Koreana Autumn 2016 (English)

autumn 2016

Korean culture & artS Special Feature

DMZ

The Forbidden Land Glimpsed through Barbed Wire Fences DMZ, Where Dreams of Unification Bloom; Peace of Mind Relished on the DMZ Forest Trail; The Uncertain Serenity of the DMZ Ecosystem; Gyodong: A Lonely Island Across from North Korea; Real DMZ Project: Art Casts New Light on Cold War Legacy

DMZ

vol. 30 no. 3

ISSN 1016-0744

IMAGE OF KOREA

Outdoor Look and Mountains Kim Hwa-young Literary Critic; Member of the National Academy of Arts

ome 70 percent of Korea’s territory is mountainous. On the plains and lowlands that make up the remaining 30 percent, people build their homes and till the soil. In the 18th century, the Joseon Dynasty philosopher Park Ji-won lamented the geography of his mountainous homeland: “Few plains extend more than 100 li and no village has more than 1,000 homes.” Foreign tourists say of Seoul today, a megacity of more than 10 million residents: “Wherever you go there’s nothing but high-rise apartments.” When so many people live on a small amount of flat land, it is inevitable that buildings will not spread outwards but grow upwards.

But the eyes of a keen observer will note that just beyond the high-rises, not far in distance, high mountains surround the whole city. This is true not only in Seoul. There are 4,440 mountains rising up on the land within easy reach of most Koreans, a short distance from where they live and work.

Naturally, hiking is one of the Korean people’s favorite leisure time activities. They climb mountains because they are there to be climbed. Different data sources have differing numbers, but it is estimated that 15 million out of Korea’s 50 million population go hiking on a regular basis every month and four out of every five Korean adults aged 18 and older more than once a year. These figures suggest that Koreans make some 460 million hiking trips per year, climbing up and down the country’s mountain trails.

Rather unexpectedly, the popularity of hiking has had a dramatic impact on the fashion industry. Clothing accounted for a very small portion of climbing gear sales until a few decades ago. Previously, hiking equipment and apparel were sold mainly at small shops near the entrances of hiking trails. But these days, many people can be seen strolling through their neighborhood or walking along the riverside outfitted in the latest functional hiking gear, as if they were about to conquer Everest.

Hiking gear in Korea today has so evolved in terms of material, design, color, and function that it can be worn anywhere, for work, sports, and leisure. In recent years, Korea’s outdoor apparel market has surged to more than 7 trillion won in value. In autumn when the mountains are clothed in leaves of various colors, the outdoor fashion show taking place on the hiking trails adds to the vibrance of the landscape.

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puBliSHer eDitorial Director eDitor-in-cHieF eDitorial BoarD

Editor’s Letter

DMZ in the age of cyber Warfare An eerie serenity pervades the deserted land beyond the barbed wire fences. The young soldiers at the frontline observatories, most of them with innocent-looking boyish faces, seem to take the quiet but tense confrontation for granted as an everyday situation. But they must be aware that they are exposed to a sudden skirmish across the border, if not serious combat, at any time.

Special coverage of the Demilitarized Zone, the long strip of land that cuts across the peninsula separating the two Koreas, at this moment may seem rather curious.

Indeed, as this issue of Koreana is being prepared for printing, peace and security on the peninsula appears to be hanging by a thread amidst escalating tension. Recalling that millions of lives, including civilians and military personnel, perished in the war fought with tanks and howitzers six and a half decades ago, the controversies surrounding nuclear and missile threats and the deployment of cutting-edge weapons like SLBMs and the THAAD system involve far-reaching implications.

This “demilitarized” buffer zone, in fact, has seldom been faithful to its initial objectives as stipulated in the Korean War Armistice Agreement. The whole world knows it is the most heavily militarized border on the planet today, even without the heightened concerns about state-of-the-art weapons of mass destruction. In this age of cyber warfare, the geographical distance provided by the buffer zone has long lost its validity.

This issue’s Special Feature, “DMZ: The Forbidden Land Glimpsed through Barbed Wire Fences,” looks at the Korean DMZ from historical and humanitarian perspectives. It is an attempt to bring to light the past and present of this “no man’s land” where human access has been strictly prohibited, along with a glimpse of the everyday lives of residents of the border areas. It is hoped that our readers will take the time to reflect on the lingering question: Why, and for whom, does this nation remain divided? lee Kyong-hee Editor-in-Chief

copY eDitor aSSociate eDitor aSSiStant eDitorS creatiVe Director eDitorS art Director DeSiGnerS

Lee Si-hyung Yoon Keum-jin Lee Kyong-hee Bae Bien-u Charles La Shure Choi Young-in Han Kyung-koo Kim Hwa-young Kim Young-na Koh Mi-seok Song Hye-jin Song Young-man Werner Sasse Dean Jiro Aoki Lim Sun-kun Teresita M. Reed Cho Yoon-jung Kim Sam Noh Yoon-young, Park Sin-hye Lee Young-bok Kim Ji-hyun, Kim Nam-hyung, Yeob Lan-kyeong

laYout & DeSiGn

Kim’s Communication Associates 44 Yanghwa-ro 7-gil, Mapo-gu Seoul 04035, Korea www.gegd.co.kr Tel: 82-2-335-4741 Fax: 82-2-335-4743

tranSlatorS

Chung Myung-je Hwang Sun-ae Min Eun-young Park Hyun-ah Suh Jung-ah

Price per issue in Korea 6,000 won Elsewhere US$9 Please refer to page 104 of Koreana for specific subscription rates.

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Korean culture & artS autumn 2016

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Published quarterly by the Korea Foundation 2558 Nambusunhwan-ro, Seocho-gu Seoul 06750, Korea http://www.koreana.or.kr

“DMZ2009_Yellow River” Heryun Kim 2009. Oil on canvas, 150cm x 200cm.

© The Korea Foundation 2016 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.

FocuS

36

“The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story”

What About a Stairway Garden in the City?

autobiography offers a rare Glimpse of north Korea

Kwak Hee-soo

intervieW

40

Cartoonist Kim Botong, Loved by Botong People

art revieW

“The Future of Silence: Fiction by Korean Women” Women Writers Describe the World they inhabit

http://www.realdmz.org/

Park Seok-hwan

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76

BooKS & more

archive for Multidimensional Studies of the DMZ

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Lee Jung-seob: A Record of the Power of Truth Conquering the Storm

Charles La Shure, Kim Hoo-ran

78

entertainment

More Popular than Ever, Kim Kwang-seok is Back

Chung Jae-suk

Kim Go-geum-pyung

GuarDian oF HeritaGe

50

Pondering Eternity from Graveside Walls

18 SpEcIAl FEAtuRE

DmZ: the Forbidden land Glimpsed through Barbed Wire Fences Special Feature 1

04

DMZ, Where Dreams of Unification Bloom

Special Feature 2

12

in love WitH Korea

60

Darcy Paquet: Advocate for Korean Indie Film Kim Hyun-sook

64

Keep the Poetry Going Till the Day of Unification

Lee Chang-guy

My Name is ‘Gosam Mom’ Kang Shin-jae

53 84

liFeStYle

The Resurgence of Small Bookshops

Gwak Jae-gu

an orDinarY DaY

18

56

Kim Hak-soon

Peace of Mind Relished on the DMZ Forest Trail

Special Feature 3

Kim Jin-young

From the Periphery, Korean-Chinese Author Geum Hee Beholds Those on the Margins

on tHe roaD

Ham Kwang-bok

Endless Variations on Rice

Heo Young-sun

taleS oF tWo KoreaS

80

eSSential inGreDientS

Baik Chang-hwa

72

88

journeYS in Korean literature

Am I Still the Same I as I was Then?

Choi Jae-bong

Plaza Hotel

The Uncertain Serenity of the DMZ Ecosystem

Kim Mi-wol

Seo Jae-chul

Special Feature 4

24

Gyodong: A Lonely Island Across from North Korea

49

Lee Chang-guy

Special Feature 5

Real DMZ Project: Art Casts New Light on Cold War Legacy Koh Mi-seok

30

64

SpEcIAl FEAtuRE 1 DMZ: The Forbidden Land Glimpsed through Barbed Wire Fences

The early morning mist rising from the Imjin River hovers over the midwestern front in Gyeonggi Province. A military jeep patrols the area around the barbed wire fence marking the southern limit line of the Demilitarized Zone, still shrouded in darkness.

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DMZ

WHERE DREAMS OF unIFIcAtIOn BlOOM

the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) is a military buffer area that stretches across the middle of the Korean peninsula along the Military Demarcation line, separating north and South Korea. contrary to its name, this cold War remnant is the most heavily fortified border in the world today.

Ham Kwang-bok Director, Korea DMZ Research Center; DMZ Reportage Writer Ahn Hong-beom, lee Sang-youp Photographers

CHANGDO

KOSONG KUMGANG

nORtHERn lIMIt lInE

2km

GOSEONG

PYONGGANG

4km DMZ

MIlItARY DEMARcAtIOn lInE (MDl)

KIMHWA

2km SOutHERn lIMIt lInE

CHORWON

cIvIlIAn cOntROl lInE (ccl)

CHEORWON CHANGPUNG

YANGGU HWACHEON YEONCHEON

KAESONG PAECHON YONAN

INJE

North Korea

POCHEON

PANMUNJOM KAEPUNG

GAPYEONG PAJU

YANGJU

CHUNCHEON 38th parallel

South Korea GYODONG

GANGHWA GIMPO

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 5

t 10:12 a.m. on July 27, 1953, at Panmunjom, Lieutenant General William K. Harrison, representing the United Nations Command Delegation, and General Nam Il of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea signed the Armistice Agreement. Then, without saying a word or exchanging a ceremonial handshake, they left through separate doors. The DMZ that divides the two Koreas was born on that fateful day, the love child of animosity and distrust, silencing gunfire 12 hours later.

A

neither War, nor peace This year marks the 63rd anniversary of the DMZ, which was born as a consequence of the Korean War. If it were a person, the DMZ would be entering advanced middle age, with more years lived than left to live. Maybe that’s why people tend to adopt a more tolerant attitude toward the DMZ these days. For example, they often conjure up the image of a pristine natural environment long left untouched by humans, where wild animals frolic.

But the DMZ is by no means a “frail elderly person” or an “ecological haven.” Rugged plains scorched by repeated wildfires; barbed wire fences running through the green mountains; trenches and cement stairs meandering up to the ridges; steep and narrow military roads; corn fields tilled by North Korean troops on the mountain slopes; bunkers where North Korean troops hide with their eyes fixed on the South; and South Korean soldiers keeping round-the-clock watch from frontline guard posts — it might not be a battlefield, but it would be a gross mistake to believe that peace exists there.

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6 KoREANA autumn 2016

DMZ: Reality and Fantasy The Armistice Agreement stipulates that the DMZ is an area of land two kilometers wide north and south of the Military Demarcation Line, which extends from the mouth of the Imjin River on the west coast, marked by the No. 0001 sign post, to Myeongho-ri on the east coast, marked by the No. 1292 sign post. It is a strip of land cutting across the waist of the Korean Peninsula.

“Along the 155-mile-long barbed wire fence of the truce line” — this is a common expression when talking about the division of Korea. To check, a geographer measured the distance along the southern limit line, from the mouth of the Imjin River on the western end to Chogu village on the eastern end. The exact distance was 148 miles (238 kilometers). Furthermore, technically speaking, the ceasefire line is just a line on the map demarcating the border between the two Koreas. From a historical point of view, it delineates the battle lines on that fateful day, which have since been frozen in time.

When looking out the large glass windows at the observatories built along the barbed wire fences, tourists visiting the DMZ are impressed by the serene green fields in summer and pristine snow land in winter, giving them the illusion that it is devoid of any activity. But 1 Two soldiers look down in fact, cunning tactics are constantly over the DMZ from a guard being deployed in the border zone by post at the central front.

2 Soldiers stationed at a cenboth sides. For instance, each year tral frontline unit along the from mid-February to May, South and DMZ line up for morning North Korean troops conduct operaroll call.

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KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 7

1

tions to burn down the plants and trees that obstruct their field of vision and line of fire.

The provisions of the Armistice Agreement, which prohibit both Koreas from crossing the respective limit lines, have been frequently violated since long ago. Each side has been advancing beyond the designated limits, moving their barbed wire fences forward bit by bit. There have been many incidents and clashes in the DMZ, such as those involving forest fires and landmines, digging of infiltration tunnels, and more recently the resumption of loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts.

The official population around this “no man’s land” is another matter of intrigue; it is much less than the actual number of residents. Troops stationed in the area are part of a “hidden population.” For example, the population of Hwacheon County in Gangwon Province bordering the DMZ is said to be around 27,000 as of 2015.

But it is no secret that there are many more “invisible inhabitants.”

8 KoREANA autumn 2016

the DMZ Ecology: Another Myth The natural environment in the DMZ, contrary to popular belief, is far from natural. The forests have been ravaged by fires, and cut down and contaminated by the large number of “residents.” For some time, scholars have been pointing out that the density of living trees in the border area has fallen to less than half the average in South Korea, urging immediate action to restore the damaged natural ecosystem. Animals living in the barren land have to endure deafening blasts from the loudspeakers and the glare of floodlights at night. Not a few fall victim to the ubiquitous landmines.

