom comes incrementally at best. That is, at least in Korea. Still, things continue to evolve. You learn something new each week about engaging students, about what to dwell on and what not to, about getting words and ideas to stick in their exhausted little brains. Some of my classes which used to be terrible, uncontrollable wrecks have magically turned manageable, the students actually responsive and approaching diligent. Some classes remain complete and utter wastes of time for both teacher and student.
The latter is probably applicable to most classes in the private, after-hours education industry in Korea. Textbooks are either over the heads of most students or full of useless exercises and dumbed-down reading. You have to teach the book, plowing through it in a set amount of time, whether it’s accomplishing anything useful or not. It’s all about metrics here: have you finished the book? Are the kids getting two writing tests and a speaking test every month? Metrics are essential in many endeavors but not if they are arbitrarily conceived and universally enforced, with no thought to whether or not they are promoting actual progress. Yet that is the nature of the entire Korean education system. Next Thursday, prospective students will take their college entrance exam. The entire country will go to work an hour late to keep the roads clear; if you’re running late for the test, a police car will speed you to the exam with lights and sirens blaring. College entrance is determined solely by your score on the test. Not your grades, not your after-school activities, not your actual intelligence or worth as a human being. Simply a score.
While I taught a TOEFL writing course tonight, I realized with a sudden and surprising power what I’d acknowledged many times before only with passing interest. The education system has failed these kids, utterly and completely, in crafting them into full and capable people. They flat-out do not know how to think. I had a few bullet points on the board but I asked them questions repeatedly about the reading and listening sections we’d just reviewed. I rephrased questions over and over, trying to examine details and points and overarching ideas from as many possible angles as possible. It might take me ten minutes of explaining an idea, asking them repeatedly if they comprehend, before I even get a hint of understanding out of any of them. Open-ended questions are utterly foreign to them. “How is the lecture casting doubt on the reading?” They don’t know. It’s not entirely a language issue. I speak slowly and loudly, enunciate like mad, and use the simplest and most direct terms possible to convey my message. Still nothing. Yet I have to accomplish something in this class, so I start writing examples on the board.
Now they go into a flurry, copying down with neat precision every word I write down. Copying. That’s what they know how to do: memorize, understand the formula, repeat it back again. Don’t understand the reasoning or logic or art behind it. Just copy and repeat. It shouldn’t surprise me, though. When you measure performance solely by tests, you should expect people to excel at learning how to test well and little else. The SAT in the U.S. is a example of this. You learn that process-of-elimination trumps any actual mastery of knowledge. Yet because the SAT is a single measurement (one under increasing scrutiny) out of many, we don’t entirely ignore the other aspects of a person’s development. But there’s no room for that in the scramble to the top here.
The presence of a parallel, symbiotic private education industry in Korea should therefore come as no surprise. When you teach people to think, you give them time to do so. Let them read, consider the questions you present them, and see if they find answers. Maybe they’ll come up with their own. Then you can critique the answers and find a new set of questions to answer. There is repetition but it requires self-initiative and facility with the nuance of reason and ideas. Yet teaching for a test doesn’t require breathing space for the mind. It requires harsh and endless repetition. Why do you think militaries around the world make their troops practice close-order drill for hours on end? Why do soldiers and Marines properly dis- and re-assemble a rifle, only to do it again, and again and again? Because repetition creates competence in that one single area. The same applies to tests. You don’t want someone who’s thinking. You want someone who can act adeptly and as quickly as possible. Unconscious competence, they call it. So the more training you get, to reach that end sooner, the better. Which means that you need lots of private academies, so that kids can get a leg up on the others. If you can learn to repeat the drill faster and more accurately than others, you’ve got a chance at acing the test. And with that, at least in Korea, comes the fast-track to status and security at the tip-top of society.
My kids thus have no background to learn to be deep, analytical thinkers. They are not encouraged to think in that way, nor do they have the mental energy to do so. Going to school six days a week, from 8:00 AM to 11:00 PM on most days, puts an unbelievable amount of stress on these kids. I can’t convey it well enough, so I’ll let them do it in their own words. Here are a few essays from my students. Recently, I’ve been trying to give them writing topics that allow some pathos to escape, to let them vent a little, because no one else will:
[Note: this is verbatim from the student's essay, all mistakes left in.]
I am very angry and frustrated in studying. If we want to have a good job that we can earn lots of money, we have to study very hard. Also I want to be an elementary school teacher but it is very hard. Because many womans want to be a teacher. So I have to study very hard. In the middle test or final exam, I have to study about 6:40 am. I can’t sleep well. I have big dark circles in my eyes. It gives me a lot of stress and angry. My parents are expecting to me. But I had low score. Everyday I said to them “I will do best next exam I’m sorry. I can get great score next exam. Trust me.” But I don’t know what I should do. My stress are very big. So I play computer or sing a song or read an internet novel and watching TV. They give me enjoying and smile. Only they can laugh at me. When I went home from the institute, I watched TV or computer games. Besides playing piano gives freedom to me. I can’t play the piano very well, but if I play the piano I can forget everything. It is my life.
This is a thirteen-year old girl. Her soul is being crushed. The push to succeed, to define success by scores, by college, by a ‘good’ job, by status, even at a young age, is stunting her. Yet she’s a drop in the ocean. If a kid wrote an essay like this in the States, they’d be placed on suicide watch. But this is the story of thousands and thousands of Korean kids, suffering silently at their desks, heads down, demeanors drawn. When someone says their workload is killing them, they might literally mean it:
[From another student, again verbatim]
I hate the test the most in the world. Maybe, every student in the world, hate the test (especially Korean students.) We are exposured to the test very young. It is not our mind. However, we must take a lot of test. Life is continuation of the test. We must take the test when we die.
I’m a middle student. So I have middle test, final test. I need to study to take these tests. It is very stress. Test kill many student. If student get bad score, student feel very tradegy [tragedy]. So they suicide. I’m very sad.
I think if there are not test, I will very happy. And study will more easy.
Students literally kill themselves because they fail tests. She’s not exaggerating at all. South Korea now has the highest suicide rate in the OECD. This is partially thanks to old people taking their lives due to their children neglecting them. But youth suicide is undoubtedly a serious problem and will continue to be so. At subway stations all over Seoul, sliding security doors are being installed at the platforms, to prevent people from throwing themselves in front of trains.
I feel pointless trying to expand upon this more. You read their words. These are not isolated students. They represent a lot of schoolkids out there. The bottom line is that this education system is not designed with a mind to a person’s worth as, well, a person. Their value is defined by the role that they can play in the system, how well they can contribute to the whole. It’s easy to argue that such devotion to bettering the whole has performed an economic miracle for Korea. But there’s only so much that you can achieve by sacrificing the well-being of your citizens. Korea is going to create a generation of stunted citizens who know how to imitate but not be dynamic and original. They may be mathematic and scientific whizzes, but without building the human capacity to innovate, Korea will find itself as the sweatshop of the high-technology and knowledge economy.
What is my complicity in this? I like being in Korea; I’m learning a lot about the country, the people, and myself. I have a job with steady pay and an apartment, a huge deal in an economy like this. But am I only furthering these kids’ misery? I hope and pray not. I do my best to build rapport with them, talk to them as human beings, to answer their questions, show interest in them as people. I expose them to new ideas, tell them funny stories, explain things about the U.S. in detail and in ways that will interest them. Yet at some point I must give them those writing tests, must make them do the pointless reading and answer the foolish TOEFL questions. I must perpetuate the system. Moral actions are always a quandary when the bad intertwines inextricably with the good.
And yet, and yet, out of these miserable students emerge some who exhibit a spark of intelligence, an irrepressible brilliance and luminosity of soul, a maturity that transcends their young bodies and minds. They speak with you intelligently, as an equal. One girl named Ally told me in nothing short of eloquent terms how she wants to be a diplomat because Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, inspires her. These kids are not products of their environment. The daily forces of their life have not touched them a whit.
