Koreana Spring 2014 (English)

spri ng 2014

Korean Culture & Arts S pri n g 2014

From Open Port to No. 1 Airport

Incheon: Korea’s Main Gateway

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Special Feature

Incheon Korea’s Main Gateway

Port City Where Internal and External Influences Converge; Incheon as Seen by a Palace Dancer of Joseon

www.koreana.or.kr

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ISSN 1016-0744

Yu Hyun-seok

PUBLISHER

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Cha Du-hyeogn EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Lee Kyong-hee

EDITORIAL BOARD

Bae Bien-u

Choi Young-in

Emmanuel Pastreich

Han Kyung-koo

Kim Hwa-young

Kim Young-na

Koh Mi-seok

Song Hye-jin

Song Young-man

Werner Sasse

COPY EDITOR

Dean Jiro Aoki

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Lim Sun-kun

ASSISTANT EDITORS Teresita M. Reed Cho Yoon-jung

CREATIVE DIRECTOR ART DIRECTOR DESIGNERS LAYOUT & DESIGN

Kim Sam Lee Young-bok Kim Ji-hyun, Lee Sung-ki Kim’s Communication Associates 384-13 Seogyo-dong, Mapo-gu Seoul 121-839, Korea www.gegd.co.kr Tel: 82-2-335-4741 Fax: 82-2-335-4743

TRANSLATORS

Charles La Shure Chung Myung-je Hwang Sun-ae Kim Young-kyu Min Eun-young

Subscription Price for annual subscription: Korea 18,000, Asia by air US$33, elsewhere by air US$37 Price per issue in Korea 4,500

Subscription/circulation correspondence: The U.S. and Canada Koryo Book Company 1368 Michelle Drive St. Paul, MN 55123-1459 Tel: 1-651-454-1358 Fax: 1-651-454-3519 Other areas including Korea The Korea Foundation 2558 Nambusunhwan-ro, Seocho-gu Seoul 137-863, Korea Tel: 82-2-2151-6544 Fax: 82-2-2151-6592 Printed in spring 2014 Samsung Moonwha Printing Co. 274-34 Seongsu-dong 2-ga, Seongdong-gu, Seoul 133-831, Korea Tel: 82-2-468-0361/5

© The Korea Foundation 2014 All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the prior permission of the Korea Foundation.

The opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily represent those of the editors of Koreana or the Korea Foundation.

Koreana , registered as a quarterly magazine with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Registration No. Ba-1033, August 8, 1987), is also published in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS Spring 2014

http://www.koreana.or.kr

Published quarterly by The Korea Foundation 2558 Nambusunhwan-ro, Seocho-gu Seoul 137-863, Korea

“Scenery with Piers” (2007) Kim Jae-youl, watercolor on canvas, 75 x 56 cm. After the opening of ports in the late 19th century, rice from grain producing regions around Korea was shipped to these piers at Incheon Port.

Editor's Letter

Incheon, Past and Present

In view of a capital city’s predominant influence in most areas, peo-

“This is just one example. Incheon was the first in many things in Korea

ple might assume that the first Western-style hotel in Korea would be

during this crucial period of modernization,” said local historian and jour-

found in Seoul. And many people believed, until quite recently, that Son-

nalist Cho Woo-sung. A century later, Incheon is striving to make another

tag Hotel, built in 1902 with support from King Gojong, was Korea’s first

leap forward. “We are headed to become the nation’s second most pros-

Western-style lodging facility. This hotel, located in Seoul’s original dip-

perous city. We believe it’s going to be sooner rather than later,” Cho said.

lomatic district in Jeong-dong, was a popular hangout for foreigners and

“But the economy isn’t everything. We want our city to become a culturally

local elites a century ago.

attractive place as well.”

However, 14 years earlier, Incheon was already home to Daibutsu Hotel

Incheon is making earnest efforts to preserve and promote the richness

(Daebul Hotel in local pronunciation; see the painting on p. 15), which

of its historical legacy; as a result, the city is now dotted with numerous

catered to foreign travelers arriving at Korea’s first open port. Before

theme museums and landmarks that illuminate diverse facets of its unique

embarking on another journey to Seoul, by horse or boat, they would often

history. Those landing at Incheon International Airport might well consider

stay here, the first Western-style hotel in Korea. When the nation’s first

taking the time to drop by these places as well as the nearby free economic

railway connecting Seoul and Incheon started operation in 1899, the hotel

zones, for a better understanding of how Korea has evolved from a pre-

lost customers, and its Japanese owner sold off the building to a Chinese,

modern society and where it is headed in this era of globalization.

who remodeled it into a restaurant.

Lee Kyong-hee Editor-in-Chief

Special Feature Incheon: Korea’s Main Gateway

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Special Feature 1

Port City Where Internal and External Influences Converge

Lee Chang-guy

Special Feature 2

Incheon as Seen by a Palace Dancer of Joseon

Shin Kyung-sook

Special Feature 3

Openness and Dynamism Highlight the History of Incheon

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Cho Woo-sung

Special Feature 4

From Open Port to No. 1 Airport

Ben Jackson

Special Feature 5

Islands Off Incheon: An Ecological Treasure Trove

Kang Je-yoon

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36

56 60 66

34 40 46 52

focus

Grand Opening of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul

Koh Mi-seok

interview

‘On Such a Full Sea’: Chang-rae Lee Talks about his New Novel

Young-Key Kim-Renaud

Guardian of Heritage

Jin Ok-sub Guards the Wellspring of Tradition

Chung Jae-suk

modern landmarks

Russian Legation Tower: A Vestige of Korea’s Passage into Modernity

Kim Yoo-kyung

art review

‘Lady Hong in the Palace’: A Human Psychodrama Based on Personal Memoirs

Kim Il-song

In Love with Korea

Rev. Motoyuki Nomura: ‘The people of Cheonggyecheon shantytown were my teachers.’

Jeon Eun-i

along their own path

Nora Noh: A Living Legend

Kim Yoo-kyung

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Books & More Charles La Shure

“Library of Korean Literature” (Volumes 1-10)

Korean Literature Series for English-speaking Readers

”The Great Enterprise: Sovereignty and Historiography in Modern Korea” A Study of Korea’s Path to a Modern Sovereign State

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73

Koreana ı Spring 2014

72 76 80 84

Entertainment

In the Era of ‘Flower Boys,’ Ha Jung-woo Shows Off Masculinity

Oh Dong-jin

Gourmet’s Delight

Bom Namul , Fragrant Vegetables for Early Spring Table

Ye Jong-suk

Lifestyle

Traditional Beauty Care: Become More Beautiful, Naturally

Lee Kum-sook

journeys in Korean literature

Translating the World with a Warm Heart Ladybugs Fly from the Top Park Chan-soon

Chang Du-yeong

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Special Feature 1 Incheon : Korea’s Main Gateway

Port City Where Internal and External Influences Converge From the broad perspective of cultural history, Incheon is an incredibly colorful and symbolic city. “Black bean noodles” and “Chinatown” are two keywords that help to illuminate the city’s vibrant past and present.

Lee Chang-guy Poet and Literary Critic | Ahn Hong-beom Photographer

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ost people would like to believe that their country has always had its own unique food. But contrary to such notions, food is not all that useful in identifying a people or a nation. It is similar to the way individuals talk about themselves in the context of others whom they know well. The same holds true for cultures as well.

Chinese-American culinary researcher Ken Hom, who hosted the KBS documentary “Noodle Road,” said, “The noodle itself is a blank canvas, and the food cultures of regions into which noodles have spread are like artists. Just as the artist has control over what is painted on a blank canvas, so it is with noodles. Noodles have been reinvented according to the regional food cultures that are painted on them.”

The reason that the noodle culture, which arrived from Central Asia, was able to flourish in China is directly related to the emergence of cities. With the fall of the Tang Dynasty and the subsequent rise of the Song Dynasty, city walls fell, and with them went all sorts of regulations, bringing freedom of commerce and industry. In the Song capital of Biànliáng (modern-day Kaifeng) some 73 large restaurants and countless smaller ones enjoyed brisk business. Quick and easy to prepare, as well as relatively cheap, noodles made an ideal meal for the poor city laborers who had flooded in from the countryside as the metropolis burgeoned. The same happened with pasta in Italy in the Baroque era, and soba in Tokyo in the Edo era.

Incheon’s noodles with black bean sauce, or jjajangmyeon, also first appeared when urbanization was in full swing thanks to the opening of Korea’s ports in the early 20th century. But for the residents of Incheon, jjajangmyeon is not a unique regional specialty. The noodles came from Central Asia through China, and the sauce is a salty fermented soybean paste from China mixed with caramel from South America. Served with sweet-and-sour Japanese pickled radish, you have jjajangmyeon, of which millions of bowls are said to be served every day in Korea.

The place where these ingredients and the food cultures of various nations merged together, in response to local needs, is Incheon, more specifically what is today called “Chinatown,” the area around Seollin-dong, Jung-gu, across the street from Incheon Station, the final stop of the Subway Line No. 1 from Seoul. This hilltop looks down on Jemulpo, the first port to be opened in Korea. The port’s opening not only unleashed a torrent of modernized systems and inventions from various nations into the “Land of the Morning Calm,” it also spurred Koreans, who had been divided by class and region, to flock to one place driven by their curiosity about and passion for new cultures.

The Incheon Port Coast Passenger Terminal, with six routes to Jeju, Baengnyeong, Yeonpyeong, Deokjeok, Ijak and Pung islands, opened in 1995 and reached one million passengers in 2013.

Koreana ı Spring 2014

Jemulpo, Korea’s First Modern City From the mid-19th century, Asia was under pressure to open its doors by the Western imperial powers, who had successfully achieved industrialization. Early on, China ceded Hong Kong as a result of its defeat by the British in the Opium War, and then in 1843 five other ports were forced to open, starting with Shanghai; Japan, awed by the power of U.S. Commodore Perry’s “black ships,” eventually opened several ports including Yokohama and Nagasaki in 1859.

The situation was no different in Korea. If there was a difference, it was that the invading foreign powers included Japan and Qing China, who had already opened their ports, albeit under unfavorable circumstances, and accepted modernization. At the time, Korea was caught up in severe factional strife between the advocates of enlightenment, supported by the Japanese following the Treaty of Friendship of 1876, and the conservatives, aided by Qing China. In the end, under pressure from Japan and Qing as both struggled for influence over Korea, in January 1883, Korea agreed to open the port of Jemulpo — gateway to the capital, Seoul.

Although Jemulpo had been a tiny port with only 15 families in residence at the time of its opening, foreign concessions sprung up there one after another, starting with Japan and followed by China, America, and various European nations. Around these concessions, where extraterritoriality, freedom of trade, and land ownership were guaranteed, roads were built, banks were established, and customs offices, post offices, and hotels were quickly opened,

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entrepreneur Tung Shun-tai. Although the Chinese government, led by Yuan Shikai, had adopted a policy of encouraging Chinese entrepreneurs and pressuring the Korean government, this was still an unprecedented measure even for China.

For a long time, China’s mainland-centered system of values meant that it showed little interest in maritime trade or fleet operations. China was content to simply welcome foreign merchants who had crossed the oceans to bring the goods it needed, or representatives from foreign governments who were willing to recognize and pay tribute to China’s power and prosperity.

In addition, the Qing Dynasty, founded by the Manchus, who had a cultural inferiority complex, was caught up in the external trappings of Neo-Confucianism. They called for people to remain in their hometowns and look after their families, and either looked down on those who roamed the world for trade or viewed them as a threat that needed to be controlled. But the Chinese who settled across Southeast Asia were an exception to this trend. They succeeded because of their own sense of adventure or business acuChinese Entrepreneurs in Jemulpo men; their situation was different from that of the Chinese entre“[On the morning of 21st June, 1894] upon landing, I found the preneurs who came to Korea deadly dull port transformed: under the protection or support the streets resounded to the of their government. tread of Japanese troops in With the sudden appearheavy marching order ... Every ance of the Japanese soldiers, house in the main street of though, even the calm and the Japanese settlement was cool Chinese entrepreneurs turned into a barracks and began to panic. Sensing dancrowded with troops, rifles and ger ahead, they rushed to leave accoutrements gleamed in the Jemulpo, and the clash of the balconies, crowds of Koreans, two nations’ armies escalated limp and dazed, lounged in the to war. Three hundred years streets or sat on the knolls, after the Chinese had helped gazing vacantly at the transforKorea fend off Japanese invamation of their port into a for1 sions, Japanese and Chinese eign camp.”

1 The stairs form the boundary between the former Japanese and Chinese concessoldiers again fought each This is a description of Jemulsions. To the left of these stairs are Chinese-style buildings, and to the right are other on the Korean Peninsula. po on the brink of the Sino-JapaJapanese-style buildings. 2 Romance of the Three Kingdoms Road, where the walls This time, the Chinese were nese War, from “Korea and Her are decorated with characters from the Chinese classic; ninety percent of the Chinese living in Incheon come from Shandong, also said to be home to Luo Guanzhong, defeated, and their commercial Neighbors,” written by the geogauthor of “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.” 3 The Incheon Chinatown Cultural influence in Korea declined. rapher Isabella Bird Bishop, a Festival is under way in the Chinatown. member of the Royal Geographical Society of Britain, who visited Korea four times, beginning in Gonghwachun and Jjajangmyeon Museum 1894, and stayed for a total of 11 months.

When the Qing concession was established in Jemulpo, some In the span of three months, some 6,000 Japanese troops had Chinese restaurants naturally opened as well. One of these was landed in the port. To Bishop, they appeared to have been preparSandong Hoegwan (“Shandong Hall”), founded in 1908. To coming for quite some time to gain supremacy over Korea by force. memorate the birth of the Republic of China in 1911, succeeding The percentage of imports from Qing China, which had been only the Qing Dynasty, the restaurant changed its name to Gonghwa20 percent in 1885, had risen to equal that of Japan by 1893, in less chun (“Spring of the Republic”) and flourished as an establishthan 10 years. The right of navigation on the waterway that linked ment where not only the Chinese but merchants from all nations Incheon to Seoul, allowing tremendous savings in both time and who traveled to and from the port of Incheon stayed and had their expense for the conduct of commerce, was awarded to the Chinese meals. Here at Gonghwachun, it is said, the Incheon-style black turning the sleepy port into a bustling modern city. Records of these rapid changes after the port’s opening are on display at the Incheon Open Port Museum, now housed in what was at the time the Incheon branch of the First National Bank of Japan.

All sorts of people roamed the port: foreign diplomats, of course, as well as merchants, engineers who had come to build the city, and workers who accounted for the largest portion of the foreign population. The Russian architect Afanasii Ivanovich Seredin-Sabatin was among them; he designed Manguk (“All Nations”) Park, the first modern park in Korea, on top of Mt. Eungbong looking down over the sea. (When a statue of Douglas MacArthur, who led the Incheon Landing during the Korean War, was erected here in 1957, the park was renamed Jayu [“Freedom”] Park. Here a siren blared to announce noon.) This is also where, in 1888, four nuns of St. Paul of Chartres arrived to begin their missionary work. But it was the soldiers who brought about the greatest change.

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Incheon’s Chinatown district has a unique culture and landscape that immerse visitors in the atmosphere of China. That said, the statue of Confucius, standing along the road between the former Chinese and Japanese concessions, dubbed the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms Road” and lined with buildings decorated with characters from the classical Chinese novel, cannot be considered the culture of China alone. bean noodles first appeared on the menu.

One of the biggest factors behind Gonghwachun’s success was the commercial freedom guaranteed to the Chinese by Japan, equal to the freedom accorded to the Western powers, after it forcibly annexed Korea in 1910. The Chinese merchants, who had been relatively quiet after the Sino-Japanese War, grew active again thanks to the trade of silk and hemp fabric. China’s textile industry, which had grown significantly with the invasion of foreign capitalist powers, expanded into nearby Asian countries through intermediary trade.

From 1913 to 1920, over 70 percent of all the hemp cloth exported by China came to Korea, and Korea’s import of Chinese silk jumped from 1 million won in 1903 to 6.76 million won in 1919. The Chinese in Korea enjoyed such economic prosperity until 1920 that every Korean was familiar with “Mr. Wang, the Silk Seller,” the popular song about the love of a rich Chinese merchant.

All this while, the Chinese population in Korea increased dramatically; some began to leave Jemulpo and spread across the nation. As a result, Chinese restaurants opened up in seemingly every corner of the country. The flourishing milling industry, which had been started by Japanese enterprises, supplied flour for noodles via the railways to the entire country, playing a major role in bringing jjajangmyeon to every city and province.

The success of the Chinese merchants represented credibility and diligence to Koreans, but for the Japanese, who had colonized Korea, it was something to be wary of. The Japanese colonial government suppressed silk imports from China with a crackdown on smuggling and imposed high tariffs on Chinese hemp fabric, replacing it with locally produced hemp cloth. As a result, the economic prosperity of the Chinese in Korea gradually declined.

The Chinese briefly showed signs of economic recovery after Korea’s liberation in 1945, but they faced yet another crisis when the Korean War broke out in 1950. Chinatown was leveled by artillery shelling during the Incheon Landing, which turned the tide of the war.

1 However, the Chinese in Korea

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sustained their economic presence thanks to their restaurant businesses and their representative dish, jjajangmyeon.

In the 1950s, even when dining out was still an unfamiliar practice for most Koreans, the number of Chinese restaurants continued to increase and by the 1970s eight out of every 10 Chinese living in Korea worked in the restaurant industry.

The Korean government, however, did not look favorably upon these Chinese residents, and through the 1970s enacted various regulations, including restrictions on Chinese land ownership, with legislative measures in 1961 that prohibited property ownership by foreign interests. Such restrictions made it difficult for the Chinese to survive, let alone maintain a business. Finally, 75 years after its opening, Gonghwachun closed its doors in 1983, fading into the mists of history. On top of this, diplomatic normalization between South Korea and the People’s Republic of China yet again cowed the Chinese entrepreneurs, who had proudly hung photographs of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in their restaurants.

The Gonghwachun building (now Registered Cultural Property No. 246) was purchased by the city of Incheon, which renovated the structure and, in April 2012, opened the Jjajangmyeon Museum, where artifacts related to black bean noodles and the legendary restaurant are exhibited. Just as a former textile factory in Shanghai, which had been a symbol of China’s textile industry, has been transformed into the M50 art district, the Jjajangmyeon Museum has emerged as a popular tourist hotspot in Incheon, greeting over 300,000 visitors in the two years since its opening.

There is No Chinatown in Incheon?

Some scholars say that Korea is one of the few nations in the world that have no Chinatown. They believe that the economic power of overseas Chinese, who have contributed to the rapid growth of China and achieved commercial supremacy in Southeast Asia, has not had much influence in Korea despite the 130-year history of local Chinese business activity. But the residents Ko re a n Cu l tu re & A rts

The Days of My Youth in Incheon Lee Chang-guy Poet and Literary Critic

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y family moved to Incheon from with worried eyes at the floodgate. My Seoul in 1959, when I was less mother gave birth to my two younger sisthan a year old, for my father’s shortters at this house. lived work at the Incheon Train Factory, My sister, who was one year younger, which closed down later that year. and I went together to the Fifth Church Our family of three settled down in a kindergarten behind our house. As I rented house, in Songhyeon-dong behind grew up, I began to roam about the what was then the heart of Incheon, East neighborhood: the Red Cross hospital Incheon Station. The neighborhood was with its white laundry flapping in the home to all sorts of emigrants, including breeze, Mt. Sudoguk and the water yoke I refugees and laborers. The area was origicarried up its slope, and the always mudnally a tidal channel that cut deep inland, dy Boat Bridge Market. I still remember bordered by grasslands filled with reeds, following the waterway that made its way but in the late 1930s the Japanese filled in beneath the covered Floodgate Market the channel, expanded the port, and built out of a sense of adventure and being factories and residential developments startled at the sight of great sailing ships that shaped it into what it is today. Place and factories wreathed in smoke amid names like “Floodgate” (Sumuntong) a tremendous clamor. This was my first 2 and “Boat Bridge” (Baedari) are remindlook at the sea off the coast of Incheon in 1 The Palmido Lighthouse, seen in the photo on the facing page, ers of the original landscape. the 1960s, beyond the vast tidal flats. built in 1903, was the first lighthouse in Korea. It is located on the At the time, this reclaimed land was The year I entered elementary school, sea route into Incheon from the southwest and played a vital role in packed with mills, foundries, and variwe moved to a house in Yonghyeonthe flow of maritime traffic for a hundred years. Since the state-ofthe-art New Palmido Lighthouse was built right next to it in 2003, ous industrial facilities. Among them was dong. Unlike Songhyeon-dong, where the old lighthouse has been preserved as a cultural property of the the Incheon Train Factory, successor to the houses were crammed together along city of Incheon. 2 Boat Bridge Village, where Koreans forced out of the Seoul-Incheon Railroad Company, narrow alleys, this house stood on its the treaty port resettled and accommodated modern culture. This neighborhood faced danger of being torn down for urban redevelthe first company in Korea to build and own on a hillside with a place out back opment in 2007, but has been designated a “historical preservation repair trains. These industrial facilities where we could fly kites. The house district” in accordance with the public’s wishes. were bordered by the Northern Coastal had been built as a residence for nearby Line, a three-kilometer branch line that connected the Seoul-Incheon Inha University. There were foreigners who lived nearby as well. When Line with the port. I can still remember watching the massive train construction began on the Seoul-Incheon Expressway, homes were derumbling down this “back-alley railway,” worrying that it would tear molished and people moved en masse to our neighborhood. Thanks to the roofs off the shacks that lined the tracks. this I made a lot of new friends.

My first memories of Incheon are from that house in SonghyeonWe spent the 1970s going out to Nak Island to fish for gobies, digdong. It was an improved Korean-style house, a small L-shaped home ging up arrowroot on Mt. Baekkop, playing at knocking down stone in an alley next to the covered Floodgate Market. Even today, my elderly towers with the children who lived near the market during the Harvest mother, now well past 80, grows sentimental whenever she thinks about Moon Festival, and skating with our little sisters in the winter. This the time we lived there. The kitchen was a little lower than the front yard neighborhood has been designated for improvement of its residential outside, and above the kitchen was a small loft connected to the main environment and is now awaiting redevelopment. Once this area is bedroom; this loft was ideal for hiding in and watching over the front redeveloped, it will most likely support the new city of Songdo, which and back yards. When the wind blew and the rains came, the backyard was built on reclaimed tidal flats. was filled with fallen persimmon blossoms. At high tide, the drain in the After finishing school in the 1980s, I went to Seoul in search of a yard flooded with seawater, and I would follow my father out to look job. Just as my father had left Seoul for Incheon for his work.

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of Incheon, who prefer the term “Cheonggwan” (literally, “Qing Village”), feel a little differently. They are somewhat uncomfortable with the seemingly contrived foreignness of places like San Francisco’s Chinatown.

According to recent statistics of the Chinese Residents Association of Incheon, about 3,000 ethnic Chinese currently reside in Incheon, including some 600 Chinese (150-200 families) within the city’s Chinatown. Incheon’s Chinatown district has a unique culture and landscape that immerse visitors in the atmosphere of China. That said, the statue of Confucius standing along the road between the former Japanese and Chinese concessions, dubbed the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms Road” and lined with buildings decorated with characters from the classical Chinese novel, cannot be considered the culture of China alone. Just as Jesus is not simply a resident of Nazareth, and Buddhism is not just the culture of Shakya, the home of Siddhartha.

Ninety percent of the Chinese residents of Incheon come from China’s Shandong Province, which lies directly across the Yellow Sea. Shandong is where the Qí and L states of the Spring and Autumn period were born, so it is also called the “Old Capital of Qí and L .” The state of L is the birthplace of Confucius, and Mencius and Sun Tzu were also Shandong residents. Luo Guanzhong,

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author of “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” is also said to have been from this area. Thus the statue and the murals mentioned above reflect the pride that the Chinese residents of Incheon have in their heritage.

The “Guanzi,” a text thought to have been written around 500 B.C. by the Qí official Guan Zhong, mentions trade between Qí and the ancient Korean state of Gojoseon (Old Joseon). Shandong was also where Jang Bo-go, a citizen of the Silla Kingdom who controlled the seas off southwestern Korea and engaged in active trade with China and Japan, founded the Chishan Fahua Temple and served as a pillar of the Silla community in China. Neo-Confucianism became the founding ideology of the 500-year-long Joseon Dynasty. “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” is one of the most widely-read classical novels in Korea as well.

