Busan e-FM Week 23: Korean History

About 'Open Mike in Busan'

Introduction

Today I’m going to talk about Korean history. Now you know what they say about Korea having 5,000 years of history [or more], so obviously I’m not going to discuss all of it – only bits.

Knowing history

I didn’t know a lot about the history of Korea before coming here. Of course, everyone knows about the Korean War... or maybe they don’t – a few months ago I read about a 2008 survey conducted by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, and in it of 1,016 Korean middle and high school students surveyed, 51% didn’t know the war started with an invasion by North Korea. In fact 14% blamed Japan for starting the war, 13% blamed the United States, 11% blamed the Soviet Union, and 2% said it began when South Korean invaded the North. I found this lack of knowledge of the historical facts of something which is so important here very surprising. There was another survey conducted last year by Gallup, and that produced broadly similar results.

Don’t get me wrong. British children are no more familiar with their history – perhaps they are even less so, but South Korea has a strong reputation for its educational system, so that’s why I found the results so unexpected.

Haeundae Beach Memorial Day

Last year I was on Haeundae Beach on Memorial Day. A group were running a photo display of the Korean War on the beach and they had the flags of the 68 countries which had assisted South Korea in the conflict. The lack of knowledge of these historical events was one of the issues the group mentioned in its display.

In fact, it was also interesting that the group had pictures of the alleged destruction of one of their previous displays by a ‘candlelight rally’ in Seoul, so it suggests that history here can be a highly controversial subject.

Because they were highlighting the international effort there were pictures of British soldiers and their contribution in the Korean War amongst the display, and I have to say that was heartening to see. The U.S. carried a lot of the effort in the war but often other contributions get ignored in this and other historical events because of the cultural imperialism of Hollywood and the frequent rewriting of history it conducts as part of that. [It's not just truth sacrificed in the name of entertainment either - some of it appears to have a particularly nasty agenda].

885

I haven’t visited the U.N. Cemetery in Busan. I’ve looked over it from a nearby hill but haven’t been inside – I’ve been putting it off because I think it will be an upsetting experience. There are 885 British soldiers buried there. I didn’t know about them when I came to Busan. I find these kinds of numbers overwhelming – and it’s just a very small percentage of the total number of foreign casualties, let alone the Korean ones.

The Haeundae Beach display, which highlighted the sacrifices of people from other countries, carried the title “Thanks Runs Forever”. But maybe it doesn’t, because today in Korea foreigners are under attack, even receiving death threats, just for voicing opinions that some people here don’t like. Even I’ve been attacked for relating things I’ve seen in Korea, which perhaps don’t portray this country in a positive way. I don’t know what it is with these people – maybe they don’t know their history, and maybe they don’t care. But when foreigners are attacked – when I’m attacked – I think of those 885 British soldiers buried here in Busan, who fought to defend this country. People like Private G.W. Harrison – to mention only one random name of those 885 - who died on the 27th March 1952 at the age of just 19.

Affinities foreign and local

As much as I feel an affinity for my countrymen who fought and died here to defend South Korea, I also feel an affinity – as a former student activist myself - towards the student activists who fought against the dictatorship here. I saw a display about the Busan-Masan Democratic Uprising while I was at PNU [Pusan National University]. They risked their lives – not against an external aggressor – but for a domestic idea – democracy and freedom of speech in the face of an extreme right-wing regime. It’s something I hope foreigners will one day have here too as we battle against today’s right-wing threats.

Japan

Aside from the Korean War, and the Democratic Uprising, the other particularly well known part of Korean history overseas, is the Japanese occupation. I know it’s very much part of the ongoing narrative in South Korea, but even so I was a little surprised to see a statue of Park Jae-Hyuk – who threw a bomb at the head of the police station here in 1921 – in the Children’s Park. Parents were standing their small children beneath the statue to take photos of them. I guess the ‘Japanese awareness issue’ starts at an early age in Korea. I’ve also been to Tapgol Park in Seoul – the birthplace of the March 1st Movement, which was a really interesting place.