In the West, there is a constant debate over nature versus nurture when it comes to raising children. Korea demonstrates the falsity of the idea that there is a choice between the two. Nurture is bullshit. These kids are nurtured from a young age to be miserable. Their education or upbringing, except perhaps in the youngest years just around their family, is not intended to craft them into empathetic, principled, thoughtful, interesting human beings. Yet some emerge as just that. Only some inexplicable, God-given gift could have turned them into what they are. They will go far in spite of, not because of, they way they grew up. They will endure immense, unfathomable challenges to their selves and come through it all intact, a trial which your average Westerner cannot truly comprehend.
Yet I suppose that’s because nowadays we expect things to be done for us. The solution will be better if something greater and more powerful than ourselves takes care of it. But the Korean education system, and how it dovetails with society as a whole, demonstrates to me that you can’t expect someone else to do the heavy lifting for you. Just because a service is universal and accessible doesn’t mean it’s beneficial. Just because it gives you something better than before doesn’t mean it’s all that great. You must watch out for yourself, even in the best of systems. Some people understand and can act on that; some cannot. That fact is one sadly not reflected in the Declaration of Independence. Not all men are created equal. They should be equal before the eyes of the law and God. But there are inequalities which you can never erase, not with universal education, not with notions of meritocracy, not with low cost of living and cheap healthcare. Systems inherently limit. The smart and capable inherently move beyond.
Every Friday when I leave class, I tell my students, “Have a good weekend. Don’t study too much.” They sometimes laugh, thinking I’m making a joke. I wish I could make it clear that it’s an order, not a request. These kids deserve a better, happier existence. While many of them won’t get it, there are those few that give you some hope and excitement, the ones you enjoy talking about with your friends over late-night sashimi and beer. Here’s to them, the handful of little ones who are going to be okay after all.
So decide now that you are worthy of living as a full-grown man who is making progress and make everything that seems best be a law you cannot go against.
And if you meet with any hardship or anything pleasant or reputable or disreputable, then remember that the contest is now and the Olympic Games are now and you cannot put things off any more and that your progress is made or destroyed by a single day and single action.
- Epictetus
Yesterday I went for a brief excursion away from the box city that is Bundang. I trekked north an hour and a half via subway to Bukhansan National Park, a collection mountains just north of Seoul. If there is any natural element that is fundamental to understanding Koreans, it is the mountain. Their whole country consists of hills and peaks of one kind or another. And climbing them is in their blood.
Baekundae.
The path on the way up was lined, at least for first kilometer or two, by huts. Enterprising (or desperate) merchants sold various foodstuffs, alcohol, walking sticks, outdoor clothing, etc, from ramshackle huts that seemed half-abandoned much of the time. They had cheap concrete floors, piles of empty soju bottles in the corner, maybe a tarpaulin covering a makeshift patio with rickety tables and chairs. I thought this place was supposed to be a national park but I guess that has a different connotation here. After less than a kilometer, the Korean couple in front of me stopped at a bench and the Korean man called for me to sit down. Wishing to be the hospitable foreigner, I obliged. We conversed back and forth in broken Korean and sparse English. I gave him part of one of my chocolate bars. He and his wife were very thankful. I awkwardly walked with them for the next kilometer or two, at a pace much slower than the one I wished I was taking. Still, I didn’t feel like I could abandon them. The man kept pointing out various sights in English and seemed to enjoy my company for the most part. He only spoke to his wife perhaps four or five times over the entire journey, something I found curious. Yet perhaps I should not have, given the propensity of older, more traditional Korean women to remain in the shadow of their husband. I lost them at one point when I stopped to take a picture. Marching ahead, I was stopped by a group of Korean men who had left the parking lot at the same time as me. Instead of charging to the top, as I intended to in good American fashion, they had stopped for a leisurely snack. The ringleader beckoned me over with an underhanded swing of the fingers. “Hanguk makkeolli,” he said, as he poured me a tiny paper cup full of carbonated rice wine. I took it and an apple slice and two slices of kimbap with a hearty “Kamsahapnida.” So here I was, on the side of a strange trail I had no map for, drinking milky rice liquor with Korean men at little past 9 in the morning. Such are the regular and bizarre ocurrences of my life. The men showed little interest in talking to me and seemed to take my offer of more chocolate almost as an obligation. I thanked them again and we parted ways, a weird, slightly uncomfortable, yet enriching encounter between two very different peoples behind us. Eventually I caught back up with the old man and his reticent wife.
A walk in the woods.
The trail to the top wound past several temples, each a strange combination of traditional painted-wood architecture along with adjacent cast-concrete modern buildings, with the ubiquitous double-hinged glass doors you will find in every building in this country. Toward the top, the trail got steeper and I encountered steel cables threaded through posts sunk deep into the rock. It was the sort of intrusion that most Americans would find abhorrent in any remotely distant area. We prefer our wilderness as pure as possible. Yet Korea is a small and heavily populated country and, given the sort of traffic they get, I am not surprised they choose to install helpful handholds along the way.
The final approaches were treacherous, even with the immense rusty cables aiding my grip. The rocks, though textured to the eye, were slippery under the ball of my foot. The top was beautiful, although you could see little. Baekundae looks down on Seoul, theoretically, as well as surrounding mountain ranges. But in reality you could see little because of the pollution. I’ve seen smog from the mountains, it’s nothing new to me. But this was something else entirely. Visibility here was limited to a matter of miles at best, and that was from almost 900m up over a fairly flat coastal plain. Strangely, the photos represent the day much clearer than the naked eye did. You’re supposed to be able to look right down into Seoul from Baekundae but that was impossible. The city just wasn’t there. Still, I stayed for a while, soaking in the natural serenity as much as I could, even with people coming and going noisily about me.
Noisy. That’s what Koreans are. Not in a bad way. I confess I must make a retraction regarding my last post. My criticism of Koreans I believe was based far, far too much on the limited crowd I regularly encounter in the city. Once outside the concrete and asphalt, Korean become a different breed. Perhaps that is the case with any people: their true nature lies somewhere in the countryside, somewhere they can let down their guard and relax, allowing themselves to act human again. I realized, or perhaps re-recognized, today that Koreans are an energetic people. At a superficial level, everything seems placid, orderly, harmonious. People follow rules, seem reserved, do what is required. But when on their own, away from the strictures of modern life, they are very passionate. They speak and interact with vigor. The old men at the top of Baekundae accented their words with such guttural fury that I doubt even the most ardent German could replicate it. Koreans laugh and poke fun and shouts exclamations at the top of their lungs and don’t care a damn. They question, probe, and wonder deeply, and seem genuinely interested in the answer. There is little artifice with them.
Bukhansan
I realized today how fortunate I am to be in this country and learning from it. Though I have only been here a little over four months, experiences like today have shaped me in positive ways that are inexplicable in their scope. Korea has taught me the power and importance of the heart. That is the place that Koreans draw their every action. For them, the mind resides not between the ears. It resides in the heart, equal to their gut instinct. It gives them passion, determination, an understanding of their place in the harmony of the universe. How many times I have wondered why Westerners became entranced with the East. It is only now that I understand that, at least in terms of Korea, there is a unified and wholesome understanding of life here, one not readily visible but ever-living beneath the surface.
