A Stab at Korean Literature

Luckily for me, Charles Montgomery introduced me to the Portable Library of Korean Literature - a collection of short translated works by modern Korean authors. He even loaned me a bunch of books. These, together with a few I bought, are all short, so I started reading - well, skimming - them all.

The books were often interesting reads, but they often were a bit mystifying too. So many stories seemed symbolic - but of what? I felt I lacked the background to even guess what the writer was trying to communicate. I also felt a "sameness" about so many of the works; the themes, the plots, the characters, the style, the use of language all seemed repetitive. Being unable to discriminate, I was clearly missing a great deal!

So I'm going back and reading some of them more carefully. Acknowledging I lack the background to actually understand these books, I'm going to comment simply on how the books affected me.

First work: The Wings (or Wings) by Yi Sang.

I'm already troubled by problems of translation. Should the title be Wings, or should it be The Wings? (It's variously translated as either.) It makes a difference in English.

Soon the story reveals itself as a whole lot of often surrealistically-unrelated sentences - basically, a puzzle to try to figure out. But to figure out a puzzle, the clues (ie the words) have to be really clear. On page 1 we get this:

"I again plan a life with a woman. I am a spiritual straggler who has been, so to speak, after a momentary peep at crystalized intellectualism, alienated from the strategies of love."

(Hey, does that sentence make anybody want to read the book??)

But I find elsewhere a different translation:

"Again, with a woman, I draw up a plan of life, a scheme of one whose spirit has gone mad after a glimpse of the ultimate reason, a man whose lovemaking technique has grown awkward."

(At least now we know "strategies of love" refers (apparently) to sex - so maybe we do want to read it after all!)

Just contemplating the the different possible meanings in these two translations could take a year !

OK, translation is always a problem. So let's forget it, and assume every word is as Yi Sang intended.

Actually, there are 3 stories in the book. All have a similar narrator - an alienated, maladjusted, confused, powerless, sickly - but imaginative (!) - protagonist who tries to make sense of the incomprehensible world around him. In each story he has a young "wife" whose main quality seems to be that she has sexual relationships with other men, usually for money, and all the "action" of the stories centers around dealing with this situation. Repeated themes or images that struck me in all the stories are the elusive passage of time and memories, the contrast of day and night, deception, hunger and fatigue, not understanding the world before one's eyes - even having/shaving facial hair! (Examining the references to facial hair in the different stories could make a nice student essay). In all, the narrator seems Hamlet-like, trying to figure out what he should or shouldn't do to deal with the deception around him, but ultimately ineffective, powerless. His imminent death - whether through disease or self-destruction - seems to lurk nearby in all the stories.

SPOILER warning.

All the endings of the stories touched me.

The Wings ends with a seemingly simple poem, simple cry for freedom:

"I stopped my pace and wanted to shout.

Wings, spread out again!

Fly! Fly! Fly! Let me fly once more.

Let me fly just once more."

When did he "fly" before? Not clear. But in the penultimate paragraph he describes his "wings" as "the deleted phantasms of hope and ambition" that "flashed in my mind like the flipping pages of a pocket dictionary." That image - all those words tossed out of the dictionary and thrown on the "sheet of white paper" that "opens in my head" on the first page of the story - maybe he just wants the white sheet again, the creative possibilities where, even though "the body sways from fatigue" (and so he may soon die), "the soul sparkle(s) like a new, shiny coin" (ah, the money symbol, with all its hope and promise).

The end of the second story specifically refers to the grand theme of deception:

"It is but a dream to deceive,

But so too is being deceived,

Twisting, turning, wandering life,

Set fire to your shadowy heart-"

For me, a searing, haunting final line.

At the end of the last story, he is presented with a knife and choices (ah, Hamlet):

He can kill someone in revenge (presumably to repay deception)

He can kill himself and get out of it all.

Or...

He can use the knife to peel an ordinary round, lukewarm tangerine, and just go on. As he anticipates the taste of the tangerine, "tears like the vaporous steam forming on a cooling glass well up in my eyes." Wow - hot tears on cold eyes. Fire on a shadowy heart. Night and day. Passion and alienation. Truth and deception. Unbearable. Irreconcilable. Such is our existence.

Yi Sang lived and died (at the age of 27) during the Japanese occupation of Korea, during which he was imprisoned and presumably mistreated for "thought crimes." Supposedly much of the content of the stories is autobiographical, including the descriptions of poverty and ill health and a woman in his life similar to the one(s) in the stories. A sad, short life - but filled with creative passion and a gift of reading for later generations.

I may have totally misunderstood this book, whether because of the translation or my ignorance of the context in which it was written, but I had a good time searching for its meaning for me.

Back in Seoul

When I first got home in January, I really missed Seoul.

But then, after a few weeks in San Jose, I started to get comfortable. Everything at home is so...EASY! And CALM!

Here's my street in San Jose:

And here's my street in Seoul:

Here's my supermarket on a typical weekday in San Jose:

And here's my Seoul supermarket on a typical weekday:

And so on. As I got ready to come back here, I wondered if I really wanted to face the crowds, the struggle with language, and all the other challenges of life here.

But once I got here, I remembered what a great city this is. One day I looked out my window and counted 27 buses that I could see on the streets at one time! It's strawberry season, and strawberry dishes are showing up everywhere. I arrived in a snow storm, but the snow melted by the next day, and the palpable change of season is once again in the air. People I got to know in local shops and my apartment greet me as a long lost friend returned. And so on. So many attractive things in life here.

And I still have 2 weeks! When time is short, each day becomes more precious. I will relish these last days in Seoul.