When crossing the sea east of the Shandong Peninsula, the first land you reach is Korea, of which Incheon is one of the first ports.

This long history of interaction and the similarities between the 1 Songdo International City, one of Incheon’s three free economic zones and the center of international business, information technology, and bio technology. 2 Incheon Bridge connects Incheon International Airport with Songdo International City. This is the longest bridge in Korea at 18.38 kilometers in length and with towers rising 230.5 meters high. It was designed so that large ships could pass beneath the towers.

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peoples of China and Korea were important reasons behind the steady migration of Shandong residents to Incheon, and also why the residents of Incheon did not perceive the Chinese concession as an isolated, transplanted cultural district called “Chinatown.”

First Stopover on the Way to the Sea In 1987, China Central Television broadcast a controversial sixpart documentary titled “Death of the Yellow River.” Conservatives in China criticized the program for “exposing China’s weaknesses,” but reformists and most Chinese took it as a painful and sobering question: “Where is China headed?” Books that were critical of China’s outdated culture and discussed possible solutions to overcome the situation, flooded the bookshelves. Deng Xiaoping, who spearheaded an open-door policy that guided China toward pragmatism before passing away in 1997, left behind a will with instructions for his ashes to be scattered at sea. Many Chinese interpreted this as an expression of his belief that the future of China lay in the efforts to promote openness, as symbolized by the seas.

Korea could not escape this sort of self-reflection, either. In July 1998, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, Korea allowed foreign concerns to own property and eased regulations on foreigners living in the country, in an effort to attract much-needed foreign

Koreana ı Spring 2014

capital. This led to further liberalization measures by the two countries. In 2000, China lifted restrictions on Korean group tours. Korea opened Incheon International Airport in 2001, as a future hub of air travel in Northeast Asia, while the city of Incheon designated the former Chinese concession and the island of Wolmido as special tourist zones. In 2003, three free economic zones were established in Incheon. And in 2005, Seoul hosted the World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention for the first time.

Three times the area of Manhattan, Incheon’s free economic zones are designed to attract foreign investment. The Songdo area is a new center of international business, information technology, and bio technology; the Yeongjong area is focused on distribution and tourism; and the Cheongna area promotes financial and leisure activities. Thus far, these zones have attracted some $642.5 million in foreign direct investment, and in December 2013 the Green Climate Fund opened its secretariat in Songdo. Korean offices for the World Bank are also scheduled to open in Songdo soon. In addition, Incheon will host the 2014 Asian Games, accepting the mantle from Guangzhou, China. Through the middle of the 20th century, Incheon was a poor, underdeveloped region scarred by war, but it is now stepping onto the world stage, competing with Singapore and Hong Kong as a center of regional trade and commerce.

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Special Feature 2 Incheon : Korea’s Main Gateway

Incheon as Seen by a Palace Dancer of Joseon The following passages that describe the port of Incheon, the gateway to Korea, in the late 19th century, are from Shin Kyung-sook’s novel “Rijin.” The novel tells the love story of Rijin, a court dancer of Joseon, and a French diplomat.

Rijin is a historical figure named Yi Jin; she fell in love with Victor Collin de Plancy, the first French minister to Korea after the Korea-France Treaty of 1886, and went with him to live in Paris. — Editor's Note Shin Kyung-sook Novelist

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rom the capital to this port it took three whole days. They traveled winding mountain roads, dusty new highways, and gravel paths that looked down on a river on which floated several wooden boats.

They traveled along paddy ridges amidst newly-planted green rice seedlings waving in the wind. They passed by sumacs, cherry trees, and elms, and they passed by marigolds, irises, dandelions, and peach blossoms. They came across some wild peonies and stopped there for a while. She drank in the scenery as it passed by outside the palanquin — wondering if she would ever see it again.

She saw the endless expanse of ash-gray tidal flats for the first time.

There was not a cloud in the sky, and the wind was still as well.

When she lifted her eyes she saw clusters of islands floating far off in the blue sea like a dream, as if they knew nothing of the uncertain future of Joseon. Boats carrying firewood and other cargo rolled calmly on the sea, as if tugged by unseen hands, and the odor wafting from the stockpile of dried fish covered the entire harbor.

Freshly caught fish was set out in street stalls. Straw shoe peddlers

hurried along with their A-frames piled high. And onto this scene of people hard at work at their trades there spilled down the clear and gentle sunshine of early summer, not yet sticky with heat.

He, as a diplomat, had spent two months of every year on ships, but she was a court dancer and had just boarded her first ship today. The French man, wearing his loose-fitting pantaloons hanging down to his ankles and his short vest, over which he wrapped his belted traveling overcoat, standing tall with his fair complexion and stylish mustache, and the Joseon woman, holding in her hand a sweeping hat embroidered with roses and a coat to wear if it grew windy, her light blue dress fluttering — both stood out even in the throng of the harbor. Not only the old men with their long pipes clamped in their teeth, the peddlers in their wooden clogs, the young men who looked like ruffians, and the children covered in filth, but even the Chinese who transported firewood on their rafts or sold tea in the foreign concessions and the Japanese who sold rice at the docks raised their heads when these two passed by. Just as one might open a door to a strange world and peek inside, they

“The Port of Jemulpo Seen from Offshore” (2009) by Kim Jae-youl, watercolor on canvas, 118 x 91 cm.

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stared at them for an embarrassingly long time.

Especially at the woman.

This woman, with her thick, lustrous black hair like ebony combed and layered atop her head, beneath which glistened deepset eyes like indigo beads against her clear complexion, naturally stood out, as it was not a time when just anyone went around with their hair done in the Western style.

Her light blue dress flowed down from her shoulders, past her hips, and to her ankles in a graceful curving line. She stood in marked contrast to the women on the docks in their white cotton traditional skirts and jackets. They first thought, “Is that a foreign woman?” but then looked again and saw that “Ah, it’s a Korean woman!” and they openly fixed their curious gazes on her face for a while before moving on to Collin’s somewhat haughty-looking nose, white skin, and curly brown hair. There were some who could not take their eyes off the dazzling lace that decorated the plunging neckline of her dress. Some took a step back, fearful that they might step on her dress, but all those gazes of the people on the docks as they looked at her and Collin harbored a common curiosity: Just what sort of Korean woman was this who dressed in the Western style? Some furrowed their brows or pouted their lips, their moods spoiled by the sight. *** She paid no mind to the sidelong glances of the crowd. Her gait was clearly different from that of Joseon women, who habitually walked hunched over, hiding their faces beneath their hooded cloaks. Her steps did not falter. Neither did she stare out over the sea or do anything of the sort so that she could bear the suspicious gazes of the crowd. She strode forward with her shoulders thrust back, as if she were pushing through something, and this gave the impression that she was strong enough to never lose her confidence, no matter the circumstance. This aggressive stride of hers was offset by her deep-set eyes, the delicate curve of the nape of her neck, and the beauty of her face. Seeing that she was unshaken despite all the glances, those who stared at her were the ones who in the end sighed and turned their eyes to the sea.

That lovely woman, that woman who looked upon the harbor surrounded by low hillsides, had no idea that only ten or so years ago, before the conclusion of the Treaty of Jemulpo, this port was a place where there had been only a handful of merchants living quietly. It is those times when life or the world around us is most unbearable that change comes. The small fishing village surrounded by water rapidly transformed into an open port after the treaty.

The Japanese concession was established first in this quiet fishing village, followed by the Qing concession and those of various other nations. By now one out of every ten people in Jemulpo was either Japanese or Chinese. No one knew whether they would bring sadness or vitality to Jemulpo.

She thought that the weather was ideal for setting sail, but then

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immediately changed her mind. The commander of the regional forces, who had been asked by Jo Byeong-sik, the director of the Board for General Control of Diplomatic and Commercial Matters, to see off Collin as he departed Korea, had left them with the words that one did not comment on how nice the weather was when boarding a ship. He hinted that saying the weather was nice now could cause the wind and rain to rage later in their voyage.

Among those who had come to see them off were a few French missionaries, and the officials of the maritime customs office could be seen as well. There were even some nuns who had come from France and now lived here in Joseon.

A quick look around showed few tall buildings or large ships.

This was an outer port, but at first glance it looked like an anchorage harbor. The waves close in and the waves far off were all calm.

Among the low roofs could be seen the occasional white Europeanstyle buildings. Since there were no tall buildings, the thatch-roofed houses in row upon row looked as if they had their arms around each other’s shoulders. The warm sunshine seeped through between them. Having spent her life embroidering turtle patterns and dancing deep in the palace, she gave herself over to the gentle sunshine that spread out over the harbor. The high eaves of the palace were all joined one to another, so as long as she bowed her head she was always in the shade. By the time she reached the port, she had already said countless farewells to things she had seen for the first time, ground she had trodden for the first time, and people she had met for the first time.

Where had it been?

On the day they left the capital, her party had stayed at an inn. At this mountain inn, with its fence of dead trees, were a dozen or so ponies. The ponies snorted and strained as if they wanted to race across the plains, but they were penned in by the fence. When night fell, the cries of the mountain beasts flowed into her windowless room.

There are times when a kind word can sprout into love like a seed buried in the earth.

In that mountain inn, the court dancer Rijin heard the French minister Collin call her “my angel.” It was clearly Korean, not French. She was not as surprised at the words “my angel” as she was at his fluent Korean pronunciation. Collin had learned Korean in his spare time, but the Korean that he spoke always seemed somewhat wanting and drifted off into thin air.

Crossing the ocean and going to his land meant being with people who spoke a different language. Perhaps he had guessed at this uneasiness that had taken up a small corner of her heart, and for that reason, in that mountain inn in her land of Joseon, he had for the first time said “my angel” in perfectly pronounced Korean.

When those Korean words flowed gently from his lips, she expe-

“The Japanese Concession and Daibutsu Hotel”(2008) by Kim Jae-youl, watercolor on canvas, 46 x 38 cm. The three-story brick building on the right is the Daibutsu Hotel, the first Western-style hotel in Korea, built in 1899.

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rienced for a moment the power of language to transform emotion.

In that moment, when she heard those two Korean words, which were not the least bit awkward coming from a man who could still not even properly say her name, her calm heart had been shaken.

The fatigue from being jostled all day in the palanquin was washed away, and a bliss like one feels when soaking one’s feet in warm water flooded into her heart. The distance that she had felt between them since the day they had met, the distance that for some reason made her want to take a step back the more Collin wanted to be with her, disappeared as well.

She let down the hair that had been piled like dark clouds above the nape of her neck and held out a brush to Collin.

“Peigner moi?”

Collin’s eyes grew wide.

He liked brushing her black hair. The first gift he had given her, after the ring, was a brush he had brought from his country. Unfortunately, she did not like it when anyone touched her hair, with the exception of the Queen Dowager Cheorin and Lady Seo when she had been a court lady. Even when her fellow court dancers brushed each others’ hair, plaited it into two braids, coiled it up on their heads, and then decorated it with purple ribbons, laughing all the while, she sat off by herself, struggling to put up her own hair.

So when Collin wanted to brush the hair of the woman he loved, he would look at her with a desperately pleading expression on his face.

And now she had let down her hair of her own accord, held out the brush to him, and asked him in his own language to brush her hair.

Collin took the brush she held out to him and sat down behind

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her. He never imagined that she would ask him to brush her hair, and he buried his face in her lustrous black hair for a moment. A smile played on his face. It was a smile like that which crept across her face as she tried not to laugh whenever he called her name, “Rijin,” in his awkward Korean. Collin lifted his head and brushed her hair, but then he stopped and, imitating her way of speaking, said, “Peigner moi?” and then he peeked around at her from behind.

She turned around to sit facing him, and her abundant hair rippled like waves on the water. She held his face in her hands as he sat there smiling, brush in hand, and placed her lips on his. His beard brushed against her flushed cheeks. She fumbled for his hands. He put the brush down on the floor. Then they heard the snorting of the horse that Collin had ridden all day. They had leased three horses, along with their drivers, in the capital. Their baggage was loaded onto two of those horses. They paid one hundred nyang for every twenty li they traveled.

One of the three horses had a wound on its stomach. It would have fed on the fodder along with the ponies raised at the inn and now be fast asleep. Listening to the sound of the horse snorting in its sleep, she unfastened the buttons of Collin’s shirt. His bare chest was flushed. *** On their last night in Joseon, she slept with her friend Soa at the Daibutsu Hotel, which was run by a Japanese. Collin was allowing them to say their farewells.

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Special Feature 3 Incheon : Korea’s Main Gateway

Openness and Dynamism Highlight the History of Incheon Incheon has become the third-largest city in Korea after considerable demographic changes and a rich history of immigration, dating back to Prince Biryu of Goguryeo some 2,000 years ago, which have left a clear imprint on the city’s current identity.

Cho Woo-sung Member, Municipal History Compilation Committee of Incheon; Editor-in-Chief, The Incheon Times

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© Jung-gu Office, Incheon

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city’s vibrant history, and even today it continues to see a steady inflow of people from all over the country. This incoming traffic swelled remarkably in 1883, after the port was opened for international trade, and again in the 1950s, when Korean War refugees from the North flooded into the city. According to statistics released by the city last year, Incheon has grown three times in area over the past 23 years. Its resident population surpassed one million in 1979, two million in 1992, and is expected to reach three million in 2014, marking the most rapid population growth among all metropolitan cities in Korea.

In early times, people mostly settled in areas around Mt. Munhak, where King Biryu had built his capital and where the Military Command of Incheon (Incheon Dohobu) was located during the Joseon Dynasty. Mt. Munhak, a graceful mountain and one of Incheon’s best-known landmarks, has the remains of a mountain fortress, its mossmottled stone walls testifying to the city’s long history. Often shrouded by haze, a beacon mound at its peak has served for the people of Incheon as an indelible image of their hometown. Viewed from a distance, the beacon mound looks like the navel of a person lying on his back, for which Mt. Two Thousand Years after Prince Biryu Munhak has earned the nickname “navel Although the first emigrant to Incheon mountain.” Just as the human navel is the could not fulfill his dreams, he opened up vestige of life given to a baby by its mother, the city’s vibrant history. His willingness the mountain has long provided a sense of to give up a life of high status and wealth security and comfort to local residents. in his father’s court and make an uncerIn the fourth month of 1592, the 25th tain journey to establish his own kingdom 2 year of King Seonjo of Joseon, Mt. Munproves his courage and ambition. His guilt 1 Fishing boats are docked at the piers of Incheon Port hak suffered the ravages of the Imjin War over the suffering of his people reveals in this undated photo from the early 20th century. The fishermen are hanging their nets high on the mast to with Japan, which devastated the entire that he was a conscientious leader who dry.

A century ago, the sea near Incheon was teeming nation. The 200,000-strong Japanese forctried to live up to an ideal that we now call with many fish species, including yellow corvinas and es advanced to Incheon and Bupyeong noblesse oblige. sea bass. 2 All Nations Park (today’s Freedom Park), designed in 1888 by the Russian architect Afanasii Ivanovich in only 20 days after landing at Busan on After the death of Biryu, Michuhol went Seredin-Sabatin, is captured in a postcard. It is one of the southeastern tip of Korea, committing by various names — Maesohol, Soseong the series of old postcards made during the Japanese unspeakable atrocities against the Koreans Prefecture, Gyeongwon County, and Inju — colonial period, featuring tourist attractions of Incheon. along the way. before it was first called Incheon six centuAs the Joseon military could do little to resist the Japanese ries ago in 1413, when King Taejong of the Joseon Dynasty reorgainvaders, the ruling class took refuge on their own, while many nized the regional administrative system in the second year of his ordinary people bravely fought to defend their country. The vicreign. tory at the fortress of Mt. Munhak also owed a lot to the bravery of In 2013, Incheon Metropolitan Government commemorated the civilian voluntary troops. As a result, the Border Defense Council two millennia since Prince Biryu’s arrival and six centuries since (Bibyeonsa) was able to report to the king on the third day of the the city was named Incheon. The history of immigration, starting twelfth month that year: “The enemy’s victorious advances up to with Prince Biryu of Goguryeo two thousand years ago, has left a now depended only on their rifles, but the high walls of the mounclear imprint on the city’s identity, which is still evident today even tain fortresses rendered them useless. Consequently, we were though Incheon has undergone considerable demographic changes able to win battles at the Incheon and Haengju fortresses, thanks to to become the third-largest city in Korea. the topographical advantages.”

Since the time of Biryu, the “Incheon rush” has been part of the

he earliest extant historical literature that mentions the Incheon area is “History of the Three Kingdoms” (Samguk sagi ). According to this 12th-century source, about 2,000 years ago, Prince Biryu, the son of Jumong, who founded Goguryeo in 37 B.C., headed south with his faithful retainers and subjects, climbing mountains and crossing rivers until they arrived at a tranquil coastal area. This place, then called “Michuhol,” where the prince and his retinue finally settled, is the area around today’s Munhak-dong and Gwangyo-dong in the southern part of Incheon.

With Michuhol as the capital, Biryu aspired to develop his new kingdom into a powerful state. However, his ambition was frustrated by the fact that the land near the salty sea was not suitable for crop farming. Furthermore, the king, reproaching himself for not being able to properly feed his people, developed a serious illness that eventually led to his demise.

After his death, his younger brother Onjo, who had settled in the region south of the Han River and to the southeast of present-day Seoul, founded the kingdom of Baekje (18 B.C.-A.D 660), laying the groundwork for the Three Kingdoms Period.

© Jung-gu Office, Incheon

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Incheon has been remarkably immune to the negative consequences of regional favoritism. Thanks to its longstanding tradition of openness, like the sea that receives water flowing in from all sources, the city has achieved development without sacrificing its diversity and dynamism.

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© Jung-gu Office, Incheon

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The presence of this large-scale residence for Chinese envoys indicated that the island was situated along a key sea route for trade between Goryeo and Song.

The island was renamed Yeongjong in the mid-Joseon period. After a naval base called Yeongjongpo was 1 moved from Namyang County (current Hwaseong) to this island in the fourth year of King Hyojong (1653), the name of the encampment became more widely known and eventually became the name of the island itself. Noting that the island was inhabited, the geographical records from the “Annals of King Sejong” (Sejong sillok jiriji) state: “Located 3 li [1.2 km] off the west coast of the port where the Jemul Naval Base is stationed and with a circumference of 25 li [9.8 km], the island provides a grazing ground for 258 horses belonging to the state, and has more than 30 households of naval personnel, shepherds, and sea salt farmers.”

In addition, this record goes on to make clear that Yeongjong Island was of extraordinary value to the royal court of Joseon.

The island was where rain-making rituals were held in times of drought, and where a temporary palace was built for the king to take refuge in times of national emergency. Since the pines growing on the island were ideal for the building of naval vessels, they were protected by the state. The island was famous for its picturesque scenery with mountains and flowing waters as well as fertile farmlands. Prior to the reign of King Sukjong (r. 1674-1720), local residents used to hunt deer that were offered as tribute to the king.

Yeongjong Island was also valued for its strategic importance.

In the fourth year of King Sukjong, Minister of Military Affairs Kim Seok-ju asserted, “With its southern port serving as an entry to the capital for cargo ships, the island is close to the river route of the mainland, and is large enough to install a military base without

Incheon

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u Office,

Opening of the Port After the Jemulpo (also spelled as Chemulpo) port of Incheon was opened to foreign trade in 1883, the city’s administrative center was relocated to the port area of today’s Nae-dong, Jung-gu, and the Incheon County Office was renamed the Incheon Port Administration Office (Incheon Gamniseo). This move made it more convenient for government officials to perform entry/departure inspections, and import/export management, and to enforce quarantine procedures at the port. In this way, Jemulpo functioned as an important gateway directly connected to Seoul, such that the city’s residents called it “the throat of the capital.”

Similarly, Yeongjong Island, close by the port of Jemulpo, was also a strategic point of marine transportation. The island was long believed to have such strong spiritual energy that the royal court regularly held sacrificial rites here. “Illustrated Account of Goryeo” (Gaoli tujing) written by Xu Jing, who came to Korea in 1123 as an envoy from Song China, introduces this island as Jayeon Island, or “island of purple swallows.” In his travelogue, the Chinese envoy comes to understand the origin of the island’s name after viewing the wondrous sight of swallows in flight from his temporary residence Gyeongwonjeong, or the House of Underlying Reverence.

© Jung-g

The contributions of civilian fighters, which proved vital to the triumphant battles, are recorded in the “Annals of King Seonjo” (Seonjo sillok): “The enemy did not dare to invade and capture Incheon Fortress because the people went inside and protected it with all their might.” (Entry of the 13th day of the 11th month of 1596) In this regard, Mt. Munhak is a symbolic monument of the ordinary people’s determination to defend their country at all costs.

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destroying the cattle pasture.” In the 34th year, Jo Tae-chae, the then minister of military affairs, proposed to the king that they build a fortress on the island “because it would surely be helpful in times of emergency.”

Allied Landing and International Airport In the 19th century, Korea came under growing pressure to open its doors to the outside world. The country hence faced a series of predicaments, such as the French invasion of Ganghwa Island in 1866, another invasion of the island by American warships in 1871, and the clash between the Japanese battleship Unyo and Korean forces in 1875. After these unfortunate encounters with foreign powers, Korea was forced by Japan to open the port of Jemulpo in 1883, incorporating itself into the fringe of modern capitalism. Subsequently, the city of Incheon underwent unprecedented changes that served to sow the seeds of a “new culture” in Korea.

Tall Western-style buildings started to appear in Incheon not long after the port opening, and jobs that had been unheard of before in the Hermit Kingdom of Joseon opened up as the city became home to the country’s first lighthouse, hotel, post office, telecommunications office, rice mill, weather observatory, match factory, soda factory, consulate, trading company, and wharf. People from all over the country flocked to Incheon to fill these jobs.

The resulting demographic diversity created a social environment 1 The anchor from the Russian gunboat Korietz , which was sunk in the Battle of Jemulpo (From the collection of the Incheon Metropolitan City Museum) 2 The street in front of Incheon Police Station in the early 20th century 3 Incheon’s Sinpo-dong area in the early 20th century 4 Cargo handling at Incheon Port spawned warehousing and stevedoring services.

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in which positions were filled based on a person's ability rather than background. The once prevalent biases and preferences of employers, like regional origin, were now regarded as secondary to a jobseeker’s individual capabilities.

Incheon has since been remarkably immune to the negative consequences of regional favoritism. Thanks to its longstanding tradition of openness, like the sea that receives water flowing in from all sources, it has achieved development without sacrificing its diversity and dynamism. Incheon’s citizens also take pride in the fact that they have elected their mayors without regard to a candidate’s place of origin. These collective experiences have contributed to creating a city that can welcome people from all regions, and all countries for that matter.

Unfortunately, the city is better known to the world for international warfare rather than its more admirable qualities. In 1902, Russia and Japan waged the Battle of Jemulpo off the coast of Incheon. And during the Korean War, which broke out on June 25, 1950, the Allied Forces led by General Douglas MacArthur carried out a bold amphibious landing at Incheon in September of that year, which marked a turning point in the South’s defense. Due to these two incidents, Incheon was engraved in the global history of warfare.

When Incheon International Airport opened on Yeongjong Island in 2001, it helped to offset Incheon’s war-related reputation and promote the city as an advanced transportation hub. While the opening of its port in 1883 was an unfortunate historical outcome of the coercive gunboat diplomacy of 19th-century imperialists, the opening of Incheon International Airport represents Korea’s proven ability to advance onto the world stage with its own technological prowess in the aerospace era of the 21st century.

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n Tuesday, December 22, 1902, when the chilly sea wind was blowing over the port of Jemulpo in Incheon, the first group of Korean emigrants to Hawaii boarded the Japanese steamship Kenkaimaru , headed for Nagasaki, Japan. There they would transfer to the S.S. Gaelic , a U.K. trans-Pacific steamship departing for Hawaii.

The 121 Koreans in the group, mostly members of Naeri Methodist Church, had mixed feelings. The receding view of the bare coast of their motherland and the thought of its perilous political circumstances would not leave their minds all throughout the journey. In the meantime, they reminded themselves over and over again of the recruitment notice posted by the Department of Emigration. (Called Yuminwon, the emigration department was headed by Min Yeonghwan, who would later kill himself in protest against the 1905 Protectorate Treaty between Korea and Japan.)