My college education is perhaps one of the greatest tools ever bestowed upon me. Furman University, and the handful of professors I studied under class after class, crafted my mind into a sharp tool. I know how to assess a situation, to tear it apart, separate the good from the bad, understand nuance and subtlety. I can research, I can reason, I can argue and stand my ground in the face of well-founded opposition. I feel completely capable of handling any intellectual challenge thrown across my path. Yet it is only now that I have come to understand a fundamental failing in the liberal arts education and the system of thought that has built it. For the well-rounded liberal arts graduate, the world seems to have unlimited possibilities. Only the boundaries of your mind can restrain you. Yet what few recognize are the limits imposed upon one’s mind, and one’s self in general, by the liberal arts. For such a school emphasizes reason above all. We must criticize, we must analyze, we must always ask questions. But there is a moral failing in that criticizing and analyzing and questioning becomes an end, not the means to Truth. One must doubt, question, and believe in as little as humanly possible because of that mandate, the mandate of Reason. It is what I was trained, for four long, long years, to believe was right. Yet now I recognize the folly in its ends. We drive men toward rationality, to believe only in what their minds can teach them. That is the modern, Western way. Be it a priori or empirical, we must judge everything by ideas and information, by the measurable and quantifiable. Yet if our minds can ascertain nothing, and we are incapable of discovering Truth, what good is that? I have experienced such a quandary over and over, which, if one is not careful, can turn a wise person into a solipsist. I am fortunate that I have survived with my values and beliefs, for whatever reason. Others are not so lucky. I see my peers walking about, healthy, successful, and confident, yet a complete and utter vacuum when it comes to any scrap of meaning within themselves. These are the people who will run our world in the years to come; they are the future corporate leaders, lawyers, bureaucrats, and academics. And reason, in the form of the infinite and perpetual Socratic question, has turned them into amoral beings, hardly recognizable when compared to humans from any other century.
Yet Korea has saved me from that. I came here knowing that it would shape me in many shapes. But I never expected this way. Koreans have shown me the inalienability of the heart from the mind. In the modern West there is forever the debate over objective truth, how elusive it is, how no one ever lives up to it, how utterly broken and despicable we are until such an ideal is attained. Korea has cast such sophomoric notions out of my mind. We cannot be objective because there is no separating emotions from reason in the first place. That is what we don’t want to acknowledge in our critique of the failure of objectivity. The mind is utterly and intractably tied to the body and the spirit. We may try to be objective, to approximate such an ideal as best we can. Yet there is something deeper and more wholesome that does and, in the Korean mind, should drive us. It is that sense of heart, that grasp of emotion, a sense of place within the universe, whatever it may be. It is a contentedness and acceptance of where and who one is, and a desire to do right by whatever inexplicable virtues and motives drive a man. Naturally, the rationalist will poo-poo such notions as foolish and illogical. But then again he is defining things in utterly different ways and rather hypocritically, too. He is unwilling to admit that his values are definable in emotional terms while he simultaneously subjects emotion to rational evaluation. I doubt that he, the complete believer in what is reasonable, material, and definable, is nearly as happy as the Koreans I have met who carry such enthusiastic spirit within them.
And isn’t happiness what we seek? As an American, I find such instruction from a foreign people not degrading but uplifting. Koreans have a great yet tragic history, one spattered in blood and strife. Yet through it has survived a sense of self, of community, and of that ill-defined yet powerful connection to the world about them. They understand at a gut level what happiness must be. They can be materialistic, they can be status-obsessed, just as we are. Yet that is tempered at a basic level by a deep and abiding sense of heart and emotion, one that ties them to other people and the world around them. As America becomes more fractured, more affluent, more distant from its past self, it would do us well to learn from Koreans. Our nation is rapidly becoming one of pretense, artifice, and incomprehensible complexity. If we are to remain a free and noble people at a political and societal level, as well as (perhaps more importantly) at a personal level, we should reflect upon our ‘pursuit of happiness.’ The ideal is a pursuit, a chase, not something that can necessarily be achieved. Yet it is what we seek. Happiness is a simple virtue, an emotion of contentedness and sense of place. It is not something that we can measure by census or income or ideology. Reason holds no power over it. This is what we have forgotten in the last forty or fifty years, as we have used our minds and our reason to build more and more complex systems which will never give us what our most basic document says we need as human beings.
I hiked down from Baekundae with a strange sense of belonging. Suddenly I felt no longer a stranger in this country. People may stare at me and they may make fun of my pronunciation. But I know in my heart the sort of people they are — their actions tell me. I see it in the freely-given cup of makkeolli on the mountainside, in the energetic “Hello!” passing on the street, in the young man lounging with his girl on a mat in the woods, talking endlessly, both of them gazing at the changing leaves and thinking only of what they mean to each other. The universe has purpose here in Korea; we all have a place, a role — it is merely ours to find it.
I try to remain a patient and polite person in most of my interactions with people, including those who are trying to sell me something, spiritual or otherwise. Even when they pressure me beyond what feels comfortable, I try not to be insulting or rude. It’s usually a positive character trait, but from time to wish I wish I could just become really, really insulting and pissed off in a split second. The past few days have been one of those times. This is thanks to the World Mission Society Church of God, which, as you will discover, is not really deserving of the the title of ‘church.’
My first encounter with the WMC crowd happened for the first time a few days ago outside my apartment building. They were polite and well-dressed. The man smiled and apologized for his bad English. They asked me for a survey about religion. A slick move, I thought they were the Korean Zogby at first, but soon found out otherwise. I had a backpack full of defrosting groceries but I figured I’d humor them for a least a minute. I know it must be tough work out all day like that, often with no success. At least I could be polite.
That was a tactical error on my part. For the next fifteen minutes, this suited Korean man flipped back and forth through a Korean/English Bible, showing me verses in quick succession. I really couldn’t figure out the logical connection between them but just said, “Mmhmm,” to humor him. This dog and pony show all seemed fairly harmless and straightforward. I just wanted him to get to the part where he asks me for money and I tell him ‘no’ and leave.
“Will you think some more about what we’ve showed you?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever.”
“You should, for it’s for the salvation of your soul.”
Wait, what? The moment anyone starts telling me they know the current state of my soul I start looking for the nearest verbal (or actual) 2×4 spiked with nails. I suddenly wanted an explanation from this kook.
“Wait a second. Explain this to me again.” I actually listened this time. You got to admit, the guy knows how to hook a listener.
The fellow started explaining to me about the “Spiritual Mother.” What exactly is the Spiritual Mother? Well, boy, let me tell you! By tangentially linking few select verses from Genesis and Relevation (rather out of context and with no consideration to the rest of the canon), this guy claimed that there was a female equivalent to God. Now, this isn’t like the discussions within more liberal branches of Prostestant Christianity about whether God should be referred to by male or female pronouns. It’s not a debate about the gender of God, most of which I find to be rather abstruse and pointless. No, this is a straight-up extra member of the heavenly family. The man showed me a diagram of a happy smiling family. “In heaven, just like on earth. Heavenly father, heavenly mother.”
“Wait a minute. So there’s not a Trinity. God is in four persons. Father, Mother, Son, and Holy Ghost. Is that correct?” I said.
“Yes,” he said, with a bit of hesitation. I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to understand what I was asking or if he was reluctant to admit an answer to my direct question. He spoke English well, so I think it was the latter.
I about called him a heretic right there, but those damn Southern manners got the better of me. He asked me to talk more with him about it. “You can go and get your Bible and come back down.”
“No, I need to go to work.”
“What about when are not at work?”
“I work six days a week.”
“What about Sunday?”
“No, not Sunday.”
“Will you come to my church? It is in Imae Station.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
That was the end of that discussion. Later on I thought more about the whole Spiritual Mother thing and realized that, yes, it was actually quite heretical. And, furthermore, the way they tried to make a sort of cyclical connection and mirror image between earthly and spiritual families seemed rather syncretic, as though trying to reconcile latent Confucian ideals with Christianity.
Today, being a good Presbyterian, I walked to Seohyeon to buy a glass for my new bottle of whisky. I saw the suit-and-tie crew out near Sunae Station but I managed to avoid them. On the way back, though, another pair stopped me in Bundang Park. I decided to talk to them, strangely enough. I honestly felt combative today, something which I rarely if ever feel. This pair didn’t launch into the whole Spiritual Mother tirade, but rather began talking about Passover. The one guy who ran the conversation spoke pretty good English. I’ll call him Ddong. The other guy with the glasses I’ll call Piji. Ddong’s logic was rather long and convoluted but I seemed to gather from it that you had to observe Communion on Passover in order to be attain salvation. “Our church is the only church in the world which observes Passover. Does your church know of Passover?”