Ever Wonder Who Coined the Term "1.5 Generation"?

"I coined the term 1.5 Generation...."

So claims T. S Chung in the video Arirang, produced by the Centennial Committee of Korean Immigration to the United States and available at the Santa Clara Public Library.

The quote continues: "...to refer to people like myself, people who were born in Korea but who have immigrated to the US, usually as a teenager, or who is (sic) bicultural and bilingual."

An article about T.S.Chung entitled "Coalescing the Korean-American Community," published in the LA Times in May, 1992, introduces him by saying: "He calls himself a 'one-and-a-half generation' Korean-American."

Was this the first use of the term? So it seems...

Learning from Non-Native Speakers

Before I went to Korea, I bought this book - with accompanying CDs - to do some pre-studying. There was nothing to indicate that the voices on the CDs would be...NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS. But so they are. They speak Korean with obvious native-English speaker accents. At the time I was disappointed with the voices, so I didn't do much with these materials.

In Korea, I had all native Koreans as my teachers. Obviously, you may think - but here in the US there are many professional ESL teachers who are not native speakers. In Korea I did not experience much diversity in the teaching pool. All my teachers were women. All were young - or young middle-aged. And as previously described, all used the same method.

Would I have been pleased with a little diversity? Well, yes - but only as long as the teachers were Korean. A man would have been nice! Or someone older. (I did have an older Korean teacher at De Anza College and really appreciated that!) But a non-native? An American?? I would have been disappointed.

But since I've been back, I've been using the Korean materials pictured above, and I have begun to realize how useful they are. When the Americans speak Korean, I can catch what they're doing to approximate the Korean sounds. Their sounds, their intonation seem halfway between a beginning Korean speaker's speech and a native Korean's, and they serve as a really useful learning bridge.

And then, coincidentally, as I've been watching a Korean drama called Jejoongwon, about the establishment of the first Western medicine hospital in Korea, one of the main characters in the drama is...American! See him back there in the black hat?

Easy on the eyes (!) - and how fun it is to watch him chattering away with the Koreans in his unmistakable American accent. When he speaks, I understand about double what I understand of the Koreans. That makes it exciting to watch. And actually, there are other American characters (more missionary doctors!), including a woman, all of whom speak fluent Korean with English accents.

So - I am feeling proud of my compatriots who seem to be able to speak Korean so well. When I hear them, I feel motivated to achieve what they have. When I listen to native Koreans, I get discouraged because native Korean speech seems so distant and unattainable. But - to be able to speak like these Americans - that would be enough. More than enough! And they make it seem attainable.

So I am learning to appreciate the non-native teacher.

Now - would I appreciate, say, a Korean teacher that was a native French speaker? or Arabic speaker? Right now, my prejudice says... no. How would hearing someone with a different accent altogether help me learn? But... I am also learning to be more open to the possibility. If I should get the chance to have such a teacher, I will welcome it. Much has been published in the US in recent years about the value the non-native English teacher brings to the ESL classroom. Maybe there is more that I could learn from such a teacher than I can even imagine now.

March 16 - Back to Seoul

Seoul weather reports look good - even lows are above freezing most nights. Safe to go back, I think!

I am looking forward to this arrival. What a difference it will be from 6 months ago, when I arrived with 4 big bags and utter ignorance. Now I have my one small suitcase, knowledge of how to get around, a slightly improved ability to communicate, a pocketful of Korean money, and my own little pad waiting for me.

It will be a bittersweet arrival; because of unexpected family circumstances, I may not be able to stay long this time. But I will try to make the most of the time I have there.

Americans vs. Koreans

Ah, the Olympics.

Someone asked me, "Who do you root for?"

I have to admit, I get a surge of pleasure when Koreans win.

Korea is so small compared to the US. Yet somehow they pull out these winners, and it is exciting to watch.

Probably, if I were in Korea now, I would be feeling the tug of home and rooting for the Americans. But I am here, and feeling instead the tug of Korea. I wish them well in these games.

Rosetta Stone

Ever tried learning a language with Rosetta Stone?

Here's how it works: You see 4 pictures at a time. You hear - or read - a sentence. You click on the picture that matches the sentence. If you're wrong you get a big X and have to try again. If you're right, you get a check and go to the next set of 4 pictures. You do this over and over. There are variations as you go but that's the basic gist of it.

This is called "dynamic immersion" - an approach that supposedly mimics first language learning. There is no translation, no grammar instruction, no explanation of any type. The pictures try to make the meaning clear, and you try to figure out the grammar as you go.

I like the idea of this. This is - sort of - the way I wanted to try to learn Korean. I wanted to see if an adult could learn this way.

But I wasn't successful with it before I went to Korea. It was too hard, and too tedious. The chunks of language being used in the sentences were just too big.

And I didn't use it at all when I was in Korea.

But now - I use it every day. And NOW - it makes sense to me as an adult learner. What a great SUPPLEMENT to the textbooks and class instruction and real world practice. Now that I know a lot of grammar and vocabulary, the new chunks being introduced are not so overwhelming, and I get to hear sentences and patterns repeated and recycled over and over until the sounds and the meaning do seem to start to sink in - in a way they don't with any other method.

I'm hooked. I believe this is helping my learning.

But for anyone tempted to try this:

Don't expect to learn anything practical, or anything that you could actually use as a beginner. You will learn things like "This clown is putting on his pants/This clown already put on his pants" or "This rocking horse is not a live animal/This pig is a live animal" or "There are many cowboy hats but no cowboys" long before you will learn anything like "Hi, my name is..." or "Where is the bathroom?" Strange content at times - definitely not a program for the casual learner who just wants to learn a few phrases.