Korea has a long and unfortunate history of invasions, and I understand that the national psyche, even today, is traumatised by that, which manifests itself sometimes as this sense of many aspects of life being about Korea versus the rest of the world. In other words, understanding Korean history is important in understanding Korea today.

Mongols, more Japanese, Korean Neo-Confucian Radicals

I went on honeymoon to Gyeongju, the old capital of the 신라 [Silla] Kingdom, because my wife knows I’m interested in history. But I thought it would be like Kyoto, and of course it wasn’t, because over the years most of it has been destroyed by the Mongols and Japanese during their historic invasions, and Korean Neo-Confucian radicals [who oddly enough, as far as I can tell, seem to often get relegated to a footnote in the cultural-destruction blame game].

So Gyeongju wasn’t what I expected, but then what is? I saw many temples in the region, such as Bulguksa, but I left feeling honestly confused about what is real and what is a rebuilt copy. History is being destroyed in Korea – and it continues today with Beomeosa and Namdaemun.

And Modern Koreans

But it’s not just about the destruction of history which disappointed me, it’s also about the way that history is disrespected, even if just from a tourism perspective. For example, the first historical place I ever went to in Korean was Beomeosa, and there was a beautiful building there which housed the temple’s drum, and it’s a great sight and a great first ‘traditional Korean’ photo to take... except there are vending machines next to the building and phone boxes. Gyeongju has a similar issue. There’s a Korean folk village down there – Wolseong Yangdong - and obviously, like Beomeosa, it’s marketed as a tourist destination. But amongst all this 15th and 16th century architecture you have a big modern church and satellite dishes on the side of the traditional Korean houses. [It’s a ‘living’ historical village but for the effort the authorities are making you’d think they might have sorted out a cable TV solution for the residents, and the Catholic church I used to attend in England didn’t have a tall spire or fall into the architectural trap of looking overtly religious, so this can be done too I think, if the will is there].

I seriously banged my head in the folk village – low beams. It demonstrates the importance of understanding history [people used to be smaller and Korean architecture is sometimes designed accordingly].

I want to learn more about Korean history. During my time here, I’ve tried to come to terms with what Korea is, but to really understand that, I feel I need to also know what it was, and how it became what it is today. It’s an important part of living here.

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Air date: 2011-03-30 @ ~19:30

The Battle of Tsushima

Korean Mother went on a two day trip to the Japanese island of Tsushima – which is called Daemado in Korea. You shouldn't read too much into the different naming – it doesn't necessarily make it another Dokdo/Takeshima/Liancourt Rocks situation.

However... in March 2005 the local council in Korean city of Masan designated June 19 as Daemado Day, claiming that this was the date in 1419 the island was annexed by the Korean Joseon Dynasty. Therefore, Daemado is Korean territory. But this isn't necessarily just some Tea Party-style fringe movement; in 2008 50 members of the Korean parliament stated their support for the territorial claim over Tsushima, and an opinion poll at the time showed 50.6% support amongst Koreans for the claim. Read on for a little more plot thickening.

So Korean Mother went to Tsushima – or Daemado - and it was meant as a short holiday, not the advanced recon party for a future invasion. Apparently Korean trips to Tsushima are quite popular. I once read that back in the 1980s the best slogan the Korean tourist authorities could come up with for a Japanese campaign was the rather weak but technically correct “Korea – the closest country to Japan” - which is practically apologetic in its lacking of ideas regarding what was attractive about Korea at the time. Now the roles are reversed, because – to paraphrase - Tsushima is the closest part of Japan to Korea.

Unfortunately Tsushima rather projects the image of being the Japanese version of Namhae. Rural and, what the tourism brochures might describe as 'contemplative'. Perhaps Tsushima isn't like that, but if not, the official Korean tour did little to sell it. The tour itinerary included – and I'm not making this up – a primary school and two banks, in addition to two very small temples. At least the latter is more fitting with a trip to another country, I'm not so sure what a 'cultural visit' to a bank really gives the tourist.

