Lotus Lantern

If you ever want to know why I like living in Korea, it's because last Saturday evening at 9pm I was stood in the middle of Yongdusan Park with thousands of other people, immersed in the 2011 Busan Lotus Lantern Festival (there's another in Seoul). By contrast, the only reason you go to a park after dark in my city is to shoot up hard drugs or get murdered. And while there are things to do and places to go after dark, it involves locking yourself in your car and hoping someone doesn’t ram you from behind in one of the bad neighbourhoods which are too numerous to avoid, as part of an insurance fraud or carjacking.

During my first stay in Korea, I saw a lot of places and did a lot of things, and now I have a child I have to reluctantly acknowledge that it was a more carefree lifestyle which might never be fully regained. So whereas once we would have made a date to visit Yongdusan Park on Saturday evening for the Busan Lotus Lantern Festival, and culmination of the three-day Joseon Tongsinsa Festival – it was past our son's bedtime and we thought we probably wouldn't make it unless he was in a good mood. But Thursday was Children's Day in Korea, so we went then instead, after lunch. The lanterns were out but the effect was obviously less impressive in the daytime, and we're getting to that time of year where the heat and humidity are becoming uncomfortable, which also detracts a little from the experience.

As things were, we actually did manage to get back on Saturday, although it didn't quite work out as planned. The event was scheduled to begin at 8pm, but it was late starting, and we didn't really think through the nature of the event. We went for the lanterns, but there was a parade. Korean parades are often noisy affairs, and when the lights were finally turned on and this one arrived, it was no different. To an extent you can move away from the samulnori and other sundry musicians, but there was no escape from the on-stage performances which were so loud over the speakers I left the park barely able to hear myself speak - this is not an exaggeration. I haven't experienced anything like it since university. Add fireworks into the mix, which admittedly were rather nicely enhanced by the fog, and it explains why my wife - concerned about our baby’s hearing - immediately fled from the park with several other parents.

Now our baby is old enough to start seriously venturing from the confines of the apartment, it's occurring to me for the first time that, at least as far as festivals and other events are concerned, Korea may not be particularly baby friendly. Maybe there's a way of holding an event like this without getting noise complaints from Japan, but if there is it hasn't crossed the organisers' minds.

Unfortunately at the point at which my wife ran away we were separated, and she had my phone, leaving me with Korean Mother who had taken a seat near the stage and was largely inaccessible – not just because of the language barrier. I spent at least thirty minutes looking for my wife and child, although it could have been longer since without my phone, I didn't know the time either. I discovered why I couldn’t find my immediate family once I worked my way to Korean Mother. "Shall we go?" I asked in Korean, but she said no, she was having fun. I lacked the depth of language to ascertain whether she was saying this for my benefit or not, and I didn't want to press the issue by emphasising that it was really OK to leave, because I was afraid of dragging her away from something she wanted to stay at. Predictably, it later transpired that while she was enjoying the event, she also mainly staying for my benefit.

The misunderstandings meant that I saw the events through to their conclusion. Confusion, noise, colour, laughter, large crowds, barely organised chaos among the performers and the possibility of permanent physical damage afterwards - the Festival was a microcosm of life in Korea, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Busan e-FM Week 15: Lunar New Year

About 'Open Mike in Busan'

Introduction

This week’s subject is Lunar New Year. We don’t use a lunar calendar in Western countries, so when I came here it was new to me in some ways, although I had to adjust to the notion of lunar years a long time before.

Family

When I arrived for my first day of studying Computer Science at university I ended up joining the wrong queue – I nearly became an archaeologist – and the Chinese guy in front of me was also a Computer Scientist in the wrong queue. We became friends and I spent most of my university life mixing with the Chinese community – so I became quite familiar with lunar new year celebrations, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating sometimes because it’s a very family oriented time, and it reminds me that my family are over 5,000 miles away.

I read in a Korean newspaper that 15 million people here are going home for ‘설날’ [Seolnal/Seollal – the Lunar New Year], and it reminds me that – as a foreigner in Korea, married to a Korean – I’m spending my holidays with someone else’s family. Actually, my mother is over 70 now and she’s beginning to think that if I go back every two years she might only see me another three or four times. That’s hard to hear – and I think of that a lot now when we have these regular Korean family gatherings.

