Sense of History in Gyeongju

Pre-20th century Korean history, at least as I've seen it represented in Korean dramas and museums, seems to represent for many Koreans a time of glory, a time when Korea was unconquered and bold and at a cultural high. In the dramas I have seen depicted over and over in highly positive ways values of reverence for nature, service to country, fierce loyalty to a superior, deep ties to family ancestry and descendents, lifelong friendships, love of art and architecture and the spiritual and physical properties of food and drink, clearly defined social roles, physical prowess for men and soft poise for women, carefully enacted rituals, the nobility of sacrifice, and so on. Even in Seoul, and all around, the preserved and restored palaces and temples and traditional villages and houses and historical reenactments in traditional costume seem revered and loved.

So I wanted to visit Gyeongju. This historic city is known as the "museum without walls," and many Koreans told me I should visit it. It seems most Koreans I talked to had been there, even if it was long ago on a school field trip. In Gyeongju there are numerous temples, tombs, monuments and the like dating from the time Gyeongju was the capital of the Shilla Kingdom, which for a time during the 7th-9th centuries AD ruled much of southern Korea.

And so we went and saw lots of things like these large numbers of ancient royal tombs:

And this particularly famous and revered Buddhist temple, Bulguksa (now on the UNESCO World Heritage List):

I now see why most of the pictures of Bulguksa you see in the tourist brochures are taken from the left side. Anyway, if you would like to see some really nice pictures of Bulguksa without a dominating sign that says "TOILET," just google it!

And these turn out to be the only pictures I took in Gyeongju. But maybe that's appropriate. Of course, not being Korean, I don't know what it really feels like, but there must be a sense of enormous separation between that history and life today. Unlike American history, where today's government is still a continuation of that formed at the beginning of its national history, this seems, in practice if not in feeling, a broken and abandoned history, remembered nostalgically, imagined, mourned perhaps, but left behind, with little that seems applicable to today's world.

But I'm a foreigner looking in. I appreciate the professionals who restore the buildings and take the beautiful pictures and perform the traditional arts and wear the traditional costumes and create these historical scenes and provide a glimpse of what life was like back then. And I'll continue to watch the dramas and enjoy spending some time imagining life in this ancient Korean world.

For a really nice article on the sights of Gyeongju, see SJCC's own Charles Montgomery's article, printed in 10 Magazine - an English-language magazine published in Korea. You'll notice that Charles took his picture of Bulguksa from the left.

My Korean Classes are Done!

Wow! I have completed all the study required for my sabbatical.

This picture was taken at Adroit College on Saturday night, Aug. 21. I have just given my final presentation, in which I showed a few pages from my blog (visible on the screen in the back.) In this picture I am receiving my certificate for having completed the Intermediate Course.

It's been fun. Really really fun!

"Hometown," Ideas of Travel and Lake Chungju

In 1945, at the close of WWII, Seoul's population was less than 1 million. It's now over 10 million. So many Koreans during the past half-century have left their "hometown" and moved to Seoul.

I was in Seoul during "Chuseok," a 3-day Korean holiday in October something like our Thanksgiving. Many many Seoulites return to their "hometown" during that time. I stayed in Seoul, and it became noticeably less crowded that weekend.

The Korean word for "hometown" was one of the first words we learned in our Korean class. In dialogues, people were always asking each other about their "hometown." Americans sometimes had trouble with the question. We usually picked the town where we happened to live in the US, but for most of us, that was not the place where we "originated," where our ancestors are buried. But that seems to be what it is for Koreans. And when they visit their hometown, they do indeed, it seems, even today, visit the ancestors' graves and perform some acts of respect and remembrance.

And it's easy for Koreans to get to their hometown because the country is small. There are no sleeping cars on regular Korean trains. There is no need for any. It just takes a few hours to cross the whole country by train.

And Koreans do have places they seem to love to visit besides their hometowns. Especially mountains! And beaches. And Jeju Island, the most famous tourist island, known as the "Hawaii" of Korea (I unfortunately did not make it there.) I think every Korean I had talked to had been to Jeju Island. It seems even school kids take school trips to Jeju Island.

But most of them I talked to had never visited, and didn't seem to know much about, Lake Chungju. It's true that it's but a man-made lake, but on a map it appears to be the largest lake in all of Korea, smack dab in the center of the country. As American travelers, we tend to read things like the Lonely Planet guide to Korea, which says: "The two-hour, 52 km boat ride along the large articicial lake from Danyang to Chungju is a highlight, with constantly changing scenery that on misty days looks like a sequence of Joseon-era landscape paintings" and calls it "Korea's most scenic waterway trip." So we took the trip.