Then there's the Japanese hotel experience. It had no toilet paper or anything else which couldn't be screwed down (to be fair I've stayed in a Japanese hotel and it wasn't like this – but then I wasn't on Tsushima). And the meals were apparently minimalistic – even by the minimalist standards of the Japanese. Hunger became the Koreans' constant travelling companion. It made me wonder whether, given the festering animosity the Korean territorial claims have created on Tsushima, these two facts were entirely disconnected.

So when Korean Mother got back, the first place she and her friends visited was a Korean restaurant near the ferry terminal. The manager saw the terrible hunger writ large across their faces and said “You've just come back from Daemado haven't you?”

Oh, and that plot thickening I promised? While they were being shown around Tsushima the Korean tour guide told the assembled visitors... “Daemado was Korean territory you know, but now Japan claims it is theirs, so we have to get it back...”

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 Puppet Masters

It seems odd to go on writing about my life in Korea without mentioning current events. Last Thursday the results of an international investigation found that four weeks ago North Korea attacked and sank the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan, with the loss of 46 lives.

North Korea has, over the years, previously attacked South Korean military vessels, launched a 31-man commando raid on the President's residence in Seoul, attacked a Presidential delegation in Burma killing the South Korean Foreign Minister amongst others, blown up a South Korean passenger plane, launched a disasterous spying mission in 1996, kidnapped Japanese citizens from the Japanese mainland - although at least they eventually got an apology - and generally made a mockery of international agreements and the international community at every available opportunity. These are merely the edited highlights of North Korean provocations. Which is why most people in Korea have reacted to the latest incident with a certain stoicism. One must be careful of reading too much into the South Korean media in these times, but I would concur that there has been little panic buying in the shops either in Busan or – I understand from my social network – in Seoul. This is not to say people are unaffected. A friend in Seoul who has a young baby said that at the moment she has no enthusiasm for her job – all she wants to do is be at home with her child now. There are more police on the subways, possibly due to the recent capture of a North Korean spy and the information she obtained about the Seoul Metro, and the underlying tension is just that little bit higher. Despite this, bizarrely, North Korea has still demanded that South Korea's SBS network give it a free World Cup television feed and pay for Northern journalists to attend the football tournament this summer.

It's said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. We paid a high price once in my country for appeasing a ruthless dictator. In retrospect, South Korea may have repeated that mistake with its 'Sunshine Policy'. It's tempting to have hoped that North Korea would have gone down the Chinese road of economic development, but this perhaps ignores the reality that the Chinese Communist Party is somewhat meritocratic and these days, pragmatic. North Korea is more akin to a feudal dictatorship, with hereditary succession where the leader is often raised to the status of a God. Our mistake has been to believe that Kim Jong-Il would do the logical thing, but ego and internal politics in dictatorships is rarely about logic.

I've been part of that mistake too. Back in the naive 'Sunshine' days I invested in a company called Aminex which had done a deal to explore for oil in Northern territory. That saga still goes on, with a deal on the Eastern sea – the place where North Korean submarines disappear - being signed despite the latest crisis. Needless to say, I've come to see that move as a mistake, and now don't believe in supporting a dictatorship in any way when it will spend the foreign currency it receives on weapons which might eventually kill me and my family. I've also considered not buying Chinese-made goods or investing in China any more on the principle that North Korea is increasingly a puppet state of China and protectorate at the UN Security Council. But it's a problematic position, because if South Koreans rose up as a whole and boycotted China in protest, it may push China into nationalist outrage. But if we all continue to do business with them, are we once again travelling down the road of appeasement with another dictatorship?

And how much do South Koreans care anyway? Believe it or not despite all this, a recent Gallup Korea survey revealed that if North Korea invades the South, apparently 25.7% of respondents are against the Government immediately exercising its right to self-defence. You read that correctly - allegedly one-quarter of South Koreans don't want to fight back. This might be because they don't want to be conscripted or because they want to just talk to the attackers. The allegation that many young people have no idea who started the Korean War may be a contributory factor. Still, I find it inexplicable.