But you have to choose to live in one country or the other, and Lunar New Year isn’t as bad as Christmas because it’s just a normal working day in England – I’m not missing out on gift-giving or anything like that. Actually in Korea, 설날 gifts are one of the strange things that I didn’t expect.

Gifts

It’s not that I didn’t expect people to be giving each other gifts, but it’s the type of gifts. For example, before 설날 a couple of years ago, a huge amount of frozen fish turned up in a box at our mother-in-law’s apartment, so it’s not quite like Christmas in England, where you’d never give someone fish or fruit. But in some ways the strangest gifts are the ones in the stores, I have to admit that I find them quite bizarre sometimes.

Part of it is a cultural thing. Here I see big gift boxes of SPAM for example, and in England SPAM was traditionally viewed as a rather low-class meat product. I suppose you might describe it as ubiquitous – but not everything which is ubiquitous is good – the ‘flu virus is ubiquitous but it doesn’t mean you want to have it. [I admit – I’m sick of hearing the popular Korean-English marketing word ‘ubiquitous’ here and now I’m just getting my own back.] In fact, one of the reasons junk email is called spam is because of a British comedy sketch [Monty Python of course - video] which just repeats the word “spam” over and over annoyingly. So you don’t buy people gift boxes of SPAM in England. The other gift that really sticks in my mind is the bulk anti-calculus [you read that right] toothpaste box. If someone bought me toothpaste for a gift, I might think it meant my breath smells.

Various Lunar New Years

One Lunar New Year here, we had a very long day. We started out with the special New Year’s breakfast of rice soup (떡국) – I was told it was at this point my Korean age advanced by one year. I find this whole business of lunar ages really confusing as well, and Korean ages always seem to make me older than I actually am and that’s just not good news, is it? Then we went out, and even though I’d read foreigners warning each other to stock up on food before 설날 because all the shops would be shut, I still found the fact that all the stores really were closed surprising, considering how everything’s open every other day of the year. It really tells you what a big event it is. Anyway, we went out to hike up a mountain to a series of temples to make offerings. As a non-Buddhist, visiting temples is an interesting experience, but it’s not a religious obligation for me, although I seem to end up participating in the rituals, which is quite strange.

After visiting the temples, usually there’s some time then before the family gathering in the evening, although one year we spent the afternoon with my mother-in-law’s sister. She’s a Buddhist fortune teller so I call her my ‘psychic aunt’. She performed some Buddhist new year rituals, including chanting in front of the shrine in her house. It was quite beautiful actually. And then she read our fortunes, which was quite frightening in a way because – apparently – she is very, very good. Even though I’m not a Buddhist, I’ve heard enough to not completely dismiss the power of her fortune telling.

Seollal

So my mother-in-law usually hosts the family gatherings in the evening, which means my wife often helps her mother prepare food – and I don’t – so I feel like I’ve slipped into a typical Korean husband’s role sometimes. Of course, we have all the big bows to go through to show respect to our elders, and the money gifts along with the ‘imparting of wisdom’ speech or ‘advice’ afterwards, which is quite strange when you’re in your thirties. Nothing quite like that happens in England, although I guess parents still lecture you – it’s just that there’s not a specific date they do it on.

I think there can be a general atmosphere of tension on 설날, especially in our mixed Christian and Buddhist family. My wife’s uncle, who’s a Christian pastor, said he tries to celebrate 설날 is a ‘Christian way’, but I’m not sure what that means. I’ve also leaned though how food can really bring people of different backgrounds together over the dinner table. Of course, food is so important in Korea, so I soon discovered that on the 15th day after the start of the new year there’s another special breakfast for Jeongwol Daeboreum (정월대보름), and a special festival - ‘The Burning of the Moon House’ - 달집태우기 – on Dadaepo Beach here in Busan.

The Burning of the Moon House and Audience

I went to the Burning of the Moon House last year. I understood that the 15th day is traditionally when evil spirits are cast out. I find it odd though that the new beginning can’t just begin on the first day like it does with a Western new year.