The notice read: “Mild climate with no extreme heat, which should suit everyone. Wages amount to 15 won, to be paid in American cur-

Province, and 7 from Seoul — the majority (86 people) came from the current Incheon metropolitan area. These statistics show that the city of Incheon was closely involved in the emigration business. In fact, some active members of Naeri Church worked for the emigration agency, translating for the emigrants and then assuming leading roles among the Koreans in Hawaii.

The first group of emigrants spent two days on the first ship before they landed at Nagasaki port, where they underwent medical inspections. Just 104 of them, including two translators, boarded the Gaelic and, by way of Yokohama, arrived at Sand Island, located just offshore from Honolulu Harbor, at the dawn of January 13, 1903, three weeks after they left Japan.

After another round of medical inspection conducted by the U.S. immigration office, some of them were sent back to Jemulpo because of eye diseases and other disorders. The remaining 86 Koreans — 48 men, 16 women and 22 children — were finally accepted and loaded onto a narrow gauge railway train headed to Waialua Plantation on the north shore of Oahu, where they were housed at Mokuleia Camp.

Contrary to the information from the emigration agency, life on the plantation was anything but easy at first. Nevertheless, the Koreans managed to establish a new life there as Cho Woo-sung Member, Municipal History Compilation Committee of Incheon; Editor-in-Chief, The Incheon Times the first emigrants officially recognized by the Korean government.

According to related documents, rency. Ten hours work per day with Sundays off. Workers to be accomthey lived not in farmhouses, as had been advertised, but in shabby modated in farmhouses. Expenses for firewood, drinking water, and plywood shacks. They had to work in the sugarcane fields for 10 hours medical treatment will be paid by the employer. Workers will not be a day in suffocating heat. Suffering from homesickness, they worked charged.” hard under such difficult conditions to earn one dollar and 25 cents Taken as stated, the conditions for emigration were not bad. Even a day, which they saved or sent to their families at home. Soon, other so, emigration to Hawaii was a hard decision to make. Koreans dreaded Koreans followed, and by April 1905, 7,200 emigrants in 65 groups had the prospect of living among Westerners, with whom most had never moved to Hawaii, creating a Korean community on the Pacific island. had any contact before. In addition, ethical principles of the time were But the process of settling down was not without problems. The such that leaving their parents with no prospect of returning was conmajority of the Koreans in Hawaii were bachelors, and some turned to sidered undutiful and disloyal. drinking and gambling. The U.S. immigration office thought the maFor these reasons, few people responded to the advertisements jor problem was the lack of women in their community, which made posted in all major cities and ports in the country. The recruiter, David them unable to start a family. Thus the so-called “picture bride” system W. Deshler, grew impatient and for help turned to George H. Jones, was introduced, offering residency to Asian women who would marry the pastor at Naeri Church. As a friend of Horace N. Allen, minister at recent emigrants from their home countries. the U.S. Legation in Korea, who had been asked by sugarcane plantaThe first Korean picture bride, Choe Sa-ra, arrived in Honolulu tion owners in Hawaii to assist in the emigration of Koreans, Jones was on November 28, 1910, and married Yi Nae-su. A total of 951 picture receptive to Deshler’s request. In the end, he succeeded in persuading brides arrived in Hawaii as of October 1924, and the Korean commumore than 50 members of his church and 20 stevedores at Incheon nity gradually found stability. port. The first group of emigrants thus recruited boarded the ship to Around that time, Korea was annexed by Japan, as had been grimly Nagasaki on that winter day. predicted. The first-generation Korean emigrants committed themThe group consisted of 67 individuals from Jemulpo, 10 from selves to fighting for the independence of their motherland. Such Bupyeong, 9 from Ganghwa Island, 3 from other places in Gyeonggi spontaneous responses to the state of affairs in the homeland charac-

Museum Commemorates the First Korean Emigrants to Hawaii

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Cutout figures of Korean passengers of the S.S.Gaelic and their luggage and personal belongings are displayed at the Museum of Korean Emigration History.

terized the history of Korean emigration. Indeed, Hawaii became one of the largest overseas bases of the Korean independence movement, its Korean community fervently supporting the provisional government in Shanghai with funds raised through diverse means including public bonds.

After Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule, the first thing that the Koreans in Hawaii did was to support the founding of a university in Incheon. They believed that the only way to prevent their motherland from losing its sovereignty again was to educate the younger generations. In 1953, on the 50th anniversary of Korean emigration to Hawaii, they raised $150,000 for the establishment of Inha Technical College (today’s Inha University), which was named by combining the first syllables of “Incheon” and “Hawaii.” The donation, added with government subsidies, was used to found the school in 1954. The Korean community in Hawaii continued to provide scholarships to support talented students.

Half a century later, in January 2003, two million Koreans in the Koreana ı Spring 2014

United States held grand festivities to celebrate the centennial of Korean immigration. Incheon’s community leaders and then mayor Ahn Sang-soo were invited to the ceremony in Hawaii, which illuminated the role of the American island as the starting point of Korean emigration and second hometown of all Koreans residing abroad.

The event served to boost awareness of how the first-generation emigrants, who despite considerable hardships managed to make their way in a foreign land and helped their country recover its independence, demonstrating the pioneering spirit of Incheon. There was also broad public consensus that a museum was needed to remember and commemorate the history of Korean emigration.

After several years of preparation, the Museum of Korean Emigration History was opened in June 2008 at Wolmi Park. Today, its exhibits are mainly focused on the history of Korean emigration to America, but there are plans to add separate halls dedicated to Asian and European countries. Highlighting Incheon as the home base of the Korean diaspora, the museum showcases a century of Korean emigration and the hardy individuals who, in spite of much adversity, proved the Korean people’s can-do spirit and maintained strong ties with their motherland.

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Special Feature 4 Incheon : Korea’s Main Gateway

From Open Port to

No. 1 Airport Perhaps it’s fitting that the main gateway between Korea and the rest of the world remains just a few miles from where the open port and foreign concessions of Jemulpo stood at the turn of the last century, symbolizing the dawn of Korea’s modern era and engagement with the outside world.

Since 2001, most international visitors to Korea have touched down on the piece of reclaimed land between two islands that is home to Incheon International Airport.

Ben Jackson Freelance Writer

Incheon International Airport has been rated the world's best airport for nine consecutive years.

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hat must once have been an exciting approach to the docks through the various islands and tidal channels off the coast of Incheon has now been replaced by a descent over sparkling sea, huge docks, urban landscapes and improbably long bridges. All around are the mudflats of Korea’s west coast, which were made famous by the amphibious landing that changed the course of the Korean War. The air is often hazy, especially in spring when the notorious “yellow dust” blows in from the northwest.

A bus or express train into Seoul passes over this vast mudscape for 20 minutes or so before crossing the Han River and entering the capital through its western outskirts.

The airport itself is one of the most important in Northeast Asia, ranking ninth in the world in terms of the number of international passengers each year. In 2013, more than 40 million passengers — over 113,000 every day — passed through its terminals. More meaningfully for travelers, it has been rated the world’s best airport by the Airports Council International (ACI) for nine consecutive years. While some airports can be little more than frustrating hurdles on the way into or out of a country, Incheon International Airport is actually quite a pleasant place to be.

No More Glamour When I was about eight, my parents pulled the magical feat of getting me and my sisters excused from school for two weeks for a family trip from England to Greece. On the way, something happened that would be unthinkable today: a smiling stewardess took me up the aisle and through the open cockpit door to meet the pilots. They chatted to me for a while and I came away, in awe, with a round sticker of a smiling cartoon plane as proof of the experience.

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Flying is different now. Real and imagined terrorist threats have closed cockpit doors and tightened regulations on the ground and in the air. The world’s mushrooming middle class is enjoying new-found international travel opportunities, creating new business and pushing airports to their limits. Many pilots claim their job is little different from that of a bus driver. Passengers grit their teeth at the gradual loss in legroom as economy class becomes ever more economical for their carriers. The mystique of airports and planes has evaporated.

So what does it mean to be the best airport in the world? What do people care, other than wanting to get as quickly and conveniently as possible from runway to city center, or from check-in to take-off? Why would anyone stop to read an article about an airport?

Invisible Airport For an airport, the list of functions to keep fulfilling smoothly and unobtrusively is dauntingly long. Customers want speed, convenience, polite and competent service, reliability, and comprehensible and accurate information. And safety.

Every long queue, unfriendly staff member, overbearing security search, dirty toilet, lost baggage item, misleading sign, picked pocket, moment of boredom, lack of seating, and disappointing shopping foray becomes a minus point or an unhappy anecdote. Outside on the tarmac, high-speed aluminum tubes crammed with people and cargo must be delivered safely to and from the sky every few minutes, without delay or confusion. Luggage must be handled swiftly and thoroughly. The local city center must be within easy reach. Every unexpected mishap must be dealt with rapidly and effectively before it has time to put a spanner in the works.

Perhaps the reason I appreciate Incheon International Airport so much is that I’ve experienced inexplicably bad airports in other developed countries. This makes it very hard to take Incheon’s quality for granted. A significant part of what makes it such a good airport is its success in keeping all the essential boxes ticked, taking as much hassle as possible out of the travel experience and showing up most of its rivals overseas. It boasts the fastest emigration and immigration processing times in the world, for example. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) recommends average times of 60 and 45 minutes for emigration and immigration, respectively; at Incheon, the corresponding figures are 19 and 12 minutes. Luggage arrives promptly on the carousels after immigration. Buses and express trains depart regularly and are clean and reasonably priced.

Incheon airport authorities put their success down to communication and coordination between the 900 organizations and approximately 40,000 individuals involved in the working of the airport. They claim their airport manages to excel thanks to a shared commitment to providing the best service in the world. Normally this would come across as glib corporate speak, but here’s the thing: most of the time, it actually seems to work.

Smiles and friendly customer service do not equal competence, however. Incheon excels in its ability to combine these things with consistently good management. And this is where, if I didn’t dislike generalizations, I would start to praise Koreans as a whole for their ability to combine working in a hierarchical organization with quick thinking, good problem solving skills, a sense of personal responsibility and — I don’t know exactly what the right word for this is — a desire and ability to get things done. This is demonstrated in myriad small ways: one American friend told me of his surprise when the airport staff helped him retrieve his mobile phone after he left it on a plane before disembarking, something that would have been nearly impossible in the United States due to inflexible regulations. Though just a small example, it represents an attitude that, when multiplied by 40,000, can create a culture of using common sense and good communication to get tasks accomplished, keeping the overall system in motion and avoiding bottlenecks.

Visible Airport Incheon International Airport is not just a piece of infrastructure but a structure, too. As the source of many travelers’ first impression of Korea, it deserves some measure of style. Like many other Asian airports built over the last few decades (Renzo Piano’s airport in Kansai and Foster and Partners’ in Hong Kong, for example), it has had the luxury of being designed from scratch, on a custom-made blank canvas,

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1 With automated screening for passengers departing and arriving, Incheon International Airport boasts the fastest processing times in the world. 2 In the baggage claim area, trained dogs of the Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency sniff the luggage of travelers. 3 A view of the departure area at Incheon International Airport Ko re a n Cu l tu re & A rts

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Incheon airport authorities put their success down to communication and coordination between the 900 organizations and approximately 40,000 individuals involved in the working of the airport. They claim their airport manages to excel thanks to a shared commitment to providing the best service in the world.

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in one go. Compared to England’s Heathrow Airport, for example, which began with an airstrip on dubiously requisitioned market garden land in the 1930s and some tents as terminal buildings, and has since evolved into a jumble of five terminals, this is definitely not something to be taken for granted.

Environmental controversies aside, the wide plot of reclaimed land allowed not only the building of Incheon’s characteristic long, crescent-shaped terminal that accommodates arrivals, departures, and leisure facilities with ease but also a long-term expansion plan. The airport opened in 2001 with two runways, now has three and may end up with as many as five. Construction recently began on a second terminal, due for completion in 2017, in order to meet steadily increasing passenger and cargo demand. This blank slate, combined with what appears to be active government support for developing the facility into a regional “megahub” airport, allows for some great design work.

The current terminal, designed by Fentress Architects, subtly incorporates elements of Korean cultural heritage, such as the sweeping curves of the roofline and inclusion of native plants like red pines, maples, and azaleas (many of them indoors). Luckily, it manages to do this by avoiding cliché and staying true to function with a restrained combination of concrete, steel, and glass. It’s not a breathtaking or monumental structure but it has poise and a lot of understated elegance, striking exactly the right combination of visibility — creating a physical impression — and invisibility in terms of supporting all of its functions and impeding none of them.

In a bid to maintain its top world ranking amid increasing competition, the airport also offers a huge portfolio of amenities such as museums, cultural experience centers, indoor gardens, extensive shopping and dining, a cinema, an ice rink, a spa with sleeping rooms, and more. These appear to go down especially well with transit passengers, essential players in the airport’s quest to become an important hub.

Terminal 2, designed by a consortium that includes Heerim Architects and Gensler, is set to be a “glob-

1 Various cultural activities are offered for the enjoyment of travelers and visitors.

2 Incheon International Airport is ninth worldwide in the annual total of international passengers. In 2013, more than 40 million passengers passed through the airport.

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al benchmark in traveler ease, comfort and amenity with expansive indoor gardens, luxury shopping, and 13-minute train-to-gate transit time,” according to Gensler’s website.

The Future Infrastructure junkies may be disappointed that the dramatic curves of the airport’s transportation center, with echoes of 1960s futurology, do not harbor a station for a maglev train ready to shoot into the heart of Seoul. I find it a little surprising that Korea’s famous spirit of competitiveness was not stirred by the arrival of the Shanghai Maglev Train in 2003, which takes just eight minutes to reach the city’s conventional subway system. But you can’t have everything. For the time being, passengers can look forward to the coming extension of the high-speed KTX rail network to the airport, though track limitations mean that the journey will be not much faster than the current 40-minute Airport Railroad Express.

Controversial plans for privatization of the airport have been floating around in various forms for several years. The airport authorities declined to answer a question about this — who knows what privatization will bring, if it happens? It may have produced bad results for some European railway networks, but advocates of the principle point out that has been a lot more successful with airports. As long as all-out efforts to keep the airport’s top ranking and reputation for outstanding service continue, maybe passengers will not lose out even under private ownership.

Unless airships make a comeback, the loss of romance from air travel looks to be irreversible. In these circumstances, convenience, minimization of hassle, a pleasant environment, and the chance for proper relaxation are all that an airport can really hope to offer, seasoned with consumerist sugar rushes of duty-free shopping.

Incheon International Airport excels in providing all of these — that’s what I like about it. If you want romantic travel, you could probably go to the docks and take a boat to China, or even to one of the offshore islands.

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Special Feature 5 Incheon : Korea’s Main Gateway

The Islands Off Incheon An Ecological Treasure Trove There are some 130 islands large and small off the coast of Incheon. Every year, over a million people pass through the port of Incheon to visit these islands, where they can find the lifestyles of the past and nature in its original form.

Thus the old islands of Incheon represent its future.

Kang Je-yoon Poet; Principal, Island School, Pressian Humanities Institute | Ahn Hong-beom, Ha Ji-kwon, Kwon Tae-kyun Photographers 1

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t’s not possible to tell all the stories of the many islands off the coast of Incheon in a single sitting. So, I think it would be helpful to begin with a poem of mine.

On the Geomeunnang coast of Daecheong Isle / The path follows the cliffs into the heavens, / And an old man who will soon return to heaven himself / Has come out to find his last meal on earth. / The old man harvests the oysters clinging clustered to the rocks. / The oysters grow fat and thin with the waxing and waning of the moon. / The island folk also grow fat and thin like the oysters. / The island folk are descendants of the moon. / The moon pushes and pulls the seawater and grows the things of the sea, / And the people go out to the sea to catch the fish and harvest the conches and oysters.

— “Descendants of the Moon” by Kang Je-yoon

Volcanic Island of Gureopdo “When you arrive at the island, take a moment to slowly look around. You’ll see a landscape that has been changing for tens of thousands of years, sculpted by the wind, waves, fog, and salt air.

Things made by human hands are regarded as cultural properties after only a hundred years. Yet people think little of the sculptures created by nature over hundreds of millions of years. They carelessly knock them down in the name of development.”

These words of the captain of the boat to Gureop Island cut to the quick. Gureop Island, part of Deokjeok-myeon, Ongjin County, which administratively belongs to Incheon Metropolitan City, is a tuffaceous island that was created by volcanic activity some 90 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era. It was built up from continuous accumulation of volcanic ash.

Thus, traces of the volcanic activity and subsequent erosion, as the rocks split apart and crumbled, are still visible along the coast. The island is home to numerous types of animals, including the Eurasian oyster-catcher (Haematopus ostralegus osculans), an endangered species of which there are only 10,000 remaining worldwide, as well as falcons (Natural Monument No. 323), storks, rat snakes, and black water snakes. It also harbors a unique plant community,

in which subtropical and subarctic plants can thrive together.

The coastline of Gureop Island is a vivid textbook in geology. The nearby uninhabited Rabbit Island, which is connected with Gureop Island at low tide, is so highly prized for its conservation value that the Cultural Heritage Administration refers to it as “the crowning gem of coastal topography, of a kind found nowhere else in Korea.”

Rabbit Island, so named because the residents of Gureop Island once raised rabbits there, has a 20-meter-high coastal cliff pockmarked by tunnels boring 3-5 meters into the cliff side. These tunnels, which were bored not by excavators but created by the saltwater, are the largest sea-eroded ditches in Korea. Also called “notches,” the tunnels are topographical features created by the erosion of volcanic rock due to its exposure to salty seawater over eons of time. Altogether, Gureop Island is a breathtakingly beautiful sculpture park created by nature.

Legendary Fish Market of Yeonpyeongdo Located near the Northern Limit Line, Yeonpyeong Island is best known these days for being a conflict area, the site of two naval battles between North and South Korea in 1999 and 2002, and an artillery shelling by the North in 2010. It is quite far from Incheon, a distance of 122 kilometers, but only 30 or so kilometers from the North Korean coastal city of Haeju.

With a teeming population of yellow croaker, Yeonpyeong Island was once considered one of the most important islands for fishing. When tens of billions of croakers flocked to the sea around the island, the waters were so abundant with fish that they were said to be “half water and half fish.” Every May, the residents of this island tossed and turned at night to the loud croaking of the schools of fish. During croaker season, a seasonal fish market opened on the island, set up either on land or on the water, depending on the movements of the fish. Thousands of fishing and merchant vessels would descend on the island, cramming the waters to such an extent that it seemed you could walk from one boat to another without getting your feet wet. When the fish market opened, the small, quiet island would be transformed into a bustle of activity, swarm-

1 The traces of volcanic activity and the history of erosion, as the rocks split, crumbled, and dissolved, are still visible on the coast of Gureop Island.

2 The Gaemeori coast on Gureop Island is a grassland where cattle once grazed.

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“When you arrive at the island, take a moment to slowly look around. You’ll see a landscape that has been changing for tens of thousands of years, sculpted by the wind, waves, fog, and salt air.” ing with tens of thousands of residents, fishermen, and merchants.

Temporary shops sprang up to sell fishing gear and daily necessities. Also, there were over one hundred bars where more than five hundred barmaids, called “water birds,” served their clients.

In April 1943, when the seasonal fish market was at its peak, some 5,000 boats flocked to the island. In 1944, some 9.7 billion croakers were caught in the waters off the island. And in 1947, the number of fishermen who gathered at the fish market reached 90,000. When the fishing boats arrived, the island women were busy as well. They supplied boats at anchor with food, water, and firewood. They also sold fresh water, lining up on the tidal flats with their water jars. When the fishing season ended, the peddlers quickly packed up and departed, and the island returned to its quietude.

The golden days of Yeongpyeong Island, which seemed as if they would last forever, came to an end in the late 1960s. In 1968, the fishing limit line was drawn north of the island, prohibiting fishing boats from the South to cross it. It was also around this time

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that the croaker population suffered a drastic decline as a result of years of overfishing. To add insult to injury, around 1969 a cold front began to settle on the Yellow Sea, cooling off the once abundant fishing grounds. The croakers remained in the seas off the south coast of Korea, where fishing boats filled their nets. All this cut off for good the migration of croakers up to Yeonpyeong Island. The croakers that had always been so plentiful vanished without a trace within just a few years. Since fishing boats and merchant vessels stopped visiting the island, the seasonal fish market was finished.

Yeonpyeong Island is wrapped in the tension of division today; if you stand at Manghyang [Homesickness] Observatory on the island, North Korea looks close enough for you to touch.

Mysterious Sand Island of Ijakdo Ijak Island, located in Jawol-myeon, Ongjin County, used to be called Ijeok Island, which literally means “island of pirates.” It was so-named because the Japanese wako, the most menacing pirates Ko re a n Cu l tu re & A rts

in all of East Asia in ancient times, maintained hideouts on the island. The pirates are long gone, but in the nearby waters is another island that appears and disappears like a mirage. It is a sand island with a surface area of 100,000 square meters or so. Called Puldeung by the locals, it is a mysterious place that hides away at high tide and shows itself at low tide. Stretching 2.5 kilometers east to west and 1 kilometer north to south, this sand bar is like a desert in the middle of the ocean, a sight that could only be the work of God. In the past, people said, you could easily catch blue crabs, shrimps, halibut, and other creatures that got stranded in the tidal pools on Puldeung during low tide. Long a spawning ground for various sea creatures, Puldeung was a vital food source for the residents of Ijak Island for generations. However, the county of Ongjin authorized the gathering of sand from here for over 10 years. As a result, much of the sand has been removed, and only about 100,000 square meters of the original 165,000-square-meter sand

bar remains. Admonished by local residents and environmental groups, the government belatedly realized the scenic and ecological value of Puldeung and in 2004 designated it an “ecological conservation zone.” The residents of Ijak Island now understand the value of Puldeung and are taking the lead in its preservation.

On Ijak Island’s Jageun Puran Beach sits the oldest rock in Korea, formed over 2.5 billion years ago. It is a migmatite formed when a metamorphic rock partially melts and recrystallizes into

1 Puldeung, off the coast of Ijak Island, is a small sand island of 100,000 square meters or so that shows itself only at low tide. In 2004 it was designated an “ecological conservation zone.” 2 Spotted seals on the coast of Dumujin on Baengnyeong Island.

It is said that the whole of the West Sea was a habitat for spotted seals in days gone by, but now these animals are an endangered species.

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an igneous rock. The result is a mixture of metamorphic rock and igneous rock, which is an important clue in explaining the evolution of the earth’s crust on the Korean Peninsula.

Billion-year-old Fossils on Socheongdo Socheong Island is a tiny island that takes only a couple of hours to tour at a leisurely pace. On its southeastern shore is a marble cliff that the locals call Powdered Rock. Marble is formed by the metamorphosis of limestone, and when the surface erodes it takes on a powdery appearance, hence the local name. Near this cliff are the oldest stromatolite fossils in Korea. They are the fossils of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) that were formed one billion years ago during the Neoproterozoic Era. Cyanobacteria were the first primitive microorganisms on earth to use photosynthesis, some two billion years ago. They were the first organisms to create oxygen and enabled the emergence of other life forms on earth.

There have been reports of stromatolites formed two billion years ago in North Korea, but of the fossils found in South Korea, these are the oldest, constituting natural heritage of immense geological value. But the fossils have been seriously damaged in the 20th century. Up to the early 1980s, many of them were taken and crafted into products that made use of their patterns. It was only in 2009 that they were designated Natural Monument No. 508. It is fortunate that their value has been recognized, although belatedly, and they are now being protected.

led volunteer troops to fend off Japanese invaders at the end of the 16th century, was exiled to this island near the end of his life. He was fascinated by the scenery of Dumujin and, in his records of his life in exile, he called this place “the last work of an old god.” Yet Dumujin, with all its natural beauty, served as a base for marauding pirates for a long time.

There are three predators in the seas off the Dumujin coast: seals, cormorants, and humans. The spotted seals, which migrate during the winter breeding season to the icy waters of Liaodong Bay in the Bohai Sea, return to Dumujin in the spring. These seals that could be seen anywhere in the West Sea in the past are now an endangered species. In the waters off Dumujin, the seal’s sole competitor is the cormorant. The cormorants build their nests in the rocky cliffs and can dive to depths of 40 meters to catch fish.

This island has always been a site of military tension, located as it is near the North-South border, but recently the winds of peace have been blowing. This is due to the Baengnyeong Island Peace Arts Residency, operated by the Incheon Art Platform (an affiliate of the Incheon Foundation for Arts and Culture) to support the creative activities of and promote exchanges between artists from Korea and abroad. Under this initiative, artists from Korea as well as the United States, China, and many other nations are using the island as a base for their creative activities, against the backdrop of the sea of division. There is no doubt that their activities will contribute to the easing of tension.