Right now, I've done nothing about the situation, which is surprising for a financial trader. We tend to think in terms of offsetting risk – hedging our positions for worst case scenarios – and that makes us financial survivalists. That sense of survivalism often extends into the real world, where it seems we are the first to buy masks during viral outbreaks, store emergency food, water and equipment. It's not always the direct problem we fear so much as the collapse in infrastructure that leaves people short of basic essentials. And gone down that road too in the past, but despite the vague risk that conflict could break out at any minute, this time I've done nothing to prepare for it. Yes, Busan's distance from the border puts it in a much more fortunate position than Seoul, but since any war is likely to be fought asymmetrically by the North, it would be a mistake to believe that we are safe here. And a widespread infrastructural collapse will carry its own implications.

Another reason why I really haven't addressed this is that I've been extremely busy of late for various reasons, and life goes on. Preparing for a war is some way down my list of things to do, which is my judgement on the probabilities involved. If conflict breaks out that will prove to be a bad trade. This is the slightly surreal nature of life in Korea right now – it feels like the Cold War all over again. Will the sirens one day sound in anger?

Surviving Picasso

"Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth." - Pablo Picasso

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has an exhibition on tour in Korea entitled "Monet to Picasso". Having spent three months at the Seoul Arts Center, where it attracted over 100,000 visitors in little over a month, it's recently arrived at the Busan Museum of Modern Art in Haeundae-gu for a two-month stay. As the title suggests, the exhibition features famous masterpieces from artists such as Monet and Picasso, in addition to Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Matisse, Renoir and van Gogh. According to the Museum the insurance cost for the exhibition was around 1,000bn won (£586m/$894m), which I suppose puts the collected value into some sort of perspective.

Given that Haeundae-gu is on the other side of Busan from us, it took an hour to get their by subway. It would have been forty-five minutes by bus, but if you have to stand that means a forty-five minute physical workout as the driver alternates between emergency braking and acceleration. Haeundae is an interesting part of Busan which has a number of places of cultural interest in close proximity - the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center for example - better known as BEXCO, is just across the road from the Museum. Unfortunately Haeundae isn't in any way centrally located, being out at the very edge of the subway network, so it isn't very convenient for many. On the other hand, given that Haeundae is the Dubai of Busan, perhaps the museums and exhibition centres are in the right place.

The ticket price was 12,000 won (around £7/$11) per person. Audio guides could be rented for 3,000 won, which read an explanation for 33 of the 96 masterpieces, providing a total running time of 50 minutes. This would have been quite useful, given that beyond the name of the artist, the year of their birth and death, the name of the work and the year it was created, there was no attempt to explain anything specifically about the piece, but unfortunately it was only available in Korean. That's a shame because one can imagine the exhibition attracting tourists with an interest in art from nearby countries such as Japan and China, not to mention the English-speaking expatriate community within Korea.


It's also possible to go on a guided tour of selected artwork within the exhibition, but I wouldn't recommend it. While we moved around the Museum a herd of around 40 people stomped their way around in a hot and chaotic pursuit of their guide, who had to talk from a platform with a microphone. It was clear that views of the paintings were hopelessly obscured.

The exhibition itself was arranged into four galleries each with a separate theme - respectively Realism and Modern Life, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Picasso and the Avante-Garde, and American Art. Each at least had an opening explanation in Korean and English for those without audio guides. Most works were paintings, but amongst the famous sculptures were Constantin Brâncuşi's The Kiss (1916), Rodin's Eternal Springtime, and Picasso's Owl.

Photos aren't allowed within the exhibit of course, although a couple of copies of the genuine paintings visitors have just seen hang on the walls of the 'photo zone'.