I gathered that it’s important that the bonfire burns all the way through, because if it does this indicates a good harvest, and if it doesn’t then there won’t be one. But maybe that makes people a little too enthusiastic about designing them to burn ferociously. We weren’t that close to the fire, but before long burning ash and rubbish started falling quite heavily on us, and the organisers were rather urgently shouting over the speakers “Move away! Move away!” It was quite chaotic but it certainly did help chase me away – so I guess it really does cast out evil spirits.

Links
Busan e-FM
Inside Out Busan

Air date: 2011-02-02 @ ~19:30

Busan e-FM Week 13: Weddings and Honeymoons

About 'Open Mike in Busan'

Introduction

One of the most important events in my life was my wedding, and it happened only a few weeks after I came to Korea – in fact, that’s why I came, to marry my Korean girlfriend here.

Fortune tellers

The Korean wedding experience is quite different from an English one. For example, the first thing I discovered was that in Korea, you don’t really choose a date which is convenient for you – instead a fortune teller picks a wedding date they believe is the most fortuitous based on your dates of births and so on. But the second shock was something I only found out about once I was here – which is that whatever the wedding date is, it doesn’t really matter, because it’s not the same day you sign the official legal documents at the local district office. And of course, it’s the legal documents that really mark the official marriage date. That’s different from England, where you either get married in a local registry office, which is a bit like a district office for weddings, or you get married in a place of worship such as a church, mosque, temple or synagogue. Then, straight after the local official or religious person – such as a priest marries you in the ceremony, you go into an office and sign the marriage register, and that’s when you’re really legally married.

Marriage dates

So my wedding ceremony and district office dates are completely different. In fact, because I only had a three month visa at the time, we signed our legal papers at the district office almost a month earlier. But some friends of ours actually signed their papers after returning from their honeymoon, which is really surprising for a Westerner. I think in our culture we have a long tradition of changing our minds at the last minute and not going through with a wedding – like in the movies. But in Korea it’s not uncommon to sign the legal papers after returning from the honeymoon, and probably – like we did – people get their official wedding photos done a month before the ceremony, so it seems there’s a belief in Korea that once a marriage is planned, it will definitely go ahead. I suppose there’s a lot of social pressure.

Photo shoots and other surprises

We spent an entire day at the studio for the photo shoot, changing outfits and scenery, and I had to wear a traditional Korean costume, so that was a really interesting experience.

Other things about the wedding were surprising as well. For example, in England the bride and groom often organise a lot of the wedding themselves, for example – who to invite, what food to have and so on. In Korea, it’s usually the parents who do it, and it seems as though they invite who they like, and that’s who comes. So, it felt like the wedding ceremony was really for their friends more than ours. I soon learned that because of the whole culture and gift money business, it’s a case of needing to invite people who have invited you to their family weddings before, or might do in future, to recover the monetary loss.

The wedding

We had both types of ceremony – a Western-style one which all the ajummas and ajeossis attended, and then a Korean one with just close family. I had to stand with my father-in-law and shake all the guests hands, I had no idea who they were and I couldn’t really speak Korean at all, so I had no idea once I’d met them either. It was chaos really, and the ceremony was equally chaotic, because it didn’t quite feel real to me – it was more like a fake wedding for the cameras.

Of course, we were already legally married by this point, so in that sense it felt like more of an act that a wedding in England would have been. Then, as we waited to walk down the aisle, all the ajummas and ajeossis at the back were pushing us around, and when we walked down the aisle, the music played briefly and then just suddenly stopped in the middle, so it felt quite rough – you know, as if people didn’t really care about the experience so much as just getting through it as quickly as possible. It was at a wedding hall as well, rather than a church, so it already felt like some kind of commercialised nightmare to me. And as soon as the ceremony began, lots of the adjummas and ajeossis rushed out. Afterwards I found out about the whole buffet voucher thing, and the fact that some people just come out of social obligation and for the free food, and they need to get an early start so they can eat a lot of food to break even on the gift money.

I found it a bit disheartening. Coming here to get married as a foreigner can be tough I think. I didn’t understand anything that was happening, and it was too far for my family to come which was sad. That works both ways as well – last year my sister got married and I couldn’t really go to that. Whichever country you marry in, someone loses. Anyway, I didn’t have any friends or family at the wedding, so it was an oddly lonely experience. They didn’t even get my name completely right. I was 짐 영국 [Kim Yeonggug - Yeonggug meaning England but also occasionally being a Korean male name I gather] on the sign at the buffet. OK, I can see how that happened, and I thought it was funny.