‘The Last Work of an Old God,’ Baengnyeongdo Baengnyeong Island is located far north, along the coast of North Korea’s Hwanghae Province, lying closer to Pyongyang than to Seoul. Passenger boats traveling to this island from South Korea must sail beyond the islands of North Korea’s Ongjin County (Sunwi, Ohwa, Changnin, Piam, Kirin, and Maam Islands) and Changyon County (Wollae, Yuk, and other islands), and continue northward. For a long time, Baengnyeong Island was part of Changyon County of Hwanghae Province, but when Korea was divided it came under the jurisdiction of Ongjin County, which now belongs to Incheon Metropolitan City. Although it is 229 kilometers from Incheon, it is only 13.5 kilometers from Changsan Point in North Korea.

Baengnyeong Island, which faces Changsan Point of North Korea across the water, is famed for the rock formations of Dumujin, found at the island’s northwestern tip. In the waters off the coast of Dumujin stand row upon row of rock formations, such as the Brother Rocks, Elephant Rock, Candlestick Rock, and Immortal Rock. Because they bring to mind the fantastic shapes of Mt. Kumgang (or Diamond Mountains, also spelled “Geumgang”), this area is called the “Mt. Kumgang of the West Sea.” Yi Dae-gi, who 1 The rock formations of Dumujin on Baengnyeong Island create beautiful scenery.

2 Women gather oysters on the coast of Baengnyeong Island.

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he MMCA Seoul opened on Samcheong-ro in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on November 13, 2013, after four years’ preparation. Built on a site of 27,264 square meters at a cost of 246 billion won (about $234 million), the museum has a total floor space of 52,125 square meters, with three floors above ground and three levels below. It is an emerging attraction of Seoul north of the Han River; it welcomed 3,900 visitors on the opening day and thereafter a daily average of around 3,000 visitors.

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (MMCA Seoul) was designed to not dominate the surrounding area but blend in with its setting. In the background are the traditional buildings of Jongchinbu and the courtyard, or madang , that they share, to the left is the MMCA’s Digital Art Archive, and to the right is Seoul Box for contemporary art installations.

Historical Significance of the Site The museum sits on what was originally the site of Jongchinbu (Office of the Royal Family Affairs) during the Joseon Dynasty, and Gyeongseong Medical School during the period of Japanese colonial rule. After Korea’s liberation, the property served as the Defense Security Command and the Armed Forces Seoul Hospital, military facilities requiring tight security, making it off limits to the general public. With the opening of the MMCA Seoul, this site of remarkable historic significance has been returned to the public.

In view of its historic context, the museum was designed in a way that it would naturally blend in with its surroundings. The traditional buildings of Jongchinbu, which had been relocated to the nearby Jeongdok Public Library in 1981, were restored and returned to their former site, where the original foundations were discovered in 2010. The modern red brick buildings, constructed for a hospital in the late 1920s, were also maintained. With the construction of new gallery buildings, the coexistence of tradition, modernity, and contemporary time has been highlighted. With buildings of distinctive styles from different eras, the museum offers a diverse array of structures and spaces; the eight galleries form the central area, around which a movie theater, a multi-function hall, and seminar rooms are located. About one-third of the floor space is allotted to visitor amenities, such as restaurants, a cafeteria, and a digital book café.

The complex is designed to be an “open museum,” where people can feel free to drop in as casually as stopping by a neighborhood café.

Now, the three branches of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art will pursue their respective roles and functions. “The MMCA Seoul will focus on promoting Korean art worldwide and furthering Korea’s status as a center of Asian contemporary art, while the MMCA Gwacheon will enhance the study of Korean art history, and the MMCA Deoksu Palace will be devoted to the research and presentation of modern art,” said Chung Hyung-min, director of the MMCA Seoul.

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (MMCA Seoul), an impressive work of art itself, has opened its doors. In the heart of Korea’s capital city, the new cradle for modern art is located across a street from Gyeongbok Palace, the main palace of the Joseon Dynasty, near Cheong Wa Dae, the presidential residence.

Koh Mi-seok Editorial Writer, The Dong-A Ilbo | Ahn Hong-beom Photographer Koreana ı Spring 2014

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The new museum comprises several buildings that are laid out like “islands in the sea.” Although they seem separate from the outside, the galleries are all interconnected at the basement level. Six madang (open spaces) also serve as passages connecting the inside and outside of the buildings illuminated by sunlight.

Birth of the Museum The MMCA Seoul is the fruition of a long-sought dream of the nation’s art community. The MMCA Gwacheon, opened in 1986, is located on the outskirts of Seoul and thus has not been easily accessible for ordinary visitors. Its primary visitors are art lovers who are willing to take the time to travel there, or groups of elementary or middle- and high-school students on field trips. Adjoining the Seoul Grand Park, a popular amusement park, and the Seoul Race Course, the museum is sometimes very hard to reach due to traffic congestion, especially during spring and autumn. The MMCA Deoksu Palace, on the other hand, is relatively small in scale and, being located within a palace, has limited exhibition possibilities.

The art community had long asserted that Seoul needed a proper museum for modern and contemporary art and tried to raise a petition, but without much success. After the Defense Security Command was relocated in 2008, artists suggested the construction of a new museum on the site. Then in 2009, at a New Year’s ceremony of artists, President Lee Myung-bak announced plans to construct a national art museum there, getting the museum project on track. The plans called for the establishment of a large-scale modern art museum in the heart of Seoul that could become a national landmark linked to the nearby palaces, museums, galleries, and traditional Korean houses of Bukchon Village.

Mihn Hyun-jun, 45, head of the architectural firm MP ART, was named the project’s lead architect in August 2010. But progress was far from smooth. During the site excavation, the original foundations of Jongchinbu buildings were uncovered, and after much discussion, it was decided that the buildings would be restored and returned to their original site. Relocating the Armed Forces Seoul Hospital,

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whose patients included the president and high-ranking officials, also proved to be no easy task. The renovation of the former Gyeongseong Medical School building, a Registered Cultural Property, caused controversy as well. A fire even broke out during the construction work.

Blending into the Surroundings The lead architect Mihn Hyun-jun, selected from among 110 applicants, said, “The MMCA Seoul isn’t architecture, it’s a landscape.” In light of the site’s historical background, he aspired to build the new museum in a way that it would not dominate the surrounding landscape but coexist with “the fragments of history” scattered around it, and quelled any personal ambition to demonstrate “architecture as a work of art.”

At the museum complex, no individual building stands out alone. Instead, it comprises several buildings that are laid out like “islands in the sea.” Although they seem separate from the outside, the galleries are all interconnected at the basement level. Also, the museum makes extensive use of underground space to cope with the 12-meter height limit for buildings in the area. The architect applied the traditional Korean concept of madang, or open spaces, to connect the separated galleries and take advantage of natural lighting. Six such open spaces serve as passages connecting the inside and outKoreana ı Spring 2014

1 “Film” (2011), installation by Tacita Dean. The wide CinemaScope screen placed vertically shows analog video features for 11 minutes.

2 “Dream Journey – Childhood” (2011)

by Whang In-kie, 307 x 845 cm, plastic blocks on plywood; part of the special exhibition “Zeitgeist Korea,” which presents works from the museum’s own collection.

3 “Home within Home within Home within Home within Home” (2013) by Suh Do–ho, 1,530 x 1,283 x 1,297 cm, polyester fabric and metal frame.

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side of the buildings, which are illuminated by sunlight.

The buildings harmonize so well with each other and the surroundings that it is as if they have always been there. The idea of using restraint in design out of respect for the site’s history, thereby integrating the museum complex into the area’s broader historical environment, has been positively received.

Grand Opening Exhibitions For the grand opening, five special exhibitions were organized to present the future direction of the MMCA Seoul. The exhibitions brought together the history of Korean art and recent trends in contemporary art around the world: “Connecting_Unfolding,” organized by Korean and foreign curators with the aim of creating a hub for the international art scene; “Aleph Project,” which breaks down the walls between genres; “Site-Specific Art Project,” which utilizes the museum’s open spaces; “Zeitgeist Korea,” a permanent exhibition featuring works from the museum’s own collection; and “Birth of a Museum,” which documents the process of the museum’s construction with photos and audio. Chief curator Choi Eun-joo explained, “The focus was placed on achieving openness and the exploration of connecting points and artistic possibilities.”

The special exhibitions included no overtly spectacular works but have been highly assessed overall

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for maintaining a consistent standard. Notably, they covered various genres, such as painting, video, installation art, and performance art, actively pursuing communication and fusion of different genres.

In the case of “Connecting_Unfolding,” the seven curators from such countries as Korea, America, and Germany discussed numerous possibilities before eventually choosing the works of seven artists. They include Kishio Suga (Japan), a major artist of the Mono-ha movement; Kim Jones (America), who showed drawings of anti-war themes; Amar Kanwar (India), whose poetic works call for resistance against inhumane development; and Tacita Dean (U.K.), who creates analogue video works defying today’s digital trends. In addition, Lee Mingwei (Taiwan) contributed a work entitled “Sonic Blossom” that is completed through audience involvement: a person in a full-length coat walks about in the museum halls approaching visitors and offering them a musical gift, then serenading them with a lied

by Schubert.

The “Aleph Project,” integrating architecture, design, science, performance, and art, fascinated the visitors with its novelty. The most talked-about works included Philip Beesley’s “Epiphyte Chamber,” a moving architecture which responds by lifting its tentacles whenever visitors approach; and “The Elaboratorium” by an Australian team, which allows visitors to view hardly visible micro-images. Amongst the installation art works, the biggest attention grabbers are the Hangeul-text video works by the “Jang Young-hye Heavy Industry” team and “Home within Home within Home within Home within Home” by Suh Do-ho, a Korean traditional house contained within an American-style building resembling the house the artist lived in when studying abroad, both made of thin fabric.

1 “Epiphyte Chamber” (2012) by Philip Beesley. An interactive installation sculpture consisting of 100,000 delicate digital elements. 2 Though appearing separate from the outside, the galleries are all interconnected at the basement level. Far in the background and hanging from the ceiling is “Opertus Lunula Umbra” (Hidden Shadow of the Moon, 2008) by Choe U-ram.

Stepping Stone for Korean Art A stepping stone is now in place for Korean art to move forward. Although some problems still need to be addressed, such as inefficient visitor circulation, the museum is on track to emerge as a venue where history and tradition, as well as nature and art, live and breathe together, providing a popular place for both cultural experience and relaxation.

The museum’s key objective is to enhance cultural welfare to enable more people to enjoy art and to place Korea in the global cultural spotlight. Great buildings and exhibitions alone are not enough for the museum to evolve into a new icon of Korea’s cultural refinement. As crops are said to grow at the sound of the farmer’s footsteps, culture and art flourish owing to the public’s sincere interest and attention. The success of the MMCA Seoul depends on how many art lovers consistently keep visiting it.

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interview

‘On Such a Full Sea’ Chang-rae Lee Talks about his New Novel There was a snowstorm on February 3, when I traveled from Washington, D.C. to Princeton, New Jersey, to meet Chang-rae Lee. We met at the Creative Writing Library of Princeton University. The little bit of uneasiness I had before the interview vanished instantly the moment I saw him. Lee was amazingly friendly, smiling, and good looking.

Young-Key Kim-Renaud Linguist and Professor of Korean Language and Culture and International Affairs, George Washington University | Jaean Lee Photographer

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hang-rae Lee's first book, “Native Speaker” (1995), won the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for best debut fiction and the American Book Award in 1996. His fourth book, “The Surrendered” (2010), was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. After the publication of his second book, “A Gesture Life,” in 1999, The New Yorker named him one of the 20 best American writers under forty. His third novel, “Aloft” (2004), received the 2005-2006 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in the Adult Fiction category. His fifth and latest book, “On Such a Full Sea,” published by Riverhead Books, was released on January 7, 2014.

Lee was born in Korea in 1965 and emigrated to the United States with his family when he was three years old. He was educated at Yale University and the University of Oregon, where he earned his M.F.A. He is currently professor of creative writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University. He has been teaching at Yonsei University in Seoul in the summer since 2007.

Chang-rae Lee considers writing more a process of discovery along with the reader than a recounting of what he already knows.

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On Chang-rae Lee as a Writer Young-Key Kim-Renaud: I loved your first novel, “Native Speaker.” It was telling a story I was very familiar with, but the sad immigrant’s story was told in such a beautiful language. And the powerful metaphor! For this, you are known as a “Korean-American writer.” How do you take it, because obviously you have written really different kinds of novels, and also you probably consider yourself more American than anything else?

Chang-rae Lee: I always feel I am a Korean-American writer, but I often find the term pretty unsatisfying, because we’re all Korean-American in very different ways. Some of us were born here, some of us came when we were young children, some of us came when we were adults, some of us are adopted, and so on.

Thus it’s a very broad and vague term that really isn’t very interesting or descriptive.

YK: Then, why do you think not just the general American public but also Koreans like to call you that?

CL: We human beings like to categorize. It makes things simpler. But I think it’s much more interesting to talk about someone in terms of the specifics of their work, rather than saying, “Oh, he is a Korean-American writer,” or “She is a Korean-American artist.” I will write about Korean-Americans sometimes, but again even those Korean-Americans I write about are not supposed to be “representative.” They are representative of only themselves. But at the same time, I take pride in my Korean heritage and accept the category.

YK: But both sides mean to be laudatory when they categorize you as Korean-American.

CL: Of course! It’s meant well. But you know, it’s like saying “Someone is nice.” That’s a very broad statement, right? You have to say exactly why they are “nice,” or talented, for it to be truly meaningful. My work as a writer is about bringing out the complexities of the world and its stories, how complicated and nuanced life is.

YK: When did you sort of feel you had talent and wanted to be a writer? And when you discovered that, what did you do to become a truly good writer?

CL: I didn’t know I had any talent. In high school my teachers seemed to suggest maybe I had some talent with language and writing. This was when I was at Phillips Exeter — 10th and 11th grades. Before that I enjoyed reading, I enjoyed history, I enjoyed math and science, really everything, but that’s where I began to focus more on writing.

YK: What sorts of approaches helped you there?

CL: I wrote poetry, and I also wrote some short stories.

YK: What sorts of training did you get?

CL: One of my teachers allowed me to write fiction, even though that wasn't part of the class. I had written one little chapter of a longer story and he liked it, and he said, “If you want to continue writing this, you don’t have to do the other assignments. You can just do this.”

YK: Oh, that was a big incentive.

CL: A huge incentive! And I thought, “Oh, he must enjoy what I am writing!” Looking back, I'm sure he was just being kind and encouraging.

YK: You are a great storyteller. How do you craft your novels? For example, when you wrote “On Such a Full Sea,” did you develop the story first or the characters?

CL: I usually start with the characters. I try to think from the small to the large. I do have a general grasp of the larger framework, but I try not to think about the details of that framework too much until I get to that

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moment of the story. For me, writing a novel is really more a process of discovery than recounting something that I already know.

For me it’s much more interesting to write that way, and also I think it makes writing more interesting when the writer, along with the reader, is discovering what’s there.

YK: It’s like a journey.

CL: It is a journey. Especially in “On Such a Full Sea,” which is pretty much a journey story. But even with my other books, which are narratives in which someone is looking back into their past, a kind of journey happens as well.

YK: You are a consummate stylist. Your writing is so lyrical, poetic, elegant, and very beautiful — so pleasing. I heard you write and rewrite your sentences so many times. When do you know you’ve got it?

CL: I think it’s just a feeling that I have. At the end of a certain process of editing, revising, rewriting, at some point I’ll get a little tired of it, but then also maybe I feel I’ve found the right, what, music? Somehow, it’s funny to say “music” but that’s really almost how I feel it.

YK: Do you actually vocalize? Do you read aloud?

for the general audience. Because the general audience contains so many different readers. And they like or dislike your work for many different reasons. I can never anticipate or understand or predict what people will like. I recently told my students in class — you can only write what you have passion for and what you believe in. That’s the artistic impulse, the artistic prerogative. Nothing else really exists.

YK: In Korean culture, as you know, we respect both spontaneity and also learning, based on the belief that “man is perfectible,” and there should be lifetime education.

CL: I absolutely believe in both of those things. I think I am very Korean in that sense. And this is what I tell my students. You should bring everything you’ve learned intellectually to the writing table.

But at the moment you write, be free.

On His New Novel, ‘On Such a Full Sea’ YK: What was your intention in writing this book? Did you plan deliberately to make it radically different from all your earlier works?

CL: No, I didn’t plan to make it different. I had a premise that I liked — which was to bring in foreign workers to a very different, ruined America. Part of my desire for writ“It is Fan’s story but also the story of the human condition. Fan is defiing the book were my worries about nitely a stand-in for us, as we struggle with our own purpose but also with America — American society and its place in the world. But once I acceptchance and destiny. The play of those things in our minds is what makes ed the premise, I realized that I had to set it in the future, and then, of us human and what gives us excitement, and also sometimes heartache.” course, everything becomes radically changed. Then I followed my CL: I read aloud, but not completely. I kind of mumble it. I hear own story and gave the story what it needed, the necessary details it in my head. My wife will tell you that when I am writing well, she and characters. I had a lot of fun writing it. can hear me go like this [humming sounds], mumbling, because I YK: You mean you could let your imagination run? am really trying to feel the rhythms and the sounds, and the tonalCL: Yes, and in a way I hadn’t before. You always let your imagiity. I do very much pay attention to these things, maybe because I nation run, but I was totally free this time around, because I could learned how to write through poetry. create the world in the way I wanted to see it.

YK: You actually started as a poet.

YK: On the other hand, it still feels like the contemporary world.

CL: Yes. That’s why I have always been attuned to not just the CL: Well, I’m not too much of a fantasist. It’s not pure fantasy. And story but to the words themselves. all books that are about the future are always about the present.

YK: You talk about food, wine, paintings, and sculpture. I could YK: Maybe that’s why it sounds scarier. say you are a bon vivant.

CL: Right. Because it’s not some far-off dream.

YK: You explained that the title is from a line in Shakespeare’s CL: Ha ha. What’s that called in Korean?

“Julius Caesar” — what does it specifically refer to? Does the YK: Probably, the closest equivalent might be pungnyugaek, an “waxing and waning of fortunes” point to the picaresque nature aesthete with carefree enjoyment of arts, good food and drink, and of Fan’s adventure? Or to the human condition in general? Or yet gisaeng in the old days. A guy who loves life . . . something else?

CL: Yes. I very much love life.

CL: All of those things, I think. Certainly Fan’s condition — the YK: That really shows everywhere. But your erudition might be way she experiences her world. She floats on her tide that takes a little intimidating to some less educated people. Some readers her to all these places. She almost has no control. might find your work inaccessible in some ways.

YK: Did you mean for her to have her picaresque adventures?

CL: Perhaps. But I learned a long time ago that you cannot write

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CL: I sort of discovered them, as I wrote. I didn’t really think about it that way at the start, but once I started her on this journey, I liked the way it was heading. It is Fan’s story but also the story of the human condition. Fan is definitely a stand-in for us, as we struggle with our own purpose but also with chance and destiny.

The play of those things in our minds is what makes us human and what gives us excitement, and also sometimes heartache.

YK: The way the story is told is intriguing. Who is “we”? The first person plural is unusual for a contemporary fiction, even though Julie Otsuka’s “The Buddha in the Attic” also has “we” as the narrator. However, I feel they are kind of different.

CL: How do you feel they are different? I am curious.

YK: In her novel the expression “one of us” appears frequently, implying that the narrator is indeed a group, while in your novel, such expressions never appear. Actually, I hear only one person in your novel.

CL: You hear only one person, but I wanted that one person to contain every possibility of emotion, supposition, etc.

YK: So, it is a kind of omnipotent person?

CL: Almost, but also someone who’s sometimes confused, hopeful, sometimes not sure, sometimes defensive. I wanted the “we” to be wide-ranging.

YK: Is the characterization of each community in the novel — the Charters, the facilities, and the counties — including the possibility of the extremely rare cases of “promotion” to the elite society, backed by the Confucian ideal or tenet of “meritocracy”?

CL: For me, no, not that way. For me the societies are partitioned that way very strictly because of my concerns and anxieties about the way our society is partitioning.

YK: But it sounds like, if you are more educated, somehow you belong to the exclusive Charters class.

CL: But you are also born into them. That’s not meritocracy.

However, the facilities community is a Confucian society. My view is that this Confucian society of production facilities has both positive and negative aspects. The three societies in the novel express my concerns about class — the socio-economic class differences.

YK: How did you devise those names? I understand the facilities “B-Mor” was meant to be a former rundown area of Baltimore, but how did you decide on “Charters” and “counties”?

CL: It just sort of came to me. I felt like the “counties” was right, because it felt like a kind of broad name for this big unregulated landscape. Unknown and wild. The “Charters” came from “charter school.” You know this kind of school where it is very focused and Koreana ı Spring 2014

exclusive, and I liked the idea that they had a kind of charter, providing a definite code of who gets to belong there.

YK: I noticed you capitalized the Charters and B-Mor, but not the counties.

CL: Counties are definitely lower-case in their importance.

YK: As a linguist, I love your metaphors and use of language ability as a distinguishing factor for different classes. But, I noticed they play language games in the counties, where technology is lacking, but you don’t have that kind of creative activities in the other two societies. Are you suggesting that the technology-deprived “no man’s land” is more conducive to a creative and interesting life, albeit dangerous and amoral?

CL: I think technology is taking us away from fundamental human impulses. I think that both the technology and the very cloistered and engineered nature of B-Mor and Charters suppress imagination and creativity, and don’t value those things.

The only people who value something like imagination have nothing else. And because they have nothing else, they have to invent their own lives, they have to exercise their minds with language, with these word games. They are the only ones who read old novels. For the other people novels don’t mean anything anymore. They have replaced that kind of art with the pursuit of money, food, comfort, luxury items, as opposed to the people who have nothing but still can appreciate what art offers.

YK: This is part of your anxieties.

CL: Yes. YK: I am actually fascinated by your use of neologism. For example, you have things like “handscreen” (tablet computer), “pix” (digital pictures), and “vids” (digital videos), and even the very words B-Mor (Baltimore) and D-Troy (Detroit). They seem to almost parody a non-native speaker’s speech patterns.

CL: I wasn’t thinking of parodying a non-native speaker. I wanted to come up with a shorthand language that was kind of denatured.

Depleted language perhaps, and here again is another fear of mine.

Language is my life. But in this future I see that language isn’t terribly important.

YK: Whose or what groups’ anxieties does your dystopian story reflect? It sounds like it’s the Elite’s.

CL: It is the Elite’s, but is also B-Mor’s.

YK: Right, they are beginning to . . .

CL: The whole novel is about their beginning to awaken. They are awakening to the true tenor of their lives about how stunted and suppressed they are. And how much they stunt and suppress themselves! That’s one of the things that I wanted to consider in

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this book. It’s not some larger power ultimately that’s keeping everyone in place. It’s their own fear of the beyond.

YK: It’s a different kind of anxiety. And that’s exactly what’s interesting, because some of the anxieties seem to be self-contradictory. For example, you are worried about collectivism, but then you are worried about individualism.

CL: Well, nothing in this world is all right or all wrong. Yes, I have worries about the Confucian collectivism inside B-Mor, how it sometimes suppresses individualism, but at the same time, there are so many joys and wonderful things that come out of that community: the sense of safety, warmth, structure.

YK: I am particularly interested in the presence of so many Asians in all three societies. I mean, currently in America, some people are worried about Hispanics. Is it because you are Asian that you put them there?

CL: I think it’s because I am Asian, but also because I think this world is becoming an Asian world. Yes, Hispanics are rising, but if you think about economic power, cultural power, and so on, isn’t Asia and the East ascendant? Across the globe you see much more Asian influence now than you have ever before.

YK: I am interested in the implication that a sense of identity is really not that important here, perhaps because it’s a departure from your earlier works.

CL: It’s a different question this time. It’s not about an identity within a culture. Some of my previous books have been about an individual self in tension with the culture surrounding that self. This novel is not concerned with that. This is more interested in the culture itself.

YK: Are you more optimistic in the future in that area? Or are you just not covering it?

CL: That’s not my interest in this novel. And that’s one thing that I’d like people to realize about writers and their works. Just because I have written about certain things in my first book, it doesn’t mean that I am always going to write about them.