But I didn't meet a single Korean, other than on the boat itself, who had taken the trip. When I mentioned it in Seoul, or to Korean friends here, most didn't know what I was was talking about. (Of course it could've been my pronunciation. Korea has Chungju and Cheongju, Gongju and Gyeongju and Gwangju - who knows where they thought I was talking about!) On the boat there were lively groups of older Koreans (affectionately called "halmoni" and "halabuji" - grandma and grandpa - although, having been so addressed a couple of times myself, I feel a little ambivalent about the term) - anyway, groups of older Koreans talking and drinking and laughing and sharing their food with us and seeming to have a great time! They were evidently local people, not visitors from out of the area, well familiar with the routines and sights and places to go.

It's hard to understand the feelings modern Koreans have for their "homeland." With the long history, the small size, the homogeneity of race and language and culture, the strong ties to the extended family and ancestors, the closeness to mountains and islands and sea, the particular attraction to one's particular point of belonging (the "hometown") - maybe these determine a person's desire to "tour the country" in a different way than it does for Americans.

But tour we did, in the American way. Here are a few scenes from the trip.

DMZ and North Korea

This spot marks the demilitarized zone - the DMZ.

It looks a bit like going into Disneyland, doesn't it? These days it's a tourist destination.

Still....

Because of the current tensions between North and South Korea, all tours actually going into North Korea have been canceled, but we took the tour that got us as far as we could go.

The picture above marks the spot where a tunnel built under the DMZ by North Koreans was discovered. You actually take a tram car ride underground and see parts of the tunnel.

At another spot, we were allowed to look over into North Korea (but not take pictures past the yellow line!)

Another part of the tour took us to the beautifully built but empty train station at the end of the South Korean line. A rail link between North and South Korea has been completed but currently no trains run. There are signs (literally!) of hope:

And here we are in Panmunjom (or the Joint Security Area) on the south side of the DMZ but looking over at the big gray building on the north side. It was here that the armistice ending the Korean War was signed in 1953.

Here I'm standing next to a South Korean UN soldier in that central blue building where talks, when there are any, still occur between the two sides.

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak has just proposed that a reunification tax be levied on South Koreans in anticipation of reuniting the country one day. It is predicted that reunification will cost the more economically-robust South Koreans billions, maybe a trillion or more dollars. I spoke to South Koreans who are ambivalent about reunification, fearful of its economic impact.

Meanwhile, this tragi-comic place endures, off limits to Koreans themselves, but open to gawking tourists.

Travelogue: Incheon

Three different times during the past year I flew into the International Airport at Incheon, and twice I left from there. It's a fabulous airport - spacious, with many friendly helpful people around to guide you and answer questions, directions clearly marked (and of course in English), wonderful restaurants and shops, a spa, a culture center where you can make Korean handicrafts, a museum, lounges, a hotel... but, that's not what I want to write about.

Away from the airport, completely out of sight and earshot of the airplanes, is the town of Incheon. Twice I spent a day there with my friend Cheng Min - once in the fall, and again with my brother and sister-in law during our trip in June. It just takes an hour to get there by subway. It's where MacArthur landed with the Marines in 1950 (there is a statue of MacArthur there.) It's now a relatively quiet spot away from the hustle and bustle of Seoul.

Some highlights:

The Sudoguksan Museum of Housing and Living is a recreated village, totally encased inside the relatively small museum, depicting the life of the poor people of Incheon in the years following the Korean War. It is interactive; you can walk through all the rooms and try out various tools and furniture and clothing (and, of course, go to the gift shop):

There is a Chinatown in Incheon, supposedly the largest (and some say the only) Chinatown in Korea. If you sound out the Korean spelling of the word on the wall behind the big plate of food in the picture below, it says Cha - i - na - ta - un, or "Chinatown."

Actually, after WWII, and especially after anti-Chinese repressions by Korean dictators in the 70's, most of the Chinese from this area either left or were living in poverty. Then the Korean government saw tourist possibilities here and put in money to revitalize the area. Apparently most of the merchants now are Chinese who bought in from the mainland - or Koreans! Anyway, it's colorful. The big plate of food in the picture is jajangmyeon, noodles covered with a black bean sauce, which Koreans call a Chinese dish but is actually a Korean - and very popular - version of a Chinese dish. (In fact, the dish is so popular and well-known we had to memorize the name of this dish in our Korean class at Yonsei.) Apparently the dish originated here in Incheon. Cheng Min and I had a great meal of it on my first visit.