I liked the Korean ceremony – it was quite intimate, and as a foreigner the experience was really interesting. But the Western wedding hall ceremony was really soulless and I’m not sure I’d do it again. Perhaps Korean people don’t mind the fake Western experience, but as a Westerner I did. In retrospect I would have preferred just a larger Korean ceremony.

The honeymoon

I was relieved when it was all over, but afterwards we got straight into a specially hired taxi and went down to Gyeongju for our honeymoon, so the hectic schedule didn’t stop.

We stayed in a ‘pension’ [Korean holiday villa], and you know... one of the top-ten things you don’t want to hear when you arrive is “oh yes, we know about the problem with the sewage smell”. So now every time I smell sewage in Busan – which is quite a lot – I’m reminded of my honeymoon. Looking back, the experience was like a comedy. As part of the wedding package the ‘pension’ offered an evening barbecue with wine, but because of the smell in our room we decided to go through with it, even though it was January. So we drank wine and ate barbecued food outside, in the dark, in temperatures around minus five degrees.

While we were there we hired a taxi for two days to drive us from place to place – mainly cultural sites, museums and temples around Gyeongju such as Bulguksa, but it was hard for me to understand some of what I was seeing because the tourist explanations were only in Korean in some places. If I’d just been a tourist in Korea on holiday, I think I might have been a little disappointed. There weren’t many people around because it was winter – so it was a strange experience, because with the taxi driver it felt like there were basically three of us sharing a honeymoon. But I have to admit, the taxi was a good way of getting around. Still, winter isn’t a good time to get married really. But that’s when the fortune teller set a date. Sometimes I feel that my life in Korea is secretly run by fortune tellers.

Links
Busan e-FM
Inside Out Busan

Air date: 2011-01-19 @ ~19:30

Busan e-FM Week 6: Busan Festivals, Events and Places

About 'Open Mike in Busan'

Background

By the time I reached my sixth week at Busan e-FM, they’d moved from the centrally-based Yeonsan-dong KNN building to Centum City in Haeundae, in the increasingly fashionable Eastern fringe of the city, where KNN are building their monstrous new headquarters.

Introduction

As everyone knows, there’s certainly always a lot happening in Busan, so for my sixth week on Inside Out Busan at Busan e-FM, I thought I’d talk about some of my experiences visiting festivals, and going out to various events and places here in the city.

Busan Fireworks Festival

My first festival was the Busan Fireworks Festival in 2006 – I think it was only the second year they’d held it then. I remember when we reached the nearby subway station many people rushed off the train and walked fast – or even ran – towards the beach. It gave me a real sense that something exciting was about to take place.

And it was exciting. Sometimes it feels that Korea is a little too obsessed with Seoul, but Busan has the sea and its beaches, and you can’t get that in the capital. It was a bit cold, and sitting on pebbles for three hours isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world – but that was the point I thought that maybe Busan was a better city to live in. Actually I was listening to ‘What’s Popin Busan’ on Busan e-FM a few weeks ago, and the Fireworks Festival sounds even better now. Also, showing movies afterwards is good – when we went it just ended and everyone headed off the beach at the same time. There was a crush and it was a little worrying.

I haven’t been again since. I live in Saha-gu so coming to events in Haeundae can mean two to three hours of travelling. I have to admit, it does put me off sometimes. But it wasn’t long before I was back in the Haeundae area for the New Year’s Sunrise Festival.

Being on the beach at 6am

So the Sunrise Festival meant being on the beach at 6am. We don’t have this culture of watching sunrises in England, so I was really surprised at just how many people were there – tens of thousands I’m sure. Unfortunately it was cloudy. Eventually we saw the sun about forty minutes after it rose. And there wasn’t much to do except stand and wait. I’m glad we did it though – it’s certainly an interesting way to start the year. But of course, you can’t predict the weather.

And many other places

Actually, it could have been worse. Last year I went to the Last Sunset Festival on Dadaepo Beach – it was about minus ten degrees and my hands were shaking so much I could hardly take photos properly. It was the same with the Pusan International Film Festival – we saw a movie outside but it was a bit too cold to enjoy it that year. I think PIFF has been held a bit earlier in the last couple of years.

