"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.