The absurdity of the statement floored me. “Yes, we do.”
“Do you celebrate it?”
Celebrate? Do we go out and spread sheep’s blood on the lintels? I had no idea what to say. “Only communion on the Passover can lead to eternal life,” Ddong said. Piji was smiling like an idiot off to the side, holding open some sort of loose-leaf with colorful diagrams.
“I’m not sure I understand,” I said. Ddong took this as a key opportunity to introduce a new concept. Wow, helluva guy, being so nice like that.
“You know the name of God?”
“You mean Yahweh?”
“Yes! And the name of the Son?”
“Jesus.”
“Yes! And what is the name of the Holy Spirit?”
Again, this was either the most brilliant or most unbelievably stupid question I’ve been asked in ages. Holy Spirit, right? I mean, I don’t exactly recall the exact term from my Greek class back in college, but he probably just wants the English equivalent, right? “What do you mean?”
Ddong then shows me Revelation 3:12. “You see here, Jesus is talking about how he will write on each of us his new name.”
“Ah, I see,” I said, but not really seeing his point.
Ddong then launches into garbled Konglish about baptism. “I’ve already been baptized,” I said.
“When?”
“When I was a child.”
“Ah, but you were not baptized in the name of the Holy Spirit.”
This is getting ridiculous. “Uh, actually I was. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
“But you didn’t know the Holy Spirit’s name!” Ddong says. Piji is still the organ monkey in the corner, his bulbous, pockmarked face bobbing up and down.
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t know that Jesus’ name became Holy Spirit. So your baptism is not true.”
The absurdity is mind-boggling. I’m not even sure if what he claims is true but let’s pretend it is. So my baptism, my unbreakable covenant with God is voided because I wasn’t aware that Jesus made some vague allusion to him being akin to something like the Holy Spirit. Possibly. It’s like saying your SCUBA tank gear will stop working during your dive because you didn’t know the name meant Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. The logic is unbelievable. And the statements are getting insulting.
“Look, I don’t really agree with what you’re saying. I was baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
“But other churches do not do this. Only our church does.”
“Well my church baptizes in the Trinity and I was too.”
“Ah, no, it doesn’t,” said Ddong.
“You don’t know that. Don’t you tell me what I know and don’t know.”
Ddong physically recoiled. I didn’t realize it at the time but in retrospect I realized my voice dropped an octave and I had moved slightly forward. I don’t think Ddong was accustomed to having people get testy with him. So he gave me that shit-eating Korean smile that says: yes yes, I will save face now for both of us and try to smooth things over. Oh, no, I wasn’t going to let that happen. Watch out, Angry American is here.
“Do you know my church? Have you been there?” I said. “No, you haven’t. You have no idea. So don’t you start telling me what I know is a fact. You don’t know a thing.”
Why they even tried after that is beyond me. Either they are patient, courageous, or straight-up morons. They kept badgering me to come to their church. I told them no. “Would you like to study more?” asked Ddong.
“No.”
He seemed very disappointed. “Are you sure? It would be good.”
“No.”
“Please, this is important.”
“Give me your card. If I change my mind, I’ll call you.”
People must not do this much, because Ddong had to go fishing into his wallet and produced a rumpled business card with a red ink smudge on it. There it was, though, the name of his outfit: World Mission Society Church of God.
“Can I have your cell phone number?” Ddong asked eagerly, thinking that this sort of exchange must be mutual.
“No.”
“Please?” He seemed deflated.
“No, if I change my mind, I’ll call you.”
“Okay. Ah . . . have a good day. God Bless.”
“Yes, God Bless.” We shook hands and walked away.
What happened next struck me as very touching. Two young Korean men came up to me. They had to have been early college age (though it is really hard to tell in this country). One only spoke Korean and he was saying something frantically to me. I tried to tell him I didn’t speak Korean. But his friend spoke English. Their hurried manner and casual clothes told me they weren’t crazies. One said, “Do not listen to those men.”
“Oh, I wasn’t. I was arguing with them.”
“They are not Christians. They are very bad.”
“I know. They tried to say that God is in four people.” I held up my forearms in an X, the Korean symbol for no. “I told them that I don’t believe that. I was debating them.”
The two spoke quickly back and forth to each other and then turned to go. “Thank you,” said one of them.
“No, thank you for your concern, I appreciate it.” And I really, truly did. These guys must have known something I didn’t and were worried that I was getting sucked into some maelstrom beyond my power. The kindness of strangers is always the best and it often shows itself in the most dire of circumstances. That being the case, this must have seemed like one. It got me thinking about who these WMC schmucks were. Their headquarters was right there, I realized, on the corner of Bundang Park.
When I got back to the apartment, I immediately Googled the church’s name, which I now had thanks to the business card. What I found out was quite interesting. The WMC is, according to Wikipedia, a strange group centered around Ahn Sang-hong, who apparently is revered as the Second Coming. But he’s dead and has been so for a while. So, wait, Jesus came back again and is dead again? The theological acrobatics these guys do must be incredible. They certainly didn’t get that far in the sales pitch. However, this guy died about 25 years ago. The new leader of the church, Zang Gil Ja, is apparently the “Spiritual Mother,” or literally a female God incarnate. These guys are nuts. People get sucked into this bizarre cult which is far outside the bounds of Christianity, although they certainly call themselves Christian. There’s an entire website titled Cult Watch that keeps tabs on this organization. If there’s a whole group of former members calling it a cult, I’m pretty sure that it is one.
My guess is I’ll probably run into these loonies in the future because, well, their world headquarters is a quarter mile from my front door and right in the middle of where I go eat and drink. Will I avoid them, walking out of the way to stay away? Maybe, if I don’t have time to chat. But I don’t like changing my behavior to avoid someone else who’s the annoyance. Will I talk to them? Hopefully I can avoid that. But if I’m unfortunately roped into it, I think I’ll start off with a nice, civil opening: “So, I hear you guys are serious heretics . . . how does that feel?”
Demonic Possession
His court’s in session
I sign my confession
Demonic Possession
It was raining on the day she told me
them things that fella sold me
Mama wasn’t there to scold me
No prison or cell could hold me
I still recall the date
I’z probably about eight
when I sealed my fate
You honor I rightly state
Suddenly I had a foot hold
I became such a butthole
I don’t need nobody consoling me
No one but the devil controlling me
I can kick ass and talk backward
I hang out with a whole bunch of slackers
and I know I can get some help from him
I listen to a lot of Led Zeppelin
Drive-By Truckers – “Demonic Possession”
I enjoy good music as much as the next person but for the most part my tastes don’t fall into the typical popular music categories. My favorite band, Drive-By Truckers, pumps out brash and culturally insightful Southern rock. Another, Mogwai, grinds down the listener with both apocalyptic instrumental rock and songs which are intricate and lush atmospheres. So I don’t usually listen to mainstream music, especially pop and hip-hop.
But in Korea, you don’t have such a luxury. Korea hasn’t had the sort of cultural upheavals that rocked the U.S. in the ’60s, which is nice because it doesn’t have a cynical, hedonic, selfish culture like the U.S. But it also means that quality, cutting-edge underground music is pretty much non-existent. What’s a music fiend to do? Well, start appreciating K-pop.
The Korean Wave, or “hallyu,” is basically a term to describe how over the past decade or so Korean popular culture has become an export phenomenon. Korean movies, TV shows, and music are immensely popular in East Asia, sometimes almost as much as or more than local pop culture. To give you an idea of this, entire tour groups of foreigners will come to Korea with the sole purpose of visiting the sites where their favorite Korean TV shows and movies are filmed.