It certainly feels like I’ve been to a lot of festivals in Busan during my time here. I try to get out and do things. Of course, it’s not just about festivals, becase there are a lot of shows and concerts going on. Maybe compared to Seoul, Busan doesn’t have a big reputation as a cultural centre, but I think that’s unfair because there seems to be far more happening here than I’d ever find it possible to experience.

Although there is the language barrier problem

The language barrier presents problems though. Sometimes there isn’t any information in English, even at visiting foreign exhibitions such as those held at the Busan Museum of Modern Art. I’ve been to performances such as the famous Nanta because it’s non-verbal, but I can’t go and watch a Korean stage play, or anything in the Korean language. That works both ways – because when foreign actos come over here, it really has to be for non-verbal performances too. And I’ve seen how that can be a problem.

I’ve seen foreign performers have difficulties here. I attended a French stage play by a famous choreographer as part of the Busan Intenational Performing Arts Festival – it was called 'Comédie!' There was a question and answer session afterwards with the performers, and the first person to stand up basically said "the performance is called Comedy and it’s pitched as a comedy... but it didn’t seem funny." It was really rather awkward. On the other hand, I was quite nervous when the famous British-based mime artist Nola Rae did a performance at Kyungsung University, but the audience seemed to like that.

Music concerts are sometimes easier in terms of language. I’ve seen Jeon Jeduk and Malo here, but I got the impression – from what’s been said – that quite a few famous entertainers from Seoul don’t often come down to Busan, because they don’t feel the need to, which is a real shame if that’s true.

I think – quite often – the costs of these events can be quite high, but actually one of the best performances I attended was by a choir – the Busan Metropolitan City Chorus – and the tickets were only 1,000 won. I think the local government subsidised that.

Sport

Baseball is another cheap recommendation. I went to a baseball game – the Lotte Giants at Sajik Stadium – and it only cost 6,000 won. We don’t play baseball in England, so that was a really amazing experience, especially because of the noisy crowd. A few years ago I watched a movie called Mr. Baseball about an ex-New York Yankee playing in Japan, and it really seemed to capture the atmosphere of Japanese baseball. I kind of hoped that Korean baseball would be the same – and it really was. They have people in the crowd encouraging them to be noisy, it was great. It’s a shame I don’t really understand the game very well, but if I ever get the time I could see myself really getting into it.

I’ve also been to see KT Sonicboom. Basketball’s not popular in England either, so that was the first time I’d seen a game. I expected it to be a bit quieter – but they still had a guy in front of us encouraging the crowd, so it was noisy. I’m not so sure about having very young cheerleaders dancing right in front of me though. That was a bit much. I could see myself developing a taste for basketball though. I guess that as an English person living in Korea, I have to accept becoming more Americanised when it comes to sport, because sports which are popular in England, such as football, really aren’t that popular here – except when the national team plays.

Favourite places

Because I live in the west of Busan, I spend a lot of time in Nampodong. It’s mainly about shopping and eating there, but it has two large cinemas opposite each other, and one of those rare independent cinemas showing more obscure foreign films a little further up.

Bosudong Book Street is nearby, with dozens of book stores and all its cultural heritage. Because of technology, I fear we might be seeing the end of an era there. And despite the distance, I do like Haeundae; it’s nice to eat of drink with a view of the sea – and of course, it’s an advantage Busan has over Seoul.

Then another thing, although I haven’t done it too much, is climbing mountains at night such as Hwangryeongsan, to take photos of the city, because there really are some spectacular views of Busan to be found.

So I can’t see that I’ll ever get bored here. Maybe this isn’t Seoul, but I think the authorities in Busan seem to be trying really hard to make this a culturally interesting city. I honestly feel overwhelmed sometimes by how much there is to see and do.


Links
Busan e-FM
Inside Out Busan

Air date: 2010-12-01 @ ~19:30

The Baby Fair

For a country with a 'plunging' birthrate, it seemed somewhat optimistic to find a large baby fair being held at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center - or BEXCO as it's known. But as this was "The 8th Busan International Baby & Education Fair" (or if you're reading the Korean, the possibly less catchy "International Pregnancy Childbirth and Small Children Education Fair"), it's almost a tradition now. And an international one at that.