But reportages on the DMZ often portray the border zone as a haven for wild animals — herds of roe deer frolicking in the fields, a goat poised high up on a rock staring into the distance, or a family of wild boars roaming around the barracks. But none of the animals are posing for the camera. In fact, the cameras are exposing little more than the secret habitats of these wild animals.

AWAITING THE DAY THE MT. KUMGANG TRAIN RUNS AGAIN

2 1 Although hard to tell from this photograph, a South Korean guard post at the central front is only a very short distance away from the North Korean guard post.

2 Kim Yeong-beom and Kim Sun-hui were both born in a village inside the civilian control zone in Cheorwon County, Gangwon Province.

In the 1980s, they opened the Frontline Rest Stop in the dandelion field in front of their village. Longing for the day the two Koreas are reunited, they welcome guests who have gone through a series of military checkpoints just to get a taste of their spicy catfish stew.

3 Jeongyeon Railroad Bridge, part of the Mt. Kumgang Line, was built over the Hantan River in Cheorwon County in 1926. The sign on the bridge reads, “Railroad Disconnected! Mt. Kumgang 90km.”

The dandelion field in Gimhwa, Cheorwon County, Gangwon Province is the northernmost land in South Korea, an unsettling place over which the black mountains of North Korea loom. The DMZ passes through this field. There is also a rusty railroad bridge there. It was part of the electric railroad to Mt. Kumgang (Geumgang) that was launched in 1926 and operated between the Cheorwon and Naekumgang (Inner Kumgang) stations until the line was severed by territorial division. The writing on the bridge piers says, “Railroad Disconnected! Mt. Kumgang 90km,” declaring the end of the journey.

In the early 1970s, a young farmer named Kim Yeong-beom, who lived in a village within the civilian control zone in this mountainous area, proposed to a young woman named Kim Sun-hui from the same village, quoting the lyrics of the Korean pop song “With You,” which was a big hit at that time: “Will you not spend the rest of your life with me in a picturesque house I’ll build in the dandelion field?”

Azaleas happened to be in full bloom by the Hantan River. She nodded in acceptance.

Ten years after they were married, while living happily with a son and a daughter, Kim was finally able to keep his promise. He had been pleading with the county office and military units based in the area, and at long last gained approval to build a house in the dandelion field. He put up the sign “Frontline Rest Stop” in the hopes that some day the railway would be reconnected, bringing trains filled with tourists. Although Mt. Kumgang tourists are not likely to stop by anytime soon, word has spread that his wife cooks a mean spicy catfish stew. People are also intrigued by the couple’s heartwarming love story, making this place a hidden attraction inside the civilian control zone.

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KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 9

When looking out the large glass windows at the observatories built along the barbed wire fences, tourists visiting the DMZ are impressed by the serene green fields in summer and pristine snow land in winter, giving them the illusion that it is devoid of any activity. But in fact, cunning tactics are constantly being deployed in the border zone by both sides.

Five Faces of the DMZ It is time to move beyond the common perception of the DMZ as a “land of peace and life,” or the “tragic wound of a divided nation,” and take a clearer look at its true face.

First, the DMZ is a living war museum. The Korean War, which broke out on June 25, 1950, was a de facto world war in which some 60 countries, including 10 communist nations, took part directly or indirectly. No war in the history of mankind has involved as many nations and diverse nationalities in a single place. The DMZ is evidence of the East-West power struggle and in itself a Cold War documentary.

Second, the DMZ is a rich repository of anthropological and historical resources. In 1978, Greg Bowen, an American soldier stationed in Korea, found an Acheulean hand-axe by the Hantan River in Yeoncheon County, Gyeonggi Province. This is evidence that some 300,000 years ago, a human species older than modern humans lived in this area. Ancient mountain fortresses along the Hantan and Imjin rivers reveal that the ancient Three Kingdoms — Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla — frequently engaged in armed hostilities in this region some 2,000 years ago. In 901, during the Later Three Kingdoms Period, Taebong was founded at a site near today’s Cheorwon, in the middle of the DMZ. In 918, the Goryeo Dynasty was established at the same location, and in 1392, the Joseon Dynasty was founded in the Goryeo capital, Gaeseong (also Kaesong), just north of the DMZ. As such, the DMZ was the birthplace of three Korean states.

Third, the DMZ is a treasure trove of modern cultural heritage.

The old ruined city of Cheorwon was home to a population of some 37,000 during the 1940s. It was originally a planned city built by the Japanese during its colonial rule, but was destroyed in bombing raids during the Korean War. Ruins of buildings that still remain — the county office, police station, primary school, church, the agricultural products inspection center, icehouse, train station, and the CheorSouth and North Korean solwon County headquarters of the North diers stand facing each other Korean Workers’ Party — are the silent on either side of the Military Demarcation Line which runs remnants of a city that once was. Chethrough the Joint Security orwon was part of North Korean terArea in the truce village of ritory from 1945, just after Korea’s libPanmunjom. The building on the opposite side is Panmuneration from Japanese rule, until the gak of North Korea, and the signing of the Armistice Agreement in blue building on lefthand side 1953. Seungil Bridge, which crosses is a JSA conference room.

10 KoREANA autumn 2016

the Hantan River, was built by North Korea in 1948. Next to this is the Hantan Bridge constructed by South Korea in 1996.

Fourth, the DMZ is a melting pot. Right after the ceasefire, the civilian control zone outside the DMZ encompassed 100 or so empty villages. The government implemented migration measures to attract settlers into the area. As a result, in 1983, when the area delineated by the civilian control line was at its largest, a total of 39,725 residents in 8,799 households were living in the 81 villages located within the civilian control zone. Subsequently, as the civilian control line was moved further north, many of these villages were excluded. The people who settled in the villages created a unique culture. The mish-mash of the disparate cultures of people with different dialects, ethos, customs, and family histories, melded with the military environment to shape a distinct culture of “the third zone.”

Lastly, the natural ecosystem of the Cold War era has been largely preserved in the DMZ. Proper ecological succession would not have been possible during the Cold War due to excessive interventions. Even so, pools of water where artillery shells fell have since turned into ponds, and abandoned rice paddies have become swamps. Water plants in these swamps have become home to roe deer while insects and earthworms attract wild animals and birds.

The trees standing in the fields where South and North Korean soldiers engage in an ancient military tactic of fire warfare every year have stopped growing side branches. Perhaps they have learned that it is best to concentrate on growing upward so that the flames can pass beneath their branches. After the fires have swept through, the fields turn green again in spring since only the young foliage is burned away. But large animals, like wild boars, will find little to eat in these fields. Some animals survive on the soldiers’ leftover food, but many are injured or killed by landmines and booby traps.

The border zone is also exposed to latent viruses and pathogens.

Hantavirus hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, which is known to have afflicted about 3,000 UN troops during the Korean War, still exists there. And diseases like rabies and malaria are rampant in the area.

Sustaining Dreams of unification These faces of the DMZ constitute a historical and cultural heritage not found anywhere else in the world. This is an invaluable legacy that has been passed on by the 20th century to the Korean people today. It is now up to us to use this unique heritage to bring closer to reality our dreams of reunification.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 11

SpEcIAl FEAtuRE 2 DMZ: The Forbidden Land Glimpsed through Barbed Wire Fences

pEAcE OF MInD RElISHED On tHE DMZ FORESt tRAIl Where does the capacity for peace come from? I pondered this question while walking through the forest which had been a bloody battlefield six and a half decades ago. lee chang-guy Poet and Literary Critic Ahn Hong-beom, Han Dae-in Photographers

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Eulji Observatory in Haean-myeon, Yanggu County, Gangwon Province, has a sweeping view over the Punchbowl, one of the fiercest battlefields during the Korean War. Far away beyond the basin area, the peaks of Mt. Kumgang in North Korea are visible on clear days.

n May 1986, the Spanish National Council for UNESCO published the “Seville Statement on Violence” adopted at an international meeting of scientists on non-violence education held in Seville, Spain. Containing five principles formulated to refute the notion that “organized human violence is biologically determined,” the statement concludes: “Just as ‘wars begin in the minds of men,’ peace also begins in our minds. The same species who invented war is capable of inventing peace. The responsibility lies with each of us.”

In the same vein, can it be said that demilitarized zones (DMZs) have been a viable invention of the human mind in the transition from warfare to peace? Those who can bring to mind some successful DMZs around the world may smile knowingly and nod in agreement. We probe the question further by going over one such case.

I

DMZ and the ‘In-between Field’ In ancient China, the Shang Dynasty (1600–1046 B.C.) experienced constant territorial disputes between the feudal states Yu and Rui. One day, their leaders decided to call on Zhou, another feudal state, to appeal for mediation by the Viscount of the West. Upon entering Zhou, however, they became convinced of their own fault and returned to their respective states. What they had witnessed in the Zhou countryside was the customary practice of farmers sharing the banks between fields with different owners.

Included in the “Records of the Grand Historian” (Shiji)

by Sima Qian, in his praise of the Viscount of the West, posthumously called King Wen of Zhou, this anecdote provides a glimpse into the agricultural wisdom and customs of ancient Asia. The story describes the concept of the socalled “in-between field” or “fallow field.” The “Great Commentary on the Book of Documents” (Shang shu dazhuan)

by Fu Sheng, another ancient Chinese scholar, documented how territorial disputes would be resolved by designating the borderline area as an in-between field. The “Garden KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 13

of Stories” (Shuo yuan ), compiled and annotated by the Confucian scholar Liu Xiang, defines a fallow field as a “buffer zone that belongs to neither party.” The “Book of Rites” (Liji), a collection of texts on etiquette and ceremonial rites of the Zhou Dynasty, calls this type of land a “vacant field,” which belongs to no one, like the moon in the sky and the trees in the mountains.

Now, there certainly seems to be a clear difference between a DMZ and an in-between field. While the former is produced at the negotiation table in consideration of human life on the simplest, most functional, and most interest-oriented level, the latter was the alchemy of concession, moderation, and tolerance, based on the practical interests of the parties concerned.

Nonetheless, DMZs have proven to be a relatively successful invention. They have been effective in mitigating conflicts, albeit temporarily, in various war-torn parts of the world, and have also served well for scientific research and exploration in remote areas like the South Pole. However, their efficacy seems very limited when the opposing parties are inclined to engage in an arms race to protect their own values and interests. For instance, the DMZ between the two Koreas, defying initial intentions, has become a heavily fortified area where some 1.5 million troops and varied weaponry are deployed. For more than 60 years, a state of confrontation, with the potential to renew hostilities, has reigned over this lengthy stretch of land.

If you believe that big international organizations, government think tanks, or prominent political leaders can bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, I may as well stop right here. Instead of those bureaucratic efforts, I would like to talk about something that might seem trivial — like people who clear trails of overgrown brush, widen roads to schools, and transplant unknown flowers into their gardens. Although they live beyond the civilian control line of the DMZ, they are no different from other Koreans in that they endure and make sacrifices for the sake of a better life. I find in these people a capacity to create peace, for surely the notion of in-between fields would have been conceived by such an attitude toward life.

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On the punchbowl trail The Punchbowl area in Yanggu County, Gangwon Province, was the scene of ferocious battles that is never overlooked in discussions of the Korean War. It was a highly strategic area that had to be secured by all means, because its loss would endanger Chuncheon, which in turn would leave Seoul vulnerable to enemy attack. Out of the nine major battles fought in the Yanggu area, four took place in the Punchbowl area, including the Battle of Mt. Dosol, which eventually gave the ROK Marine Corps the nickname “the invincible marines,” and the Battle of Gachil Peak, a cutthroat struggle to control a strategic vantage point, which changed hands six times in 40 days.

The basin surrounded by mountains rising over 1,000 meters in height came to be known as the Punchbowl thanks to a foreign war correspondent; this nickname caught on with Koreans as well. Formally called Haean Basin, the area was home to a small mountain village nestled in the basin created by rock weathering and erosion.

After the armistice, the devastated village was relegated beyond the civilian control line. The government started to relocate people there in 1956, and the village is now a small township with a population of about 1,700. At a time when the nation’s per capita income was less than a hundred dollars, the settlers risked their lives to cultivate the land strewn with landmines, up to the hillside as high as 600 meters. Recently, when the Korea Forest Service had the ground plowed for afforestation of Mt. Wawu, two large sacks of shell casings were collected here, bringing home once again what happened decades ago. Even today, the tracts of land that the residents have not cultivated are either minefields or restricted zones controlled by the military.

The DMZ Punchbowl Trail, a trekking course, was opened in this northernmost village in the autumn of 2011. The first priority in creating the trail extending beyond the civilian control line was demining. The military would not have allowed civilian passage otherwise.

In addition, every tour must be accompanied by a certified guide for safety.

Kim Eun-suk, 56, is a forest trail guide who has led tours along this trail for five 1 Kim Eun-suk (right), years. Managing the trail and carrying a forest tour guide on out ecological surveys are also part of her the DMZ Punchbowl duties. Kim sees her job as one of the benTrail, explains the geographic features of efits of having grown up in this remote area. the surroundings.