YK: Well, since you started your novel with the idea of characters first, I am also wondering if your characters are some sort of stereotypes or types.

CL: I work with “types.” But I hope I can show many different facets of type that are expressive of what people are really like.

And have some fun, too, doing this. With the people in B-Mor, who live in an Asian Confucian society, I have a little fun parodying certain things they like. The people in B-Mor are food obsessed, right?

It’s their ready little comfort, which is wonderful, but I also worry if it is too much of a comfort. Is it too easy a pastime? Of course the broader questions that arise subsequently are more serious. Are we not radical enough? Rebellious enough? Outspoken enough?

Those are the kinds of anxieties I want to consider about the society of B-Mor. YK: Creativity comes from a certain kind of dissatisfaction, I guess.

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CL: Dissatisfaction and dissent. Ultimately, a primary anxiety of the novel is about creativity, or the lack of creativity.

YK: But the thing is, I mean, they really remind one of all those real stereotypes — the very passive Asian females, the totally content Asians in almost self-imposed imprisonment?

CL: Miss Cathy’s girls.

YK: Yes, Ms. Cathy’s girls with surgically widened eyes. Those might also reflect your anxieties or stereotypes?

CL: Yes. I wanted to have a bit of fun with them, because they kind of scared me. I went over to Japan and Korea this past summer. So many young girls were like this! They all look the same! They think they are beautiful but something is very wrong. And it’s frightening.

YK: In this context, was the protagonist Fan created to carry some sort of message? Something like hope?

CL: Yes, she is definitely all about hope. Not because she says it. She never says anything like that, but she inspires hope in all the people who meet her. She is the only person in the novel who understands who she is, and what she wants. Everybody else in the novel is struggling, yearning. They are very dissatisfied and very unsettled by who they are, whether they are in the counties, because they are poor, whether they are in B-Mor and limited in their lives, or the Charter people who are imprisoned by their wealth. Fan is a sort of vessel for them. A kind of beacon as well.

She is modest and simple, but that’s something that is rare in this world I imagine.

YK: The ending is quite intriguing. Do you have some kind of sequel?

CL: I don’t know. I like the feeling of the ending, this sense of life being still unfinished. Because if it is finished, there is no hope left.

On His Personal Life YK: Your first language was Korean. I understand you spoke only Korean until you went to school. Now your English is far better than most native speakers’. Using your metaphor, can one become a native speaker? Do you feel you are one now?

CL: One can become a native speaker externally. I think internally it may be impossible.

YK: Can you elaborate a little?

CL: You, as a linguist, probably know this as well as anyone; language cannot be erased from you completely. And because so many other things come with language, to “become” a true native speaker is a falsehood, or a dream. You’re only a native speaker if you are born there and never lived anywhere else. You cannot “become” a native speaker. Even though I may sound like a native speaker, I still am not.

YK: Let’s talk a bit about your marriage to a non-Korean. How has it enriched your life and solidified your sense of identity?

CL: I think it has enriched me. Of course, I don’t know what it would have been like had I married a Korean. So I don’t know really how that would be, but I do know that I cannot take for granted what Ko re a n Cu l tu re & A rts

Young-Key Kim-Renaud speaks with Lee at Princeton University’s Creative Writing Library.

my wife brings in terms of her history and consciousness to our family and to our life. Not that I could if I married a Korean woman, but I think I would have a much more intuitive sense of the things she might bring. With my wife we’ve both had to learn and discover each other as individuals but also as individuals from different cultures. Perhaps we’re more conscious of cultural differences, which I think in turn has helped me as an artist. I question things more, take nothing for granted, both self and context. You’re constantly asked to step outside yourself, and look at yourself. And that’s what writers do naturally.

YK: Have you sometimes felt alienated because of the life you lead?

CL: Sometimes I long for a very intuitive, instinctual sense of belonging that I don’t think I will ever have. When I go to Korea, even though I feel wonderful and everyone looks like me, it’s still not my place, because I didn’t grow up there. And even though Princeton is my home, where I have my job, and everyone knows who I am, there still is a sense of difference. So, sometimes I think it would be nice to have that feeling once.

Koreana ı Spring 2014

YK: I read your depiction of your mother’s death. It was such a moving piece. You were describing her English problem. Do you feel you’ve resolved your mother’s han (regret/sorrow about a bad deal in life) through your own efforts?

CL: No, I don’t feel that. I don’t think that could ever be resolved, because in the end, nothing is ever resolved. It’s more the process, and the process is taking me to a different place. It still is there, as strong as ever.

YK: I know you’ve been going to Korea to teach every summer.

Do you have any writing plans in Korea, or related to Korea, in the future?

CL: Not yet, but I am sure it will come up. I may set some scenes in Korea. I’ve really enjoyed my visits to Korea and my teaching at Yonsei. And meeting students there. Meeting faculty there.

YK: Do you feel you are going back home?

CL: A little bit. But I know it will never be home. But going back is nice. I know I will never live in Korea and feel fully comfortable there. I don’t speak Korean well enough. I can’t be the person I am.

But I enjoy the emotional feeling that I have there.

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Guardian of Heritage

Jin Ok-sub Guards the Wellspring of Tradition Jin Ok-sub, stage director and impresario of traditional Korean performing arts, has helped numerous artists to emerge from obscurity and return to the spotlight, along with writing about their lives and artistic worlds.

Chung Jae-suk Culture Editor, The JoongAng Ilbo | Ahn Hong-beom Photographer

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Jin Ok-sub, artistic director of the Korea Culture House, hopes that traditional Korean dance will remain alive as an engaging cultural experience for today’s audiences, rather than become a dead tradition displayed in a showcase.

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F

or Jin Ok-sub, artistic director of the Korea Culture House (KOUS), the best theater in the world is one that is packed with people. He defines his work of planning and promoting a performance as a process of filling the theater. In his opinion, it is the audience that makes or breaks the show. In any good performance of traditional arts, true tradition creates something new when the audience is engaged in the performance as much as the performer on stage. He believes the best way for tradition to survive the passing of time is to exist as a cherished memory in the hearts of the audience members.

A Desperate Fight Against Time Jin notes: “After spending 30 years working and interacting with these artists, I’ve come to the conclusion that we can best appreciate the artistry of these elderly masters, in what little time they have left, by making their arts relevant to our own times. When I sell tickets for their shows, I feel like I’m selling my own blood. How could I not be so desperate when I’ve invited an artist who may not exist in this world in, say, several months from now? All efforts to preserve tradition are a desperate fight against the relentless tick-

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ing of time. According to what I’ve experienced, the best way to do that is to have it reported in the public media. That is why I always make it a point to check how the performances that I promote are reviewed in newspapers.”

Last year, a revised and enlarged edition of Jin’s book “The Finale Makers” was published, and the author stressed the book’s role as that of a press release in that it would help publicize traditional performing arts. His writings and the outstanding performances that he promotes and directs are like two sides of the same coin. His intent is evident in both his written accounts and stage productions; creating and showcasing masterpieces that owe nothing to anyone.

As such, news about an upcoming show produced by Jin invariably attracts the interest of a large number of his loyal fans. The memory of truly thrilling moments from his past shows gives spontaneity to his “fan club.”

In the prologue of his book, Jin wrote: “In our traditional performing arts, applause springs from between two beats. It is not a thunderous outpouring of enthusiasm, but a sudden, irrepressible burst of exclamation. To take dance as an example, the dancer steps on off beats, creating an unconscious anxiety among the Ko re a n Cu l tu re & A rts

© Lee Jin-hwan

The 5th “Eight Dancers” show held in 2013 at the Korea Culture House in Daechi-dong, Seoul, featured eight female dancers, who performed eight genres of traditional dance, including the Exorcism Dance (Salpuri), Dance of Peace (Taepyeongmu), Monk’s Dance (Seungmu), and Dance of Butterflies (Nabichum).

audience members and making them lean forward, but then the dancer suddenly returns to the original rhythm and steps on the strong beats, alerting them to lean back again. Using such a rhythmic variation, the dancer engages the audience, gripping and letting go of them at will. Gradually, a soundless applause that has accumulated among the audience finally breaks into an irrepressible cheer, “Eolssu!” … When the show is over after a series of such tense moments, and when the performers reappear on stage, the audience gives them a rapturous applause … a 100 percent expression of pure joy. Like a snowball, the thunderous applause rolls down from the third-story balcony, getting louder as it comes down, rippling over the stalls and crashing into the stage, with a jolt that even stirs up dust from gaps in the floorboards. At the moment when all rise for a standing ovation, the theater exists beyond the constraints of time.”

Who is this man who creates an avalanche of applause by castKoreana ı Spring 2014

ing the greatest performers of our time and presenting such an enchanting show?

Journey to Explore Traditional Performing Arts One day in early January, I met Jin Ok-sub over a jug of rice wine at a noodle restaurant near Changdeok Palace. He came down from his home on the rooftop of the five-story building next to the restaurant. He began to talk with modesty, but he was obviously a high-spirited man.

“It is my job to look after the old masters in the sunset years of their life,” Jin said. “When I watch them burning their last flames after spending years in loneliness and oblivion, the image of camellia flowers comes to mind — the glorious flower shedding its petals and fading away at the very peak of its blossoming. From their experiences, I’ve learned when to drop everything and retire.”

Jin, who was born and raised in Damyang, South Jeolla Province, was working as a stage actor when he encountered traditional mask dance drama. In his twenties, he was so enamored with traditional performing arts that he traveled all across the country to meet artists of the past, whose names had been all but forgot-

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ten. He visited senior citizen centers, country teahouses, and restaurants in marketplaces, hanging out with old village women with poor hearing, wrinkled teahouse waitresses, and elderly bar hostesses. It was “a journey to taste the most delicious parts of our traditional arts.” It was then that he found something poignant about their arts, and realized that, as he puts it, “tradition is not something musty and antiquated, but something ripe and time-proven.”

After numerous trips to seek out the elderly artists living in obscurity around the country, he decided that he would present them on stage again for the enjoyment of today’s audiences. Meanwhile, he worked as a stage director for Seoul Nori Madang, an outdoor theater-in-the-round built by the city of Seoul to showcase and preserve traditional performing arts. He also produced “Good Morning, Korea!” for KBS TV. Later, he established a production agency, named The Land of Festivities, which staged a large number of creative traditional performances. Since 2008, he has served as the artistic director of KOUS, run by the Korea Cultural Heritage Foundation. In 2005, he taught dance to the actors in “King and the Clown,” a mega-hit film about entertainers of a vagabond troupe during the Joseon Dynasty. Director Lee Joon-ik described Jin as “a man who has peered into the innermost nooks in a clown.”

Jin talked about his artists: “Of the artists with whom I produced performances and about whom I wrote in my book, six are dead now: Kim Soo-ak (Sword Dance of Jinju), Kim Yu-gam (Saenam Shamanic Ritual of Seoul), Sim Hwa-yeong (Monk’s Dance), Han Seung-ho (Pansori Chant), Gong Ok-jin (Mono Drama with Song

females, not a group of senile people. The late folk singer Jeong Gwang-su was known to have said, “I spent my lifetime frolicking with young lasses like Chun-hyang and Sim Cheong (female protagonists of pansori classics).” Several months before he died, Master Jeong left an indelible mark on Jin’s heart in saying, “All through my life, I’ve been afraid of both too much and too little satisfaction.”

Safeguarding the ‘Wellspring of Tradition’ Jin goes on to note: “The lives of the elderly artists were themselves a fount of amazing stories. The masters who had perfected their skills over 70 or 80 years were scattered all over the backwoods of this country. It was a so-called untested market. When I planned to get them back on stage, I was certain that it would work.

All of these people are true artists who have practiced their art for many decades. Even a brigade of young ‘idols’ could never surpass them in terms of perfection. They are so acutely at one with their arts that they have dance moves dripping from their fingertips and songs welling up from the depths of their bodies. On the stage they shed all pretense and self-consciousness, their bodies like spools that unravel a pink silk thread that binds up the audience. For these performers, their arts have been the skills to earn a living, so the stage is not so much a dignified hall of sublime art than a marketplace. That adds poignancy and intensity to their performances.”

An archaic word from the jargon of the nomadic troupes of entertainers called namsadang, the “finale maker” (noreum machi) refers to the player who completes the show with a climactic performance, which is so excellent that any other act would “The lives of the elderly artists were themselves a fount of pale in comparison. That is, a finale maker amazing stories. The masters who had perfected their skills over stands head and shoulders above all other 70 or 80 years were scattered all over the backwoods of this country. performers.

In the epilogue of his book, Jin describes It was a so-called untested market. When I planned to get them back an episode with Jo Gap-nyeo, the master of min salpuri, a variation of the Exorcism on stage, I was certain that it would work.”

Dance: “After the performance was over, I touched the dancer’s socks. There was something extraordinary and Dance), and Mun Jang-won (Dongnae Mask Dance Drama). I about her beoseon (traditional socks with pointed tips). It was padsometimes forget that they are not around anymore and try to call them. Most of those artists have led such a hard and extraordided in the front but had only a single layer of thin fabric at the heel. nary life as a courtesan, a shaman, a clown, or even a libertine, that Awestruck, I realized, ‘Her attention to this minor detail makes sometimes it is hard to fathom what they have really been through. for perfection!’ Since standing on the heel is a crucial part of the Nevertheless, I tried hard to write honestly about what I saw and dance, she has to be extremely sensitive to the pressure on her heard, so that my book could be called a collective autobiograheel, which is why the heels of her socks are so thin. On the other phy of 18 masters of traditional performing arts, who could have hand, the pointed tips of the socks, peeking out from under the long remained unknown forever.” skirt, is so central to the dance’s aesthetic appeal that the front part Calling himself “the ringleader of entertainers,” Jin has sucof the socks should be stiff enough to form a smart point at the tip. ceeded in coaxing the greatest performers of our time to appear Of course, the dancer created her own socks that missed neither on his stage. His strategy was to treat each and every one of the allurement nor restraint.” septuagenarian or octogenarian masters as individual males and Jin regards the profound world of the elderly masters as a

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“wellspring of tradition.” Based on his firm conviction that the wellspring must be a source of pure water, he warns against any attempt to market this purity by turning it into a strange cocktail in the process that is called modernization, or popularization, of tradition. He believes it is his mission to protect the authenticity and integrity of these arts that spring up from the human heart.

“When Mun Jang-won had his first large-scale performance at Ho-Am Art Hall at the age of 86, he was worried about his weakened legs,” Jin said. “So I told him, ‘Master, you can come out on the stage leaning on your cane.’ On that day, the audience was astounded by the sight of an old man, who needed a cane to walk onto the stage, slowly starting to dance … and then throwing his cane away, entrusting himself to the rhythm of his dance.”

Jin talks about the same dancer in another book he wrote, “Mun Jang-won: The Last Libertine of Dongnae Who Danced Away His Life.”

“The essence of his dance lies in syncopation. Traditional Korean dance, characterized by its elegant simplicity and moderation, tends to impart a sense of tranquility, but by adopting syncopated rhythm, Koreana ı Spring 2014

Jin’s home on the rooftop of a building near Changdeok Palace is the cradle of his artistic creations. The wall behind him is covered with his notes and memos.

it can also convey a sense of vibrancy. This is achieved by placing steps to precede or follow stressed beats, but missing the timing of the beats can destroy the intended tension and mess up the steps.

Mun Jang-won is so perfectly in control of his moves that his syncopated steps are as natural as his usual gait.”

Jin attracted public attention when he produced and promoted a gala performance, titled “Unprecedented Dances of Perfection and Elegance,” at the 8th Seoul International Dance Festival in 2005.

Featuring master dancers, all in their 80s, the show was true to its name. In addition, “Eight Dancers,” a series of performances he has produced since 2008 at the KOUS, have featured a group of eight dancers acclaimed for their sublime artistry. Whereas traditional dance performances are often presented for free, this series has attracted large paying audiences. Indeed, for his dedication to traditional Korean performing arts, this man himself deserves a hearty “Eolssu!”

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modern landmarks

A silent witness to the tides of history, this watch tower is all that remains of the former Russian Legation complex in Jeong-dong, central Seoul.

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part of its basement and a three-story watch tower. The tower’s original color was light gray, but it was painted white when restored in 1973. There are five arched wooden doors on the first story of the tower: two on the southern wall and one each on the other three sides. All five doors have uniform arched tops, but vary in height and width. There is a rectangular window on just one side of the second story, and two identical arched windows on each side of the third story. The top of the tower is parapeted and decorated with a triangular pediment on all sides.

A lifelong denizen of Seoul, I went to school and later worked in Jeong-dong in the vicinity of the Russian Legation site, passing by the tower almost every day for over 30 years, and have even been inside it. The interior of the tower is open from top to bottom. During renovation work in 1981, a narrow secret passage that connects the legation to Deoksu Palace was found in the basement of the tower. Could this also have been designed by Seredin-Sabatin?

A photograph taken in 1901 by an American travel documentarian, E. Burton Holmes, shows the “Russian Gate,” the front entrance to the legation modeled after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, on a hillock packed with tile-roofed traditional Korean houses. Across from it down the road below is Sontag Hotel, the first Western-style hotel Standing on a small park in Jeong-dong, central Seoul, a three-story watch tower is all in Seoul, built in 1902. Emperor that remains of the original Russian Legation building in Korea, which played an imporGojong bestowed land and buildtant role amidst the turbulent historical tides engulfing Korea in the late 19th century. ings of the imperial family for the Kim Yoo-kyung Journalist | Ahn Hong-beom Photographer construction of this hotel, and entrusted its operation to Antoniette Sontag (1854-1925), sister-in-law of the Russian minister Karl stood alongside and the neighborhood it overlooked long lost to the Weber. The traditional Korean house standing next to the legation vagaries of time. provided temporary accommodations for the first group of Catholic women missionaries, the sisters of St. Paul of Chartres, when Attractive Villa on a Hill they arrived in Korea in 1888, and thus became the birthplace of the Designed by Afanasii Ivanovich Seredin-Sabatin (1860-1921), the present-day Pauline convent in Myeong-dong.

Russian Legation was completed in 1890. A report written by Kirill Tchirkin, a Russian diplomat who served at the legation from 1911 to 1914, gives a sketch of the building at the time of its completion: Modern Landscape along ‘Legation Street’ “The main building in the style of an Italian villa stands on top of a Toward the end of the Joseon Dynasty, a swelling tide of modhillock. It is a beautiful one-story structure with rows of high-ceilernization began to spread from the Jeong-dong area, which inged, spacious rooms along its walls and a rectangular tower on includes Deoksu Palace, the final residence of Emperor Gojong. the right side … There is a gorgeous park on the rise of the hillock Seven of the nine countries that established diplomatic relations dotted with various kinds of trees, which look like they are over a with Joseon around 1890 built their legations here, with China and hundred years old.” (From “Architect of His Majesty King of Korea: Japan being the exceptions. To this day, six embassies, including Sabatin (1860-1921),” a collection by T. Simbirtseva and S. Levoshthose of Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, mainko, Seoul: 2009) tain diplomatic compounds in this district.

The main building, constructed with granite blocks and clay The American Legation, which moved into a modified tile-roofed bricks, was destroyed in 1950 during the Korean War, leaving only house in the vicinity of Deoksu Palace that had been purchased oday’s Jeong-dong Street traverses a graceful cultural district in what had been the nation’s first international neighborhood at the heart of Seoul, the capital of dynastic Joseon and modernday Korea. Stretching northwestward from Daehan Gate, the main entrance to Deoksu Palace across from Seoul City Hall, to the Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper building, the picturesque street lined with flowering trees, palace walls, and cobblestone walkways was the center of politics and diplomacy in the late Joseon Dynasty and its successor, the short-lived Korean Empire.

On a low hillock just off the street, there is a solitary white Western-style watch tower. Designated Korea’s Historic Site No. 253, the tower is all that remains of the original Russian Legation complex, which became a setting of seismic events a century ago that forever changed the course of the nation’s history. Today the tower stands forlorn, long out of use, with the handsome structure it

Russian Legation Tower A Vestige of Korea’s Passage into Modernity

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from the Min family, was the first to settle here in 1882. Then came the Russian Legation on the hillock, and the British Legation to the north of the royal palace. The three neighboring legations were connected to each other and to the royal palace through their front or back entrances.

In 1883, William Aston (1841-1911), a British diplomat based in Japan, came to Seoul to secure a site for the British Legation in Korea. His report about the property he selected shows how Western diplomats in Seoul favored particular conditions for the location of their legations: “[The building was] … within the walls of the city, between the south and west gates, and about a mile from the Palace, the Foreign Office and the Japanese Legation … The American Legation already bought a tract of land in Chong Dong [Jeongdong], and Germany, Russia and Italy also had plans to build their legations in Seoul, so the issues concerning the purchase of the land had to be resolved before they arrived. The area [around Deoksu Palace] was originally royal land, but most of it had slipped out of royal control into the hands of courtiers.” (From “The British Embassy Compound Seoul 1884-1984” by J. E. Hoare, Seoul: Korean British Society, 1984) Tennis tournaments held at the foreign legations, parties in their gardens, Western women in dresses cinched tight around the waist, Sontag Hotel illuminated by electric lights — all of these unfamiliar tokens of foreign cultures must have aroused exotic sensibilities in Koreans at the time. The appearance of Christian churches, Paichai Hakdang [boys’ school] and Ewha Hakdang [girls’ school], both founded by American missionaries, as well as tailor and dressmaker shops gradually changed the landscape of the Jeong-dong area, which came to be called “Legation Street.”

Some historians regard this district as a hotbed for the operations of foreign agents waging a clandestine war to advance their respective country’s interests amid the volatile geopolitical situation at the dawn of the 20th century.

A number of distinguished figures visited Seoul and stayed at Sontag Hotel. These high-profile visitors included Winston Churchill, who would later become his country’s prime minister, and the American writer Mark Twain. Ito Hirobumi, a Japanese statesman, also stayed at the hotel and met with politicians of the Korean Empire to coax or threaten them into promoting Japan’s annexation of Korea.

‘Architect of His Majesty King of Korea’ Architect Seredin-Sabatin, who designed the Russian Legation, lived in Korea some 100 years ago, during the period when the Joseon Dynasty turned into the Korean Empire.

As one of 30 Europeans retained by the Korean government, Seredin-Sabatin came with his wife, arriving at Jemulpo, the port of present-day Incheon, in September 1883, via Shanghai, China. Ten months later, in July 1884, Korea and Russia signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce.

Born into a noble family in Ukraine, Seredin-Sabatin studied art at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts for a brief period and also attended an architecture college. He also worked as a navigator for the Russian Far East Fleet, and that was when he was recruited by Paul Georg von Möllendorff, the German diplomatic adviser to King Gojong, who was looking for a builder versed in Western architecture. He came to Korea at the age of 23 and remained here for 20 years until 1904.

1 A complete view of the Russian Legation in an undated photo in the collection of Jeong Seong-gil.

2 A photograph by E. Burton Holmes, dated 1901, shows the Russian Legation in the background.

The “Russian Gate,” the front entrance modeled after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, stands at the foot of the sloping access road, with the hillock beyond packed with tile-roofed traditional Korean houses.

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accounts, someone asked the Russian minister Karl Weber for a safe place for the queen to hide in, and Walter Hillier, then British consul-general in Seoul, also reported to his government that “it looked like the queen had escaped.”

In February 1896, as the Japanese threats became more 2 imminent, Gojong and his crown prince, who would later become King Sunjong, took refuge at “The main building in the style of an Italian villa stands on top of a hillock. the Russian Legation after fleeing Gyeongbok Palace. The king It is a beautiful one-story structure with rows of high-ceilinged, spacious remained there for about a year until he moved to the nearby rooms along its walls and a rectangular tower on the right side …

Deoksu Palace in February There is a gorgeous park on the hillock dotted with various kinds of trees.”

1897, when he proclaimed the founding of the Korean Empire.

Although Deoksu Palace was considerably smaller than his main Nations Park (today’s Freedom Park) in the port city, and also compalace, Changdeok, the king chose to stay there because he felt that piled a map of the foreign concessions in operation there. All his this palace, in the vicinity of several foreign legations, was a safer children were born in Korea; his first son Pyotr is known to be the place for his court to deter Japanese threats. first European born in Korea.

