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: