Jinju's Smoke Stack and its singers....

(and yes, I shall work on my "video" skills!)

Dear Friends and Family,

Once upon a time, in a far away land, a long, long time ago, there lived a beautiful woman named Nongae. Nongae was rather ordinary - beyond loving her husband so much that she felt his sorrows more deeply than her own. One day, a large, evil army conquered their valiant home city. Nongae’s husband fought gallantly to defend his home and survived the battle. However, after the battle was lost, he could not survive his despair at the loss nor the thought of living while his comrades did not and so Nongae’s husband ended his life. His wife spent many days weeping, inconsolable. And then she became angry, deeply angry. With nothing to loose and anger in heart, Nongae took a job as a professional female entertainer at a house of ill-repute that important officers of the evil army favored for drink and entertainment. The beautiful Nongae quickly established herself as a favorite of the commander of the entire evil army. One dark night with only a sliver of moon on the horizon, Nongae persuaded the commander to take a romantic walk near the river. They walked until they neared the location of a rock called “Danger Rock” by the locals, whereby Nongae seized the commander with all her strength and dropped them both against the rock, into the river, drowning the commander, depriving the evil army of its leader, joining her husband in death, and placing herself into legend.

The year of this story was 1593. The valiant city was Jinju. The evil army belonged to Japan. And the legend of Nongae appears true, although information is scant and story-teller in me could not resist adding the touchy-feely. But I saw – actually stood – on the rock! What was known as Danger Rock (Wiam, in Korean) was changed to Righteous Rock (Uiam) in memory of Nongae’s “self-sacrificing spirit.”

Nongae’s time, the late 1500s, was a dark period for the whole of Korea. An ambitious Japanese warlord by the name of Toyotomi Hideyoshi had set his sights on conquering China and logically concluded that to acquire China, he should also control Korea. Well, why not? So with some 150,000 troops, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Busan and easily carried the day. They marched inland, caused Korean King Seonjo to flee to Pyongyang, and had captured Seoul within a month. The Japanese seemed well on their way to China. However, in the waters of southern Korea, a once mighty Japanese navy began to suffer major losses to a small Korean fleet directed by one Admiral Yi. The Japanese began to loose battle after battle and even little Jinju, cozily set in the mountains away from the sea, had its moment of victory against the Japanese. In the fall of 1592, 3,800 men retreated into Jinju’s hill fortress and miraculously managed to defeat an army comprised of 30,000 Japanese.

But the Japanese refused to be cowed by their losses and their determination was especially bad for the city of Jinju. In June of 1593, the Japanese army returned to the city, this time some 100,000 troops strong, to wipe away the disgrace of their previous defeat. During that second battle for Jinju, the Japanese won, slaughtering some 70,000 soldiers and civilians. Nongae’s resulting heroic suicide became cause for celebration amongst the defeated. And if suicides of beautiful ladies offered comfort, the times must’ve been dark indeed.

I learned all this and more while perusing “Jinjuseong” – Jinju’s castle/fortress, my next stop after my quest to visit an old brass bell failed. My game taxi driver accepted my money, nodded at my assurances (“괜찮아요” – “It’s alright”), and we exchanged sympathetic smiles before he dropped me at the fortress entrance. The day had become lovely, clear and sunny but wind chilled to the point that later I nipped into E-Mart to purchase tights and warmer gloves. On the surface, the fortress was not terribly remarkable – just the usual Korean-style historical buildings set on a hill, bordered by the river. But my time at the fortress was made remarkable by unusually interesting stories on placards, intimidating statues, rather beautiful scenery, an excellent museum of Japanese invasion artifacts, and by entertaining glimpses of a boat anchored in the middle of the river with an inflatable, slightly larger than life dummy. I did not figure out why anyone would take the trouble to keep a dummy inflated on a river – but I found the arrangement laughable. Perhaps you had to be there!

Finished with the fortress and with two hours remaining before my train departed, I slung my bag across my chest and ventured, on foot, a visit to the “Smoke Signal station in Mangjinsan,” figuring that a smoke stack would make a nice change from the usual Korean-style building tourist attractions. The uphill journey probably should’ve been strange: I passed a few small factories, a long row of small houses with blue roofs and rusted fences, a 5-story temple shiny with gold paint and framed by a modern apartment building, lines of clothes drying in the wind, and a brand new picnic pavilion, surrounded by stubby trees, overlooking the river. As I neared the hilltop and what I presumed would be the smoke stack, I began to hear music. Finally, I broke away from the stubby trees and found a music group, seated against an ancient smoke stack. Pious Christians? Budding rock stars? The sun was descending behind the smoke stack and yet the music group ended up being more interesting than the smoke stack, which disobligingly did not offer an English explanation of its history.