She and her husband had engaged in farm2 As she guides touring for their livelihood and to raise their two ists, Kim Eun-suk emphasizes that the children. But they found it harder every year Punchbowl Trail is a to deal with the laborious work, while crop special forest path prices continued to drop. The opportunity to where you can take a walk contemplating work as a trail guide came at a time when war, peace, and the she was looking for something else to do. mystery of nature.

The trail runs through an area that Kim used to wander about with her mother col-

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KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 15

lecting linden tree bark and wild greens to help their family survive through the lean times in spring. She never imagined that the names of the trees and herbs that her mother had told her long ago would be so useful today. Of course, the fauna and flora is not exactly the same today, due to the disappearance of some native species — the medicinal herb Arnebia euchroma , marsh cudweed, Seemann’s sunbonnet — and the addition of other exotic ones.

The DMZ Punchbowl Trail is a trekking course stretching 73 kilometers, divided into four sections: Forest of Peace Path, Oyu Field Path, Mandae Plain Path, and Meonmet Hill Path. Although the Meonmet Hill Path that leads to Baekdu Daegan (Great White Head Ridge) is also quite impressive, Kim’s favorite course is Oyu Field Path. Unlike the mountainous, mine-strewn areas around Gachil Peak and Mt. Daewu, this path is relatively flat with diverse scenery of red clay roads, valleys, and reservoirs. Above all, this area is where she lived as a child, cooking for the family “squatting beside the stove on top of a wood-burning furnace” because she was too small to reach the stove top. Her parents’ graves lie at the entry to the path, reminding her of her farmer father, who would always dress in a traditional high hat and long outer robe when he went out.

As she guides tourists along the path, she is often tricked into thinking she is combing the woods to collect wild herbs with her mother, especially when looking upward through gaps in the tree tops at the blue sky dotted with white clouds. Once, while guid-

ing a group of elderly marine corps veterans who had fought in the Battle of Punchbowl, she sensed the same feeling in their eyes.

Perhaps, somewhere along the trail, they had seen young soldiers, as defenseless as small children, sitting on the ground and fallen asleep leaning on their rifles.

In the cheorwon plains The Korean Peninsula has long been an ideal wintering ground for migratory birds from Siberia and northeastern China. However, rapid urbanization and increased reclamation of wetlands have turned many of them away. The Cheorwon Plains is one of the few remaining places on the peninsula that still offer a sanctuary for wintering birds. Early flocks of wild geese and cranes start to arrive even before the fall harvest is done, followed by countless others, practically blanketing the October sky. Joined by mallards and Baikal teals a short while later, millions of migratory birds create a magnificent spectacle on the plains.

The birds make the Cheorwon Plains their first stopover because of the warm streamlets of about 15 degrees Celsius flowing over the plateau of lava created by Mt. Ori. The warm streamlets and fertile soil of weathered basalt make these plains the best granary area in Gangwon Province. Just as people visit this place beyond the civilian control line for the clean natural environment, migratory birds also come here looking for grains scattered over the rice paddies after the harvest, grasses, and caterpillars of all kinds, as well

Once, while guiding a group of elderly marine corps veterans who had fought in the Battle of Punchbowl, she sensed the same feeling in their eyes. Perhaps, somewhere along the trail, they had seen young soldiers, as defenseless as small children, sitting on the ground and fallen asleep leaning on their rifles.

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1 Uncovered in 1990 within the DMZ northeast of Yanggu, the 4th Infiltration Tunnel is part of the Security Tour Course in the Punchbowl area. It was dug by North Koreans for intrusion of the South.

2 Woljeong-ri Station in the civilian control zone in Cheorwon is a whistle stop opened in 1914 along the Seoul-Wonsan Line. The remains of a train car bombarded during the Korean War are on display under a sign reading, “The iron horse wants to run again.”

3 A guard post in the civilian control zone overlooks the autumn scenery of the Cheorwon Plains, beyond which lie North Korean fields and mountains.

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as fish under icy surfaces.

The plains were also one of the bloodiest battle grounds during the Korean War. Called the Iron Triangle, this zone linking Cheorwon with Pyonggang and Kimhwa counties was a vital strategic area which had to be secured to maintain control over the central front. Up until the ceasefire agreement, the United Nations forces continued to exchange fire with the Chinese communist army here, which resulted in tens of thousands of casualties.

In December 1992, a guard in the Cheorwon part of the DMZ spotted a crane standing still in the snow-covered fields for an unusually long stretch of time. The bird was found in the same place almost a week later, fallen on the ground beside the carcass of a male crane that apparently had died a while earlier. The story of the crane grieving over her dead mate and the soldier looking after the exhausted bird soon spread among the villagers.

Thanks to the soldier’s devoted care, the widowed crane came back to life, and the villagers released the bird on a northern lake surrounded by white birch trees. A ring was attached around her ankle, so that they could recognize her when she returned. Over time, the Odae Rice from Cheorwon became a nationally famous rice brand, prized for its clean growing environment. Although there have been no accounts about the crane’s return, the locals tend to think of her as a harbinger of their good fortune and thus make an effort to feed the migratory birds that return to the area every year.

Some areas around the civilian control line, including Jangdan

Peninsula, Imjin River, and Togyo Reservoir, are well-known wintering places for eagles. Two or three decades ago, large eagles started to show up at neighborhoods in these areas, often starved and exhausted. Since then, the residents have made it a point to leave food for the starving eagles, providing much-needed sustenance for their winter sojourn. Around 2,000 or so eagles visit these places every winter. By picking clean the carcasses of animals discarded by livestock farmers, the birds help to protect the natural environment, representing yet another model of coexistence between humans and wildlife.

After the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) proposed creation of international peace parks in 1979, various research and investigation efforts have been conducted by diverse international organizations, as well as the Korean government and media, to advance the concept. Based on the outcomes, South and North Korea have signed several agreements that call for peaceful utilization of the DMZ, but there has been little progress in implementing them. This is because the agreements essentially required peaceful bilateral relations.

In his poem “Flower” which is widely beloved for its impressive opening line, “Flowers bloom along all borders,” the poet Ham Min-bok warns: “On the day tears dry up / and fail to pass between moonlight and shadows / the fence of flowers will wither / and all the borders between me and the world will give way.”

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SpEcIAl FEAtuRE 3 DMZ: The Forbidden Land Glimpsed through Barbed Wire Fences

Taepung Observatory in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province offers views of the Imjin River meandering southward through the DMZ from North Korea.

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tHE uncERtAIn SEREnItY OF tHE DMZ EcOSYStEM Seo Jae-chul Expert Advisor, Green Korea United Ahn Hong-beom, Kim cheol Photographers

A buffer zone between the two Koreas, the DMZ is part of a key ecosystem axis on the Korean peninsula. this forbidden strip of land has been cut off from civilization for over 60 years since the end of the Korean War. Despite the continued destruction of forests from military activities, wetlands have developed on the western side and temperate forests flourish on the eastern side.

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ntry into the DMZ is basically allowed for only a limited number of military personnel from both the South and the North. Since the ceasefire in July 1953, only a handful of civilians have been permitted to step foot in the area. In the early 2000s, amid a growing mood of détente, the two Koreas discussed plans to reconnect cross-border roads and rail lines, including the Gyeongui Line, from Seoul to Sinuiju, and the Donghae Line along the east coast. That’s when I had a chance to enter the DMZ, on three occasions, as a member of a joint public-private survey team to conduct an environmental impact assessment of the zone, albeit on a very limited scale.

In 2006, I entered the DMZ again to take part in a forest environment survey under the sponsorship of the Korea Forest Service and the Defense Ministry. We walked close by the barbed wire fences along the southern limit line all the way from the mouth of the Imjin River in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, the western end of the frontline, to Goseong, Gangwon Province, the eastern end. It was a tiring job that took two months. Each morning, we crossed the civilian control line to enter the DMZ and walked our daily permitted distance along the south side of the Military Demarcation Line. There we found a mosaic of temperate forest ecosystems, forming a treasure trove of biodiversity, ranging from ordinary puddles to climax forests.

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1 Golden mandarin fish, a designated natural monument, swim in the upper reaches of the Bukhan River in Hwacheon County, Gangwon Province, in the DMZ. 2 Water deer walk along the barbed wire fence in the central frontline area of the DMZ.

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Western Wetlands It is the wetlands that form the most dynamic scenery in the western part of the DMZ. The bodies of water in this area have turned into wetlands through a process of natural succession. Traces of old paddy levees can be seen here and there, in the midst of all this water in streams large and small, valleys, puddles, and reservoirs, creating a diverse landscape.

The vast central western part of the DMZ used to be a rural area before the Korean War. The old farmlands lie along waterways. Over a long period of time, the abandoned rice paddies have turned into a haven of wetland biodiversity, which sustains a variety of birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and a multitude of insects. Walking along the barbed wire fences, we marveled at the diversity of sights presented by the wetlands, formed on sites where no farming has been undertaken for decades. In winter, the wetlands are home to all kinds of migratory birds, including red-crowned cranes and white-naped cranes.

One internationally protected species that lives in these wetlands is the water deer. These deer are smaller and slenderer than other deer species. They look meek as they leisurely roam around the marshes or in quiet spots, yet they can jump with the agility of a cat.

The brooks and streams in the valleys of the DMZ, most of which originate in the North and flow into the South, are as clean and clear as the waters we remember from pre-industrial days. Thanks to a complete ban on all development and fishing, a variety of freshwater fish are swimming freely in the waters here. In fact, fish are so abundant that one could say the waters are “half water and half fish.” Though otters are an endangered species, they are found throughout the DMZ, feeding on the fish so plentiful in the waterways.

Eastern Forests The eastern end of the frontline is dense with forests. The valleys are deep and the slopes are steep. No forest fire spreads very fast or wide here. It is an environment that provides animals with a stable habitat and safe playground. Soldiers on duty often run into endangered species like mountain goats and musk deer. Since the 1970s, musk deer had all but vanished from sight

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Walking along the barbed wire fences, we marveled at the variety of sights presented by the wetlands, formed on sites where no farming has been undertaken for decades. In winter, the wetlands are home to all kinds of migratory birds, including red-crowned cranes and white-naped cranes. on the Korean Peninsula, except for the DMZ. But their existence in areas outside the DMZ was confirmed in 2014. They are on the Red List of threatened species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Many other mammals, such as sables, flying squirrels, wildcats, and Asiatic black bears, also live in the DMZ. Amazingly, these animals are not afraid of humans. They say it’s because of the unspoken rule among soldiers stationed in the DMZ, who refrain from killing wild animals believing that it will bring bad luck.

The natural forest areas in the DMZ, which extend over magnificent ridges and peaks, are thick with

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1 Migratory birds know no boundaries as they arrive in search of leftover grain in the Cheorwon Plains, where the harvest is over.

2 A dog’s-tooth violet grows through a crack in an abandoned, rusted combat helmet.

such trees as Mongolian oaks, white oaks, Oriental oaks, black birches, wild cherry trees, painted maples, and wild-walnut trees.

About 30 indigenous plant species, including nodding lilies and diamond bluebells, also thrive here.

The nature and ecosystem of the DMZ are piquing the curiosity of many people. But an ecosystem survey has been conducted in a mere 10 percent of the entire area, and it has been a long time since the last survey was completed. Many areas are still inaccessible due to the numerous landmines. I look forward to the day when a foundation is laid for peace between the two Koreas, so that a fullscale survey can be conducted and the shroud of mystery lifted from the entire DMZ.

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A SUMMARY LOOK AT THE DMZ ECOSYSTEM The forest ecosystem of the DMZ and vicinity is divided into the western coastal area, central western inland area, central eastern mountain area, and eastern coastal area, according to the National Institute of Forest Science of the Korea Forest Service.

■ The western coastal area has vast expanses of brackish water wetlands, including the estuaries of the Han River and the Imjin River, where freshwater meets saltwater. Hills around 100 meters high stand here and there, and the fertile plains are suitable for farming. Many endangered birds, such as black-faced spoonbills, white-naped cranes, and Chinese geese, live here.

■ The central western inland area includes Yeoncheon County and the Cheorwon Plains, which are volcanic lands near the Hantan River. The Imjin River and the Hantan River meander through this area, where red-crowned cranes and white-naped cranes, two internationally protected bird species, spend their winter.

■ The central eastern mountain area, lying near the Bukhan River between the Baekdu Daegan and Hanbuk Jeongmaek mountain ranges, is surrounded by mountains over 1,000 meters high and covered with dense forests. Mountain goats and musk deer, natural monuments of Korea, inhabit these mountains.

■ Finally, the eastern coastal area sits east of Baekdu Daegan, or the Great White Head Ridge, which runs through the Korean Peninsula. The area between Hyangno Peak and Mt. Geonbong has been designated a nature reserve.

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SpEcIAl FEAtuRE 4 DMZ: The Forbidden Land Glimpsed through Barbed Wire Fences

On a fine day, the Yeonbaek Plains in North Korea can be seen from the top of Mt. Hwagae on Gyodong Island. Elderly refugees from the North say that Gyodong islanders used to travel by boat to Yeonbaek to buy and sell goods at the market there until the peninsula was divided.

