Dear Family and Friends,

Living in a place where history is equally evident in everyday life, in culture and even in landscape can be a puzzlement.

For Americans, it seems to me, history is a series of dates in dusty textbooks to memorize, a minor consideration at best in our daily lives, in our culture. We don’t think of our current actions being at all related to our past history. I often think that we intellectually know our history and how it shaped us – but that our everyday actions can be explained by the ideologies that we are passionate about that were fostered in our history (i.e. democracy and inalienable freedoms), not our history itself.

In contrast, I’ve come to believe that Korea is a country both visibly and invisibly ruled by its history – to the same extreme that we Americans are ruled by our ideologies. Of course, Korea’s history is much deeper than the twentieth century facts that we Americans are generally aware of (the 1910 Japanese take-over of Korea, the proxy war that split Korea in the early 1950s, the South Korean economic “Miracle on the Han River,” and North Korea’s on-going militarist posturing). Indeed, Korea’s historical past combined with its geographic sandwichment between the powers of China and Japan manifests in large and small actions, can explain why Koreans passionately want to protect their culture, and why the Korean people want to be well-regarded in the world. Korea’s history fostered Korea’s ideas and continues to foster the everyday actions of its people.

Anyway, this idea that Korea is a country both visibly and invisibly ruled by its history is one of the important conclusions that I have reached after a year plus of living in Korea. As I’ve said before, one of the major ways that I maintain interest in Korea is in trying to explain Korea – which inevitably involves learning about the history of Korea. And this is the reason that I keep throwing history at you from this blog. Not because I have grandiose plans to pump out historical tomes that will mostly gather dust – but because I cannot explain Korea without framing the present with its past.

This conclusion was also my rationalization for an action that you all in the States would deem borderline mad: taking a trip especially to step upon a life-sized replica of an armored ship from the late 1500s. Blame my on-going curiosity about Korea, if you like. Or blame Winchester – because, as usual, he planted the seed which lead me to take an entire trip based on his words, “…students of naval warfare the world over compare him with Drake and Nelson and Halsey, as on of the great naval strategists of all time.” At that moment in Korea: A Walk through the Land of Miracles, Winchester was discussing Admiral Yi, Sun-shin, whose tactical brilliance along with his famous Turtle Ship re-design resulted in the world’s first ironclad battleships (some 266 years before the French altered the design of battleships with their launch of the first ironclad, dubbed La Gloire). Admiral Yi is mostly overlooked by history books, at least ones written in English and yet surely a historian, partial to feats rather than geography, would wish to include a commander who was successful in every battle he fought and was able to triumph against astonishing odds (such as utilizing 13 of his battleships to defeat 133 warships), yes? Admiral Yi deserves to be in the world’s cannon of historical heroes.

As for me, I am not by any stretch a historian nor a naval fanatic, so I shouldn’t have been interested in Admiral Yi. Except that reading Winchester’s account of him piqued my curiosity and I couldn't help but fancy Yi’s ironclad Turtle-like warships (in Korean, 거북선 - pronounced kŏ buk sŏn) which meant that I just had to see, touch and explore the inside of a Turtle ship. And so early in January, I traveled south from Jinju to Yeosu.

Another sunrise began my time in Yeosu. This time I watched the sun slip through a hole in gray clouds like thread too thick for the eye of a needle from the railing of a Buddhist hermitage in the southern-most part of an island. After the sun emerged as an orange ball of fire from behind the clouds, I celebrated with an early morning picnic followed by paying my respects to Buddha. It was only 9:20 when I caught a public bus for the 25 kilometer return to downtown Yeosu. The ride began with plenty of empty seats but as the bus intermittently stopped at small groups of rural houses along the way, bent old men with canes, school children in school uniforms, old women with mismatched clothing and cloth bundles of lettuce began to fill the seats. One old lady boarded the bus with a plastic bucket full of water and clams. As the bus began to fill, I respectfully vacated my seat in order to ensure that the older generation could sit rather than being tossed while the bus lurched from stop to stop. My simple gesture caused the curious stares of my fellow riders to turn to beaming smiles and silent offers to hold my bag while I attempted to stay upright, balancing on my heels and clinging to the back of seats. As the ride went on and on, the bus lurching while I clung, the people around me went out of their way to ensure that I was comfortable while I did everything I could to demonstrate that I was a respectful visitor (respect from outsiders means a lot to Koreans) - and to appease their curiosity. At this point, I can answer basic questions: conveying in broken Korean that I am an American, that I do not have a husband, that I teach English in Daegu, and that kimchi is delicious. And answer these questions, I did. LOL! Anyway, a bus ride that should’ve been isolated, car-sick misery instead became a lovely moment of cross-cultural camaraderie.