On my way down, I smiled at an old lady hobbling up the hill on a cane and thought, “I’ll bet she’ll pass me on the way down.” She did. And not because I stopped to photograph paintings on the temple! Korean old ladies are tough, tough.

On my walk to the train station, I paused to purchase four hot red bean cakes shaped like fish from a vendor while two wide-eyed little girls dressed in pink gawked at the foreign stranger standing on their street. I suppressed my annoyance under a smile and gave them each a cake.

As the sun set and the dusk fell upon the winter-brown countryside, I took a train to the city of Yeosu. And the next morning I awoke yet another city, a city by the sea, but still not as beautiful a city as Jinju.

So long!

Laura

Dear Family and Friends,

The city of Jinju is beautiful. Well, almost beautiful.

Ok, pause for a second here: have I ever, in your recollection, intimated that a city in Korea is beautiful? Uh, NO! And that is because I have yet to discover ascetic beauty in any Korean city – Daegu, Seoul, Busan, Gyeongju. Indeed, being instantly repelled by the appearance of this place has been a struggle for since arrival: the plethora of apartment buildings, the steaming rusted smokestacks, the tangle of neon signs in Hangul, the squat trees which do little to relieve all directions of dusty concrete. “It all looks the same and it is all so ugly!” I thought - which immediately lead me to chastise myself for shallowness, for being too caught up in my own Western cultural-informed ideas of ascetics, for being judgmental. Eventually I tamped my reaction down but I had to sternly repeat to myself that there was no use in experiencing other cultures if I was going to condemn what I saw out of hand.

But further exploration and repeated self-admonitions didn’t improve my outlook so I began to cast about for an explanation or more likely, a rationalization. After all, ascetic beauty is subjective and rather shallow. Perhaps there was something more that I was looking for?

Consider this: cityscapes are our own graphic history books – their layers of history allow us to derive a place’s story based on its buildings. Personally, I feel that I learned this on rural roads leading to cities. Farm houses of gray cemented stones continue in fields as they have for hundreds of years. Light-colored churches with upfront steeples have pews polished by masses of Sunday best and ghosts of baptisms and funerals. Fenced in grave markers have their names worn away and yet are still able to speak of village inhabitants. Water wheels rest in rivers, attesting to early industry. All things move closer together as the city approaches, the houses shift to “McMansions” then boxy developments to single story wooden slats with picket fenced yards next changing to brownstones with character, eventually giving way to unrelieved apartment buildings. Factories smoke, supermarkets callout their sales, strip malls glare. Downtown, squatter skyscrapers boast shiny brass fittings and art deco points, towering glass boxes epitomize modernist ideals while post-modern buildings unashamedly mix all aesthetics. Together these buildings tell of a country, first formed of little agricultural communities and then came industry, perhaps a bit tardy due to civil war devastation but then full-throttle into progress with big and bigger factories and shifting homes into city apartments into today’s modern day metropolises, which sometimes are ugly, oftentimes dirty, and yet occasionally sublime. Through buildings I learned our history, our story almost without noticing. But even while taking considerable notice of everything, I found that I couldn’t form of a story of Korea’s history through the buildings that I saw.

I'm not saying that Korea doesn't have its own architecture and it is important to remember that here almost everything old has have been rebuilt from the ashes of various wars. But frankly, in my experience, there are mainly two kinds of buildings here: old temples and utilitarian boxes. The temples, inspired by Korea’s proximity to China, are positioned well within the landscape with buildings of boldly painted wood enclosing gleaming Buddhas. While the utilitarian boxes are manufactured in two heights: quite short or quite tall and there are endless numbers of the bloody things. However, slowly I’ve come to the realization that actually these buildings too tell of a country, first and so long formed of little agricultural communities and isolated from western progress. Next came tight control by the (also) western-eschewing Japanese followed by a thorough country-wide razing in the form of civil war. Western culture began to seep into Korea’s buildings at perhaps the worst time architecture-ascetic-wise (in my opinion), when concrete was considered synonymous with attractiveness. I now suppose that Korea’s utilitarian boxes are tell-tale signs of a country needing to recover from war, eager to spring into the future and doing so by utilizing a factory system of buildings where the prime design features were immediacy and practicality. Perhaps Korea has been concentrating so hard on becoming an economic force to reckon with that it has been slow to move from habitual utilitarian architecture to buildings that are something more. Perhaps there is more to the story than I now suppose. I cannot definitively say. But what I can say is that that establishing an understanding of the utilitarian ascetic that I’m surrounded by hasn’t much helped my outlook.