Beyond this, the Chosun Ilbo currently has an reasonable overview in English and Korean, and the Philadephia Museum of Art's website carries information on such representative works as van Gogh's Still Life with a Bouquet of Daises, Manet's U.S.S. "Kearsarge" and the C.S.S. "Alabama", Renoir's Portrait of Mademoiselle Legrand, Degas' Ballet Class and Matisse's Yellow Odalisque.

The nature of the audio guide meant that my wife stopped at particular paintings for much longer than others, so rather than browse each one equally I was left waiting at certain pieces and then passing over others more quickly than I might otherwise had done. Unfortunately the friends we'd arrived with were making their own pace too, so we didn't want to be holding them up at the end.

After the main exhibit, we went to investigate a couple of side galleries containing the work of Vietnamese artists, and had just entered another containing a Japanese collection when a member of staff politely told us they would be closing in a few minutes. We'd entered the Museum at the admittedly late time of 3.30pm, but apparently it was now 7pm. Somehow, the time had flown by. It was a pity because there was clearly a lot more to investigate in the Museum, and while the genuine art enthusiast must consider coming face to face with an original work by the likes of Monet or Picasso as something of a pilgrimage, I was equally happy looking at the paintings of Kim Chong Hak, so perhaps a return trip is on the horizon.

The Lost Words

In June 1950 the North Korean Army crossed the 38th parallel, invading the Republic of South Korea. By September, most of the Republic had fallen, with only the area around the city of Busan, or Pusan as it was then known in English, remaining under the control of anti-Communist forces. As the Republic collapsed, half a million refugees fled south to the coastal city, swelling the population to around 1.4 million. The Battle of Pusan Perimeter raged, and conditions within the titular city were equally chaotic.

The Bosudong area of Busan became home to a significant number of refugees who had fled the Nothern advance. One displaced couple began selling old magazines from the U.S. military, and this quickly expanded in scope as the impoverished sold or pawned their books. Even as the war continued into 1951, seventy percent of children in Busan still attended primary school, even if classes were held in the open air. The proximity of many such 'provisional schools' in Bosudong ensured the growth of the second-hand book market, and the number of shops grew until by the 1960s there were around seventy crammed together in the narrow 'Bosudong Book Street' ('보수동 책방 골목'). The speed of the North Korean advance during the war had separated many families and friends, and the 'Book Street' also became a place for refugees to meet, socialise and perhaps search for those they had lost, long after hostilities had ended.

Today, sixty years after the war began, 'Bosudong Book Street' still exists and has become part of Busan's cultural heritage, and there is also, perhaps inevitably, an annual festival.

The street is not really a street at all for most of its length, but rather a narrow passageway with book shops of various shapes and sizes on both sides. In itself, this might create a rather disorganised feeling, but the effect is only heightened by the contents of the stores, many of which feature chaotic stacks of books placed everywhere there is a space. Often this spills out into the 'street' itself, only serving to make it even narrower. Along with the tarpaulins over the front of the shops to protect the books from the elements, it combines to create a somewhat claustrophobic atmosphere.

Inside the shops, the chaotic theme continues, with careful navigation a priority, and an acceptance that this may not be a place for the tall - even I had to duck under a large beam to reach one part of the upper floor of one particular store.

Most books were Korean, but not all of them. I was surprised to find one shop filled with old books in English, most of the titles and authors of which must surely have been long forgotten in the West. An ageing and probably unloved tribute to Western circa-1970s pulp fiction.

In addition to the decorative sewer grates which never detract from the emerging stench but are a regular feature of Busan's cultural districts, the street itself features tributes to the great works of literature such as Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne and Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.

We'd planned on visiting 'Bosudong Book Street' for a number of weeks, but the night before the local news did a piece on an photo exhibition about the street that was being held until the weekend, so we expected that the publicity might result in the street being busy. In fact it wasn't busy at all, which was both surprising and a little saddening. It seems that in recent years, the character of the street has begun to change, as economic prosperity created more demand for new books. And while second-hand books can still be found in abundance, one suspects that the chaos of the second-hand book market is slowly giving way to a more ordered and modern consumer experience. As much as poverty created this place, wealth may be changing it fundamentally.