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GYODONG

A lOnElY ISlAnD AcROSS FROM nORtH KOREA neither a military demarcation line nor a demilitarized zone has been delineated for Gyodong Island, which lies beyond the civilian control line. this is because the island is separated from north Korea by the sea. Despite controversy over security concerns, a bridge was built in 2014 to connect Gyodong Island with Ganghwa Island, near Incheon, which means that it can now be reached without taking a ferry from the mainland. lee chang-guy Poet and Literary Critic Ahn Hong-beom, Kim Yong-chul Photographers

he body of water that locals call the Jo River — between the confluence of the Han River and the Imjin River, and the waterway between Ganghwa Island and the West Sea — is officially referred to as “the waters around the Han River Estuary” in the Korean War Armistice Agreement. The agreement permits all civilian boats from the two Koreas to make peaceful use of the waters, unlike the DMZ, effectively defining the waters as “neutral.” But the governments of the two Koreas restrict fishing in this area for security reasons.

Two-thirds of the Gyodong Island coastline, which extends 37.5 kilometers, is fenced off with barbed wire.

Back in 1992, the government allowed a barge to pass through these waters to supply materials needed to build Jayuro, or the Freedom Highway, running from Haengju Bridge to the Imjingak Unification Observatory. It was such a rare move that it was the top news story of the day. Thus, the seas off Gyodong Island “came into sight.” But for the islanders, this sea, lying under the red sun, swept by strong winds, and enshrouded by thick fog, is a constant reminder of everything that transpired in the course of national division and the war.

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My Father’s Sea I am from Incheon and spent my childhood and school years there. I lived in the port city, not far from Gyodong Island, until I married and moved out. But at some point in time, I started to be evasive when anybody asked me where I come from. My father’s hometown is Honam-myeon in Yeonbaek County, KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 25

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Hwanghae Province, now in North Korea. He took refuge in Incheon during the Korean War. I don’t know when I really became conscious of being a member of a displaced family. Stories of festive days when the family would eat big songpyeon (stuffed half-moon shaped rice cakes), and mandu (dumplings) so big that just two of them would fill an entire bowl, may have taken deep root in my mind. One day, my father and I put our heads together to draw a map of his hometown, which I had never seen.

To soothe their longing for home, on a clear day, my father, now in his 90s, and his older brother, who died some 10 years ago, would look vacantly at the pine trees standing on the remote hill behind their hometown across the sea from the northernmost hill of Gyodong Island. Their home village, Honam-myeon, is just two or three kilometers from the island. On those days, my father would get dead drunk and go to bed early.

Before Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, Gyodong had been an important port of call for passenger boats.

There used to be some 10 harbors and ferry docks along the coast.

When I think of the boats, big and small, that visited the island and the noise they made, I somehow feel at ease and content. At low tide, it was actually possible to walk to Yeonbaek on the mainland.

Busy at the market there, Gyodong islanders would often miss 26 KoREANA autumn 2016

the low tide and return home the next day. When drought hit the island, they went to the mainland to sell persimmons, a specialty of Gyodong, and the young islanders sought jobs there. The island boys got jealous when the girls left to marry mainland boys.

Naturally, the Gyodong islanders developed a similar way of life as the mainlanders of Hwanghae Province. Their way of speaking reminds refugees from Hwanghae of their own long lost relatives. Their lifestyle also has characteristics of the northern regions: their rice cakes and dumplings are extra big, as are their houses with many spacious rooms. The tune and melody of the farmers’ music performed in the village on Chuseok (Harvest Moon Festival) or Daeboreum (first full moon day of the lunar New Year) are faster and more dynamic than those of the southern regions. And just like northerners, the islanders enjoy eating coriander and kimchi made with big chunks of turnip.

Fishing in Gyodong Island has been restricted to the waters between the ferry dock of Namsanpo Port on the southern side of the island, Changhu-ri on Ganghwa Island, and Seongmo Island since a “fishing limit line” was drawn in 1955. As a result, three of the eight beautiful sights of Gyodong Island, including the view of fishing boats over the horizon, have vanished, along with the bars at Juksanpo and Binjangpo ports, where seasonal fish markets

thrived. The Gyodong fishing area is so limited that from Namsanpo, it takes a mere five to ten minutes for boats to reach the other end. Each fishing boat is entitled to carry only two nets. About 10 households used to live off this little bit of sea. Now only five fishermen are barely maintaining the tradition, satisfying people’s nostalgia for fish with the “taste of the old days.” Sometime in the past, ahead of the Lunar New Year’s Day or Chuseok, commanders of nearby military units permitted civilians to catch gray mullet and shellfish within the fishery restriction line, under armed soldiers’ protection. But that’s now an old story.

Friendly Waters Cha Gwang-sik, 67, was born in Yeonbaek. His family fled when he was a baby during the Korean War. Nobody would have guessed he’d spend his life catching shrimp for a living. The harvest of shrimp this year is as modest as usual and most of it will go to his old customers, who use it to make salted shrimp (saeujeot). Hyeon Sang-rok, 63, a senior village fishery manager, sells seafood and runs a restaurant. He was born to a refugee from the North the year after the war ended and has lived in Namsanpo for more than 40 years, catching fish.

Fortunately, there has been no military clash between the two Koreas in the waters off Gyodong Island for over 60 years, though once in a while one or two North Koreans swimming over across

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the sea make headlines. There is much to admire about the everyday lives of these islanders who are growing older while living off the sea, adventurous yet submissive, realistic yet at ease.

Old-timers of the Island Han Gi-chool, 67, comes from a family that has lived on the island for generations. He doesn’t hide the fact that he is a selfmade agri-businessman with farmlands measuring over four hectares. Boasting of farmland on an island may seem strange, but agriculture takes precedence over other economic activities here.

Indeed, Gyodong has failed to properly function as an island, for much of the sea remains inaccessible under fishing restrictions. It was in the 1970s that farming became easier and agricultural productivity began to increase after construction of a large reservoir and readjustment of arable land. The area of available farmland increased after a seawall was built and mud flats were converted into fields. Han dedicated his youth to achieving these revolutionary changes to agriculture on the island.

A respected local community leader, Han holds various titles but his favorite is chairman of the Council for the Historical and Cultural Development of Gyodong. For a long time now, Han has overseen local affairs to carry on and publicize Gyodong’s history and culture. The “Gyodong Chronicle” will be published soon in support of the council. Han assumed the role of council head because he

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1 Daeryong Market is a back alley marketplace set up by North Korean refugees from Yeonbaek during the Korean War, modeled after Yeonbaek Market back home.

Time seems to have stopped at this market with its nostalgic murals. The market has become a tourist attraction since the opening of Gyodong Bridge in July 2014.

2 Ji Gwang-sik, 75, whose family came from Yeonbaek during the Korean War, became a barber in his early 20s, and has been running Gyodong Barbershop since the 1970s. He has since been faithful to his own rule to remain open “until sunset,” even if there are no customers.

3 The sports meet celebrating “Day of Gyodong Residents” brings some 2,700 local residents together.

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believed that unwise development would destroy nature, bury history, and ruin the local culture. He talks calmly and logically about the island’s history and culture in a low voice, naming years just like a history teacher. His key points are: first, Gyodong is underprivileged economically; second, Gyodong has a rich history and culture to be proud of nonetheless; and third, it is the duty of the locals to safeguard and carry forward the island’s legacy.

“Gyodong used to be called the ‘throat’ of two royal capitals — Kaesong (also Gaeseong, now in North Korea) of the Goryeo Dynasty, and Hanyang (present-day Seoul) of the succeeding Joseon Dynasty,” Han says. “It was difficult to dock boats at Ganghwa Island due to the rapid currents. Therefore, all maritime cargo, including rice and other cereal grains bound for the capital were inspected here. Foreign envoys also had to pass through this area before they entered either city. In addition, the island was of such great military importance that the naval command of Gyeonggi Province and the naval command headquarters for the three southern provinces (Gyeongsang, Jeolla, and Chungcheong) were set up on this island to defend the capital area, given its location at the estuary of the Yeseong River and the Han River, which led to Kaesong and Hanyang, respectively. Nowadays, Gyodong comes under Ganghwa Island’s jurisdiction.”

Han’s love of his home island, however, is not blind. When the local government suggested building an industrial park on the island as an inter-Korean cooperation project, he argued instead for a project that would enable the two Koreas to share their common history and culture and advance mutual understanding, rather than developing a special economic zone focusing on commercial gain.

He also suggested turning Gyodong Island, whose climate and soil are similar to those of North Korea’s, into a base for agricultural exchange with the North. “Let’s seek ways to coexist, while preserving the culture and identity of Gyodong and also helping residents to protect their livelihoods,” he said at the time.

Daeryong Market and Former partisan Guerrillas Daeryong Market was formed by North Korean refugees who ended up on Gyodong Island during the Korean War, finding the sea a safer and faster escape route than overland. Beginning in December 1950, when the UN Forces retreated in the wake of commu-

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nist Chinese troops’ participation in the war, tens of thousands of refugees boarded boats and headed for Incheon or Chungcheong Province, via Gyodong and Ganghwa islands. Many young men from Yeonbaek remained on Gyodong, hoping to go back home as soon as the war ended. They also hoped to hear about relatives who had been left behind, and rescue them, if at all possible. To scrape together a living, they opened makeshift roadside shops selling fabric, rubber shoes, clothing, soup and rice, liquor, and naengmyeon (cold buckwheat noodles). These shops eventually grew into the market we see today.

Ji Gwang-sik, 75, and his family came to Gyodong to join his father, who had settled on the island earlier. In his early 20s, he

To soothe their longing for home, on a clear day, my father, now in his 90s, and his older brother, who died some 10 years ago, would look vacantly at the pine trees standing on the remote hill behind their hometown across the sea from the northernmost hill of Gyodong Island.

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became a barber, which was a very popular job at that time, and has run a barbershop in the market ever since. In the intervening years, more people arrived and the market grew. A school, police unit, and municipal office were set up nearby, making the market the center of the island. However, this area has been excluded from redevelopment plans because of conflicting interests between the owners of the land and the buildings. As a result, time seems to stand still here. Preserving the ambience of the 1960s and its image as a community of refugees, the market has become a major tourist attraction.

The 1986 edition of the “Yeonbaek County Chronicle,” published by the Council of Former Yeonbaek Residents, includes records of how young men and students, stray soldiers, and former police officers from Yeonbaek engaged in guerrilla activities on the island as members of the voluntarily organized “Tiger Unit,” after it was incorporated into the UN Forces. For two years and six months until the ceasefire, they killed 2,746 enemy troops and rescued more than 80,000 civilians. A monument to their heroic activities stands on the island. But records about their massacre of families of South Koreans who defected to the North and pro-North collaborators during the same period have been deleted.

As in other parts of the country, the scars of war remain buried here. The wounds are healing, though slowly. Tourists from

China, once an enemy country, today account for the largest share of foreign visitors to Korea. People who have overcome their fears amid the changes have testified about the days when they were unsuspecting anti-communist warriors fighting fiercely against the enemy. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which existed from 2005 to 2010, found that 183 civilians were massacred by the UN Partisan Forces Korea for merely being relatives of suspected pro-North collaborators. This Cold War incident has finally been brought to light for the sake of reconciliation.

1 In Eupnae-ri village there This year marks the 41st anniversaare ruins of Gyodong Town Wall, which was built to ry of the “Day of Gyodong Residents,” defend against foreign which was inaugurated in 1975 to build invasions during the Joseon a sense of unity among the islanders.

Dynasty. This area used to be the center of Gyodong A big athletics carnival is the highlight Island, but lost that position of the celebration. There is no war in as a result of an extensive which the citizens emerge as victors. reclamation project undertaken after the Korean War. This is another reason why Koreans, 2 Farming has been an while hoping for the day when a bridge important industry for Gyocan be built between Gyodong and dong residents since they lost most of their offshore Yeonbaek in the North, should take a fishing grounds in the wake moment to reflect on the island’s sigof the Korean War Arminificance. stice Agreement.

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SpEcIAl FEAtuRE 5 DMZ: The Forbidden Land Glimpsed through Barbed Wire Fences

REAL DMZ PROJECT ARt cAStS nEW lIGHt On cOlD WAR lEGAcY the Real DMZ project is a contemporary art project that seeks to interpret and document the multi-layered significance of the DMZ and its adjacent areas. Beginning with a site-specific exhibition held in 2012 along the cheorwon Security tour course in the central frontline area of Gangwon province, the project has been expanded every year to include a variety of experimental exhibitions and academic forums.

Koh Mi-seok Editorial Writer, The Dong-a Ilbo

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he DMZ is a contradictory space.

On either side of the military buffer zone designed to serve as a de facto border dividing the Korean Peninsula, the two Koreas have maintained a frail truce, still aiming their weapons at each other. Left untouched for decades, the area has a clean ecosystem featuring rare species of animals and plants, but it is also the most heavily fortified border in the world, where a military contingency could occur at any time. In the vicinity, however, ordinary people go about their daily lives tilling their fields in the South’s northernmost villages, located within the civilian control zone just below the southern limit line of the DMZ. This contradictory nature of the DMZ, rather than its political and military implications, is the focus of the Real DMZ Project.