So with tales of birthrate woes regularly appearing in the media, and the Samsung Economic Research Institute suggesting that the Korean race might be halved to 25 million by 2100 (with the Korean race eventually becoming extinct by 2500), it didn't seem right that when we arrived at BEXCO it would be overwhelmed with Korean parents, pregnant women and babies.

The show was a predictable mix of pushchairs, educational equipment and other products aimed at babies and expectant mothers, though there were some more Korean twists on what might otherwise be a familiar theme the world over, such as the stand offering to create "baby's first homepage". Yes, you can never get onto Cyworld and start your social networking too early...

A couple of stands were trying to entice visitors to sign up for pregnancy photo-shoots, which I learned are quite popular here. I suppose that's not so unexpected considering the enormous amount of fuss which goes into creating pre-wedding photo albums. One thing I took away from the whole wedding shoot business was the often jarring lengths people go to here to evoke a sense of period-Western romanticism that never existed in Korea, and truth be told, probably never existed in the West either, except in movies. Perhaps that's how this pram - or perambulator as it surely deserves to be called, came to be on sale at the baby fair, confounding my initial expectations that it was merely a prop:

It is, perhaps unsurprisingly, called the Balmoral, and may just find a market among Haeundae's BMW-driving royalty. Given that a significant number of Korea's pedestrian walkways are built to the usual local construction standards and seem designed to keep the local hospitals in business, it's entirely possible that the large wheels of the Balmoral perambulator may provide a smoother ride. So it may have some appeal, though it doesn't look like you'd be going anywhere in a taxi with it, and certainly not the subway. Anyway, if you wanted it, the 'show special' price was reduced from 6,000,000 won to 5,400,000 ($4,487/£2,985!)

The big surprise for me was how relatively little technology was on display. A 'magic wand' read pre-prepared stories bilingually from a book, and there were a few electronic gadgets for baby monitoring, but otherwise the most cutting edge stands were for something entirely unexpected - biotechnology - and specifically, umbilical cord stem cell extraction...

On the evidence of the number of babies and pregnant mothers at the Baby Fair, the Korean race is safe for another couple of hundred years at least, especially if those stem cells are harvested.

Shaolin Soccer

Apparently it was the dream of many Korean men to watch the World Cup on a 3D TV. I thought that was a little optimistic but then I found one in Lotte Department Store near us, proving at least that the technology was really out there as opposed to 'coming soon'. However, at around 2.5 million won (£1,400/$2,100), for many it may have remained a dream for now, although Samsung claim to have sold 26,000 3D TVs in Korea, so evidently some had the money to make the leap of faith.

Watching a 3D match live in the cinema seemed much more attainable, but it was so popular we were unable to get tickets. It was remarkable really, considering that at almost any other time football barely seems to register on the Korean sporting radar. I guess that's national pride for you. Despite working full-time during the day, two friends of ours - one of whom never watches football otherwise - arranged their limited sleeping schedule around South Korea's matches and somehow still managed to function at the office the next day.

Perhaps unfortunately for the 3D viewers though, some were quite disappointed by the quality of the 3D coverage. What I saw in the Lotte Department Store through 3D glasses was quite impressive, but it was a demonstration video which I'm sure is optimised to sell televisions. As always, real life may vary from the promises we are sold.

Even 2D television coverage was problematic. SBS won the exclusive rights to broadcast matches in Korea much to the anger of their competitors, but the practical upshot of this seems to have been that when matches occurred simultaneously SBS only showed one, because they were only using one channel to broadcast coverage. Which meant if you happen to be a foreigner wanting to watch your own team, or a Korean with a particular foreign interest, apparently you were out of luck.

The standard line of encouragement to almost anything requiring strenuous effort here is Fighting!, although admittedly due to the linguistic challenge of pronouncing this English word it is often heard as Whiting!, so I hear Korea Fighting! - or Korea Whiting! - rather a lot when the country, or anyone within it, is doing anything remotely competitive. The tag-line for the World Cup though, appeared to be Shouting Korea, or Korea Shouting - a potentially noisy yet welcoming toning down of the rhetoric. When the matches were shown, the highway outside our apartment went eerily quiet - somewhere out there, an entire nation were glued to their 2D and 3D screens.