Wolmido is a seafront area of Incheon, very "vacation-y" with a promenade, nature park, amusement park, ferry docks, and many seafood restaurants. We had a HUGE seafood lunch at a restaurant with a window seat overlooking the harbor:

So we took a couple of ferry rides, and ended up at Jagyak Island (or Jagyakdo). There are no cars on this island. No roads, no houses, no hotels or restaurants - just an island you can walk around, or walk over, and lots of shoreline where you can fall asleep, or play games, or set up a barbecue and have a good time as a number of Korean groups were doing. We mostly walked around and over the island:

Visiting these sights in Incheon, I feel a stronger sense of some particular aspects of Korea - its long and ambivalent relationship with China, the effects of the war tragedies engulfing Korea in the past century, and the strong influence of sea coast and island life on the culture of Korea in particular. I really enjoyed all I saw and learned there, and really thank Cheng Min for her help in getting us around, finding interesting spots to visit, and sharing her Korean insight with us.

Travel Reflections: Houses

We have our suburban little boxes all in a row, and Koreans have their urban big boxes all in a row. In Seoul and all the big and, as I discovered, all the medium-sized cities as well, these nearly identical-looking huge apartment blocks are everywhere.

I was invited inside two of these apartments while in Seoul, one somewhat small and modest, the other larger and more lavish, but both furnished western-style - although in one, when snacks were served on the coffee table, we got off the sofa and sat on the floor to eat them. Clearly the high-rise is space efficient, and the Koreans I met seem quite happy to be living in them.

My vision of what a Korean house would be like was somewhat different, originating in - you guessed it - Korean dramas. The historical dramas showed the very traditional Korean house (like this one at the Korean folk village in Suwon):

But even in the dramas showing modern life, many families - especially the good families, the ones who are honest, and generous, and loyal, and who love Korea - are depicted as living in traditional Korean-style houses. These houses, like the old ones, generally have a gated entrance leading into a court yard or reception area with a series of rooms built around it, all opening into the central area, something like this:

In these houses the inhabitants still conduct most of their living (visiting, watching TV, eating, etc.) sitting on the floor; mats are rolled out at night for sleeping on the floor as well. There is always a low table in the reception area, and eating and visiting with guests is conducted there.

The bad guys in the dramas - the power-hungry, the deceivers, the connivers, the ones careless of Korean virtues - they tend to be richer, and live in western-style houses and apartments. They don't usually sit on the floor, unless they are conniving to hoodwink the good innocent Koreans.

In my travels around the country, I wanted to see if people outside the big cities still built, and lived in, traditional-style houses.

In my very limited time, my only means of seeing this was from a train window.

And in every town, yes, I saw groups of traditional-style housing from my window, usually surrounded by fields of crops. I tried taking pictures as the train whizzed by:

This particular township actually looks more prosperous than many I saw. Many of these areas with traditional houses seemed seedy and run-down. Here seem to live farmers, people who have, by choice or necessity, not partaken so much of the financial benefits of Korea's economic boom. Everywhere near these townships, on flat patches of ground and up hillsides and along riverbeds and surrounding the houses there are fields, big, medium-sized and small, with an amazing variety of crops. There are large, mechanized farms to be sure, but also many of these small farms where family farmers still appear to be working the land and eking out a living.

My mind was absorbed with speculating on the lives of the people living in these places. From the dramas, it would seem there is enormous camaraderie, lots of visiting back and forth, lots of gossip (!) lots of hard work, lots of strict roles between men and women, old and young, bosses and workers, lots of intergenerational living. Home life is lived half indoors and half out - sinks for washing and teethbrushing are often outside in the courtyard, a lot of food is prepared outside, etc.

A translator of Korean into English commented on the cultural difficulties of translating. For example, to write "He entered the house" may conjure up a very different image in the mind of a westerner and the mind of a Korean. The Korean may think of the courtyard or reception area, and open air, and almost public visiting space, and not the private interior of a home, with the door closing behind, as a westerner is likely to imagine.

And so, with no time or sufficient language skills and perhaps without the courage to actually go to small villages and seek to interact with the people, I speculate on the different houses and how they affect our relationships and activities and values and lives. And I watch out the window as the train whizzes by:

Time Now for Reflection

The Korean adventure is drawing to a close. In the end, I spent more time in California than in Korea, so it turned out quite differently than I expected. Still, I pursued the goal of learning some Korean, and I did have some grand times and met some wonderful people.

In the coming month, to fulfill the requirements of the sabbatical as well as my own desire, I must comment on the following:

• Experiencing language learning as an older learner
• Comparing the different approaches and methodologies used in second language instruction from the student's perspective
• Finding ways to have immersion practice when not living in the country where the language is spoken
• Developing relationships with Korean individuals
• Finding ways to maintain connections to life in Korea and the acquaintances I have made there
• Observing Korean culture through travel
• Reflecting on Korean literature through translation

I will try to make these comments here on the blog during the month of August. Stay tuned.