Kim Sun-jung, curator and representative of SAMUSO: Space for Contemporary

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Art, who conceived and organized the project, explained its intent: “The parties to the armistice agreement of 1953 were the United States, the United Nations, North Korea, and China; South Korea was excluded. Reflecting on the past when we were so passive in our own affairs, I hoped this project would help us take the initiative in reinterpreting the significance of the DMZ.” I met Kim to discuss the DMZ as perceived by the participating artists.

the Division of Korea Revisited Ko Mi-seok Why the DMZ? What made you choose this place of conflict as the venue for an art project?

“Claims of Victory” (2015) by Magnus Bärtås is a video installation highlighting the different ways the Korean War is commemorated at the respective war museums in Pyongyang and Seoul.

Kim Sun-jung In 2008, I organized an exhibition of the Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima on the theme of this border. The event involved taking photographs of people whose bodies were painted with the numbers 3 and 8 to signify the 38th parallel north, which forms the border between South and North Korea. The photos were taken against the backdrop of Imjingak Pavilion in Paju, Taepung Observatory in Yeoncheon, and other spots in the border areas. While researching relevant social issues in planning the exhibition, I realized, with much remorse, that although I am Korean I knew hardly anything about the DMZ and had taken no interest in it.

Later, I planned a 10-year project with the aim of archiving records and artworks on the DMZ. The participation of both domestic and foreign artists was taken into account from the beginning, and our direc-

©SAMUSO

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tion in research and planning was determined accordingly. The scope of the project has been extended to include a broader range of topics, such as varied notions of the Military Demarcation Line, sociopolitical conditions resulting from the division, and entailing environmental issues. A complementary event to the on-site exhibition is held at Art Sonje Center in Seoul, which includes performances, talks with the artists, workshops, and other activities.

The project’s main venue is Cheorwon in Gangwon Province. This central inland county briefly fell under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Military Administration when the borderline was drawn along the 38th parallel, soon after Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. Since the county straddles the inter-Korean border, with one third of the DMZ stretching across it, its southern part is the territory of the Republic of Korea, and its northern part the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. During the Korean War, Cheorwon was a vital strategic area for securing the central front, and also the site of one of the fiercest battles, known as the Iron Triangle. Located in the heart of

©SAMUSO

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the Korean Peninsula, it had prospered as a transport and logistics hub before it was practically devastated during the war.

Interaction with the locals Ko What has changed over the years since the start of the project?

Kim In the first year, the exhibition was mostly held in places near the border with rather limited accessibility, such as a section along the Cheorwon Security Tour Course or deep inside the Infiltration Tunnel, and ran for a shorter period of time. Unlike most regular exhibitions that are based on existing works, the project has featured mostly new works produced specifically for our exhibition. To make this possible, participating artists need to take some time to learn about the DMZ. It seemed a shame to close the exhibition so quickly when the works had taken so long to create. So, we have modified the event and eventually transformed it from an exhibition held in a restricted area, which required authorized entry, into a local activity open to everyone. An art project that receives financial support from the local government, it should have been more

accessible to the local community. So, in 2015, we moved the venue to the town of Dongsong, which is readily accessible for locals and soldiers on leave.

Ko It seems the change was intended to enlarge the scope of the project from the border itself to the everyday lives of the people living in the border areas.

Kim As a public art project in a public place, we are concerned with continuity.

That’s why we don’t treat it as a one-time event, but seek to get closer to the residents every year. “The Real DMZ Project 2015: Lived Time of Dongsong” took place at various sites around the town, such as the marketplace, Catholic church, bus terminal, and empty buildings. Moving from the restricted area near the civilian control line out to the town with commercial and cultural facilities, we came into closer contact with the residents.

Ko Is the residency program at a village in the civilian control zone an attempt along the same lines?

Kim The Yangji-ri Residency was launched in 2014 in the village of the same name. The program encourages artists and scholars from Korea and abroad to live and work on site for the exhibition. A deserted house in the village was renovated for this purpose, and 10 or so artists have participated in the program so far. A small village created in the 1970s for propaganda targeted at North Koreans living on the other side of the border, Yangji-ri now has about 130 residents in 75 households. At first, the villagers and the artists were on somewhat awkward terms with each other, but they’ve gotten so close that some residents are helping the artists to grow their own food.

An Argentine artist, who likes to hold barbecues with his neighbors, is filming them for his video work.

“I got the impression that South Korea had developed the DMZ as a war tourism product, while North Korea had turned the entire country into a war theme park.” — Ingo Niermann (novelist, participating artist) 32 KoREANA autumn 2016

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3 1 Curator Kim Sun-jung (far right) talks with contributing artists for the Real DMZ Project on the site of an icehouse from the Japanese colonial period, which was destroyed during the Korean War save for part of the walls.

2 Cellist Lee Ok-kyung offers an impromptu performance “Broken Sky” in an abandoned rice mill in Yangji-ri, a village in the civilian control zone, during the Real DMZ Project 2014.

3 “Ice Cream Hill” (2014–2015), a video installation by Aernout Mik, portrays the divide and conflict between South and North Korea using the story of a group of young people on an excursion to Sapseul Peak near the DMZ that is ruined by tension.

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Differing perspectives of Outsiders and Insiders Ko It seems that the project is trying to achieve both regional originality and global universality while dealing with Korea’s special situation.

Kim As in the case of the DMZ that divides the two Koreas, the world at large may share an interest in the issue of borderlines formed by the complicated workings of armed conflicts and international circumstances. Until its unification in 1975, Vietnam was divided into North and South by a DMZ running along the 17th parallel north. Germany was also divided into East and West after World War II before the border was erased with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The DMZ between Syria and Israel and the border between Iraq and Kuwait have been installed in accordance

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©SAMUSO

The photo installation “To Survive vs. Once Arrived” (2012) by Noh Sun-tag includes a set of photographs taken from the rooftop of the Peace Observatory in Cheorwon, which commands a panoramic view of the Pyonggang Plateau in North Korea. The photo of a sign warning against taking photos and that of the rear view of a soldier are on display on the same spot where they were taken. The photographer says, “In the South, the border area has become a popular tourist attraction among Koreans and foreigners alike. What would be the duty of those who visit this peculiar place? It would be to see, to take pictures.”

with United Nations Security Council resolutions. Whether physical or psychological, the theme of borders — or anything dividing land, or people for that matter — is always relevant. With the Cold War far behind us, this is also apparent in today’s raging conflict over cross-border refugees.

Ko Are there any differences in the interpretations of the DMZ between Korean and foreign artists?

Kim Korean artists who received anticommunism education in school tend to make a conscious effort to see familiar situations from a new angle. Artists from other countries understand the DMZ on their own terms, approaching it from much wider perspectives. As they share an interest in such concepts as state, nation, ideology, and border, the artists try to find a way to combine the DMZ with topics of their own

interests. They are also keen on identifying features unique to Korea — such as the military culture. You can’t grasp the whole picture when you see it only from the inside.

Placed between cold war and hot peace, the DMZ needs to be seen from the outside or from international perspectives in order for its complexity to be fully understood.

noteworthy Works Ko Could you introduce some of the works that you found to be especially impressive?

Kim “Ice Cream Hill” by Aernout Mik from the Netherlands is a video work commissioned for the project. In the film, which took a full year to produce, the ice cream is a metaphor for a certain mountain that looked as if it were melting under heavy artillery fire during the war. The work

shows how this place with a beautiful hill has been charged with grave historical meaning.

Magnus Bärtås from Sweden has been applauded for “Claims of Victory,” a video installation that combines footage taken in two museums — the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul and the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang — to illustrate how the conflict between the two Koreas is portrayed in the respective countries. While the museum in Pyongyang showcases actual relics from the Korean War, such as real tanks and jeeps, against a grand backdrop painted by 40 artists, the museum in Seoul features dioramas using special effects that resemble computer games. The artist highlights the contrast by projecting the distinctly different video images onto two adjacent screens.

In addition, the German novelist Ingo Niermann wrote 11 scenarios for a unified Korea, entitled “Solution 264-274: Drill Nation,” based on his visits to both Koreas.

He gave a public recital of the first chapter of the book, which he had started writing during the 2014 project to publish in 2015.

I especially remember what he said in an interview: “I got the impression that South Korea had developed the DMZ as a war tourism product, while North Korea had turned the entire country into a war theme park.”

Ko I guess that most foreign artists had seen the DMZ only in the media before actually visiting the area. When they arrived at the DMZ, what caught their attention?

Kim The artists looked at it in their own ways. Some were attracted to the natural

environment of the DMZ as a valuable ecosystem. Others wanted to convey an envisioned future in their works, imagining, say, a house where South and North Koreans live together, or an installation built through their collaborative work.

Ko Could you describe some of the works by Korean artists as well?

Kim Korean artists encouraged viewers to ponder on our past history and current lives, and the coexistence of tension and everyday life. Lim Min-ouk presented an archive of records on 300 people who were allegedly massacred on the site of the Waterworks Bureau in Cheorwon after the war. Koo Jeong-a created an installation on the Peace Plaza using basalt, a characteristic element of land formed by lava.

Former photo journalist Noh Sun-tag presented documentary-style photographs, including images of tourists visiting the infiltration tunnels in the DMZ, taken from behind. But nothing beats seeing the works for yourself. I hope more people will come to the DMZ to see, feel, and think about how and why this project deals with regional problems on an international level.

Through the DMZ project, Kim Sun-jung has developed a channel for collaboration of visual arts, architecture, music, humanities, and social studies. This year, the regular exhibition will be skipped to prepare for next year’s “Pavilion Project,” which will facilitate permanent preservation of the works. Kim is also determined to keep the project going past its initial 10-year target.

As a research platform to enhance understanding of Korea’s modern history, the Real DMZ Project ultimately aspires to offer a vision for world peace and coexistence by integrating local and global perspectives. If it succeeds in these goals, the project will provide us with an opportunity to reflect on not only the physical borderline of the DMZ but also the invisible, psychological barriers in our own minds.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 35

FOcuS

WHAt ABOut A StAIRWAY GARDEn In tHE cItY?

Kwak Hee-soo Principal Architect, IDMM Architects Kim Dong-hyeon Photographer

urban regeneration programs launched by the government to revitalize dilapidated neighborhoods through public art projects have created vibrant “mural villages” across the country. But there has been growing discontent among local residents. they claim that their once quiet neighborhoods have become playgrounds for the surging number of visitors drawn by their villages’ quaint old charms enlivened through the projects.

aking a miraculous recovery from the ruins of war, Seoul has become a cosmopolitan metropolis with 10 million residents in just 60 years.

The Gangnam district, background to Psy’s global mega-hit “Gangnam Style,” is the economic center of Korea, with numerous high-rise buildings lining the streets. It’s hard to believe that just 40 years ago, this affluent district consisted mainly of farmland and orchards. In contrast, some places have been left behind in the country’s rapid urban development and still retain much of their old appearance.

Over 70 percent of Korean territory is mountainous terrain. The capital city of Seoul is formed around mountains, which explains why there are so many stairways in the city. Amid rapid modernization and urban development, the poor were steadily pushed out of their neighborhoods and forced to settle in substandard houses in the hilly areas of the city. People called these areas daldongne (literally “moon village”), since their location meant they were closer to the moon.

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36 KoREANA autumn 2016

The steep stairs leading up to these hilltop villages speak of the harsh daily lives of the residents. And it is these stairs that have recently become the center of a brewing controversy.

closure of a Stairway Market At the entrance to Usadan-gil in Itaewon, a district with a unique local culture thanks to its large number of foreign residents, there is a stairway that leads to the mosque Seoul Cen1 tral Masjid. This was a vibrant neighborhood bustling with young people drawn to the charming stores with unique products and restaurants serving traditional cuisines from around the world. But when a market first opened on this stairway in 2013, things started to change.

The “stairway market” was organized and run by young entrepreneurs and artists from the vicinity. Selling trinkets, fashion accessories, and snacks, the vendors and artists took part mainly for fun or as an extension of their hobbies, and perhaps to make a small profit. As word spread, the stairs soon became packed with people on the last Saturday of each month, when the market opened. It was fun for both those selling and buying. But the market disappeared in March this year. The influx of outsiders had driven up rents and complaints had poured in from residents about the inconveniences caused by the market.

The initial hope that the market could transform a decrepit stairway into a local landmark and bring positive change to the neighborhood ended as only half a success. The stairs became a well-known attraction, but this led to a souring of relations among neighbors.

1 At the stairway market at Usadangil in Itaewon, Seoul, young artists lure passers-by with the sign, “Capture memories with a polaroid.�

2 The stairway market that opened in 2013 transformed the relatively quiet and pleasant neighborhood into a bustling attraction, leading to skyrocketing rental costs and rising discontent among residents. The market was closed in March this year.

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Defacement of Stairway Murals A similar situation occurred in the mural village in Ihwa-dong, Jongno-gu. Ihwadong is an area in central Seoul that connects the theater district Daehangno and the 600-year-old city wall meandering along the ridge of the mountain behind. It was one of the 11 neighborhoods that were chosen for “Art in the City,” the 2006 public mural project sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Around 70 artists took part in the project, painting murals on the walls of the old houses lining the steep hills, installing artworks, and refurbishing street signs. After this moon village, densely packed with rundown tenements and small sweatshops adjacent to the ancient city wall, received a makeover with attention-grabbing murals on the old houses and stairways, it became a popular filming location for TV shows and dramas. Soon, people flocked to the village, and it quickly became a popular date spot and tourist attraction. Then, some time ago, residents destroyed the fish and sunflower murals on the stairways. It was a form of protest to bring attention to the noise pollution, littering, and invasion of privacy that the residents have had to endure these past few years due to the rapid surge in visitors.

This shocking incident has developed into a legal dispute. visitors vs. Residents To city folks, places like Usadan-gil and Ihwa-dong are rare gems. Open views of the city, labyrinthine alleyways and stairs, and small secret spaces tucked away in the corners offer a refreshing change of scenery to the uniform, checkerboard streets of the modern city. The unpretentious, homely atmosphere of Ihwa-dong and the simple lives of the residents create the illusion that

time has stopped there. With the addition of beautiful artworks and publicity from popular TV shows, the village naturally received attention as a charming neighborhood offering respite from the hustle and bustle of city life.

But what of the residents? The main purpose of the government’s public initiative was to enable the underprivileged, who often cannot afford the luxury of cultural activities, to enjoy art as part of their daily environment, thereby improving their quality of life and promoting cultural self-esteem. However, the satisfaction of the residents didn’t last that long; it soon gave way to rising discontent that crowds of visitors had taken over the staircases and alleyways that had once been their playground, hangout, and resting place, completely disrupting their neighborhood. The clash of interests between residents wanting to protect their daily lives and visitors seeking to enjoy the neighborhood’s charming ambience led to the drastic defacement of the murals on the stairways. The authorities decided to hold the residents legally accountable for destroying artworks that had been produced with public funds.

So what can be done to address this situation?

The crux of the issue is coming up with a program that can satisfy both the visitors and the local community. Discussions that focus on legal rights are meaningless, since the residents and the visitors are all citizens with equal rights to use public spaces, such as stairways and sidewalks.

Murals first began to appear in Korean cities in the wake of the democratization movement in the 1980s. With the spread of grassroots activism, they were used as a means to express political discontent. These murals sparked conflict between the artists and local people, but this was short-lived since beautifying the city had not been the primary pur-

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People walk up and down stairs. Stairs are also where people can sit down to take a rest or stand on to take in the view of the city. These basic functions should be taken into account when devising programs for these areas.

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pose. In Korea, the origin of murals as pure artworks can be traced back to the neighborhood street exhibitions organized by art students of Hongik University in 1992. With the consent and cooperation of the local community, the students enlivened the dreary walls in the neighborhood with their artworks. This event, which has been ongoing for 24 years now, inspired the government to launch an initiative for cultural urban regeneration.

viable Approach to urban Regeneration Although these programs are spearheaded by the government, their self-sustenance and the involvement of residents are of utmost importance for long-term sustainability and end results to contribute to restoring humanity in our mod1 Residents of Ihwa Mural ern city. What’s encouraging is that recent projects are applying Village are divided beorganic approaches to the city and focusing on a citizen-centered tween those who think concept of community. The “comprehensive plan for the urban the murals transformed their gloomy neighborrenewal of Seoul,” announced by the Seoul Metropolitan Governhood into a vibrant place ment in 2015, intends to adopt a customized approach to sprucand those who don’t want ing up neighborhoods, with the local community playing a key their neighborhood to be a tourist spot but just role from planning to implementation, so as to preserve the indiwant to live in peace. vidual identity of each area. The key points of the plan include 2 Ihwa Mural Village is an “customized solutions, spontaneous participation of residents, old neighborhood situated on a hill under the ancient and creating long-term momentum rather than focusing on city wall of Seoul meanimmediate tangible results.” dering along the ridges of The controversy surrounding the stairs in Usadan-gil and Mt. Nak behind.

Ihwa-dong can be approached from the same perspective. People walk up and down stairs. Stairs are also where people can sit down to take a rest or stand on to take in the view of the city. These basic functions should be taken into account when devising programs for these areas. Also, clear boundaries need to be marked so as to minimize disputes; the boundaries should be conducive to an enduring sense of harmony and coexistence. Engaging the local residents in the project is a prerequisite.

How about creating gardens on the stairways? Skyline gardens, container gardens, rooftop gardens — these are just some of the many types of gardens that can be found in cities around the world, which show how the beauty of nature can serve as a medium to connect people with urban spaces. Just the thought of a stairway garden being tended to by the locals brings a smile to my face.

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IntERvIEW

Cartoonist Kim botong Loved by botong PeoPLe Kim Botong captured attention at home and abroad with his very first work, “Amanza,” a cartoon featuring simple drawings in light pastel colors. the final words of the main character, a terminal cancer patient, are: “live brilliantly!” this brief statement is probably what the young cartoonist is trying to convey to the world.

40 KoREANA autumn 2016

park Seok-hwan Professor, Korea University of Media Arts Ahn Hong-beom Photographer

n a television drama, the female lead shouts, “I’m a cancer patient.” Soon thereafter, on the viewers’ bulletin board, someone asked what “amanza” means. This quickly spread and made many people laugh; the pronunciation of “cancer patient,” amhwanja, was misheard as amanza, a nonsense word with an exotic tone. However, there were some who were not able to laugh: cancer patients and their family members. And Kim Botong was one of them.

Kim Botong is still a rising cartoonist. He first published his work online in 2013, three months before his 34th birthday. His debut work “Amanza” tells the story of a young man in his twenties who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Despite being a story about a patient waiting for his life to end, it attracted readers with drawings in pleasant, jaunty lines and light pastel colors. For this work, Kim received the 2014 Korean Cartoons Today Award, and came under the international spotlight when it was introduced in Japan and America.

Kim’s next work dealt with the military. In 2014, a newspaper started to carry Kim’s cartoon titled “D.P. Dog Days” (or “Deserter Pursuit Dog Days”), an exposé on human rights violations in the military through a character whose job is to track down deserters. As the cartoon deals head-on with social problems, public success was hardly expected. But when it was published on the webtoon site Lezhin Comics, it played a role in alerting Korean society, which had remained largely indifferent to human rights abuses in the military. While the cartoon was running, Kim also started his “Arbitrary Agony Uncle” column on the same site, a cartoon series offering advice in a question-and-answer format. He received viewers’ questions on Twitter and gave his opinion through cartoons. Through this Kim switched roles from a cartoonist telling his stories to a cartoonist listening to the stories of the public.

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For public appearances in Korea, cartoonist Kim Botong wears a mask featuring his puppy character.

From Office Worker to cartoonist Kim Botong spent his teens and twenties far removed from cartoons. As a teenager he focused on studying, and in his twenties joined a major company, just as his father had wished. So in his thirties he was a member of a large business organization, a position he had achieved through hard work. However, he took no great pride in it. His business suit made him feel stifled, and the stress from his boss overrode whatever he achieved with his colleagues. Then, his father was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

“My father had a great passion for education,” Kim says. “He supported me as much as he could and wanted to see me land a fine job. I knew during middle school that I had some talent in art, and I liked cartoons a lot. But it never occurred to me that I could choose to be a cartoonist.”

Even when his father could die at any moment, Kim had to attend the after-work dinners with his colleagues and even sing at the noraebang (karaoke). He hated the situation, and himself, for behaving as expected even though nobody was actually forcing him to do so. But he couldn’t tell his sick father that he didn’t want to live that way. Only after his father passed away did he quit his job, immediately at that, and try to find a new one.

He went on, “Actually, as soon as I handed in my resignation I regretted it. I was sure I could never stay in the job, but then I became so anxious about what to do for a living the next day. I could hardly breathe. I looked into all kinds of jobs and told my family that I was going to attend law school. Even when I got lucky and started drawing cartoons, I just thought I could save up for law school.”

One day, while he was looking for a new job, he picked up a mechanical pencil and notebook that happened to be around and started to draw. And for the next few months, all he did was draw. Around that time, he started Twitter and began to meet new people who were quite different from those he had known before. A composer offered to compose music for his writing, so he wrote some lyrics. And when he began to draw the faces of his Twitter followers, he met a well-known cartoonist, and this eventually led him to create his own cartoons.

Choi Gyu-seok, the author of hit webtoon “Gimlet,” advised Kim to make cartoons. Kim got to work, thinking he would make something that could be read on a smartphone, as if he were writing a letter to his late father. His story, written from the perspective of a young cancer patient, was much more successful than expected. Kim thus made a rather smooth transition to his new career, but he still regards himself as straddling the margins of society.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 41

Wearing a Mask for Anonymity “Botong” is Kim’s penname. In Korean, it means “not special" or “ordinary.” Kim explains that he chose this name because he wanted to distinguish between his life before and after quitting his office job. And he wears a mask when he has to stand before the public, because he cannot change his face.

“Last year, I was invited to the Blue Room of Twitter Korea, where I had to sit in a studio interacting with Twitter users through video and chatting,” he says. “At first, I refused the invitation. I was afraid that people who had known me before would judge me by the criteria of the earlier days. I assumed 2 that such communication would not help readers appreciate my work. The organizers then made me a mask resembling my puppy cartoon character. Since then, I always wear this mask during interviews. But I don’t wear one in Japan where I feel more at ease as no one knows me personally.”

However, Kim Botong is not an eccentric artist type who is alienated from the world.

With a neat hairstyle and a body toned through exercise, he is thoughtful and respectful of others — traits that he might have learned at work — as well as humble.

“There are more people who don’t yet know my work than who know it. So I make efforts to promote it,” Kim notes. “I’m quite active on social media. I also exercise a lot and control my diet. For long term serial work, mental stability is important. That’s why I don’t go out and meet people a lot.”

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42 KoREANA autumn 2016

Finding Hope the Kim Botong Way The Japanese edition of “Amanza” was published online last year, bringing Kim even more acclaim in Japan than in Korea. On the back of this popularity, the Japanese edition was published in book form, and he was invited to participate in an artist-in-residence program in Okayama Prefecture. Kim is thus planning his next work while going back and forth between Korea and Japan. An English edition of “Amanza” is available online in the United States, where hospital workers in cancer treatment wards are known to read it as reference material.

“When my work was being serialized in Japan, I used the Japanese name ‘Hutsu,’ which corresponds to ‘Botong.’ Because I didn’t reveal my nationality, some viewers apparently argued about it. I was surprised when someone claimed that I must be Korean because he noticed a Korean stew on the dining table when the main character was telling his family about his cancer diagnosis. Many Japanese empathized with my story because the cancer death rate is quite high in Japan,” Kim says. “It was suggested that ‘D.P. Dog Days’ be published in Japanese as well, but I’m not sure how the Japanese would respond to a story that deals in detail with the reality of the Korean military.”

In Korea, a divided country, every able-bodied young man is obliged to serve in the military during his twenties. Kim Botong served in the Military Police as a member of a team arresting deserters, those who leave on furlough but don’t return. Unlike his first

“I tried to tell the painful story of ‘Amanza’ as a source of healing, but in ‘D.P. Dog Days,’ it wasn’t possible to depict problems in the military system in any way that would help cope with reality.”

work that dealt with a cancer patient, this story is based on his own real-life experiences.

“I wanted to talk about the people who feel they have no choice but to desert, not about catching the deserters. In doing so, I wanted to talk about human rights abuses in the military, and some elements might make viewers feel uneasy,” he explains. “I tried to tell the painful story of ‘Amanza’ as a source of healing, but in ‘D.P. Dog Days,’ it wasn’t possible to depict problems in the military system in any way that would help cope with reality. Many people accept that certain problems are unavoidable in the military, but such silent acquiescence leads to despair, and desertion.”

Kim delves into human rights issues in the military not only through his cartoon work but also in other activities, such as lectures. When asked why he is just raising issues without offering any alternatives, he replies, “If I do what I can do, and others do what they can do, then surely things will begin to change.”

In his next work, Kim intends to deal with the school system as he believes it is driving young students to despair, some even killing themselves. “I want to depict certain monsters that are growing up in our schools. The monsters can be students, teachers, parents, or the environment itself,” he says.

In “Amanza,” Kim takes the main character, who is struggling with the spread of cancer and side effects of chemotherapy, to a different world. In this world called “The Forest,” the hero, unaware of who he is and why he is there, witnesses the devastation of the forest. The story goes back and forth between his painful struggle with cancer and his adventures in the forest that he tries to protect. The forest scenes, which enliven the sad hospital drama, represent Kim Botong’s style of fantasy, the element that enhances the virtues of “Amanza.” This is also what makes us look forward to seeing what kind of hero Kim Botong will create to fight against the monsters that are menacing our schools.

1 The forest scenes from “Amanza,” Kim Botong’s debut work, enliven the sad drama of a young cancer patient.

2 “D.P. Dog Days,” based on Kim’s real experience of serving on a military police team that pursues and arrests deserters, has been published in four volumes after newspaper and online serialization.

3 Kim works with his two assistants at a small studio in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province. He is considering getting a Cintiq (graphic tablet) so he can work anytime at home.

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KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 43

ARt REvIEW

LEE JUNG-SEOB A RECORD OF THE POWER OF TRUTH CONQUERING THE STORM 44 KoREANA autumn 2016

©National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

“Family on the Road” (1954).

Oil on paper, 29.5 x 64.5 cm.

A family sets out on a journey at dawn. The sun has not fully risen, so it’s still dark. The painting conveys the artist’s hope of reuniting with his family one day.

lee Jung-seob (aka Yi chung-sop) is undoubtedly the most widely beloved Korean artist of the 20th century. Most of his works have been scattered among private collections since the “lee Jung-seob boom” of the 1970s, making it difficult for researchers and the general public to view his complete body of work in a single setting. the “100th Anniversary of the Birth of Korean Modern Masters: lee Jung-seob 1916–1956,” organized by the national Museum of Modern and contemporary Art, is the first large-scale retrospective of lee’s work. chung Jae-suk Editorial Writer and Senior Culture Reporter, The JoongAng Ilbo

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 45

ike the hero of a popular novel or movie, Lee Jung-seob is much beloved by the Korean public. The dramatic story of his short life — marked by artistic genius, tragic longing for loved ones, drifting from place to place, and an untimely death — has become legend.

From his birth in 1916 until his lonely death in 1956 at the age of 40, Lee led a humble life, which was joyful at times. It was only after his death that he rose to fame as a master of Korean contemporary art.

Choi Yeol, an art historian and author of the book “Lee Jung-seob, a Critical Biography: Searching for the Truth Behind the Artist’s Myth” (2014), gives his take on why Lee has become an artist so adored by the Korean people: “Having suffered the devastating consequences of the Korean War, what the people needed was a pure soul who could help them endure the bleak times, and the person who best fit the bill

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was Lee Jung-seob. Brought to life as a pure soul with explosive talent, Lee became a symbol of integrity.”

Records of a Wandering Soul Lee was born in Pyongwon County, South Pyongan Province (in present-day North Korea). He spent his life wandering from place to place, living in more than 10 cities, including Pyongyang, Tokyo, Seogwipo, Busan, Tongyeong, and Seoul. Melancholy and a yearning for love permeate his paintings, as well as a sense of emptiness and innocence, perhaps because they are records of a wandering soul. Lee was widely acquainted with writers, and these encounters also imbued him with a poetic spirit that enabled him to overcome the hardships of a nomadic life. Lee used to say, “Art is a record of the power of truth conquering the storm.”

The Lee Jung-seob retrospective runs

from June 3 to October 3 this year at the Deoksugung branch of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. It showcases some 200 works and 100 materials on loan from 60 institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, providing a comprehensive picture of the artist’s life and career. A rich array of his works are on display, including 60 of his most important oil paintings, such as “Bull” and “Family on the Road,” tinfoil paintings, drawings, postcard and letter illustrations, and various personal items. The illustrations on the postcards and letters that he wrote to his family, from whom he lived apart due to the war and his state of abject poverty, convey a heartrending family history and, in a larger sense, the tragic history of separation shared by numerous Koreans.

Lee’s most prolific period was five years during the 1950s — a stunning testimony to the artist’s irrepressible creative pas-

©National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

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sion in the face of destitution and hardship in the war’s aftermath. During the last year of his life, he battled anorexia, mental illness, and hepatitis, and yet he never put down his brush. Even when death was near, his determination never faltered as he held onto the hope of reuniting with his wife and two sons in Japan. A passage from a letter he wrote to his wife in 1954 gives us a glimpse into his heart: “An artist who is not able to give his everything to become one with his precious and beloved wife cannot hope to make good art. There are those who produce artworks without being married, but Agori [his nickname, meaning “long-jawed Lee”] is not that kind of artist. I am seeing myself from the right perspective. Art is a never-ending expression of love. When you are filled with true love, your heart is able to reach a pure, clean state. Please have faith in the great artist Jung-seob, who thinks only of you when painting, and stay happy and healthy, maintaining the greatest self-respect and spirit in all of Tokyo.”

Lee liked to call himself an “honest painter.” Honesty in his feelings is revealed in the depiction of children that appear in many of his works. He projected himself into the images of young boys, perhaps as a way to escape his harsh reality.

2 1 “Cockfighting” (1955). Oil on paper, 28.5 x 40.5 cm.

Two cocks fighting divide the canvas diagonally. Lee first painted the basic shapes in the three primary colors, then painted them over in dark gray, and scratched the surface with a chisel in swift, sweeping strokes before the paint dried.

2 Lee Jung-seob poses at an exhibition held jointly with three other artists in the southern port city of Tongyeong in 1954, shortly after the Korean War ended.

3 “Two Children” (1950s). Etched on tinfoil, 8.5 x 15.5 cm.

Lee Jung-seob created his tinfoil paintings using an innovative method that is reminiscent of the inlaying technique of Goryeo celadon or silver inlay on metalware.

creation of tinfoil paintings Probably the most discussed among Lee’s works are his tinfoil paintings. Lee was an avid smoker, but more important than the cigarettes was the tinfoil lining in the cigarette packs. Lacking the money to purchase art materials, he used the tinfoil as a canvas. Most of his tinfoil paintings were produced during his years in Busan, where he sought refuge after the war broke out. This was a new genre that Lee had invented using an innovative and unprecedented technique. The paintings were produced by scratching images on the surface of a silver foil lining, applying paint, and then wiping away the excess paint, leaving 3

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1 “Three Children with Fish” (1950s). Oil on paper, 27 x 36.4 cm.

2 “Bull” (1953-54). Oil on paper, 32.3 x 49.5 cm.

Among the “Bull” series by Lee Jung-seob, this painting is considered the most striking.

©National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

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Images of naked children are frequently found in his tinfoil paintings, rendered in distinct, bold lines that obviously express Lee’s desperate longing for his family. Lee used to say that these paintings were rough sketches for the murals he wanted to paint later. paint in only the etched recesses. The end product was a drawing composed of etched lines that were rendered on a flat surface but created the illusion of being indented or raised, with a glittery surface heightening its artistic appeal.

Lee is known to have produced some 300 tinfoil paintings; they are small in size, measuring only 9cm x 15cm, and are filled completely with images. The drawings capture the essence of the subject in just a few lines that express key features. Images of naked children are frequently found in his tinfoil paintings, rendered in distinct, bold lines that obviously express his desperate longing for his family. Lee used to say that these paintings were rough sketches for murals he wanted to paint later.

The main theme that runs throughout Lee’s work is his love for his wife and two sons. This is also why his paintings have such broad appeal and are loved by peo48 KoREANA autumn 2016

ple of all ages. Lee met his wife, Masako Yamamoto (Korean name Lee Nam-deok), when he was studying art at Bunka Gakuin in Tokyo. He pursued her ardently, sending her about 90 postcards to express his love until he finally won her heart. Illustrations like “In Mythology” and “Man and Woman” appearing on one side of a postcard seem fantastical and surreal, exuding great energy, and like the tinfoil paintings, constituting an independent genre.

Lee sent his wife and sons to Japan in 1952 in the midst of the Korean War, and thereafter led a solitary life, drifting from place to place, never forgetting to write to them all the while. His 70 or so letters, making up some 150 pages, feature delightful illustrations that overflow with love and yearning for his family. The letters are not only a valuable resource for studying the relationship between Lee’s life and his art, but are also works of art in them-

selves, marked by the harmony of unrestrained handwriting and impromptu drawings. “I will do my best to paint as quickly as I can in order to hold an exhibition and sell my paintings. Then I’ll be able to visit you, bringing lots of money and presents. So please stay healthy until then,” he pleads in one of his letters.

Boundless Experimentation It appears that Lee did not care much about what materials he used. Whenever deeply immersed in his work, he didn’t hesitate to experiment with whatever materials were on hand. According to the latest study completed this past April, among his 540 or so surviving works, around 140 are oil paintings and about 160 are colored drawings.

The retrospective features five of Lee’s trademark bull paintings. The bull was his alter ego and the spirit that exemplified his

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work. He had a predilection for white bulls, considering them a symbol of the “whiteclad” Korean people and their patience and tenacity to overcome hardship. In one work, a thin and bony-looking bull takes a massive stride, stomps on the ground, and continues its march resolutely. One can feel an intense energy emanating from Lee’s bold brushwork, which captures the bull’s powerful image in just a few strokes.

The most representative of Lee’s bull paintings is an oil painting produced between 1953 and 1954, a close-up of the huge head of a bellowing red bull, with the red sunset in the background. The realistic depiction of the big eyes and wide open mouth letting out a ferocious roar, as well as wrinkles on its sunken cheeks, is truly staggering. Choi Yeol explains the significance of the bull in Lee’s paintings: “Lee was a purist who pursued the fantastical and mystical during his youth

when he was well-off, but the experience of the war changed him. He turned his eyes to the world and became more in tune with the spirit of the times. He came to believe humanism that stands up against mass killing, immorality, and poverty should be the foremost human value, and discovered this value in the world and the family. His ‘Bull’ series, painted during the 1950s, was a product of the times that reflected the history of a nation as well as his personal history.”

Enduring legend On September 6, 1956, Lee died at Seoul Red Cross Hospital in Seodaemun-gu, central Seoul. With no family members present, his body was left at the hospital for four days until a friend came. In contrast to his tragic life, his posthumous exhibitions garnered huge attention and attracted an overflow of visitors. The 30th anniversary

special exhibition, held in June 1986 at the Ho-Am Art Gallery, Seoul, had to be extended to accommodate the large crowds. It drew an impressive 100,000 visitors, all told. Another special exhibition held in January 1999 at Gallery Hyundai also attracted a similar number of visitors.

Poet Ku Sang (1919–2004), a lifelong friend of Lee’s who had always been by his side, left these words in his memory: “I don’t know of any artist who, like Jungseob, showed such consistency between his art and person, between his art and the truth. He was kind and compassionate to all those he knew, and lavished deep affection on animals, birds, fish, and even trees and grass, depicting their harmonious communion with fresh, energetic brushstrokes.”

These words help to explain why research and evaluation of the artist Lee Jung-seob and his works are still ongoing.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 49

GuARDIAn OF HERItAGE

pOnDERInG EtERnItY FROM GRAvESIDE WAllS On Jeju Island, where volcanic rocks are ubiquitous, stone walls around graves, or sandam, represent its unique culture for the dead, while those around houses and farming fields are part of its culture for the living. the traditional stone-built grave enclosures used to be scattered all over the island’s hillsides, creating an impressive landscape, but they are now gradually disappearing amid the winds of development. to reverse the trend, Kim Yu-jeong, director of the Institute of Jeju culture, has been hard at work conducting research on ways to preserve the legacy of the island’s ages-old burial custom.

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Heo Young-sun Poet; Director, Jeju 4.3 Research Institute Ahn Hong-beom Photographer

he volcanic eruptions that created this island have left it covered with rocks: Jeju, the island of fire. Fields of rocks are everywhere.

The rocky terrain has made life harder for the islanders, but has also helped to shape the local culture. Stone walls that divide plots of farmland meander through the landscape like rolling waves. The walls look like streams flowing along the smooth slopes of oreum, parasitic cones strewn across the island. On those slopes, within walls that separate the farming fields, there are small mounds enclosed by their own stone fences, called sandam.

Imagine what they would look like from the sky. The stone walls adorned with masses of yellow rapeseed in bloom at the foot of Mt. Halla in the spring. The lonesome mounds covered with snow in the winter, and the delightful contrast between the rough black basalt and the fluffy white snow. This is a magnificent work of land art, the epitome of Jeju’s indigenous aesthetics.

All humans are mortal. The sandam stand as a boundary between life and death. A timeless resting place for the dead and the living, for nature and humans. A modest virtue that acknowledges human finitude. Love and reverence for the dead embodied in every single rock in the walls. Is there anyone or anything in this world that is not life on the rocks?

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consolation of Sandam Kim Yu-jeong describes the sandam as “a spiritual fence.”

He once wrote: “Just look at the stone walls weaving their way, from one grave to another, across the island like twilight descending on the land. How spectacular! The pyramids of Egyptian pharaohs seem to be projecting their quadrangular edifices upward to the sky. The titanic monoliths are counted as the largest graves on earth. But turn your eyes to Jeju Island, and you’ll see that Mt. Halla itself is like a massive pyramid.”

Over the last two decades, Kim has photographed Jeju’s funerary culture, with rocks at its center, analyzed its aesthetics, science, and history, and then published his observations in books, including “Beautiful Korean Stonework: Statues of Young Children,” “Sandam: Graveside Stone Walls of Jeju,” and “Statues of Civil Officials on Royal Graveyards.”

He treasures this lonely work. But why does he go around searching for gravesite walls? What is it that he has found in this undertaking?

It was destiny that led him this way. As a sensitive boy with a talent for painting, he grew up surrounded by the remains and reminders of death. His hometown Moseulpo was a seaside village with ingrained folk customs marked all over with the scars of history. During the Jap-

Art critic Kim Yu-jeong, a native of Jeju Island, studies traditional graveside stone walls called sandam, like the double wall he is sitting on that surrounds a grave in Jocheon-eup, Jeju City.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 51

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1 Standing sentinel at the graves, statues of young children carved from native stone are unique to the volcanic island of Jeju.

2 A pair of horses graze in the field next to a stone wall around a grave in Jocheon-eup, Jeju City. Jeju Island is noted for its basalt rocks, horses, and winds.

anese colonial period, an airplane hangar and airfield of the Imperial Japanese Army were built here. And in liberated Korea, the village was at the center of the Jeju Uprising that began on April 3, 1948 and resulted in one of the nation’s greatest tragedies, tens of thousands dead and widespread destruction due to violent ideological conflict. When he was young, there were many orphans and war-disabled beggars in the village, and he always tried to go and see the places of death. At fifteen, he helped carry the bier when a neighborhood child died.