The black and white photos featuring the owners of the remaining Book Street stores looked out over an empty space at the Bosudong Catholic Exhibition Center.

Exit Napoleon Pursued by Rabbits

I am of course an actor, playing a part, and I have been since I got here. I always knew this was the way it would be, and it's one of the reasons I chose to title every entry in this blog after a dramatic work. Free will or fate? You know my answer, and as Laplace's demon has inevitably revealed itself as my time in Busan unfolded, I have followed the script as it has been delivered to me, trying my best to fade into the background as an extra, but all the while feeling I was being watched as though I was walking centre-stage.

Standing outside the theatre on the Kyungsung University campus where a film crew is hovering, I felt the inevitability of them being drawn towards me, and a minute later I am once again stood next to a student union building giving an interview - different country, same modus operandi - smile, be diplomatic, don't start a riot.



What do I think of the festival so far? Let me explain how my life works here - "There's a mime, do you want to go? OK." Context often comes in retrospect, and I'm usually far too busy to worry about something until it happens. So I've seen some banners for the Busan International Performing Arts Festival, quickly put two and two together, and explain how this is my first event so I really don't have a view yet, but how I'm sure it's great for Busan and a good way of promoting the city internationally. Please don't ask any deeper questions about what I'm here to watch because the first time I glanced at the script was a couple of hours ago and I certainly haven't studied it in any detail.

We are here to see Exit Napolean Pursued By Rabbits, performed - I discover once I get home - by Nola Rae, or rather, Nola Rae MBE - making her a Member of the Order of the British Empire, which is more than I'll ever be, particularly if I keep taking the Empire to court. Which is all to say that Nola Rae is moderately well-known, and certainly well-respected back home in the Empire, so this then, is no ordinary mime.

Before this revelation I'm just hoping that attending doesn't transpire to be a mistake. I've arrived in a group with twelve other people and I've been told the mime is British. so even though this wasn't my idea I can't help feeling that like everything else which is British in Korea, it reflects on me to some extent. I needn't have worried though, because the Koreans apparently loved it, despite some finding themselves dragged onto the stage. They should be used to it anyway, because I have yet to attend anything here where there members of the audience weren't conscripted as part of the entertainment. I always try my best to appear invisible at these points; I'm already on the stage in Korea without being on it literally, and I only want to carry the metaphor so far. But here's a tip if you don't want your fifteen minutes of fame here, don't sit on the front row. I suppose that's life all over. Participation eventually extended to the whole audience, which evidently wasn't to The Times of London's liking, but as Ms. Rae made puppets of us all from the stage, I thought surely this was the point. Did we refuse to stand, to gesture, to make fools of ourselves or was it easier to go along with arbitrary and illogical diktats of someone commanding the majority? After the show, it was our hosts turn to be on the spot as an audience member suddenly burst out that it was Children's Day in Korea the next day and 'requested' that the performer pose for pictures with all the children in the audience. Exit Napoleon had demonstrated how quickly one dictator can be fall and be replaced by another, perhaps in more ways than one.

I've never sat through 75 minutes of mime before, unless you count two years I worked under an old boss, so I wasn't sure it would appeal to me, although it held my interest - and not just because the material seemed vaguely autobiographical. But while we cycled through various European dictators some uncertainty was voiced to me afterwards as to how many of the references the local audience picked up on. It's easy to grow up with a Euro-centric view of history and not appreciate how the 'important global events' taught in school turn out to be merely important European ones, with little coverage of, or meaning to, our Asian peers. In the question and answer session which followed the performance someone asked about the genesis of the work and Nola Rae commented on the importance of opposing dictators, a message which does, however, have a particular resonance here.



On the way out the film crew caught me again and once again I offered my diplomatic answers. For some reason, this time they were quite keen for me to say 'something unknown... fighting!' to the camera, where the something unknown is presumably the name of whatever group they belonged to. So one moment we are condemning dictators and the next we are shouting 'Korea Fighting!' or whatever other cause you want to rally people's base emotions to. It seems we walk a fine line indeed. I did it of course; it was in the script.