And now it's over - for Korea at least - and presumably an entire nation will go back to the status quo ante as far as football is concerned until the next major championship. I keep meaning to go to a football game here, but they seem so far off the radar normally that I've never managed it, despite having a friend who is a referee with the Korean Football Association.

The Face of the Enemy

If we sit by and become complacent and put our heads in the sand, we're complicit. - Shelley Morrison

Last Sunday was a public holiday here. Memorial Day, held on the 6th June each year, commemorates those who have died for what has become the Republic of Korea.

I was on a beach, it was hot and smoke blew overhead from a burning building, but the acrid smell which reached me didn't drive me back; amongst grotesque images of death and destruction I saw tanks and they were friendly. A British flag flapped in the wind. The pristine sands of Haeundae were hosting a Korean War memorial.

Under the title of "Thanks Runs Forever" (except, perhaps, if you're a member of this group), "The World Peace Freedom United" explains:

We would like to publicize the realities of the Korean War... ...which was a fratricidal war, and which everybody is forgetting, especially for young generation who do not know anything about truth.

This may be a fair point - a Gallup poll conducted in Korea suggests that only 43.9% of young people polled identified North Korea as being responsible for the war. 10.9% blamed the United States. While this is contrary to accepted history, it cuts both ways. The memorial describes the 1948 Republic of Korea as 'a free, liberal and democratic country', a narrative which does not necessarily fit well with the Jeju Uprising during which mass executions of suspected leftists took place, or the findings of South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission pertaining to the 1948-1950 period.

People like to label themselves liberals or conservatives, but when they do so they give up their individual rationality in favour of outsourcing their thinking to a newspaper, television network, political group or political leader, and this country has its fair share of useful idiots in this respect. But unless you believe the North Korean propaganda machine (as some in the South are apparently minded to), most of the facts are not in question. Stories like those of the SS Meridith Victory are often no more than historical footnotes, and yet they are profoundly important touchstones in the context of their times.

"North Korean refugees just trusted United Nations Forces and followed them to go the world of freedom, Republic of Korea."

Coming down 'Hwangcho-Ryung' Pass on December 10, 1950, the column of US 1st Marine Corps and a Provisional Battalion of 31st Regiment of US Army 7th Infantry Division, which were composed with survivors, were intermixed with many North Korean refugees feeling from the Chinese Communist Forces to go the land of freedom and life, Republic of Korea.

Some civilians were not so fortunate, and the memorial did not hesitate to show those images too. Below the photo of a dead American soldier with a gaping head wound and minus a leg, we are informed:

Body of soldier killed from 3rd Battalion, 31st Regiment of US 7th Infantry Division. Why this young fellow die? He sacrificed himself for freedom and democracy for Korea and Korean people.

But the memorial is not just about the past, but the present and the future. We are told that North Korea has never changed:

"North Korean Communists who were controlled by Soviet Union have opposed the founding of the Republic of Korea since August 15, 1945, the day Korea was liberated from the Imperialist Japan.

Despite their opposition, the Repubic of Korea was founded on August 15, 1948 through election as a free and democratic country.

Then, under the pretenses of unification as one county, the Communists created an unprecendented fatricidal tragedy, the Korean War.

There are many who believe North Korea has changed and now many look upon North Korea too amicably.

However, we must recognize the goal of North Korean Communist remains the same: the communization of the Korean peninsula. This has never changed. Never changed."

So who are these people that would so readily forget the 'lessons of the past' and 'the realities of the present'? Apparently, it's the people who burned the contents of the first memorial when in was on display by Cheonggye Stream in 2008.

"Behind Candle Light Rally?: Who is trying to overthrow Republic of Korea?
While we held our Korean War Photo Display at the Cheonggyecheon of Seoul in summer of 2008, our peaceful photo display was totally destroyed by some of a so-called candle light rally organization. On the night of June 25, 2008, they attacked and broke most of the photographic displays and again, on the night of June 26 to the early morning of June 27, 2008, they continued to burn the photographic memories of the founding of the Republic of Korea and its defense during the Korean War. The photos which these radical terrorists attacked were mainly related to the national identity of our sovereign nation, Republic of Korea. Who can say that these demonstrators were engaged in a peaceful rally when every one saw their acts of terrorism attacking our peaceful photo display?"