Anyway, as I was saying, the city of Jinju is almost beautiful: a still silver river, shadowed by an old fortress and surrounded by a quiet city. Favorable first impressions of the city came from a friendly cab driver whose English equaled my Korean, night-time bridges with colored lights spanning the river, and an almost attractive performance hall in the distance. The river was reflective as I paced it the next morning in an attempt to gage actual distance illustrated on the city map. And despite no English, the people were terribly friendly.

In fact, my best travel story of the week occurred first thing that morning. There was this moment when I found myself standing midway up one dusty hill, surrounded by other dusty hills, my hair lifted by a slight breeze, the buzz of farm equipment in the distance, on a path that seemed to lead nowhere, asking an old man with browned teeth for directions to an old bronze bell.

You see, the prospect of seeing one “Goryeo Bronze Bell of Samseonam” had seemed promising just a few minutes before when my taxi driver had driven straight to what seemed the correct district to see this ancient bell - the first sign of trouble came when he rolled down his window for directions. I wasn’t unduly alarmed by this as every old lady he asked seemed to have an opinion, chattering at the taxi driver and nodding her head knowledgeably, but the result of several opinions was only more driving.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was in the midst of what is euphemistically known as a travel adventure so I settled into the backseat just as the taxi took off across a cliff with unforgivably narrow road. Alarmed for the first time, I closed my eyes and hadn’t decided whether prayer would save us from toppling when we reached the other side. We spent several more minutes bumping over potholes and skittering over gravel until we dead-ended on a farm road, in an orchard with three old men chatting and squatting around a fire. My driver got out for another conversation with knowledgeable head nodding - and that is how I ended up midway up a dusty hill, with my taxi driver anxiously watching from the base of the hill to see if I’d locate this special bell. I was part up a most unpromising path when the man with browned teeth told me that the bell wasn’t at the top of the hill (I don’t know how I understood this but I did). The old man then shouted to my taxi driver and escorted me back down the hill. Now just along for the ride, I listened to their detailed discussion and eventually resumed the backseat. The taxi driver took off – backwards! – down the farm road, completing a u-turn just before cliff road. We safely inched along the cliff and after a few more minutes, located a traditional wooden Korean building over which a sign announced that this was the home of the Goryeo bell. But the gates were locked. I climbed out and circled, hoping to circumvent the gate, alert for an entrance and very alert because the neighbor’s dogs were madly barking at me. The bell was tightly locked away. My taxi driver found an intercom and rang. No one answered. He looked me. I looked at him. I sighed. I laughed. I gave into the inevitable. So I asked my game driver to instead take me to Jinjuseong - the city fortress.

(Oh, yes, there’s more. And lot of it! To be continued) --L

One building type found in Korea: the utilitarian boxes.
They are either quite short or quite tall - but neither do I find ascetically pleasing.

The other building type found in Korea: old temples.
Their architecture rarely varies but they are definitely lovely in their way.

Literally ringing in the New Year in Busan. Sadly, you won't be able to feel the ring deep in your core, as one can in person, but....

Dear Friends and Family,

So, as previously mentioned, the year’s first sunrise over Busan was magnificent. And the final sun set of 2007 was equally as magnificent just as friends and I were in the midst of repeating my New Year’s celebrations of 2007: a trip to the sea at Busan, an exquisitely fresh fish dinner at the market, the same Buddhist bell reverberating our cores at midnight, and marking a new day with the first sunrise of the New Year. But my friends and I improved upon last year first by venturing upon a ferry to ride alarming white waves along the coast and later by taking our post-sun rise Starbucks on the road southwest to explore some ostensibly beautiful islands. Our coffee was long gone by the time we crossed the bridge to one Geoje Do (pronounced Koh jay + “Do” means island in Korean) and sped through the curves of the coast, at every turn glimpsing the turquoise sea bracketed by hewn cliffs, racing to catch yet another ferry.