To expand the palace grounds, the imperial family purchased In October 2009, at a seminar hosted in Seoul by the Internaadjacent land, such as the sites owned by the American missiontional Association for Korean Historical Studies, Dr. Tatiana Simaries Horace G. Underwood and Samuel A. Moffett. A number of birtseva of the Russian State University for the Humanities noted: Western-style buildings were erected on the enlarged grounds “Seredin-Sabatin’s articles, contributed to Russian newspapers of of Deoksu Palace. Seredin-Sabatin designed five out of six such the time, show that he had a profound knowledge about Joseon. He buildings, including Jungmyeongjeon, where the king took refwas involved in Joseon’s important historical events, and his affinity uge when the palace was set on fire in April 1904, which Ernest to King Gojong, toward whom he had both respect and sympathy, Bethell, a British journalist who founded the Seoul Shinmun (Korea connected him even more closely to the nation.”

Daily News), reported as an act of arson by the Japanese intruders. When the Russo-Japanese War broke out in February, and just Eyewitness to Tragic Historical Incident before this palace fire, Seredin-Sabatin left Korea with his family Seredin-Sabatin, who had earned King Gojong’s trust, was stayand other Russians, never to return. ing at Gyeongbok Palace when Queen Min was killed by Japanese assassins on October 8, 1895. He and William McEntyre Dye, an American general and military trainer for the Korean Royal Guard, New Nations Renew Diplomatic Ties happened to witness what is known as the Eulmi Incident. His After South Korea and Russia normalized diplomatic relations account of the assassination was vivid and damning: “The Japanese in 1991, the Russian Embassy built a 12-story modern chancery in soldiers could not find the queen. Nobody knows if she is alive or Jeong-dong, near the former legation site. Not long thereafter, I dead. The Japanese minister to Korea, Miura Goro, did not admit came across a group of Russian military officers who had come to that Japanese soldiers had invaded the palace and killed court view the tower at the original legation site. The officers in military ladies and government officials until he realized there were Eurouniforms, visibly moved, looked around the tower and took photopean eyewitnesses.” graphs.

The assassination of Queen Min (who was posthumously given Jeong-dong was the center stage of Korea’s modernization in the title Empress Myeongseong) remains shrouded in mystery. the tumultuous period of the early 20th century. Today, however, In 2013, Jeong Sang-su, a research professor at Korea National the political tension and exotic atmosphere of the past have faded Open University, found German and British diplomatic documents away. A silent witness to the tides of history, the tower stands that indicate the queen had survived the attack. According to these alone watching over the park’s tranquility.

Due to an increasing influx of foreigners into the country, there was a growing demand for European-style buildings.

During this period, SeredinSabatin created designs for about 20 projects, of which 15 were actually constructed.

He designed the marine customs office in Incheon, supervised the construction of the All

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art review

‘Lady Hong in the Palace’ A Human Psychodrama Based on Personal Memoirs 56

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A scene from the drama “Lady Hong in the Palace.” Kim So-hee gives a vivid interpretation of the life of hardship that the 18th-century crown princess led.

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o-called official history can hardly escape the influences of those in power. Hence, you can think of “unofficial” history as a kind of box that contains the truths that the powerful had preferred to keep hidden. Lee Youn-taek, who challenged conventional historical perspectives to present new viewpoints by appropriating “unofficial” history, collaborated with the National Theater Company to produce the new historical drama “Lady Hong in the Palace.”

When the lights dim and the sound of dry coughing dies down, Lady Hong and her son, King Jeongjo, appear on stage. They are at the temporary palace at Hwaseong, where Lady Hong’s sixtieth birthday celebrations were held. Go back in time. The running crew changes the stage setting to Changgyeong Palace where the Imo Incident took place. The 10-year-old Lady Hong, chosen as the crown princess, enters the palace. The audience gets a chance to travel through time for a night with a woman who went through so much in her life.

The King’s Tragic Family History Yeongjo, the 21st king of the Joseon Dynasty, is praised as one of the most outstanding rulers in the dynasty’s five-century history. He is credited for such innovative reforms as tangpyeongchaek, or the policy of impartiality, and gyunyeokbeop, or the equalized tax law. These policies enabled the recruitment of talented individuals regardless of their political affiliation, and reduced the common people’s financial burden by halving the amount of the military service exemption tax. His grandson, Jeongjo, who succeeded the throne, was also lauded as a wise and benevolent ruler. Jeongjo reinforced the impartiality policy and opened the doors for the sons of concubines to take the government service exams. He abolished the monopolies that were held by a handful of powerful merchants for the benefit of smaller merchants. Lady Hong was King Jeongjo’s mother and King Yeongjo’s daughter-in-law.

Lady Hong was born in 1735 and entered the palace as the crown princess at the age of 10. Until her death as Queen Dowager in 1816, she spent seven decades at the center of royal power. However, her life was far from happy. Her husband, Crown Prince Sado, was Yeongjo’s son and Jeongjo’s father, but instead of taking the throne he was ordered to death by his father, who locked him in a rice chest. The chest was so small that even a young child could barely fit inside, and the 28-year-old crown prince died of suffocation on his eighth day of confinement. Historians call this the Imo Incident since it occurred in 1762, the imo year by the Chinese hexagenary cycle. “Lady Hong in the Palace” is based on the book “The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of EighteenthCentury Korea,” which details the tragedies of the Joseon court and Lady Hong’s own family.

The moment she enters the palace, Lady Hong senses that her father-in-law does not have trust in his son. Crown Prince Sado was an intelligent person, but Yeongjo deliberately played the distant father to groom him as a strong ruler. The young crown prince always felt inadequate, and growing up under his father’s constant disapproval and harsh admonishment, he came to suffer from extreme depression.

He was caught in the middle of a power struggle between rival political factions, and became so stressed that he developed a mental disorder. Depression and mental illness led to bizarre behavior and madness that can be compared to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In the play, when the crown prince murders the eunuch who was sent to watch him, the audience is reminded of the scene where Hamlet kills Polonius.

“Lady Hong in the Palace,” an original play recently staged by the National Theater Company of Korea, is based on “The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea” (Hanjungnok ). To this story of a woman who led a tragic life at the center of royal power, playwright and director Lee Youn-taek applied his philosophy that it is “the trivial psychological motive that creates history,” successfully giving new life to historical figures.

Kim Il-song Editor, Scene Playbill Koreana ı Spring 2014

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It has been said that Crown Prince Sado killed more than 100 people, but the play does not mention this. Instead, it explores his promiscuity. Not only did he have relationships with the court ladies, the play suggests that he was intimately involved with his sister Princess Hwawan. When strange rumors spread in the palace, Yeongjo ordered that his son be locked up in a rice chest.

Jeongjo, the young heir to the throne, watched his father climb into the rice chest and be sealed inside. Even his mother had turned a blind eye to this horrific scene of execution. Crown Prince Sado, who had yearned for his father’s approval, had shown special affection for his son. Jeongjo was closer to his father than his mother, and this traumatic incident haunted him for the rest of his life.

After taking the throne, Jeongjo worked hard to restore his father’s reputation, and the construction of Hwaseong Fortress, now registered as UNESCO World Cultural Heritage, was part of such efforts.

In the play’s first scene, as Lady Hong seems to be enjoying the lavish birthday banquet held in her honor, she is ill at ease because her son’s efforts to rectify the tragic demise of his father had caused near massacre of her own family. The son, whom she had believed in, sought vengeance by purging his maternal relatives who had been involved in his father’s death, even though this decimated his mother’s family.

The play compresses a long history into one day in the life of the protagonist. After her birthday celebration, Lady Hong goes to bed and in her dream she travels back to the past. She awakens to see her younger sister standing in front of her. She had been exiled when Jeongjo took the throne, and for the next 20 years Lady Hong did not know whether she was alive or dead. Lady Hong is overcome with anguish when Jeongjo pays a visit to her sleeping quarters, but he shows no change in his emotions. In the end, Lady Hong decides to record every detail: the forsaken years during which she had to live as the wife of an evil-doer, and the suffering of her family because of her position. Her writings make up her memoirs, on which the play is based, and this is the last scene of the play.

Director and Lead Performers Playwright and director Lee Youn-taek Even among the impressive cast of actors who gathered to perform is known as a “guerilla” in Korea’s culture scene. He debuted as a poet, worked as the shaman ritual to appease the souls of the dead, Kim So-hee a journalist, and then entered the world clearly stood out. In “Lady Hong in the Palace,” this sublime actress of theater. In 1986, he founded Theater Troupe Georipae and still serves as its narrates non-mainstream accounts of history from a woman’s perartistic director. In addition, Lee operates theaters in Daehangno (University Street), spective, not the male-oriented, winner-takes-all mainstream history.

Seoul, and Miryang in South Gyeongsang In other words, the “loser” strikes back.

Province. Miryang Theater Village is one of the few remaining creative hubs in the Korean theatrical community where the culture of actors boarding together still survives. He has produced controversial works as a poet, playwright, and drama and musical producer. Prior to “Lady Hong in the Palace,” he had already created notable works on historical themes, including “Dreaming in Hwaseong,” a musical about the life of King Jeongjo. In his earlier works, Lee gave Prince Yeonsan, known as the most violent king of Joseon, a chance to speak for himself, and also delved into the personal aspects of the courageous Admiral Yi Sun-sin, a national hero. He has sought to dramatize what was not revealed in the official records of history. This time, he focused on the life of Lady Hong, with Kim So-hee cast in the title role.

Lee praises Kim as an actor with a gift for “materializing a concept.” She is “Lee Youn-taek’s persona,” able to bring to life, through her acting, issues of the human consciousness and inner soul taking place in the conceptual world, the psychological realm of non-everyday life. This is well illustrated in The moment just before Crown Prince Sado is locked up in a rice chest. His “Lady Hong in the Palace.” On stage, the protagonist’s life is portrayed over a span of 50 years — from father, King Yeongjo, orders him to go the 10-year-old girl just beginning to bloom, to the 28-year-old woman at the peak of her beauty, and inside while his son begs the king to the aging 60-year-old lady. With no special make-up, Kim used only her facial expressions, body gesspare the crown prince.

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tures, and tone of voice to transcend the decades. Lady Hong is the only character in the play who is depicted through 50 years.

Since her memoirs were used as the basis of the play, it would have been difficult to deviate too much from Lady Hong’s perspective. But this does not mean that the play supports her position alone.

Why did Yeongjo order the death of his son? Why couldn’t the mother of the crown prince stop her husband? Why did Hong Bong-han, or Lady Hong’s father, feign indifference? Why did Jeongjo go out of his way to eliminate his maternal relatives? The play gives voice to all the characters, leaving the audience with room for thought. To deliver the various messages, Lee Youn-taek used the dead souls that visited Lady Hong in her sleep. Thus he could reveal the person, more than the history, and the psychology rather than the facts.

Among the impressive cast of actors who gathered to perform the shaman ritual to appease the souls of the dead, Kim So-hee clearly stood out. For “Lady Hong in the Palace,” this sublime actress narrates non-mainstream accounts of history from a woman’s perspective, not the male-oriented, winner-takes-all mainstream history. In other words, the “loser” srikes back.

Though the play was originally scheduled to be staged at the Small Hall Dal of the National Theater of Korea, a delay in renovation work required a change in venue. Staged at the Baek Seong-hui and Jang Min-ho Theater in Seogye-dong, the play was sold out for its entire run from December 14-29, 2013. If it had been staged at the renovated Small Hall Dal, even more people would have been able to enjoy this play. All we can hope for is an encore performance.

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In Love with Korea

Rev. Motoyuki Nomura ‘The people of Cheonggyecheon shantytown were my teachers.’

For Rev. Motoyuki Nomura, 83, the decade from 1973 was a period of learning about living the life of a “homeless Jesus” from shantytown residents along Seoul’s Cheonggye Stream, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the capital at that time. In 2007, Rev. Nomura donated to the Seoul Metropolitan Government 800 rolls of film containing photos of the neighborhood and other valuable data from the period which had been stashed away in his study. He then published the “Nomura Report,” a photographic journal about the people living beside the stream in 1973-1976. These records helped him form a new relationship with Korea’s younger generations.

Jeon Eun-i Research Fellow, Research Center for Media and Culture, Kobe University

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s I traveled to Rev. Nomura’s community, changing subways and trains several times, a couple of images came to my mind. The first was the image of “the saint of Cheonggyecheon” strolling through the dingy neighborhood of poor residents. The second was that of an old man preparing “dinner for foxes” in the forest at sunset. When we first exchanged e-mails to arrange a meeting, I naturally called him “Reverend.” But he asked me not to use that title. “I’m nothing but an old man living in the remote countryside. Just call me ‘Halbae’ (affectionate Korean word for Grandpa].”

1 1 “Nomura Report,” a collection of Motoyuki Nomura’s photos published in 2013. 2 Motoyuki Nomura at his home in Kobuchizawa, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. Apart from a few personal snaps for his own keeping, he donated most of his historically valuable photos of the Cheonggye Stream area to the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

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Journey to Bethania House On my lap was the “Nomura Report,” a photographic journal about the shantytown residents along Cheonggye Stream in 1973-1976. The cover shows the poor neighborhood along the urban stream in the 1970s. Fast forward to 2014, there are no traces of the shabby neighborhood, which has since been converted into a leisure area for the citizens of Seoul. When I open the book to the first page, I see a child beaming at the camera, standing at the entrance of something like a cave or a mud hut. Some families who could not even afford to buy planks of wood dug caves into the embankment of the stream for their homes, covering the entrance with straw mats or sheets of plastic. People called this neighborhood of mud huts Gaemi Maeul (Village of Ants).

I changed to a quiet rural train in Shiojiri, Nagano Prefecture. After about 40 minutes, the majestic snowy landscape of the Southern Japanese Alps suddenly came into view. In a small village some five kilometers northeast of Kobuchizawa Station is “Grandpa” Nomura’s Bethania House, at the foot of the Yatsugatake Mountains (1,050 meters above sea level). This is Nomura’s community Ko re a n Cu l tu re & A rts

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where everything, be they people or animals, freely comes and goes. I arrived there after a fourhour journey that began in Kobe, where it rarely snows.

A Bowl of Sugared Water Walking along the forest path, I reached a small house. It looked rather modest compared with the other houses in the neighborhood, which has become a popular area for country villas. In 1985, Grandpa Nomura sold his house in Tokyo and moved here. At the time, the land prices here were low since the area was a quiet rural backwater nestled among forests. The trees that were kneehigh when he first came have now grown to form a large forest, which serves as a passage bringing wild deer, foxes, and birds to his front yard.

“You’ve come all the way here to meet a useless old man who’s just waiting for the fox families….”

Grandpa Nomura, with a smile as innocent as that of the children of Gaemi Maeul, welcomed me. His son, who provides vocational training for mentally retarded people in Ibaraki Prefecture, and his son’s wife, who offers dental services for physically handicapped people there, happened to be visiting for the Christmas holidays.

“I had a chance to visit Korea for the first time in 1968. When I was attending a veterinary college in Japan around the time of the Korean War, I had a close friend who was Korean. He was from Jeju Island. After a visit to Jeju, I traveled across Korea. The shock I felt then still haunts me. I thought, ‘Ah, only about 20 years earlier, Japanese flags must have flown in every corner of this country, Koreana ı Spring 2014

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“The residents of the Cheonggyecheon area taught me a lesson that nobody else could teach me.

They were my teachers, who opened my eyes to what the Bible says. I am ashamed of being called ‘the saint of Cheonggyecheon’… I’m just thankful to the people who awakened in me the desire to become a genuine disciple of Jesus.”

including the remote countryside, and the sounds of imperial Japanese soldiers’ boots must have resonated loudly. All this is the indelible legacy of Japanese colonial rule.’ All of it suddenly came home to me.”

This was around the time he had returned to Japan after studying in the United States. Japan was then enjoying robust economic growth. While studying veterinary medicine, he had been encouraged by an American missionary to go to the U.S. to study theology. In Korea, he was deeply shocked to see the scars left by the Korean War, which broke out soon after Korea was liberated from Japanese rule. That was when he became convinced that individuals should also be held morally responsible for the war of aggression started by their country. Accompanied by his family this time, he visited Korea again in summer 1973 with a view to helping Koreans, with the approval of his family.

Then, his wife, Grandma Yoriko, who had remained silent and seemed absorbed in thought while we were talking, told me an episode from their visit to Jeam-ri in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province.

“It was really hot that summer. It was very hard to get drinking water. We were visiting Jeamri when, to our surprise, an old woman in a thatched house offered us a bowl of sugared water and pieces of watermelon generously sprinkled with sugar. At the time, sugar was very rare and expensive in Korea. Our son, Makoto, whom we had brought on the trip, was a second grader,” she said.

They later found out that this woman was one of the few survivors of the Jeam-ri Massacre. (In retaliation for the March 1 Independence Movement in 1919, Japanese imperial soldiers and police officers slaughtered about 20 innocent Korean civilians in Jeam-ri, Hwaseong County, Gyeonggi Province, on April 15 the same year.)

‘Don’t call me the saint of Cheonggyecheon!’

On July 25, 1973, Rev. Nomura and his family visited the Cheonggyecheon area with the help of a civic group named Urban Industrial Mission. They were shocked at what they saw. It was a living hell. But in one corner of the shantytown they found a ramshackle house with a wooden cross on top. It was Hwalbin (“help-your-needy-neighbors”) Church.

Thanks to a young and enthusiastic preacher at the church, Nomura became convinced that his calling was to work for residents of the rundown area.

That was how the relationship between Grandpa Nomura, the Cheonggyecheon area, and the young preacher began.

Through the residents there, Nomura came to learn about living the life of a “homeless Jesus.” And he decided to put that ideal into practice.

Nomura engaged in many activities to support the people of the area and raised large amounts of money with the support of the international community, including Japan, West Germany, and New Zealand. When the Cheonggyecheon shantytown 1

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1 In Rev. Nomura’s front yard, a fox enjoys the supper prepared by him. 2-5 Scenes from the Cheonggye Stream area in the 1970s, as documented by Nomura in his photos. The second photo from top shows a mud hut and children in Gaemi Maeul (Village of Ants).

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was eventually demolished, the aid funds and supplies from abroad were used to assist those who were relocated to Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province. Day care centers were built for low-income families and self-sufficiency rural resettlement programs were launched.

Foreign volunteers arrived to serve at work camps to help people build community facilities. Through all those years, Nomura spent not a single penny of the donated funds for his personal use. Every one or two months, he had to travel back to Japan to renew his visa. All his personal needs were covered with his own money.

Then a few unfortunate incidents occurred due to financial mismanagement by a Korean preacher who had no experience in handling large amounts of funds.

Nomura faced much difficulty coping with the incidents, and in 1985 his relationship with Korea came to an end.

His family suffered from economic hardship thereafter. Makoto had to take a break from his college study, while Nomura and his wife wore their cotton underclothes until they became threadbare.

“Naturally, anyone who is richer and more competent than others should share what they have with those less fortunate. Even if you have nothing to spare, you can still share what you have on hand with those in need,” said Nomura, thinking back to the old days.

The people who taught Nomura this lesson were none other than the widows, prostitutes, tramps, and children living in the Cheonggyecheon area.

“When I was young, my father was a professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto. I attended a Christian high school. Later I studied at three different theological seminaries in the U.S. But the residents of the Cheonggyecheon area taught me a lesson that nobody else could teach me. They were my teachers, who opened my eyes to what the Bible says. I am ashamed of being called ‘the saint of Cheonggyecheon’… I’m just thankful to the people who awakened in me the desire to become a genuine disciple of Jesus,” he said.

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© Choi In-gi

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Dinner for Animals Standing up suddenly, Nomura said, “Excuse me, but I have to cook, for the guests who have made a reservation at the restaurant….” He had a unique way of speaking, serious and humorous at the same time. I was pleasantly confused several times before I got used to it.

“Pardon me? Did you say restaurant?” I asked.

“In the front yard, there’s a restaurant for a fox family. Of course, there’s a restaurant for birds and a restaurant for deer as well,” his daughter-in-law chipped in.

The whole family burst into laughter when I finally realized what they meant. I felt happy, too.

Grandpa Nomura prepared dinner for the foxes in his front yard where darkness began to fall.

There was a broad, black stone in the center of the yard about three to four meters from the balcony window. Nomura took something out of a plastic bag and carefully placed it on the stone. It was scraps of meat he had been supplied by the village butcher. When people began to build country villas in the forest, animals came down to the village for food. Especially in winter, the animals can starve to death due to a lack of food. The “restaurants” in Grandpa Nomura’s front yard are fully booked every day.

“After my father died when I was young, my mother wanted me to study at a seminary. So I lived with my maternal grandparents and spent a lonely childhood, yearning for my mother’s tender loving care. At the time, I had no confidence in myself because I thought I had been abandoned by my mother. So since I was young, I’ve liked animals,” Nomura said.

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The Beginning of a New Relationship The next morning, I woke up early with the tip of my nose tingling with cold. The previous night, Grandpa Nomura had laid out an electric blanket, two old cotton-padded blankets, and several military-style blankets on my bed, saying, “Korean visitors feel cold in Japanese houses, because we don’t have ondol [traditional Korean underfloor heating system].”

Bethania House is a kind of communal dwelling. Its large living room consists of several separate areas, though not divided by partitions, which include a space big enough for about 10 people to have a meeting, a space to relax, and a space to eat. The kitchen connected to the dining space is so small and tidy that it reminded me of a monastery kitchen. There are several rooms on both sides of a long hallway. This suggests that the house was designed to accommodate visitors, a place where everyone shares everything with everybody else. So far, about 3,000 visitors have stayed at this house.

“Martin Buber [1878-1965, an Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher] once said that people’s view of the world differs largely depending upon how they see other people,” Nomura said.

“Roughly, the world consists of You and I, or It and I. If you accept others not as a tool or means to fulfill your desires, but as individuals to be treated with respect, this opens up a world of trust and affection. I think Koreans were once inclined to regard me simply as It, probably because they were severely challenged materially and spiritually at the time. Many people also tried to seek It through me. But I’m very gratified now, because the Koreans have at last accepted me and my family as You. This happened after I donated my collection of photos of Cheonggyecheon.”

In 2005, when his mother, Katsuko Nomura, who was born to a family of kimono craftsmen in Kyoto and dedicated her life to the consumer cooperative movement, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the late editorial writer Lee In-cheol of the Hankyoreh newspaper visited Tokyo. In a meeting with the Korean journalist, Nomura, saying that he was now getting old, expressed the hope that Korea would make good use of his old records of the Cheonggyecheon area. He donated to the Seoul Metropolitan Government 800 rolls of film containing photos of the area and other valuable data from the period.

That was how Rev. Nomura’s years in the Cheonggyecheon area became known. After exhibitions of his photos were held in Seoul and Gwangju, Koreans who had seen them began to visit Bethania House. His long-term relationship with the Purme Foundation, a Korean nonprofit public organization for the welfare of people with disabilities, also helped bring him an honorary citizenship award from the Seoul city government in 2013.

In this process, Nomura also met a young Korean photographer. Choi In-gi was a shy young man who liked cats and took pictures of evicted or relocated residents, or street vendors. After returning to Japan, Nomura sent Choi two digital cameras and lenses. The young photographer introduced him to a publishing house that agreed to put out the “Nomura Report.” All proceeds from sales of the book are being used to support the work of young social activists.

Nomura said he was perplexed when told he would receive an honorary citizenship award from the Seoul city government — he had only wanted to “cry with those who were crying.” But he is thankful, for the award gave him momentum to renew his relationship with Korea, and he wants to do something to repay the recognition. Makoto, who is living a life similar to his father’s, is also looking forward to his family’s new relationship with Korea. “I grew up looking at my father’s back. I was following in his footsteps in spite of myself. It was not a matter of choice,” he said. “Now it seems that a new chapter has opened in our family’s life.”

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1 Nomura and his son Makoto (to his left) visit the Institute of the Disabled for Independent Living in Seoul. 2 Nomura was awarded a Certificate of Honorary Citizenship from the Seoul Metropolitan Government on October 28, 2013. His wife, Yoriko, who has strongly supported her husband’s work, stands beside him at the awards ceremony.

along their own path

Nora Noh A Living Legend Nora Noh, who opened her first shop in Myeong-dong just before the end of the Korean War, is the last of Korea’s first generation of fashion designers to be still working. At 85, she retains an aloof beauty with her short hair, attractively made up eyes, and designer black that makes her look more chic than an actress. Through fashion she has been an independent woman in charge of her own life and an advocate for women’s participation in society.

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few years before Nora Noh’s 60th year as a fashion designer, a young woman came to see her one day. It was the stylist Suh Eun-yeong, who said she was planning an exhibition looking back on the history of Korean fashion through the life of Nora Noh. That’s how it all started.