The Wave makes you reconsider a lot of the whining and complaining about globalization and ‘cultural imperialism’ that gets thrown about, primarily at the West and in particular the United States. I think South Korea pokes a big hole in the argument that weaker nations are kept down for the malicious profit of the developed world. It’s pretty hard to think that South Korea is out to make the world into its cultural and economic slave and rip apart traditional cultures with its bloodthirsty fangs of capitalism. Here’s a country that fifty years ago was considered almost Third World after a devastating war. They could hardly feed themselves. Now they’re making better phones and TVs than anyone else and are right up there amongst the other economic powerhouses of the world. So maybe all the grousing and grumbling by some countries and their sympathetic Fifth Column in the West is really just them upset that they are too incompetent to really compete. They can’t (or won’t) make the sort of leaps forward necessary to pull themselves up and become an equally dynamic force. So instead of actually working to make themselves better, they just try to guilt others into reining in their own success.
But I digress. Because the purpose of this post is to enlighten you to the sublime and ridiculous music that is K-pop. I will give you a smattering of videos. I’ve learned about these bands from different places but my students are in general the best source of information. A couple things to note: the bands will throw in English words or phrases here and there because to Koreans it sounds hip and sophisticated. Also, I put up the original Korean version of the videos, not subtitled, because the English translations only make you realize how inane some of these songs are. It’s better not knowing the lyrics.
This band, 2NE1, is my current favorite:
They’re one of the newest K-pop groups but they are immensely popular. Their bizarre fashion sense is pretty hilarious. Without a doubt they write some of the catchiest hooks out there. Their live stage presence certainly beats out a lot of other groups and they actually can sing well live, which many groups could not do to save their lives.
Girls Generation (So Neo Shi Dae):
So Neo Shi Dae exemplifies this country’s obsession with cuteness. American music is drenched in sexiness to the point where you wouldn’t know it if it hit you in the face. In contrast, Girls Generation pumps out delightful bubblegum pop that is a pretty good view into the bubbly innocence that is a lot of Korean culture. I’ve seen them live and they too have a good stage presence. They have their own TV show called So Neo Shi Dae Hello Baby, which involves them playing with babies and doing all sorts of strange, motherly things. Really weird and kinda creepy, since they’re all about 19. But, again, that’s another insight into Korean culture: a definite focus on family and having kids and even the most popular girl group in the country isn’t tainted with the image of them learning about raising kids. In the U.S. that would put some sort of stain on a performer, as though they weren’t really interested in success or being a sex icon.
BIGBANG:
Everyone here listens to BIGBANG. They are the NSync of Korea, though arguably more creative and talented. I love this video because it’s a pretty good condensed example of how love ends up portrayed in music and on TV. Usually there’s a misunderstanding between lovers; the guy longingly looks back over his shoulder as the girl walks away, then as he turns to go, the girl stops and looks back, but it’s too late. Or maybe one guy took another guy’s girl and there’s tension and crying. Oh, and a lot of the time one of the lovers dies. That’s a pretty frequent theme. Lots of passionate, unrequited, and brokenhearted love floating around out there in Korea.
Brown-Eyed Girls:
This video caused quite a stir here because of its raciness. Brown-Eyed Girls decided they were tired of the typical cutesy Korean girl group act and rebranded themselves. Well, it’s a catchy song for sure, but their other music is not. And they absolutely cannot sing live — autotuning has done wonders for them in the studio.
SHINee (pronounced ’shiny’):
I hate these guys. Really, I can’t stand them. But my students are crazy about them. They might not know the word for “desk” but they can launch into an elaborate discourse about how great SHINee’s latest single is. So, students of Room 304, this is for you.
Kara:
Oh, Kara, will you never leave middle school? Again, the cuteness is hilarious and unbearable at the same time.
So that is a brief smattering of K-pop for you. I like some of it, can’t stand some it, but it’s pretty much what I hear on the daily basis, from storefronts to cellphone rings to commercials. Welcome to my life.
Bundang Skyline.
Everywhere you turn here, the sky will be scraped by an immense high-rise. It will have a ridiculous name, wholly un-Korean: Royal Palace, Pantheon, Zenith, Pavilion, Paragon, Park View. All are built by a massive corporation: SK, Samsung, We’ve, LG, or Doosan. They are the future of humanity, where everyone is packed in close, separated by tiny walls, yet a million miles away from understanding their neighbors. Food and education are in the building or close by. The very small makes up the very big and grand.
The Future.
I captioned this photo because I thought the architecture represented something sleek and modern, with no shred of the past. In retrospect, the pair of CCTV cameras furtively peering into our lives more aptly captures the title. Which begs the question, if big cities make us just one in a faceless, teeming mass, what of individual interest is there for the camera to look at?
Surprise splash.
Goaded by her friends, this schoolgirl walked out into the middle of the fountain, expecting that the water wouldn’t hit her when it came on. Obviously she was wrong.
Directions for ajoshi.
The younger man holds his left hand to his chest as a form of respect. This comes from the days when men wore a hanbok, which had a long sleeve that needed to be pulled back to hand something to another person.
Annyeong, jamae . . .
There’s something quite precocious about lots of Korean children. They’re well-behaved and seem to act like miniature adults at times, seemingly perfectly at home and competent in the world about them. Not a lot of screaming and tantrums like American kids.
Goin' to the temple, gonna get married.
In the midst of the modern throng, two people take the time to follow the old ways. They will be married but it’s not just a union of convenience. No, it is the continuation of an ancient pact. They are not ashamed of it, nor do they think it is backwards. The past has given them purpose for moving forward.
Timeless couple.
History moves on out there, in the world. Nations are crumbling, tyrants are rising, great deeds are done, horrible wrongs committed. People die cruelly and pointlessly, grand ideas are found hollow, wars rage, famines linger. We are all a part of history; it will inevitably touch us someday, somehow, in some way, big or little. But we still carry on, still build lives for ourselves. Maybe it’s the divine spark within, guiding us on our unique path. Maybe it’s the innate cheekiness of human beings, that spirit which raises a middle finger to the grimness of the world and pushes us to do great things, take great leaps. People get married, even if times are tough. Others buy a motorcycle and ignore sane advice. Still others cast aside stability and convention to take a job that thrills them. Or is the right thing to do. We live, in spite of the darkness out there.
Old men always talk furiously to each other.
Wherever you go in Korea, there will be old men sitting around, looking at things. They seem to be waiting on something but what it is, I’ll never know. They talk heatedly with each other or play chess or nap on a bench in the humid shade. You can see the story of rough years worn into the deep lines on their faces. These old guys have seen a lot. They are tough bastards.
In between the cracks we can find the past. Even if it’s not our own, we can appreciate it. We can understand and smile, being glad to remember and think back. For despite all the bad of the past, never can we deny the good that once was. And that we wish could be again.
With each day, Korea opens wider and deeper for me. Answers only leave more questions. So down I go, into the rabbit hole, waiting to see when and where I’ll come out.
Enter the dragon.
This past weekend my fellow teachers and I undertook the quintessentially American experience. We got a van, packed it full of seven people, and went tearing off down the highway, blasting music out the open windows, on a road trip. The difference being that we couldn’t read most of the road signs, you had to run red lights or risk getting rear-ended, and performance is measured in kilometers per liter. It was a road trip across Korea and perhaps one of the best experiences here yet.
In order to make this excursion possible, we needed driver’s licenses. Last Wednesday my friend Drew and I ventured into Seoul to locate the Driver’s License Agency. It was actually the best experience I’ve ever had dealing with cars and licensing of any sort. Unlike the DMV in North Carolina, where you wait for four hours in a tiny waiting room with forty Mexicans and their screaming kids, everything was orderly and efficient. I found it completely ridiculous that they would give me a license. I can barely read the alphabet, only know a handful of words at best, and here they are giving me a license. Fill out the forms, go back and forth between counters, get stamps on different sheets of paper. Take a physical test, which consists of squatting once and picking out three numbers off an eye chart and color-blind test. Then the written test, which only consisted of twenty questions. It was supposedly written in English but I had to stare at each question for a minute straight in order to make sense out of any of them. For example: “Of the following of the questions which is NOT the most absurd of choices regarding the performance of driver in approaching the deaf-driving car in the lane?” Most absurd of choices? Are you asking me what Camus would do? Somehow I passed with an eighty out of one hundred, which I attribute only my recall of process-of-elimination from the SAT. And an hour later, I had a Korean driver’s license. I was free to go anywhere, yet utterly incapable of any reasonable communication or understanding of traffic laws. This country is nuts.