We became all smiles of relief as we stepped aboard a rocking passenger ferry. We peered through spotted windows and did our best to shut out the jabbering Korean tour guide over the very loud loudspeakers as the ferry launched itself towards distant outcrops flinging salty spray every which way. An escape from the loudspeakers came when passengers were invited to the deck of the ferry for an unhindered view of the jagged, towering edges of a rock island – for me, reminiscent though as not as exquisite, as any San Juan Island. We admired and snapped pictures as our ferry circled the island before returning to the cabin so that the ferry could pick up speed to an actual destination, a tiny island called Oe, a reputed paradise. I use the word reputed because tourist information in Korea is rife with hyperbole. In fact, typical of the species is an excerpt from the brochure that says,

Oedo Paradise Island, which has been cultivated for almost 30 years since 1963 by couple Lee Changho and Choi Hosook, is the first island ever to be owned and developed by an individual. It has cultural spaces and continues its transformation for the further development of the island culture in the 21^st century. At the Oedo, you can feel the lifelong romantic sentiment of a husband and wife and you will also be amazed to see the island which has turned into an earthly paradise covered with more than thousand of subtropical plants from once an ordinary rocky island.

I was not amazed. The sculptures are obvious imitations and there are likely more species at my admittedly unusual plant nursery in the States. That said, the island was well-planned and well-cultivated and there is a definite attractiveness to it. As we walked along a path framed by sculptured hedges, my Korean friend confided that, “In Korea, we do not have very many good tourist destinations. But this place is beautiful. It makes me proud to be Korean.” Raising my eyes past the nodding flowers and palm trees to the distant glare of a spangled sea, I murmured my assent. It was indeed beautiful.

After the ferry had returned us to the shore of Geoje Do, we forwent viewing additional scenic beauty in order to establish a better understanding of history at the “Historic Park of Geoje POW Camp.” Apparently back in the Korean War days, Geoje Do had a magic combination of remoteness plus good drinking water so the United Nations set-up a gigantic prison camp amongst its hills in 1951. The camp eventually harbored some 150,000 North Korean soldiers, some 20,000 Chinese soldiers, and about 300 North Korean women that together composed a total population near 173,000 prisoners of war. Stories from that P.O.W. camp must be fascinating.

From what we read, the camp was established and run on then-new-fangled 1949 Geneva Convention standards that mandated training prisoners in vocations and insisted upon quality prisoner diets (better quality than Republic of Korea soldiers, as was emphasized by the museum ad nauseam). But shutting hundreds of thousands of soldiers with opposing ideological view points, little hope, and little to occupy themselves into a tight space in less than ideal conditions can only come out badly and the camp was soon the scene of many bloody, often fatal, confrontations between Pro-Communist and Anti-Communist soldier factions within the camp. One modern account that I found of the camp said that “[t]he gang-like atmosphere in the prison bore a striking similarity to America’s prisons today in how prisoners segregate themselves into gangs based on ethnicity.” Uhh. Not good. And things went from really not good to beyond worse in May of 1952 when one North Korean faction managed to kidnap American Army Camp Commander Francis Dodd and held him hostage for three days while screaming to the world media that the Americans were torturing them although most accounts say that overcrowding and riots were the worst problems of the camp. The incident ruined Dodd’s reputation and career, although he was lucky to escape with his life. The camp was closed after the 1953 and let to ruin. Only in the last few years did the Koreans designate the camp remains a cultural asset, collect together artifacts and assemble an open air museum to teach the history of the camp and the war.

Obviously, the museum did its job on me. While walking about and taking in the displays, I could’ve been repelled by the kitschy dummy re-enactments and frankly, I was repelled by the museum’s apparent fascination with graphic displays about how prisoners did not have toilets available (need I say more?). However, between crinkles at yet another P.O.W. squatting over a bucket, I became fascinated with what I could glean of the history of the camp. Although likely related to my recent first read of Lord of the Flies, I began to imagine that the history of the camp would make an excellent backdrop for a historical novel and come to find out, a Chinese-American author that I can recommend by the name of Ha Jin has written a novel titled War Trash which wades into the midst of the camp’s history. You can bet that’ll be on my Amazon list!

Anyway, as the sun began to set, albeit less spectrally than the day before, we departed from the museum. We left the beautiful islands behind and set course for a nearby city bus terminal, where my friends would leave me and my backpack to explore while they drove home to necessary jobs and comfortable beds.