My next stop was the turtle ship that I had journeyed to see. The replica ship was actually kitted with poorly rendered, life-sized manikins in the midst of such actions as rowing and sleeping and commanding. Nonetheless, I loved the feeling of bobbing in the bay while reading that drums positioned towards the front of the vessel set the pace of the rowers, that one of these 37 meter x 6.8 meter x 8.2 meter, 150 ton ships could hold (uncomfortably) 130-150 people, and that the dragon masthead of the ships would spit sulfur clouds to confuse the enemy. I able to study the remarkable ship to my head’s content – I was the only crazy person there.

Pleased at having accomplished my ambition of having stepped into an important, albeit kitschy, bit of Korean history, and with plenty of time until my mid-afternoon train, I took myself to visit the reputedly beautiful island that overlooks the Future Site of the 2012 World Exposition, the site of the 2012 World’s Fair.

Call me a naysayer but as I gaped at futurist fair renderings of a converted empty industrial complex, I had to wonder if there was more than one kind of World’s Fair. World’s Fairs are big. They are famous. Yeosu was neither. Vaguely, I recalled that the first World Exposition was held in the architecturally famous Crystal Palace, in London, in the mid-1800s. And I was fairly certain that later World Expositions had been later been held in Seattle (ok, not famous!) but also in Paris, Vancouver B.C., St. Louis and… well, come to find out other world famous cities such as Barcelona, Brussels, New York, New Orleans, Osaka, Montreal, Milan and Vienna. According to one source, World’s Fairs are considered the third largest type of event in economic terms and cultural impact, after the FIFA World Cup & the Olympic Games. But the idea of including Yeosu and its population just exceeding 300,000 in the company of cities such as London, New York, and Barcelona just didn't make sense. There city has a single freeway, a (no doubt) tiny airport, and only a few trains run through the house-sized railway station with a single track. How could Yeosu be selected to hold a World Exposition?

Well, in the interest of fairness, my visit to the future site of the World Expo was four years and four months before the big event which is scheduled to open in May of 2012. Buildings can be built. Infrastructure can be improved. And there is some precedence for cities with smaller populations hosting the World’s Fair. Did you know that the last World’s Fair was hosted in Aichi, Japan, in 2005? And before you ask, I don’t know where Aichi is. Look it up. Other podunk cities to hold the Expo were San Antonio (Texas), Knoxville (Tennessee), Liège (Belgium) and Tsukuba (Japan) with the best podunk city to host the World’s Fair being Spokane, Washington in 1974. Apparently with its heart-pounding theme of "The Living Ocean and Coast: Diversity of Resources and Sustainable Activities,” Yeosu beat Tangiers, Morocco and Wroclaw, Poland for the 2012 hosting honor. So Yeosu must have something going for it. And let's be honest here, if Spokane can do it, Yeosu can too!

Anyway, I spent my remaining time in Yeosu puzzling over World’s Fair infrastructure (really!) while clambering over rocks to glimpse a rock dragon frozen into a watery cave, hiking under waxy leaf-covered camellia bushes, taking in the view at an octagonal lighthouse, getting invited to coffee by a lecherously grinning Korean man, and, best of all, walking barefoot down a path called the “health foot-pressure walkway.” After walking across meters and meters of alternating cemented stones, wood discs, smooth rocks, and pointed triangles, my feet felt tingly and happily alive although whether this was a result of the near-freezing weather or the painful pressure to my feet, it is hard to say.

Then, at that point, after days on the road and rails, I became eager to return home to Daegu. I wanted to warm myself on my ondol floor, sleep through sunrises, re-read Winchester’s account of Admiral Yi, and research World’s Fairs.

“A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” (George Moore)

Love,

Laura

The path that I tread before my feet became tingly and happy. Maybe there is something to this whole alternative medicine pressure-point stuff!