Sunday morning we awoke early and loaded our expeditionary vehicle, a KIA Carnival. This is a minivan, but the interior certainly feels smaller. I kept bumping my knees while driving. We took off into the rainy morning, trying to work the satellite navigation attached to the middle of the windshield. There were a few missed turns and we accidentally ended up in Yongin but by 9:00 we were headed south on the motorway. Highway 1, the Gyeongbu Expressway, runs the length of the country between Seoul and Busan, the second largest city and a massive sea port. We roared along, taking in the sight of countryside. Everywhere you looked, there was some sort of civilization, even if separated by rice paddies. Korea is a tiny country and proximity is inevitable when you cram almost 50 million people into it. For someone used to seeing huge swaths of open desolate country, like West Texas or Wyoming, it was a strange, almost suffocating experience. The thought that, even behind the wheel of a car, master of my own fate, I couldn’t escape from people bothered me.
In between the crude paper map I still had from the Korean Consulate in Atlanta and the useful but byzantine sat-nav, we managed to figure out our route from the highway. From the Gyeongbu Expressway we took Highway 25 and then at Ganggyeong we pulled off onto Road 23 (I guess they call them roads). The trip had flown by. By the time we stopped outside Iksan for fuel, only two hours had passed and we were getting quite close to our destination. Filling up the Carnival will diesel was a hilarious experience. The look on the attendant’s face was one of bewilderment as seven foreigners all hopped out of this nondescript van. We laughed about how baffled everyone we met must have been: How did these foreigners get here? Why are they here? We were truly in the middle of nowhere. What was even better was when we rolled down all the windows and began blasting homemade house music into the small towns we passed through. One Korean couple in an SUV were laughing hysterically, though they didn’t roll down their window, despite Drew’s insistent waving.
At Iksan I took over driving. Even after a mere two months away from the wheel, I felt rusty. It was thrilling, though, the knowledge that I was in control of my own destiny. I felt much more at ease with the world about me, much more confident. Technology can be a crutch but in some cases it is a radically enabling tool. The automobile, at least for me, truly is synonymous with a daily, nuts-and-bolts freedom. I was bound to no one.
Hyundai pier outside Byeonsan.
Our destination for the first day was Byeonsan National Park, which covers most of a peninsula on the southwestern coast. Once onto the peninsula, we saw a huge causeway that seemed to lead somewhere. Naturally we drove down it. It turned out to be some sort of pier owned by one of the many Hyundai subsidiaries. Every now and then loud warning announcements would sound from the sealed-off industrial area, which we joked were warnings for the locals to ’stay away from the foreigners, they might have swine flu.’
The views were beautiful, even if rainy and overcast. We wandered around for a bit, puzzled at the purpose of this random industrial pier. Korea is all about the corporation. Certainly small businesses proliferate; the presence of a FamilyMart convenience store or a restaurant on every corner, filled with middle-aged woman slaving away twelve hours a day, makes that undeniable. But this country is not entrepreneurially focused. Power and prestige are rooted in the corporation. And the larger you are, the more the government will make sure you stay big and profitable. The glossy cities with wide boulevards, shining skyscrapers, and grand electric signs blasting the company’s name into the darkness are a stark contrast to the worn and often trashed countryside. The Korean countryside is beautiful until you get up close. Then you run across abandoned buildings, vacant lots full of trash beside a rural road, and enormous industrial buildings surrounded by only rice paddies and farm houses for miles. It outdoes even some parts of Appalachia.
We left from the pier and drove another fifteen or twenty minutes into the heart of Byeonsan Peninsula National Park. From there we hiked to Jikso, a waterfall up in the mountains. Regrettably, I have no photos of it, judging it better to keep my camera out of the falling rain. But there was a flume of water pouring off of a rock into a very, very deep emerald green pool. Chinese characters were carved into a high-sided rock that flanked the pool. It was unbelievably tranquil. We swam out in the pool for a while, the water surprisingly warm considering that it flowed out of the mountains. That spot reminded so much of being back in North Carolina, with curling fog, cool drizzle, and thick woods around a waterfall. Yet it was indescribably different from home, as I found later as we climbed several kilometers up a ridge. Up there we were socked in with fog, but it would pass away at times, leaving only light rain. There was something distinctly different about Korea’s nature. North Carolina and other places in America are inspiring or magestic or simply beautiful, always in some sort of proud and enjoyable manner. Yet I felt none of those emotions here. It was tranquil, that was all. Just peace all around. Nothing stirring toward any particular end. I began to ponder the extent to which the physical aspects of Asia have influenced religious thought, thinking to Buddhism primarily.
That was fitting, for we hiked down from the ridge into another valley, to a temple called Naesosa. A thousand year old tree sat in the front of the first courtyard. Honestly, it wasn’t particularly impressive, the oak in my backyard is bigger. But the temple was quite old and was unadorned. Most temples in Korea are brightly painted with ornate detail and lavish colors. But Naesosa was mostly bare wood, with a few faded murals on the ceiling and beams inside the temple. The temple was nearly deserted, save for us intrusive Westerners. Again, an immensely tranquil place. Nothing was out of place, nothing was hurried or loud, everything moved on slowly, steadily, towards no specific end. Timeless is too brief for this place.
Once we left, we all expressed our amazement at how much territory we’d covered. At 9 AM we were getting on the expressway and nine hours later we’d driven almost the length of the country and seen some spectacular sights. Only with an automobile could we have achieved such rapid travel to such a distant spot. The next few hours were not quite the best, as we drove all around the Byeonsan peninsula in search of lodging. We hoped to find a ‘pension,’ basically a guesthouse with plenty of space and cheap in the off-season, but to no avail. Eventually, all options exhausted to us, we ended up backtracking to Gyeokpo and staying at a Korean trucker motel. It was a strange place, if only because the rooms were just doors on an open hallway which led from a nondescript central lobby that could have doubled as a storage room on the other floors. But that’s Korean architecture for you. Lots of buildings are just boxes that are thrown up and then adapted to needs later. Purpose-built structures are not the most common, particularly in the countryside.
Gyeokpo from the Korean trucker love motel.
The owner of the motel decided to wake us up with a phone call on Monday morning. “Chop chop!” he said, clearly indicating that we needed to get out. We really got the sense that he thought we’d slept too long and needed to get out and do something with our day. That was fortunate, for it got us on the road and roaring north to Gunsan. There’s a United States Air Force base there and a port. I feel sorry for the poor airmen who are stationed at such a remote spot. Yongsan or Osan would be fine places to be stationed in Korea, since they’re near or in Seoul, but Gunsan is the equivalent of southwestern Oklahoma: nothing around and you wonder why people even have half a thought to stay.
We went in search of a ferry to take us to Seonyudo, an island that Heather had picked out as a cool place to spend a day on beautiful white sand beaches. Sat-nav and roadsigns failed us, though, and we ended up at some waterfront military museum by a tidal river, fishing boats and rusting dredging barges littering the waterway. A pair of policemen showed up and actually just stood watching us. Maybe they were suspicious of seven foreigners driving in a van, maybe they were bored; in Gunsan, probably both. As Drew and I climbed on some old Korean M48 tanks, the others shouted for us in a panic. They’d found the ferry but it was at the tip of Gunsan’s peninsula and it was leaving in thirty minutes. A helpful Korean punched in the destination on the sat-nav and I gunned the KIA out of the parking lot. The next twenty minutes were an exercise in Korean roadway survival, as I drove intently, zooming around trucks, yanking out of the far right lane at 80 kmh as we rapidly approached a vehicle just parked in the lane, gunning through red lights on deserted roads when no one was around. Drive slowly under the speed camera, then smash the accelerator down and send the Carnival ripping along deserted stretches of highway, past huge industrial buildings on a wide coastal plain that showed no signs of life. We reached the ferry, though, just in time.