I caught a bus to the city of Jinju. I easily located a motel for the night. I awoke alongside a serene river, lightly swathed in mist. It is a truly delightful feeling to wake a bit after sunrise, in a brand new place, in a brand new year, with so many sights in my future.

새해 복 많이 받으세요- Happy New Year!

Laura

Dear Family and Friends,

The year’s first sunrise over Busan was magnificent. I don’t know if you recall my version of the beginning of 2007, when we rang a Buddhist bell at midnight and watched over Busan’s horizon for the sun’s first appearance of 2007, but the sun did not appear to rise that day last year. At the time, I was likely too dazzled, perhaps by the moment, perhaps by the strange beauty of Korea, to feel disappointment that day. But on the first day of 2008, I find that I am less easily dazzled; therefore, a sun, beaming layers of gray clouds into lavender, felt propitious – although time will tell whether it actually was.

As always, it has been too long since I have posted to this blog. For better or for worse, I post most when I spend time with my own thoughts – so much time alone that my thoughts must be spilled. Consequently, I end up frantically typing for hours which results in my depositing my accumulation here. More like my busy daily life in Seattle than when I first departed to Thailand by my lonesome, now I have lots of friends in Daegu and can remain ever as busy as before – which means I do not spend nearly enough time with my thoughts.

But another, more complicated inhibitor to my needing and wanting to write for this blog is, uhmmm… well… this may sound strange, but another inhibitor to this blog is my ability to assess and write about Korea accurately, honestly. You see, it does not take long to for a visitor to Korea to understand that Koreans collectively passionately desire the world to see Korea in, shall we say?, its best light. And if the visitor becomes in any way attached to Koreans, as I have, then it doesn’t take much longer for the visitor to want, to deeply want, the world to see Korea as Koreans wish it to be seen. Criticism of Korea, whether positive or negative, is… difficult… although paradoxically, Koreans are over-critical of themselves.

This is indeed a paradox. It makes my brain hurt. Ouch.

But the larger problem for me in writing about my life in Korea, is that Korea was and remains a puzzle. To this day, I find Korea and Koreans more baffling than not - and when baffled, it is astonishingly easy for a visitor to judge everything, simply everything, as CRAZY. But crazy is not an accurate assessment of Korea; it has taken me a great deal of time and study to establish even an elementary understanding of Korea. Observing the motions of Koreans within their daily lives constantly requires my subjecting everything two mental test questions: “(1) Does this phenomenon happen in the States? (2) Is this strange human nature behavior or strange Korean behavior?” Even if I can answer these questions (and I cannot always) and even after careful mental examination, I continue to feel inhibited to criticize, inhibited in telling the truth, well, at least the truth as I see it.

Once I put my truth-telling dilemma to my Korean English teaching peers. I asked, “How shall I share Korea with my friends and family? In my experience, it makes Koreans sad when I want to tell my family about garbage on the beaches or elementary students wildly hanging out the windows of their schools - but that Koreans really want me to brag about how amazing the shipbuilding at Hyundai Heavy Industries is or how incredible the Tripitaka Koreana is. (Note: the Tripitaka is an ancient collection of 81,258 woodblocks Buddhist Scriptures and I haven’t bragged about it here but I should!). I believe it right to share Korea with honesty – but I fear it disloyal to a country that has been wonderful to me if I am honest. So, how shall I share Korea with my friends and family?”

Their initial reaction was a thoughtful, almost sad silence. The silence itself a confirmation of my understanding, of my dilemma. Finally, one peer said, “I think you should tell the truth. It is true that we want the world to regard Korea well but you should tell the truth and you should not worry.” Our other peers nodded, soberly, in agreement. They vaguely understand that I like to write but they do not know about this blog and experience has informed me that the views of my peers are unique and that others may not be as fair-minded if they were to discover this blog. And, of course, my problem with accuracy remains. All of which combines to inhibit me in needing, in wanting to write about my life in Korea.

But I shall miss the next first sunrise, magnificent or not, over the sea of Busan on January 1^st, 2009. As you know, I am absent from the people that I consider home to explore the world – to sow wild oats, as a friend and I laughed just the other day – and I will be exploring elsewhere next year. So if I do not share the Korea that I love – garbage and all – with you all now, then when shall I?

Love,
Laura

My last supper of 2007....