The Story of Many ‘Noras’ Younger designers famous in their respective fields of clothing, shoes, and accessories began to offer works for the exhibition. Top actresses of bygone days and many different clients sent in madeto-order clothes they had purchased between the 1950s and 1980s.

With the inclusion of Nora Noh’s creations from her own collection, the exhibition shed light on the evolution of modern Korean fashion, or Western-style Korean fashion, from the 1950s to the present day. This exhibition, held in 2012, was titled “La Vie en Rose.”

The story of Nora Noh’s life thus examined in a retrospective exhibition was then committed to film: the result was the documentary “Nora Noh,” which wove together stories told by people involved in the exhibition, intercut with scenes from the preparation process.

Premiered at the 2013 International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul, the film made it to the screens of mainstream cinemas, where it made a quiet impact. It was then introduced to foreign audiences through the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.

“The film is about the story of the lives of Korean women in the 1950s to the 1970s, who lived through the difficult years after war, making compromises as they were torn between their longing for the new Western culture and society’s demands dictated by tradition,” explains the director Kim Seong-hui. “I wanted to tell that story through the life of the fashion designer Nora Noh. What did Nora Noh want to keep through fashion, what was she trying to say? The documentary is the story of the fashion designer Nora Noh and at the same time the story of many ‘Noras’ living back then and today.”

The Myeong-dong Era In 1952, with the Korean War still raging, Nora Noh, just returned from America, opened a Western-style fashion shop named “House of Nora Noh” in Myeong-dong, Seoul. The history of Western fashion in Korea would be incomplete without mentioning Myeong-dong. For a long time, this district in the heart of Seoul had been the hot spot for young people seeking an artistic ambience, the liveliest and most exciting place for taking in and swapping the latest news, trends, and talk-of-the-town that attracted well-off matrons and students alike, as well as pickpockets and swindlers.

Myeong-dong was also the center of conspicuous consumption, and it was natural that Korea’s foremost fashion district emerged here. The show windows of boutiques lining the road along the entrance to Myeong-dong became altars for the objects of desire for Korean women. A number of the photographer Limb Eung-sik’s best-known works are images of the Myeong-dong of that time. One photo, from around 1956, shows a woman dressed in a traditional Koreana ı Spring 2014

hanbok crossing paths with another woman dressed in Western fashion. It was right about this time that people living in Seoul began to switch from hanbok to Western clothing for everyday wear.

In those days, most of the premier boutiques were named after the heroines of iconic Western art works, such as Alissa from Andre Gide’s novel “Straight Is the Gate,” or Elise from Beethoven’s piano solo “Fur Elise.” Similarly, the House of Nora Noh was named after the protagonist of Ibsen’s play, “A Doll’s House,” who was known as an archetype for women’s liberation. After ending a short two-year marriage, at the age of 19, the young woman named Noh Myeong-ja, determined to find her own path in life, had gone to study in the United States and start a new life as Nora Noh. Now she was back in Korea after studying fashion in college and completing an internship at a clothing company.

There are a number of first-generation fashion designers credited with the Myeong-dong era. Among them was Choe Gyeongja, born in 1934 in Hamheung, Hamgyeong Province (now in North Korea), who had dreamed of becoming a pianist before she sold her piano and bought a sewing machine. After studying Western dressmaking in Tokyo, she returned home and opened the first dressmaking school in Korea. Kukje Dressmaking, opened in Daegu and later relocated to Myeong-dong in Seoul, was a great success.

Choe went on to open Kukje School of Fashion Design (now Kukje Fashion Design Occupational Training College) which has produced some of the biggest names in Korea’s modern fashion, such as the late Andre Kim. Similarly, Seo Su-yeon, the designer behind the Alissa brand, went to study dressmaking in Japan after a showdown with her father-in-law. After a stint of teaching dressmaking at Sookmyung Girls’ High School upon her return, she opened her own boutique in Myeong-dong.

Nora Noh chose to study in the United States. “In those days America was a whole new world, where the living conditions were much better than ours,” she recalls. “I could have settled down there but I believed that my path in life was to return to my own country and make clothes for Koreans.”

Unlike her contemporaries, who mostly ended up studying fashion in Korea or Japan, Nora Noh was able to learn about Western fashion through her real-life experiences in the United States. To bring Western clothing naturally into the everyday life of Koreans, it was necessary to understand in detail the way Westerners wore their clothes. Nora Noh’s firsthand experience provided a solid foundation for her work. “It is not the clothes but the people who are works of art,” she says. “Fashion should make people feel comfortable and look their best. If the clothes stand out more than the person, then that fashion is a failure.”

The retrospective “Nora Noh: The Birth of Ready-to-Wear Fashion,” which was held at Presseum in 2012, included a photo of a party from the early 1950s. It was hosted by Nora Noh’s parents, her father Noh Chang-seong, one of the earliest broadcasters in Korea, and her mother Yi Ok-gyeong, Korea’s first female announc-

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3 1 Nora Noh’s friends pose for a photo after seeing her off at the airport as she leaves for France in 1956. All of them are wearing clothes made by Nora Noh. 2 A Nora Noh fashion show features top actress of the day Um Aing-ran dressed in Audrey Hepburn style. 3 Nora Noh makes a sketch of the A-line mini-dress she made for singer Yoon Bok-hee in the 1960s. 4 Nora Noh’s creations on display at the retrospective “Nora Noh: The Birth of Ready-toWear Fashion,” held at Presseum in Seoul in 2012.

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er. This photo features several high-profile figures, such as the poet Moh Yoon-suk, known for her clout in political circles, and Kim Sooim, a graduate of Ewha Womans University who was later vilified and executed as a spy during the anti-communist witch hunt that followed the Korean War. It shows a slice of the rising upper class of Korea and gives a glimpse at Nora Noh’s personal background.

Celebrities and High-profile Clientele In the early 1950s, when the per capita income in Korea was less than one hundred U.S. dollars, the only people who could afford to shop at the House of Nora Noh were the moneyed elite or entertainers who performed for the U.S. Army troops based in Korea.

Indeed, Nora Noh made many stage outfits for these entertainers.

She also designed movie and theater costumes.

But it was a time when quality fabric and trimmings were hard to come by, which forced her to apply her creativity. When Lim Chunaeng, the most celebrated changgeuk (traditional Korean musi-

bell-bottoms on stage, frequented the House of Nora Noh. In the 1960s, Nora Noh turned her attention to ready-to-wear fashion. After collating and analyzing the sizes of her clientele to come up with standard sizes, she came out with a ready-to-wear collection. Though the clothes were off-the-rack, they were just as stylish as haute couture. With this new venture, even women who did not belong to the economic upper class were able to purchase Nora Noh outfits for work and for special occasions. “I wanted to encourage working women by making less expensive and more stylish clothes for them to wear,” she says.

As Active as Ever In the 1980s, a less formal look was the trend in fashion. Myeong-dong came to be dominated by casual brands, such as Tomboy, and the overall atmosphere became younger and mass marketoriented. Second- and third-generation designers emerged in quick succession. Song Ok Boutique, which had led the bespoke market, and Alissa left Myeong-dong; a string of other boutiques soon closed their doors. In “Fashion should make people feel comfortable and look their best.

1988, after 30 years, Nora Noh also ended her Myeong-dong days and moved her shop If the clothes stand out more than the person, then that fashion is to Cheongdam-dong in southern Seoul.

“Myeong-dong was growing younger a failure … Through fashion I wanted to change the way women and more casual by the day, and fitting in moved and the way they thought. I wanted to give them confidence.” there would have meant lowering quality to lower prices … I decided I didn’t want to make clothes that way. And, as Myeong-dong grew busier, parking cal theater) artist of the day, asked for a “glittery stage outfit,” she became a big issue…” she recalls. “Fashion today is all about brand created a flashy cloak decorated with aluminum can pull tabs and and capital.” foil lining of cigarette packs. When the handsome actor Kim DongThese days Nora Noh is focusing on a ready-to-wear line for won played Hamlet in 1953, she made his stage outfit from a velour export. Because of long-time customers who are “addicted” to her skirt of her mother’s and a U.S. army blanket. Nora Noh catered clothes, she also continues to make bespoke outfits. “Her talents to foreign clients as well. In her autobiography “Nora Noh: Designshine particularly when she makes dresses, jackets, and coats,” ing Passion,” she recalls what a nerve-racking experience she had says creative director Jeong Geum-ra, the wife of Nora Noh’s cutting a very pricy piece of cashmere that a foreign customer gave nephew. Though Jeong now looks after much of the business, her to make a coat.

Nora Noh is still at the office by nine every morning and works nine In 1956, at the Bando Hotel, Nora Noh held Korea’s first fashhours a day. She continues to set aside three hours a day to exerion show featuring creations made entirely with homemade fabcise in order to keep her shape and stay healthy. Her 26-inch waist rics and local know-how. After marking this milestone, she went is no longer as slim as when she was younger but she has enough off to France. A photo taken at Yeouido Airport, Korea’s first and false eyelashes to last the rest of her life. Several times a year she only international airport at the time, shows six young women, all travels to Europe and the United States. “I get ideas for the colors wearing stylish dresses and high heels. “Four of them were modand trends for new designs as I check out the markets and closely els for my fashion shows who later became actresses. In those observe the lifestyles of the young,” she says. days, movie directors would come to the shows to look for potenIn the documentary film, Nora Noh comments: “Through fashtial actresses. Their dresses, in the American college style, were all ion I wanted to change the way women moved and the way they made by me,” she says. thought. I wanted to give them confidence.” Though she has lived Nora Noh designed clothes for many of the young lead actressby the name of Nora, she says she falls short of being an activist for es of 1950s and 1960s movies. The adorable Hepburn-style dress feminism. worn by Um Aing-ran was her creation. When miniskirts and bell“When I look back,” she says, “my life was not a rose-colored bottom pants were all the rage, the singer Yoon Bok-hee, who one that young people associate with the world of fashion.” made miniskirts popular in Korea, and the Pearl Sisters, who wore Koreana ı Spring 2014

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Korean Literature Series for English-speaking Readers

“Library of Korean Literature” (Volumes 1-10) By various authors, $65.00 (10-volume set), Champaign, Ill., U.S.; London; Dublin: Dalkey Archive Press (2013)

Introducing works of literature from non-English-speaking countries to English-speaking readers is very often an uphill battle. While readers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other English-speaking countries may be familiar with some of the more famous examples of translated literature, these works are just the tip of the iceberg, just a few shining gems from the treasure trove of world literature. They make up a very small part of the books read in English. John O’Brien puts it rather simply: “It is a fact known to most in the literary world that very few literary works from non-English-speaking countries are being translated into English.”

O’Brien is the founder and publisher of Dalkey Archive Press, a publishing company that specializes in bringing little-known writers to the attention of readers. In cooperation with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, Dalkey Archive Press is seeking to overcome the gap between the richness of Korean literature and the awareness of that richness (or lack thereof) in the English-speaking world with its “Library of Korean Literature,” a selection of 25 novels and short story collections.

Simply publishing these books, though, is only half the battle. The truth is that literary translations do not tend to sell as well as mainstream works, and for that reason major publishing houses generally shy away from them. As a result, it is left to the smaller concerns to publish literary translations, but these presses usually lack the resources to properly market their products. “The Library of Korean Literature is a bold experiment that will address these problems,” O’Brien says. Dalkey Archive Press and LTI Korea are jointly committed to seeing the process through, from the initial translation work to the media coverage and marketing efforts needed to catch the attention of readers who might otherwise never think of picking up a Korean short story or novel.

The first stage in this project is already complete, with 10 books published in November 2013; the remainder are scheduled to be published in fall this year. The series begins, at least chronologically, with a work that is often considered to be the first modern Korean novel, Yi Kwang-su’s “The Soil.” First serialized in a daily newspaper in 1932, the novel follows a social activist who attempts to enlighten the farming village in which he was born, bringing those who live there into the modern era. It paints a vivid picture of the social conditions in Korea during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), which led World Literature Today to include the work in its list of 75 Notable Translations of 2013.

The remainder of the works, though, were published during the past few decades and thus present to readers a broader depiction of a more modern Korea. The short story, which has always been a popular genre in Korean literature, is represented here with collections from three authors. Jung Young-moon’s “A Most Ambiguous Sunday and Other Stories” is a collection of tales that feature the strange and weird in a comical light; his work has been described as Kafkaesque. Jung Mi-kyung’s “My Son’s Girlfriend” uses irony to plumb the depths of life in urban, contemporary Korea, finding a silver lining behind the dark clouds of alienation. Park Wan-suh was a legendary figure in contemporary Korean literature, and her collection “Lonesome You” brings together tales from the perspective of an older writer as she offers her reflections on life.

Of the novels, three deal with biography and history. Hyun Ki-young’s “One Spoon on This Earth” is an autobiographical novel that presents the history of modern Korea through the lens of family and personal experience. Kim Won-il’s “House with a Sunken Courtyard” delves into one of the darkest times in Korean history, the period immediately after the end of the Korean War, through the story of six families living in the same house. In “Stingray,” author Kim Joo-young presents what he calls a “critical biography of my loving mother” through Ko re a n Cu l tu re & A rts

the story of a mother and son forced to eke out a living in a farming village in the 1950s.

The remaining three novels are an eclectic mix. “When Adam Opens His Eyes” is a tale of sex, death, and coming of age by Jang Jung-il, an author so controversial in Korea that he has even been jailed for writing what the Korean courts deemed pornographic. Jang Eun-jin’s “No One Writes Back” has been described as a modern picaresque, the tale of a young man who spends three years on the road, encountering a dismal cast of characters and then writing them letters of consolation. Lee Ki-ho’s “At Least We Can Apologize” is a humorous satire that focuses on an agency offering a most unique service: apologizing for the wrongdoings of others.

This bold project by Dalkey Archive Press and LTI Korea should serve as a meaningful introduction of Korean literature to any reader willing to dive headfirst into these otherwise inaccessible works. With the remainder of the series to be published later this year, the Library of Korean Literature promises to be a landmark contribution to the ever-broadening field of Korean literature in translation.

Charles La Shure Professor, Department of Korean Language and Literature, Seoul National University

A Study of Korea’s Path to a Modern Sovereign State

”The Great Enterprise: Sovereignty and Historiography in Modern Korea”

By Henry H. Em, 265 pages, $24.95, Durham, NC: Duke University Press (2013)

Henry H. Em’s “The Great Enterprise” examines the Korean quest to establish a modern nation-state equal in status to all other nations (the “great enterprise” of the title), and how this quest influenced the writing of history in Korea. The author divides his task into two parts, first providing the historical background to Korea’s sovereignty as a modern nation and next studying the different threads woven into the tapestry of history in Korea, first during the Japanese colonial period, then later in the brief post-colonial period and the period of division that has continued to the present day.

Korea’s path to sovereignty and nationhood was not an easy one, and a prerequisite to understanding this path is knowledge of the cultural background of East Asia, first under the influence of China and later as it struggled with Western imperialism. In the first chapter, Em shows how Korea, while existing within the hegemony of China, was a “not-so-exemplary vassal state,” accepting the reality of a Sino-centric world but at the same time exercising a certain measure of independence. Within this context, it becomes easier to see why Japan needed Korea to assert its independence from China before it could assert its own dominance. In the next chapter, Em examines Korean sovereignty in terms of how it conformed to European standards, and he offers a fascinating discussion of the role played by language and translation.

The second part of the book begins with the re-discovery of S kkuram (Seokguram) by the Japanese, using this incident as a jumping-off point to show how Japan did in fact make a concerted effort to establish a unique Korean identity, contrary to claims often heard in Korea that Japan enacted a policy to obliterate the Korean identity. Em argues that Japan instead needed to establish a Korean identity — but one that was inferior to Japan — in order to rationalize their colonial ambitions, and locating the apex of Korean culture in the distant past (exemplified by S kkuram) was one way of doing this. Em goes on to depict the struggle between efforts to universalize Korea’s past by the left and to particularize Korea’s past by the right-wing nationalists. The book finishes with a chapter on post-colonial history writing in the era of division, showing how these different modes of historiography continue to interact to the present day.

“The Great Enterprise” is an informed, concise depiction of the problems of sovereignty and writing history in modern Korea, which draws on Korean, Japanese, and Western sources in an attempt to present an objective argument. There is no doubting the time and effort that Em spent researching his subject; the notes to the five chapters are over a third of the length of the chapters themselves, and the bibliography will provide any student of Korean history a fine starting point for further research in Korean, Japanese, and English. This book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on modern Korean history in English.

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first big success in “The Chaser,” portraying a cold-blooded serial killer. And from 2009, most of the movies in which he played the lead character have turned into formidable commercial successes.

His series of box-office hits started with “Take Off” and “The Yellow Sea,” continuing with “The Client,” “Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Game,” “Love Fiction,” “The Berlin File,” and “The Terror Live.”

“The Terror Live” was a film made by him, for him, and almost wholly of him — a virtual one-man show by Ha Jung-woo. For this reason, the movie was criticized for lack of depth of its supporting characters, and a rather contrived ending. But the movie’s monodramatic focus, which leaned heavily on Ha’s lead character, was enough to overcome these Male Sex Appeal shortcomings, as evidenced by “Never Forever,” directits popular appeal among moved by Jina Kim, a professor at iegoers. The box-office outcome the Department of Visual and of this film was all about Ha Environmental Studies, HarJung-woo’s on-screen magic. vard University, looms large in In the film, Ha plays a forHa Jung-woo’s acting career. mer television news anchor The movie by and large failed who once enjoyed national to attract Korean audiences at fame but is currently relegatlocal theaters — or, I would say, ed to hosting a radio program, as a film critic, that the film did far from the spotlight. As an not get the reception it deserved, opportunist obsessed with pereven though it earned critical sonal success, on air, he fakes acclaim at the 2007 Sundance concern for social justice and Film Festival. However, the film care for the underprivileged. did succeed in creating a powBut off the air, this mask falls erful aura of masculinity for Ha away: he strikes absurd deals Jung-woo.

Actor Ha Jung-woo may be having the time of his with the head of the newsroom Back then, the Korean enterand deceives his colleagues. tainment industry was awash life. He pulled off a veritable one-man show in a By no means was his demowith “flower boys” — effeminate low-budget film of a young director, turning it into tion from celebrated anchor male actors and idol stars — a formidable box-office hit. It is rumored that every to radio host due to bad luck and was experiencing a severe investor and producer in Seoul’s filmmaking circles alone. Rather, it resulted from drought of actors suitable for his involvement in an unsaportraying strong male charis pursuing this new-found movie star. Why are Kovory incident that revealed his acters. Against this backdrop, rean movie audiences so fascinated by this actor? despicable me-first character Ha emerged as an actor who Oh Dong-jin Film Critic to his newsroom colleagues. exudes a potent masculinity on Then, a once-in-a-lifetime the screen. He seemed to poschance to redeem himself sess the animalistic instincts of presents itself. He receives a phone call from a man who threatens a carnivore devouring raw meat. It was only natural for movie proto blow up the Mapo Bridge unless his demands are satisfied. Not ducers to take note of his sex appeal. one to be easily taken in, he taunts the caller: “Go ahead and blow up the bridge, you son of a bitch!” The bridge indeed goes down, as the Box-Office Hit Maker caller had threatened. The threat of a terrorist bombing could be a Ha Jung-woo’s powerful box-office appeal has earned him the chance for him to reclaim his anchor position. He could not care less moniker, “Ha the Megatrend”; filmmakers are assured of lucrative about the innocent casualties of a terrorist attack, however, since he profits once they cast him in their movies. is preoccupied with scheming to recover his fame in the TV media.

After his first leading role in “The Unforgiven” in 2005, Ha’s popWhile watching “The Terror Live,” I thought that only Ha Jungularity had its ups and downs through 2008, when he scored his ophie (Vera Farmiga) only wants to get pregnant to save her marriage to her husband, a Korean-American lawyer. All that keeps Jihah (Ha Jung-woo) going is the thought of bringing his lover from Korea to America. They go to bed with such different goals in mind. The woman wants a child, and the man receives $300 each time they have sex. If Sophie gets pregnant, he would receive a lump-sum payment of $30,000. However, Sophie finds herself gradually attracted to this blunt but mysterious darkbrown-eyed Asian man. While they try to deny the intimacy of their acts, their couplings get heated up.

In the Era of ‘Flower Boys,’ Ha Jung-woo Shows Off Masculinity

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Actor Ha Jung-woo has proved his versatility in playing diverse roles, ranging from a serial killer to a protagonist in a romantic comedy.

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A man who can add a romantic touch to a hard-core action and spy thriller, and jump out of a window to save his woman — Ha Jung-woo can do this with aplomb.

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woo could personify so well this kind of vile character. I also wondered if Ha is harboring a similar kind of selfishness within himself. His performance invites audiences to realize how their own thoughts and behavior in their real life are not all so different from that of the character he portrays.

Lee Choon-yeon, the head of the studio Cine 2000, which planned and produced “The Terror Live,” strove to cast Ha Jung-woo in the lead role in order to move forward with his filmmaking idea. Ha’s contract fees took up a significant portion of the movie’s relatively limited budget, which ran on a net production cost (total production costs excluding marketing and distribution costs) of 2 billion won, or about $1.9 million. The director and production staff members were willing to forgo their regular pay under an arrangement that they would share in any of the film’s net profits. This strategy worked perfectly. The movie attracted more than five million viewers, garnering a hefty profit of some 15 billion won ($12.75 million).

A Cool Bad Guy Playing a gang boss in “Nameless Gangster,” Ha Jung-woo demonstrates the full force of his on-screen charm and versatility. As the mustached actor strides down the street wearing aviator sunglasses and a natty double-breasted jacket, his sleek hair plastered with pomade, the viewer can be forgiven for admiring his coolness rather than damning the ruthlessness of his mobster character. He brings the role to life with a superbly appropriate dose of snobbism.

While conversing with an uncle (Choi Min-sik), whom he recruits for his connections with public officials, he repeatedly strokes his chin, an intriguing bit of acting that catches viewers’ eyes — a mannerism that unmistakably brands his character’s charisma. It was later said that Ha was paying homage to Marlon Brando, who in the first scene of the “Godfather” trilogy, strokes his chin while listening to the pleas of his associates. Ha says the “Godfather” series is his all-time favorite movie. “I’ve seen the whole trilogy about 100 times. Since childhood, I liked to mimic Marlon Brando’s acting.”

Action and Romance In the spy thriller “The Berlin File,” Ha plays an elite North Korean spy, who had been praised as a hero by the regime. But he gets entangled in a sinister political plot, in which he must protect the life of his wife (Jun Ji-hyun), whom he loves dearly but whose identity he is constantly suspicious about. The job of protecting his wife becomes increasingly more daunting. He is closely chased by a brutal North Korean operative, who assassinates a Berlin-based North Korean ambassador, in whom he had confided. With unex-

Ha Jung-woo’s painting “Portrait,” 175.5 x 146 cm, pen on canvas (2013). The actor is also a professional painter. He has held individual exhibitions annually since 2010.

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pected help from his South Korean rival, a National Intelligence Service agent, he struggles to rescue his wife who is kept hostage.

Amidst a fierce firefight, he succeeds in eliminating the captives but his wife is shot and fatally wounded.

Holding his dying wife he wails sorrowfully. The audience listens to his painful wailing, slowly rising in intensity. An actor who can add a romantic touch to a hard-core action and spy thriller, and jump out of a window to save his woman — Ha Jung-woo can do this with aplomb.

Fine Art and Farce Ha has a talent for painting as well. He does not enjoy painting merely as a hobby; his art works are good enough for a one-man exhibition. His works express a primitive vitality that seems to arise from his innate desires. His works also demonstrate his sense of humor, which constitutes an important aspect of his acting. He also proves his versatility in the comedy genre, for instance, when he appears in a music video at the end of the hilarious romantic comedy, “Love Fiction.”

True humor derives from self-deprecation, as evidenced by Ha’s directorial debut, “Fasten Your Seatbelt,” released in October 2013. Ha wrote the script and directed the movie, which affirms that this premier movie star, whose filmography includes an impressive series of mega hits, is in fact willing to ridicule himself, sneer at himself, insult himself, and knock himself on the head. He freely crosses over the boundaries of hypocrisy and assumed evil, which accompany celebrity worship. At the same time, he asks the audience, “What on earth does it mean to be a star?” He asks about the reasons for the public’s mania over celebrities. And he says that a star is only a human in the end, who has his own life like anyone else, not particularly different. Ha’s critical message is not only aimed at pop stars. His criticism is also directed toward power wielders, those snobs obsessed with their boastful existence who will wantonly exploit society for their own advantage.