Spot the foreigners.
The boat was filled with old people and many of them gravitated to the bumping karaoke session down in the ship’s hold. Old drunk Korean men tussled and each tried to shove the other into the dance room before the other. What sort of ferry was this?
Sailing to Seonyudo.
Seonyudo is an island that is a part of a chain of islands called the “Polynesia of Korea.” Seems that there’s always a “*Blank* of Korea.” Jeju was the “Hawaii of Korea.” Maybe we drove on the Route 66 of Korea, who knows. There’s not much out here except lots and lots and lots of fishing. Even more so than Scotland, whose islands I’ve visited a few times. The ferry ride was beautiful and even better because of our unique position as foreigners seeing something so far off the beaten path. And we had attained it all through improvisation, cooperation, and a little serendipity.
Distant traveler.
Korea is one of those places in the world that becomes rarer and rarer each day. The outside world is visible on TV and in the papers but it still remains outside. The nation’s daily reality is fundamentally Korean; people wake up and live their lives relatively undisturbed by the machinations of the great big, humming world about them. In America, our lives are fractured more and more everyday as we grow more complex in every single facet, the very foundations of our civilizations changing silently but inexorably beneath our feet. Korea is, in many ways, a hundred years behind the times: a monoculture and unified society in a strong state, made prosperous by the farmer and the brazen worker in the glowing factory. They are technology advanced and adept but their roots are solidly Industrial Revolution. In a world that revolves around buying shit, worthwhile or worthless, Korea will do well, far better than our own service-oriented economy.
Taegeukgi.
We spent very little time on Seonyudo. There is only a single ferry per day, we discovered. So we walked around for about an hour, saw what little there was to see on this peaceful but remote island. Again, as foreigners we were a peculiarity. Seonyudo would be a wonderful place to return to at some point. Then we were back onto the ferry and back to the mainland. It would be a long drive back through the dark. Having driven for most of our two days of travel, I let Heather take the wheel and took a nap. The sat-nav freaked out on us again and sent us driving back roads all the way to Daejeon but eventually we found the Gyeongbu Expressway and were soon back on our way to Seoul.
While unconventional, our road trip was perhaps the best possible way to see Korea. We never could have gotten where we did in anywhere approaching that amount of time. Departure to return time was at most 37 hours. Trains or buses might have worked but would have required huge amounts of planning and local bus routes to get us places would have been incomprehensible even to those who understood the most Korean. And we were free to venture into (comparatively) wild and unknown places (at least for a foreigner). We were masters of our Korean reality. Trains, buses, and taxis maybe be for the traveler. But the car and truck is for the explorer.
This country is great.
Among the clouds.
Taebaek is a mountain town about three hours from Seoul. I took an early subway to catch the 8:00 AM bus from Dongseoul Station. Not making a reservation was a mistake (although I’m not sure I could have communicated what I wanted). I was fortunately able to get onto the 10:25 bus but I was amazed that I found a spot at all. Throngs of Koreans would sprint across the street from the Gangbyeon subway stop as soon as the crosswalk signal turned green. Everybody was escaping Seoul on this, one of the last weekends of summer. What was supposed to be a smooth three hour ride turned into a five-plus hour ordeal as the highway leading out of Seoul became a parking lot. An ajoshi (old man) sitting next to me spoke good English and we conversed periodically throughout the journey. “All these people,” he said, gesturing to the cars around us, “spend maybe five hour in car, maybe all day. Not get to where they are going until evening. Ha! They so tired, they sleep, then get up and come right back tomorrow!”
The bus wound its way through the mountains and finally arrived in Taebaek. I could only think of how awful it must have been to fight the Korean War. No nice rolling plains of fields and trees like Western Europe. No, it’s all flat ground and steep hills completely covered in thick trees and brush. If you weren’t climbing or attacking up a hill, you were probably in a rice paddy getting shot at from the top of one. Taebaek is down in a valley and by down, I mean I heard a bus downshift into the lowest gear possible for the first time in this country. My friend Walker Pfost met me at the bus station, where he’d waited for three hours in anticipation. It was slightly frustrating, if only because much of the day had been wasted waiting for a bus and stuck in traffic. Yet I enjoyed it because of my lack of a cellphone. I wasn’t able to communicate constantly about my whereabouts. I was simply crossing a strange land, the language unknown to me, with a phone number written down on a piece of paper in my wallet. It was a very anachronistic feeling, one which travelers must have experienced in the days before automated E-tickets, mobile phones, and international ATMs, and it was liberating.
After a quick bite to eat, we took a taxi to the base of Taebaek-san, one of the tallest mountain in Korea. The hike up was pleasant and not as difficult as the Stairmaster-like Halla-san I hiked in Jeju. Smelling trees and feeling the cool damp air rushing off of a fast-moving stream thrilled me, for city life cannot offer such spiritual rejuvenation. Once we got to the top of Taebaek-san, we were blessed with unbelievable views all around.
Shangri-la.
There was a stacked stone altar atop the mountain. Several Korean men clad in cutting-edge outdoor gear sat cross-legged and silent on the top, facing the center where they had stacked food in some sort of offering, motionlessly meditating or praying. The juxtaposition of old and new was striking. The externals of this country may seem modern but the most fundamental elements are ancient, even time-defying. An ajoshi walked over and offered Walker and I some u-ee, Korean cucumber, as soon as we reached the top. In return, we offered he and his wife cans of Cass beer, which they gratefully accepted. Instances like this were far more common in the countryside. Foreigners are rarely seen in a place as rural as Taebaek and we were perpetually greeted with smiles and “Hello!” or “Annyong haseyo!” wherever we went. In Seoul, you’re ignored as just another white guy.
The sun set, reflecting off of the mist which settled into the valleys. I snapped dozens of pictures, hoping for some perfect ones. This place really did feel timeless, like a great ship whose crow’s nest cut above the clouds and the mizzens of smaller peaks below. I finally gained my “Asian sense,” something indefinable I feel every time I see a Japanese woodblock print or a picture of women with coolie hats in rice paddies or a pagoda. It was a feeling of seeing something untouched and utterly foreign, something that defied any normal categories which I and my Western mind might try to impose. It was of a beauty that is not measurable or repeatable. Korea simply lay before me, unchanged, tranquil, the same as it is, ever was, ever will be. The old man who arrived, promptly spread out a mat, and began bowing and praying in each of the four directions didn’t have to know or articulate that. That was he.
Sunset meditation.
Modern man seeks out places such as this because it is not a part of himself and he, delighting in novel things, selfishly wants yet another new experience. Yet he always leaves and returns to his hustling city ways, forever separated from whence he came. Bertrand Russell, in the June 1921 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, wrote that modern industrial society “forces men, women, and children to live a life against instinct, unnatural, unspontaneous, artificial.” How true for my experience of big city life so far and how accurate Russell is in pointing out that it is our instincts which are crushed. We attempt to build some sort of framework of rationality in our world, one which can support and justify our crowded, intense modern existence. Yet we cast away the standard of the previous generation with the maturation of a new one. As a result, we are perpetually in flux. Our principles and our relationships with each other and the physical world are always either being reformed or criticized to the point of ostracism. We cannot live as we sense that we should, as something Greater than ourselves would have us. We are chained to the Wheel of Progress, even as it smashes us with each great revolution.
On top of the world, for a little while.
Yet some, like the bowing ajoshi above, are perturbed not by the machinations of the perpetually hustling world down below. He has found his own little pocket of peace, his own bulwark against the absurdity of the world, one which matters far more than any cynical or nihilistic attitude. For indeed, if this man and his Buddhist ancestors or the bent-knee christophoros or the crippled Ionian slave who found tranquility in desiring only what happened to him were wrong in their hope and lightness of heart, then their instinct mattered as little as any other wretched life. Yet they held held firmly to that which came from within. It is they who stand to gain once the sun sets for the last time and the humble but bold gamble of one or the other pays off.