Two years later, there are now images of the sinking of South Korea's navy ship Cheonan to add to the display, and the opportunity was not missed. It was an image heavy with symbolism when I saw it, because the memorial made frequent reference to the "Chinese Communist Forces" that ultimately fought against the armies gathered under a United Nations flag in Korea, and to many people's minds by refusing to condemn North Korea's sinking of the Cheonan, they are siding with the aggressor again. There was a board at one end of the memorial with a large sheet of paper and a pen, where people left their thoughts. Two people wrote in badly formed English letters, which made it highly likely that they were not native speakers, 'Chinese Fockers', or something very similar.

Ultimately though, despite China's considerable contribution to the Korean War, the memorial is really about Korea. And personally, I came away from it with a heightened sense of the darker forces which are at work with the Korean Republic - old schisms forged in blood which would rewrite history, and perhaps even re-enact it, given the right circumstances. It's said that those who do not learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat it, and it's easy to forget those lessons on a bright summer's day on a beach where people are playing games and children's laughter is carried through the air. Yet it's that very banality - immediately beyond the images of horror, that perhaps more than anything is the real memorial to those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of the free and democratic country which South Korea finally became in 1987.

The Sandman

When I discovered that finance ministers and central bankers from the G-20 were meeting in Busan I felt like I wanted to go and stand outside the hotel to watch because suddenly, as a financial trader, my world was coming to me - here in the relative backwater that is Korea's second city, and I wondered if I would ever again be in the presence of so much collective inaction. But as events transpired, by the time they reached Busan, all I wanted to do was catch a glimpse of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer and shout “Stop letting President Obama kick sand in our faces, Mr. Osborne!” (a long story of Brit-bashing and appalling double standards, especially considering how Britain dealt with Piper Alpha).

But when we reached The Westin Chosun Hotel where the G-20 meeting was being held, it was by a complete coincidence. We'd decided some time ago to attend the Haeundae 'Sand Festival' not realising its proximity to the meeting either on the calendar or geographically. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn't get to see my country's finance minister while walking past a stationary policeman every three meters on wooded path near the Hotel. As much as I would have loved to take a photo of the scene, that would most likely result in arrest in my country these days, and while twenty-three years after the end of military government Korea's normal policing style could best be described as 'apologetic', I wasn't going to push my luck.

My wife expressed a casual hope that the North Koreans wouldn't decide to attack Haeundae Beach while we were there. That's the thing about our northern neighbour - you have to think of the most reckless thing they could possibly do, and assume that sooner or later, they'll try it. It didn't seem quite such an absurd idea five minutes later when the sirens went off and I was treated to the sight of lots of Koreans all looking at each other in confusion. The first people I looked at were the police - who appeared completely unconcerned as usual. I suppose it must be normal. We don't get to Haeundae Beach very often - the poor part of town is too far away.



What wasn't quite as normal was the building that was evidently on fire at the far end of the beach, spewing somewhat unpleasant smoke down towards us from time to time. It probably wasn't quite the image the Korean authorities wanted to their international guests with their grandstand view in the hotel.

I did eventually find a smiling fat-cat, but not from The Westin Chosun - it was a sand-sculpture.

We may have arrived at the beach too early in the day. There weren't huge numbers of sculptures - a number were by the same Dutch artist, Jeroen Advocaat, and although a competition with around twenty amateur entrants seemed to be slowly getting under way it was clearly going to take some time to come to fruition. A dance contest was nowhere near beginning and further down the beach a sand-surfing ramp and football pitches were similarly lacking in activity. What I did find was a rather fascinating memorial to the Korean War - but more on this later.

I reached the end of the beach and the building which was belching smoke. It was not entirely surprising to find that it was having some construction work done - it often seems to be the way.

Unfortunately shortly after taking these shots I saw a casualty being loaded into an ambulance, escalating it from another one of those all-too-common unattended under-construction fires to something more serious.

By the time I was half-way back the football had started, but that was about the only development. Much like the G-20 finance ministers over the last two years, I guess our timing was a little off.