Even though this farcical film came short of scoring a commercial success, Ha intends to continue to work as a movie director.

These days he is working on a film project based on “Chronicle of a Blood Merchant,” a novel by the Chinese writer Yu Hua. “I’m trying to come up with an additional subtext to the novel. It seems not enough for a movie to cling to a single narrative of Xu Sanguan’s story. I am also working hard on how to adapt the Chinese temporal space to a Korean context, in the period between the Korean War and the 1990s.”

The horizon of his artistic vision is ever expanding, making it difficult to chart the trajectory of this accomplished artiste. Nonetheless, it is certain that a growing number of his contemporaries are hoping to enjoy his company for years to come through his continued engagement in the movie world. In all likelihood, the actor, director and artist Ha Jung-woo will leave people with memories of his enduring presence.

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Gourmet’s Delight

Bom Namul

Fragrant Vegetables for Early Spring Table

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Spring vegetables, or bom namul, made with the young shoots sprouting as the frozen ground starts to thaw, are vital sources of vitamins and minerals. As versatile appetizers, they are eaten after being blanched and tossed with bean paste or red pepper paste, along with other condiments, or cooked into a soup. Pancakes made with fresh greens are another simple and delicious specialty of the season.

Ye Jong-suk Food Columnist; Professor of Marketing, Hanyang University

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n Korean cuisine, seasonal food is a foretaste of good cooking and the centerpiece of a well laid table.

For Koreans, a fine way to enjoy the season and restore one’s health is by eating sisik, or “food of the time,” prepared with seasonal ingredients.

Food of Royals and Commoners Namul make springtime’s best sustenance, a gift from nature, with philosophical as well as practical significance to Koreans. They symbolize the resurgence of life as fresh sprouts break through the early spring earth after a long, cold winter. During the Joseon period (1392-1910), the royal family offered freshly gathered spring vegetables to their ancestors at the seasonal rituals. According to “The Annals of King Taejo,” the official court record of the reign of the founding monarch: “New vegetables in the spring, tangerines, and wild game were offered as the first foods of the season at the royal ancestral shrine.” At the onset of spring, or ipchun (one of the 24 seasonal divisions), five kinds of vegetables dug out from the snowy ground — radish, scallion, mustard leaf, water parsley sprouts, and angelica sprouts — were seasoned with various condiments and served to the king.

These tangy fresh vegetables were called the “five spicy foods.” In Gyeongdo Japji and Dongguk Se­sigi, books about the seasonal customs of the Joseon period, these vegetables were brought to the royal palace from the mountainous areas of today’s Yangpyeong and Pocheon in Gyeonggi Province.

The royal family believed that eating the “five spicy foods” helped to cultivate the five virtues emphasized in Confucian teachings: serenity, gentleness, courtesy, frugality, and humility. They also believed that these foods contributed to good health by balancing and harmonizing the five viscera. Common folks also observed these customs and would share the vegetables, delivered on a plate, with their neighbors.

A poem titled “Ipchun” in the poetry collection Saga Sijip by Seo Geo-jeong, a foremost literary figure of early Joseon, mentions these vegetables: “This year, ipchun returned again. / In the meantime how much the world has changed. / Tired of the five spicy namul after so much eating, / I rather want to drink pine nut wine more often. / Not achieving one’s goals in worldly affairs, / what has changed is oneself reflected in the mirror.”

Namul dishes were also regarded as a symbol of contentment and pleasure amidst poverty, as in this passage from Lunyu, the Analects of Confucius: “Taking coarse rice and vegetables and drinking water, / lying with one’s head pillowed on one’s arms, / pleasure there is even in that alone.”

Easy bean paste soup with shepherd’s purse (naengi ) and mugwort (ssuk ): Boil water with some dried anchovies and kelp. Remove solid ingredients, then add bean paste to taste. Add shepherd’s purse and mugwort just before removing from heat.

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Survival Food for Early Spring For many common people, however, namul was associated with a sense of poverty, especially among farming households. Throughout history, food was more often than not scarce in Korea. Seventy percent of the land is mountainous and even farmlands did not yield enough during a year of famine, which was all too frequent. Until a half century ago, there was the dreaded “barley hump,” a period of serious hardship for rural villages, when people would go hungry. This was a fact of life, though entirely unfamiliar to today’s younger generation. This difficult period occurred during the fourth and fifth months by the lunar calendar, when stored crops had all been eaten but the barley in the fields was not yet ripe enough to harvest, creating food shortages not only for farming households but the entire nation.

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Spring vegetables, abundant in vitamins and minerals, can help to overcome spring fatigue and restore vitality. Rich in fiber and filling as well, they are also popular as diet food.

1 Various types of bom namul, or spring vegetables, at a street market. 2 Spring namul salad: wild scallion (dallae ), water parsley (minari ), and Pimpinella brachycarpa (chamnamul ) tossed with citron syrup dressing.

Natural disasters, great and small, also caused food shortages. Therefore, King Sejong had books published, such as Guhwang Byeokgokbang (Ways of Fighting Famine), which not only contained measures to overcome famine due to drought and flooding but also advice on how to find and prepare survival foods during times of famine. The books described several hundreds of food substitutes for famine relief, such as pine tree bark, elm bark, pine needles, buckwheat flowers, bean pods, taro, yam, acorn, Atractylodes (sapju) root, and Rumex coreanus (sorujaengi). In times of serious famine, such “foods,” which included wild herbs, were essential sources of nutrition. People added any available grain to these plants to make a filling one-pot meal or a kind of gruel.

The dire conditions were recorded in Mongmin Simseo (Admonitions on Governing the People) by Jeong Yak-yong, a prominent scholar of silhak (practical school of Confucianism) of the late Joseon period: “During a famine, people have to eat wild vegetables gathered from mountains and fields but they cannot easily swallow this food unless it is seasoned with salt. The salt price then rises, so it will be of help to make soy sauce early in sufficient quantities and prepare kelp and dry shrimp.” The Canadian missionary James Scarth Gale, who arrived in Korea in the late 19th century, noted: “There is no other folk who know the kinds of edible wild plants better than the Koreans.” He marveled at how Koreans would eat bracken tops after removing toxic content by soaking them in water. Bracken is a kind of fern classified as poisonous in Western countries.

Eating namul today still rekindles memories of the spring season for people who grew up in the countryside. Yi Hae-in, a Catholic nun and poet from Yanggu in Gangwon Province, recalls the spring days of her childhood: “I want to call out the names of friends / who together with me gathered the wild namul. / I want to see my good childhood friends / who at times expressed envy through their eyes, / like the chill breeze envying the season of flowers.”

A Health Food Rediscovered Namul is back in the spotlight again, no longer as a famine food but as a health food. Spring vegetables, such as shepherd’s purse (naeng­i ), mugwort (ssuk ), Ixeris dentata (sseumbagwi ), spring cabbage (bomdong ), Aster scaber (chwinamul ), bell flower root (doraji), fatsia (dureup ) shoots, day lily (wonchuri ), bonnet bellflower root (deodeok), wild parsley (dol minari), wild scallion (dallae), and chives (buchu), are abundant in vitamins and minerals, so they can help to overcome spring fatigue and restore vitality. Rich in fiber and filling as well, they are also popular as diet food.

For the steadily growing ranks of vegetarians, namul dishes are an ideal choice. Although not as flavorful as the seasonal greens freshly gathered from the mountains and fields, various greenhouse edibles can also be enjoyed year round nowadays. When the cold winter winds subside and new sprouts emerge, why don’t you take a trip to the countryside to welcome the arrival of spring? At popular restaurants that specialize in wild namul dishes and traditional restaurants scattered across the country, the sheer delight of tasting fresh greens filled with the fragrance of springtime will immerse you in comforting memories of life’s continuous renewal.

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Lifestyle

Traditional Beauty Care

Become More Beautiful, Naturally

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Instead of visiting dermatologists and plastic surgeons to become more beautiful, many women are now turning to traditional Korean medicine. Facial meridian massage which helps stimulate energy flow and relieve stress, thereby reinvigorating facial tissue and skin tone, is a growing fad. More and more women are rediscovering this ancient traditional therapy as an effective method for beauty care.

Lee Kum-sook Staff Writer, Health Chosun | Ahn Hong-beom Photographer

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or Ms. Shin, an office worker in her 30s living in Guri, Gyeonggi Province, facial meridian massage is a part of her regular routine these days. Over the past three years, she has been making a visit to a massage shop near her office at least once a week. Especially after a stressful day at work, the massage relieves her fatigue and makes her feel rejuvenated. At first, she found it painful and even left light bruises on her face, so she was disappointed and wondered why she had to pay as much as 100,000 won (about $90) per session. As she continued to get the massage, however, she began to appreciate its effects. First of all, when she wakes up in the morning after a hard day at work, her face is noticeably less puffy than before. And the pimples that used to erupt on her face are also much less apparent, making her face look smoother. She even hears compliments about how her face looks “smaller.”

Expansion of Traditional Beauty Care Market The concept of beauty treatment first appeared in Korean traditional medical practice in the early 2000s. Previously, a typical facial procedure in traditional medicine had largely been limited to acupuncture treatment for facial nerve damage from a stroke.

On the strength of fast-growing positive response from consumers, Korea’s traditional medical community has been able to carve out its own niche in the beauty market. As in any lucrative market long dominated by one set of players, there is predictable resistance to a newcomer on the scene; not a few scoff at the idea of massage being a viable alternative to surgical enhancement.

In fact, beauty care is a huge market in Korea, with its annual value amounting to 11.9 trillion won ($11.2 billion). According to a 2013 market analysis by the Samsung Economic Research Institute, Korea’s beauty industry, for both Western (modern) and Eastern (traditional) medicine, is enjoying robust annual growth of 10.1 percent. Industry experts say traditional medicine accounts for some 20 to 30 percent of the total beauty market, although the ratios vary depending on the types of treatment.

With their effectiveness becoming increasingly known through word-of-mouth, burgeoning demand for traditional beauty treatments has led to a sharp increase in the number of traditional medicine doctors and meridian massage specialists, who have completed training and passed a certification examination administered by the Korea Meridians Association. A few franchise businesses running meridian massage shops have emerged in recent years. Franchise outlets can offer customers an array of technical data with support from their head offices, which independent clinics and massage shops are not able to provide. However, they often require customers to purchase package deals of at least 10 visits for hefty payments.

1 A woman receives facial cosmetic acupuncture from Professor Choi Min-sun at Dongguk University Ilsan Oriental Hospital. Professor Choi says, “I stick some 50 to 100 silver nano needles on acupoints and meridian tendino-musculature at once. About 5 to 10 treatments will give you cosmetic effects such as face lift and flexible muscle in addition to improving conditions such as headache, insomnia and menopausal symptoms.” 2 Medicinal herb powder for Oriental herbal peeling, and silver nano needles.

Beauty and Health Benefits Is it really possible to reduce face size with meridian massage? Surprisingly, a clinical study from Western medical practice in Korea seems to recognize this possibility. For a scientific comparison of the effects of meridian massages and Botox injections, the Dental Hospital of Yonsei University’s ColKoreana ı Spring 2014

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lege of Dentistry enlisted 10 women in their 20s to 40s to receive twice-weekly facial meridian massages for a 10-week period in 2012. When facial measurements before and after the massages were compared, facial volumes were reduced by an average of 731 cubic millimeters, with muscle thickness on the cheekbones and jaw reduced by 0.4 mm and 0.44 mm, respectively. The research team remarked, “This is equal to the effect of reducing face size with Botox injections.”

In East Asian traditional medicine, the meridian system refers to the networks or passages through which life-energy flows. As blood flows through blood vessels and stimuli are transmitted through the nervous system, energy flows through the meridian system. The human body includes 12 vital meridian networks. A vital area where energy gathers forms a meridian point, which is like a station along a railway line.

The basic principle of meridian massage is to restore balance in the autonomic nervous system and enhance self-healing power by stimulating meridian points and networks. Enhanced energy flow revitalizes cell functions and accelerates blood circulation, improving the facial complexion first. This immediate result satisfies customers.

As for long-term benefits, meridian massage can help to prevent various kinds of pain, digestive problems, depression, and obesity. Experts say that regular meridian massage increases energy flow, correcting imbalance in muscles and joints, and improving the functioning of the internal organs, which ultimately invigorates the entire body and helps with weight maintenance. In this way, massage therapists take advantage of customers’ desire to retain a youthful appearance by touting its “anti-aging” and “weight control” benefits.

Nowadays, meridian massage facilities offer more than facial therapy; whole-body services and massage for specific areas of the body, such as the pelvis, lower body, and arms, are available as well. Ms. Lee, of Seocho-gu, Seoul, who is in her late 30s, had been worrying about her twisted pelvis due to childbirth. As the imbalance in her body shape worsened, she felt ever more distressed by her bottom-heavy appearance. When she requested a whole-body meridian massage, she was told that her twisted pelvis and incorrect posture were interfering with the energy circulation in her

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1 Regarding cupping treatment, Professor Choi Min-sun explains, “By softening the hardened muscles on shoulders, you can improve blood circulation on the face.”

2 Oriental herbal peeling is a skin rejuvenation method that exfoliates, controls facial oil, and revitalizes by gentle stimulation using fine herbal particles.

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The basic principle of meridian massage is to restore balance in the autonomic nervous system and enhance self-healing power by stimulating the meridian points and networks. Enhanced energy flow revitalizes cell functions and accelerates blood circulation, improving the facial complexion first.

This immediate result satisfies customers.

body, causing severe swelling of the lower body. Ms. Lee spent more than 2 million won for 20 massage sessions; she is satisfied with the results, saying meridian massage on her whole body has rectified her pelvic imbalance.

Self-Massage As the effectiveness of meridian massage becomes more widely known, books on self-massage, with such titles as “Face Diet” and “Face Yoga,” are also gaining popularity. However, the techniques touted in these books are entirely different from the meridian massage that focuses on stimulating meridian points and networks. The books just offer self-massages that can help to refine the shape of facial muscle for a more oval look by stimulating the skin and connective tissues. They contain dozens of massages for those hoping for a V-shaped jaw line, narrower forehead, or a perky tilt to the nose, as well as massages to get rid of wrinkles around the mouth and to make a face look smooth and natural after makeup. Many women got busy, pressing muscles on different areas of their face, ears, and head for about 5 to 10 minutes every day, as the books say; not a few proudly declare their faces now look more oval and slimmer.

Acupuncture for Facial Rejuvenation There is a more aggressive method of beauty treatment in traditional medicine: cosmetic acupuncture. Since the procedure is said to be as effective as plastic surgery, but without actually going under the knife, a growing number of people, Koreans as well as visitors from China, Japan, Vietnam, and the United States, are now seeking out this method. According to a well-known traditional medicine clinic that specializes in cosmetic acupuncture, located in Gangnam, Seoul, about 10 percent of its patients are foreigners.

The most common treatment is to stimulate the inner skin layer with acupuncture, which helps to create collagen and smooth out wrinkles. A variation of this procedure is an “imbedded acupuncture” method, which is used to remove wrinkles and lift the skin by embedding in the facial skin or breast a surgical thread coated with herbal ingredients. The thread is dissolved in tissue fluids within a week or two.

Ms. Shim, who is in her 30s, has often been thought to be 40 or older due to the deep creases around her mouth. After a tough diet regimen in order to look younger, her face lost its fullness, but making those wrinkles even more pronounced. About one month after receiving imbedded acupuncture treatment, she said her complexion now feels and looks more firm and resilient, the wrinkles around her mouth less visible. She plans to undergo the procedure a few more times to completely eliminate the wrinkles. Similar success stories about imbedded acupuncture lifting the nose by more than 3 mm or improving the contour of saggy faces are appealing to those women who are disinclined to undergo plastic surgery.

As interest in beauty care continues to abound, across genders and ages, the beauty market for traditional medicine is expected to enjoy surging growth. In Korea, more schools of traditional medicine are adding beauty-related departments to their basic disciplines. Compared to surgical procedures and prosthesis insertion techniques of Western medicine, beauty enhancement by traditional medicine requires more patience, as it is rather difficult to expect dramatic outcomes. Satisfaction with the procedures can also vary significantly from one individual to another. Still, it seems that much can be said for the appeal of traditional medicine due to its more natural therapeutic processes.

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Journeys in Korean Literature

Critique

Translating the World with a Warm Heart Chang Du-yeong Literary Critic

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ny introduction of the writer Park Chan-soon is accompanied by a comment on the lateness of her literary debut. Born in 1946, Park was 60 years old when she won the first prize in the annual Chosun Ilbo literary competition in 2006, with the short story “Garibong-dong Lamb Kabob.” Her late start as a writer attracted wide attention. Not only were those in literary circles fascinated by this new writer’s background and her commanding presence on the scene, but the curiosity of the reading public was also sparked by the fact that she had started a new life at an age when most people are going into retirement. This is evident from the reviews that greeted her emergence, such as “a late-blooming writer who debuted at the age of 60,” or “a combination of 21st centurystyle breeziness with the earnestness of the 1960s generation,” an appraisal by the critic Kim Byeong-ik.

In the eight years since her debut as a writer, Park has published two collections of short stories, proving that she is no flash in the pan. Her first book, titled “Balhae-style Garden” (2009), is set in various countries and full of exotic subjects, such as jageusani (a kind of carp), the nest of the swiftlet, the spindle tree, crystal manufacturing, turban shell building, and the mantid position. You can’t help but wonder how she comes up with such diverse subjects and how she can weave them into such wonderful stories. In this respect, “Balhae-style Garden” seems to be a proclamation: “What does age matter?” To those watching the writer’s output with wonder and curiosity, it is an intellectual adventure story.

This naturally leads to mention of the writer’s prolific career as a translator before her literary debut. Park, who majored in English literature in college, is a veteran translator who produced Korean scripts for countless foreign movies and TV series in the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, in some of her short stories, she mentions the difficulties of those who make a living by interpretation and translation. In “Lip Sync,” the translator, who has to convey to Korean TV viewers the contents of a documentary on the birds called avocet that inhabit the Minsmere Nature Reserve in England, complains of the trials and tribulations of her work: “I had worked up a nervous sweat after translating just a single word …” In “Conch Shell Republic,” the interpreter cries out: “I have to take the foreign lan-

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guage that reaches my ears to the mound of my life, which I have built up and up, and mix it and rub it in with all the ingredients of my experience, then put the mixture through a sieve and somehow produce a silken thread … It has taken countless bone-crunchingly painful days and nights for me to be able to do this.”

Her work emphasizes the fact that prior knowledge and research are a prerequisite not only of translation but also of literature. To grasp the subtle nuances in every word, it is essential to uncover the rich culture and meaning that lie behind that word.

Park Chan-soon’s erudition, spotted all over her work, and her familiarity with Western culture are no doubt closely related to her university major and her past work as a translator. The diversity of subject matter is not just a device to arouse the reader’s interest but is necessary to bring the theme to life or create the mood of the story. It is not superficial knowledge cherry-picked from an encyclopedia but knowledge painfully accumulated through anxious efforts over countless days and nights. In this sense, Park’s work as a translator ultimately serves as a most arduous process endured to give birth to a writer. That is, her late start as a writer did not come about by chance; rather, decades of intellectual training bore fruit in the form of a writer’s imagination.

In contrast to Park’s first book where most of the works are set in exotic places, her second collection of short stories, “Ladybugs Fly from the Top” (2013), contains more stories set in Korea. Even when the setting is not Korea, the stories draw closer to various issues in Korean society. The author, who for some time focused her attention on unusual subjects from around the world, is now observing her own surroundings and has begun to train her imagination on incidents that are likely to happen around us.

Generally speaking, is it not the translator’s task to observe others in minute detail? Only through close observation of his or her surroundings can the translator achieve a clear understanding.

Like the first book, “Ladybugs Fly from the Top” remains true to the translator’s task of faithfully interpreting the language of others and expressing it with the most appropriate words. The author observes the expressions and actions of those around us (“others”), and thereby examines their dreams and despair. It is the writer’s Ko re a n Cu l tu re & A rts

work to closely observe these people who tend to be overlooked in the repetitive routine of daily life and translate their lives through the means of fiction.

© Park Jai-hong

Park Chan-soon Though they live in different places and make a living in different ways, the characters in Park Chan-soon’s stories have one thing in common: they are all living precariously, as if hanging from the roof of a highrise building with no safety device.

This late-blooming novelist embraces the lives of those people with prose such as “Life is precious in itself when it is not weighed up but seen for what it is” (from the short story “Promenade with Rousseau”), words that are piercingly ardent yet warm at the same time.

Koreana ı Spring 2014

It seemed I was always hearing the voices of those around me. I seemed to be hearing anew the stories that these young people brought to me, although I could be of no help at all, telling me of their troubles. It was the same with the voice of a darkish young man who sweated his days away at the Sihwa Industrial Complex. They were young people who, in the prime of their lives, were thrown into a tough competitive world, or were suffering under the harsh conditions of life. The worries of the young German I met at Casa de la Musica in Cuba, or the man eating dumplings in an eatery in Dandong are not so different from the worries of young Koreans. If we take a step back and look at them, they are all the children of nature, beautiful forms of life like the ladybugs with their bright-colored backs. (Author’s note from the short story collection “Ladybugs Fly from the Top”)

Though they live in different places and make a living in different ways, the characters in Park Chan-soon’s stories have one thing in common: they are all living precariously as if hanging from the roof of a high-rise building with no safety device. Caught in a maze, they wander about lost, unable to find their way; the person they are waiting for does not come, and they are gripped by the uneasy feeling that even if they try to escape they will not be able to make it. Enduring loneliness, grief, and a sense of helplessness, all they can do is survive. As we identify with the observations of this faithful translator while reading the story, we encounter these beings worn down by the act of living and realize that we share their feelings. Such empathy is surely the ultimate end of the author’s close observation and understanding.

To these souls worn out by living, the author does not rush to give hope.

Neither does she offer a definite solution to overcome the loneliness that envelopes them. All the stories in the book end at the point where the reader reaches a vague empathy with the protagonists. But when you close the book you realize that some words remain ringing clearly in your head. The triangular yukizuri that props up the limbs of beings so tired they could not be any more tired, Ariane’s thread, a small ball of golden thread that appears in Greek mythology, and the ladybug with its beautiful back — these are all words that offer the comfort so dearly sought by the characters in her stories in simple yet dignified ways.

85

IMAGE OF KOREA

M

y heart grows restless, awaiting spring, as I feel the warmth of the sunlight falling on the snow at the start of February, pacing beneath an apricot tree standing in the courtyard of a temple deep in the mountains. When the flower buds on the branches of the tree begin to swell like millet, I come to the temple, supposedly to offer prayers to the Buddha, but my eyes turn first to the flowering branches.

Despite my impatient heart, the apricot trees, the Cornelian cherry trees, the camellias, and the willows still have more than a month to wait before they wake from their winter sleep, one by one.

The first shoots of the Adonis plants bloom yellow in sunny patches, bursting through a blanket of fallen leaves and snow not yet melted.

At around this time, spring in Korea blossoms first not in the valleys, nor the fields, nor even the gardens, but in the universities.

Toward the end of February, university campuses everywhere bustle with graduation ceremonies. Young people who have raced through a dozen breathless years learning the mysteries of spelling and numbers in kindergarten and elementary school, then conquering countless competitive tests through middle school, high school, and university, finally don graduation caps in the flower of their youth.

The universities that numbered only 52 in 1960 have since mushroomed into 345 today. In a nation of 48 million people, 71 percent of high school graduates enter university, and there are some three million university students. That equates to 615 university students out of every ten thousand people; the comparable figure in the United States is 502.

These universities produce from six to seven hundred thousand graduates every spring. Thus, each February in Korea, seven hundred thousand flowers bloom on campuses across the nation.

But spring in this country is far too short. These beautiful young people in caps and gowns, who have reached the peak of their lives, have so little time to savor the joys of life and the rewards of learning. Their hearts, as they flock to job postings, are hurried and anxious. The joy of youth is behind them, and before them looms the specter of the job market. Has the blossoming spring given way so quickly to the heat of summer that flays one to keep pressing forward? In the mountains and the fields and in the temple courtyards, the flowers of spring have not yet even bloomed....

A Spring Too Fleeting Kim Hwa-young Literary Critic; Member of the Korean National Academy of Arts

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