Korea is an innocent land in that regard, in that reverence for what has been and what is unexplained. Culturally, they are an innocent land as well. While at the beach at Donghae, an hour’s train ride from Taebaek, I commented to Walker about how much I liked Korean families and Korean kids. I have yet to see an ill-behaved or angry child in this land. They are perpetually happy and well-behaved and their parents are incredibly attentive. In contrast, American parents treat their kids like liabilities to be fed and clothed, and most American kids I would prefer to drown like a sackful of kittens. Walker made the insightful comment that Korea is the cultural equivalent of 1950s America. Everything is blissfully ignorant. Drugs are unheard of. Promiscuity is not common or at least well-concealed. Homosexuality is utterly inconceivable; as a result, I saw two grown men sound asleep together, one embracing the other, on the floor of the bus home last night. Any sort of underground or counterculture exists at the farthest possible periphery. Crime is virtually nonexistent. Eight year old kids wander around the streets with their friends, unwatched. Some would sneer at their ‘innocence’ and lack of ’sophistication.’ But that innocence makes Korea a wonderful place to live. There is no anarchy of the individual ensured by a tyranny of thought as in the West.
It was with regret that I left Taebaek and Donghae and made my long trip back to Bundang, watching inane historical dramas on the plasma screen TV in the bus. The openness and friendliness of the people in those two places cheered my weary city heart and the sights of sounds of tree, creeks, and mountains reminded that it is truly outside cities that you discover the real character of a people. Yet for those who are without strong will or great skill in these times, it is where we all will live one day. Seoul, it is massiveness, its alienation, its unbelievable and unknowable complexity, is the future of our race.
“Vast is the power of the city to reclaim the wanderer. More than mountains or the shore-devouring sea, a city retains its character, imperturbable, cynical, holding behind apparent changes its essential purpose.”
- Sinclair Lewis, “Babbitt”
The Asia of the mists and forests, the Asia of myth: here.
Traveling always seems to bring strange new observations that last for only the briefest of moments, but stick with you. For example, Sunday I stood in Jeju International Airport waiting for Asiana Air Flight 8910 back to Seoul-Gimpo airport. While standing at Gate 7, the Asiana Airlines rep began announcing something to everyone gathered around. Obviously, I had no idea what he was saying but I figured as long as the the gate display still read “OZ 8910 11:40″ I was still in the right place. A short Korean girl next to me stared intently at her boarding pass and went up to the Asiana rep at the gate and seemed to ask some confused questions. By her body language and the overly patient attitude of the man, it seemed that she didn’t understand what he said, as though she didn’t speak the language. She could be Korean-American, I thought, back in the homeland but not speaking much Korean. That seemed the most likely explanation. But when she resumed her adjacent position, I noticed her dip a minute later into a travel folder and produce her passport. Not a green Korean one or the navy blue with “United States of America” emblazoned in gold; no, it was red, with Cyrillic lettering at the top which seemed to ominously read “Russian Federation.” Wait, a Korean from Russia? I began immediately reorienting my assessment of the girl. I began thinking that maybe she was from the Vladivostok area, where Russia meets the Korean peninsula. So she only knows Russian which is why she’s confused. She then began reading a guidebook about Seoul written in English. Obviously this girl defies a lot of stereotypes and I found myself pleasantly surprised at that. People like this will be the future masters of the world. Not a master in the sense of the Captain of Industry or a famed politician or any of the other great figures who exert power over the direction of the world. No, a master in that those average people who can transcend languages, cultures, and national boundaries with ease have a leg up on the rest of us. Their sense of self, their personal identity may be more confused than ours but they can handle change and differences much better. It makes me realize how much farther behind I (and many Americans) are in confronting the tidal changes that globalization brings. Our world is only going to become faster, more confusing, and more byzantine, and anyone who can adapt and bring whatever advantages they may have will beat out the rest. It’s pure Darwinism. The average white-bread American kid, with maybe some high school and college French or Spanish under their belt, is not going to do well, even if the rest of the world is learning English. I’m not saying sacrifice your sense of self, culture, and place, but understanding and internalizing the intricacies of another people is going to be vital if individuals and whole nations are to continue to thrive.
That’s quite a revelation for what had initially planned to be a modest excursion to Jeju, an island which is frequently referred to as the “Hawaii of Korea.” I wouldn’t go that far, but after the stifling humidity and thick haze of Bundang, seeing some green and feeling a fresh breeze was worth the cost of the flight alone. I flew alone, having booked my flight separate from my friends, and was a little apprehensive at first. Not only was this my first time flying a foreign carrier but my Korean skills are pretty much limited to food, beer, and navigating Seoul via subway or bus. No need to worry, though, all the stewardesses spoke very good English. Also, they are, by all thoroughly objective standards, smoking hot. There is no concept of anti-discrimination when it comes to stewardesses in Korea: if you ain’t gorgeous, you ain’t getting anywhere near that plane. The same emphasis on looks, particularly for women, applies to a lot of other jobs. Americans would have an absolute fit over this. I think, though, that our reaction is probably more based on what we feel like we’re supposed to believe rather than what we actually do.
On Friday, while all the others took the expensive option of scuba diving, I followed my basest cravings: woods and hiking. City life is sapping me a lot.
Jeju from the volcano
Halla-san
Halla-san is a mountain on top of a huge volcano which formed Jeju. It’s a UNESCO site, like a lot of things on the island. The hike was good but disappointing because you can’t go up to the top of Halla-san. That’s fine, it was good to get out in the woods for a while by myself.
The best parts of the weekend, though, centered around the beach and food. Koreans love the beach and love fishing. There are men, young and old, out at all hours with huge fishing rods, trying to reel in a big catch. They even have lighted lures so they can see once the sun goes down.
Ajoshi fishing on Jeju-si beach.
We spent our nights sitting by the water at open-air sashimi restaurants, enjoying perfect weather, wrangling with the restaurant staff, quaffing mekju and soju, getting stared at. (I get stared at a lot in this country and by a lot, I mean everywhere I go and especially on Jeju. I’d literally see heads swivel. Probably not every day a Korean sees a bearded white dude zooming in and out of pedestrians on a bike). Eating is probably what I love the best about Korea. Food is everywhere and it’s pretty cheap for the quality of the meal and how much you get. We ate prodigious amounts of delicious raw fish, lots of sides, spicy seafood soup, beer and soju, sitting right by the water, looking at the whole length of the shore in Jeju City, and it all ended up being 20,000 won a person. 15 bucks American for that? In the U.S., you’d easily have paid 100 dollars a head for that much food, not counting booze. Eating here is extremely social and Koreans spend hours at a stretch doing it. Compare that to the U.S. where you are hurried in and out to make space for the next party.
There were very few foreigners on Jeju, at least compared to Seoul. I’m so used to hearing English on a daily basis in my hagwon, from friends and Koreans alike, that I had to adjust myself a little bit, keeping an open ear, listening to full-fledged conversations instead of short exchanges. I know few words, so perhaps I am not capable of judging the language as a whole, but that forces me to listen to the flow, the sound of the language. Korean is not a language for lovers. It is not French or Italian. You are not going to whisper sweet nothings into your girlfriend’s ear and make it sound good. Korean is direct and emphatic. It can be rapid-fire or rise and fall, becoming more rounded to accentuate a point, but the meaning, at least in terms of its sound, is rarely hidden.
Now I am back in Bundang, away from Jeju, the sunburn slowly fading from my skin and the stress of the busy season filtering back in. Sweltering classrooms, kids with minds shocked and numb from constant education since the youngest age, moronic textbooks that are impossible to make worthwhile or interesting: battle must be done now for a few more weeks. So I am off to strap on my teacher’s armory, a shield of homework, a breastplate of writing tests, and my sword, a brand-new whiteboard marker.