A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit

During my time in Busan, I've found there are areas of this city where foreigners are ubiquitous, and then there are other areas which are more exclusively Korean, and your chances of seeing another obviously foreign face are quite low. By this admittedly very rough and ready measure, Busan's Children's Grand Park would have to fall into the latter category, given that last Saturday I must have seen several thousand Koreans there during the course of the day, and the total number of obvious foreigners (i.e. non-Asian in appearance at least), not including myself, amounted to one. Since he, like me, seemed to be part of a Korean family, it's possible that the Grand Park is way off the tourist trail, especially considering it was a five-day holiday weekend (Monday was Children's Day), and in theory at least, the foreigner teaching community should have been freed from the bondage of their hagwons and were out running loose in the wild.

Recently, the temperature here has been rising into the uncomfortable range which merely forebodes the arrival of even more oppressive degrees of heat as the real summer rapidly approaches. They say Korea is famous for its four seasons, but forgive me if I blinked and missed the spring this year, because it only seems a few weeks ago that it was snowing in Busan. Under the circumstances, I was concerned about visiting a park, which being English evokes images of gardens and wide open spaces. But my fears of getting sunburned were misplaced - the Children's Grand Park is a heavily forested affair and wonderfully cool compared with exposed exterior.

After being here for almost a year-and-a-half, I would have to say Korean tourism and leisure often seems to be a case of 'almost, but not quite'. It's as though the Government recognises that it's important to provide public facilities and even try and promote them to foreigners as part of 'Korea Sparking' (the promotional branding inspired by Korea's ubiquitously questionable electrical wiring), but somehow the authorities seem to fail in a way which Koreans probably don't see but which a foreigner would probably raise their eyebrows at. In the Children's Grand Park, this means that a bridge across a river, which in a Japanese park might be a faux-period wooden construction, is a functional concrete affair with a satellite dish attached to it so a nearby food vendor can watch TV as they sell their high-mark-up drinks to their captive audience. An overhead cable strung across the lake - which used to be Busan's main reservoir and is supposed to be shaped like a map of Korea - detracts from what might otherwise be an unspoilt picturesque view.

But none of this detracts from the reality that overhead cables notwithstanding, the smell of relatively pristine forest on a warm spring day marks an excellent alternative to breathing Busan's otherwise polluted atmosphere. And for those seeking a little more excitement in their lives than a quiet walk through the woods with hundreds of Koreans, the Children's Grand Park has a small amusement park with roller-coaster and some other rides.

While the younger people catapulted themselves around the forest at high-speed, the older Koreans were to be found playing badminton and using the public equipment in a nearby public exercise area.

Meanwhile, in this Children's Park, the young children themselves were being posed for photographs beneath the statue Park Jae-hyuk - 'one of the greatest patriots in Korea' says the description (he threw a bomb at the head of Busan Police Station under the Japanese occupation).

But in the name of making love, not war, the park may also provide a home for equally clandestine activities if the graffitied claims of sex in some of the picnic areas are anything to go by.

This is probably not what the park authorities have in mind when they launch their 'Romantic Zone' area next year.

Main Street on the March!

One day you'll be walking down the street in Korea, and it will be the usual mix of noise, diesel fumes and advertising boards as far as the eye can see, and the next it will be the same, with the addition of Korean flags everywhere. Putting flags on almost every lamppost seems like a major logistical exercise, yet it seems to happen instantaneously whenever the occasion demands it. I can only imagine that men on the back of Bongo trucks drive up and down the streets at night quickly slotting flags into their slots while the driver barely slows down.

In addition to the flags on the streets, they are also hanging from houses, apartments, shops and they appear on buses - outside and inside.

The occasion - this time - is the anniversary of the March 1st Korean Movement, and involves a range of events in addition to the overnight speed-flagging of the country.