It was his grandmother who led him to sandam. As her eldest grandson, he was dearly loved by his grandmother. When she passed away, he assumed the task of photographing the seven-day funeral rite with an Olympus camera that he found in his house. It was 1981 when he was nineteen years old. He forgot about this experience for some while thereafter.

In the spring of his thirty-sixth year, when he was hurt by friends and colleagues while working as a full-time cultural activist, he packed a simple lunch and went up a mountain. There, sitting on the shady stone wall around a grave, he offered drinks to the spirits and had a conversation with the deceased. How transient life was, he said to himself. Why had he become so angry? Look at the grave over there, whose occupant must have gone through all the joys and sorrows of life! Sitting on the graveyard wall with a drink in his hand, he gazed at the spiritual fence.

With his strength restored and his heart filled with warmth, he thought he could see the path of life that he should follow. He would not forget this moment when his heart was constricted with emotion. “A gust of foggy wind after rain rustled the wet silver grass, and before I knew it, tears welled up in my eyes,” recalled Kim. Korean society around that time was preoccupied with questions about the “Korean-ness” in art. Kim was also committed to defining national art and promoting its traditions. At the graves of unknown people, he would think the essence of traditional Korean art could be found in the beauty of the stone walls and the stone statues of young children therein. He could see the earnest care that ordinary people had put forth to create proper gravesites for their ancestors, no matter how hard their own lives might have been. He was thrilled. Then he started to spend most of his time in the mountains.

In the process of his research, he met a number of stonemasons who taught him much about life, with their modesty that prevented him from revealing their names in his books due to concerns that their children would be affected by a prejudice against their fathers’ “menial” job. As they became closer, the masons started to contact him, instead of him seeking them out, to inform him of a new project. He would rush to the

He could see the earnest care that ordinary people had put forth to create proper gravesites for their ancestors, no matter how hard their own lives might have been. He was thrilled. Then he started to spend most of his time in the mountains.

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site to measure each wall and make drawings of internal and external structures to collect data needed to analyze and classify the graveside walls. The long years of studying those walls also gave him a degree of skills for erecting them on his own.

Building Graves Adjacent to Farmland On the day when a summer rain drenched the woods on the lower hills of Jeju Island, I followed Kim on one such outing. The hilltop in Gyorae-ri on a slope of Mt. Halla glistened in green. It was all quiet in the rain-soaked woods. What graves would there be in this brush? I wondered. But he strode into it and found a grave completely hidden by a dense growth of weeds, saying that he was guided by a hunch.

Had he become a sort of shaman? He replied that intuition often came to his aid in identifying a potential location of graveside walls while wandering on deserted trails in the mountains.

The rectangular stone enclosure on the sloping land included stairs, down which he carefully stepped into the gravesite. As he pushed away the tall bracken ferns, there appeared a pair of mosscovered stone statues of young children with round eyes. Standing in attendance on either side of the mound, they were friends and servants of the deceased.

The weathered headstone told us that the occupant was someone named Kim who died about 140 years ago, at the age of 49. The

grave faced east. Was the deceased also listening to the sound of the pines susurrating in the breeze, I wondered. And to this sound of rain, too?

Kim explained: “There are diverse types of sandam, but this one is rather typical, equipped with the statues of young children and civil officials, octagonal posts, an altar for the earth god, and all.

The sloping site required steep stairs, which also give the departed a nice front view. The site has mountains in the back and water in front, with an open view and good drainage.”

The grave was enclosed by a double wall. Unlike single walls, which are just a symbolic demarcation line, double walls are solidly built, the space between the inner and outer walls filled with gravel.

The double-wall enclosure also comes in various shapes — rectangular, trapezoidal, and others.

Near this grave, a grand-scale stone structure caught my eye. Its twin mounds were for a man named Bu and his wife. The wall even had a gate for the spirits, called olle. Two small heads of bluish purple hydrangea stuck out from gaps between rocks, as if in mourning for the couple.

Kim claimed, “Any culture related to death is in effect a kind of tragic festival for the living’s expression of their own wishes.”

The sandam originated from the stone barriers that the islanders of the past erected around graves to prevent cattle and horses graz-

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Jeju’s graves, snug within their stone enclosures, create magnificent patterns that appear chiselled on the gently rolling landscape.

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ing in the fields from straying into the gravesites. Over time, they came to serve as a kind of monument to the family or a symbol of their social status. Numerous such graveside walls are scattered across the fields of Jeju Island, ranging from small, humble enclosures to more elaborate structures.

“Digging a grave right next to your farmland is a custom not seen in mainland Korea,” Kim notes. “But it is easier to tend your family’s graves when they are close to the fields where you’re working. So having your ancestors’ graves enclosed with stone walls in a corner of your fields is like insurance for your own future. On Jeju Island, stone walls are an integral element of a gravesite, while elsewhere the mound would be the centerpiece.”

Statues of children Made by nameless Stoneworkers The obscure masons he met during his fieldwork have been his teachers about life. They have carved graveside stone statues with various looks — full faces with round eyes, innocent eyes that look like grapes, large hands like big leaves hugging the body, stony faces pockmarked by the salt-laden winds, lively faces on the verge of springing to life, large noses in bold relief, smiling lips, tiny hands, braided hair, shaved heads — but these innocent boys and girls are rarely made nowadays.

Kim knows how generations of nameless sculptors have put their souls into carving these figures from basalt rocks, and he thinks it is a true blessing that the fields and mountains of Jeju still hold these stone works in their bosom.

“The beauty of the statues can be categorized into energetic vitality, naiveté, native naturalness, humor and smiling, and nonchalant irregularity. Bold omissions in some works also reflect modern aesthetics of form, while the basic material — Jeju’s basalt rock — has limitless potential for abstract expressions. Born of the natural environment of this volcanic island, the graveside statues of young children are works of art for which the material has determined the form,” said Kim. It is truly regrettable, however, that these stone statues have long been damaged and smuggled out by grave robbers. Kim once spotted a familiar graveside statue at an exhibition, and went to great lengths to have it returned to its original site. He could prove his claims because he had documented the relevant details, with photos and measurements, about all the statues that he had surveyed on the island.

©Sou Je-chel

preservation of Sandam Kim considers a gravesite on Donggeomi Oreum as the paragon of Jeju’s sandam, but its stone enclosure, commanding a spectacular view, has been destroyed by grazing horses and cattle. Lately, modified walls made with a mixture of rocks and cement have started to appear, and ever more people now opt for flat graves or cinerariums. In the past, it was taboo to disturb graveside stone objects, which served to prevent damage or looting, but they are now being hauled away and used for garden landscaping.

“The stone walls are indispensable for preserving the uniqueness of Jeju’s native landscape. We should have them officially designated as cultural properties, even just some samples with representative styles from different historical periods,” Kim said.

The gravesite walls on Jeju Island are the embodiment of the laborious work and artful craftsmanship of local masons who carried the volcanic rocks on their backs and stacked them up, one by one, for such ridiculously low pay as a sack of barley, for instance. The walls are imbued with the sentiments of parting and longing between the dead and the living. The distance between this world and the next is close indeed.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 55

tAlES OF tWO KOREAS

Kim Hak-soon Journalist; Visiting Professor, School of Media and Communication, Korea University Ahn Hong-beom Photographer

FROM tHE pERIpHERY, KOREAn-cHInESE AutHOR GEuM HEE BEHOlDS tHOSE On tHE MARGInS

Geum Hee, who writes in Korean, is one of the novelists who energize the ethnic Korean literary scene in china. late last year, her collection of short fiction “My Home nowhere in the World,” which includes stories about the real-life conditions faced by north Korean defectors, was published in Seoul, marking her literary debut in South Korea.

he writing space of a young author, who is credited with expanding “Korean diaspora literature,” is much humbler than one might imagine. Geum Hee (real name Kim Geumhee) lives in a tiny old apartment in the ethnic Korean neighborhood near Changchun Station, in Changchun, Jilin Province, northeast China, with her husband, teenage son, and young daughter.

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Short Stories about Defectors Geum Hee first became known to Korean readers with the publication of her short story “Ok-hwa” in the spring 2016 edition of The Quarterly Changbi [“Creation and Criticism”]. This work was also translated and published in a bilingual English-Korean edition of the Asia Publishers’ “K Fiction” series. Nowadays, it is not difficult to find in Korean literature stories about Korean-Chinese immigrants and North Korean defectors living and working in South Korea. But in telling the story of a North Korean woman before she arrives in the South, “Ok-hwa” is distinct from other narratives. The voice of a Korean-Chinese author has a fresh appeal that grabs readers’ attention, whatever the subject matter. The collection of short fiction which includes “Ok-hwa” earned the Baek Sin-ae Literature Prize earlier this year.

“Ok-hwa” is an experiential story that describes how a woman who escapes from North Korea ends up being sold to a disabled man living in a remote area of China. After all kinds of hardship, the woman leaves behind her newborn baby and manages to make her way to South Korea. The novella “Nomad,” in the same collection, also tells the story of a North Korean woman and a Korean-Chinese man who come to the South for work.

For Geum Hee, however, being known simply as an author who writes stories mainly about North Korean defectors is burdensome as well as disconcerting. This is because among the many works she has written, only the two mentioned above are about defectors, whereas what she ultimately seeks to delve into is not the situation of the socially underprivileged, but rather the plight of those who are psychologically vulnerable. Furthermore, in China, the issue of defectors from North Korea is taboo. Since China is most often the first port of call for those who flee North Korea, you would think that it might be a familiar subject for ethnic Korean authors in China, but even if they write in Korean, it is still a challenge to get a novel which deals with the subject published in China.

“Ok-hwa” was originally written on commission by Doraji (Bell-

Korean–Chinese novelist Geum Hee (left), who lives in Changchun City in China, strolls the campus grounds of Northeast Normal University with her mentor Kim Yeong-ja, who is a professor of Korean language there.

flower), a Korean-language literary magazine published in Yanbian.

“At the magazine that had commissioned the work, after the editors read it they said all of a sudden that they couldn’t publish it because the story dealt with a sensitive subject,” said Geum Hee. “This was despite the fact that the story doesn’t contain any political content or ideology. I thought it was a shame that it would go unread, and I also wondered how it might be received in South Korea, so I stuck my neck out and submitted it to The Quarterly Changbi.”

Breaking into the South Korean literary scene has quite a different meaning for Geum Hee. “First of all, the literary atmosphere is freer there than in China. There is much more diversity in the kinds of subjects you can write about, and when I want to I can write in a very candid way,” she says.

Fourth-Generation Korean Diaspora Migrant Geum Hee’s great-grandfather settled in China, making her a fourth-generation immigrant. After graduating from Yanji Normal School she worked as a schoolteacher for a while and then traveled to South Korea, where she stayed for two years. This was at a time when going to South Korea was all the rage among the ethnic Koreans in China. She worked various jobs, such as teaching Chinese, cleaning motel rooms, and waiting tables, in places such as Cheongyang County in South Chungcheong Province and the cities of Daejeon and Daegu. She says two things that made a deep impression on her from that time were the outpouring of fanatical energy during the 2002 FIFA World Cup jointly hosted by Korea and Japan, and the contest between Roh Moo-hyun and Lee Hoi-chang in the presidential election.

“I felt very keenly then that although we may be descended from the same ancestors and are from the same ethnic group, the context of our lives is very different and our memories are completely different too. So I ended up thinking, however I might write I can only be a Korean-Chinese writer, I can never become a Korean writer.”

Naturally, a sense of ambivalence as someone in the margins, who lives in two languages, is quite evident throughout her work.

Things like identity conflicts incurred as part of an ethnic minority in China, the issue of North Korean defectors within Korean-Chinese society, and the experiences of labor migrants in South Korea, are all depicted vividly in her novels.

In the title work “My Home Nowhere in the World,” the main character is preparing to move into her own apartment for the first time. She plans to decorate the interior of her new home in “Korean style,” a vague concept which has no particular form or shape.

This is an expression of the main character’s desire to establish roots, not a person who is “neither this nor that,” but a true self.

In “Nomad,” the story of Park Cheol-yi, a Korean-Chinese man who works as a laborer in South Korea and witnesses the intense distrust of Korean-Chinese people among Koreans, and of North Korean defectors among the Korean-Chinese, casts an extremeKoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 57

ly distressing shadow. This is summed up in a painful observation: “We may be of the same kind, the same species, but like wild wolves and German Shepherds, there is no way we can get along as one group any longer. Like oil and water, both liquids of a sort, but that cannot mix even if poured into the same container.”

Geum Hee’s first collection of short fiction, “Schrödinger’s Box” was published by Liaoning National Publisher in China in 2013. Its stories chart the turbulence in the process of economic reform and introduction of capitalism to China, and examine the break-up and loss of a sense of community within the Korean-Chinese society, the failings of traditional family systems as seen from the perspective of women, and the breakdown of virtues and ethical principles brought about by materialism. As someone born and brought up in a Korean-Chinese farming village, Geum Hee herself is part of the generation that experienced firsthand the times of political and social upheaval in China, following its economic reforms.

Writing novels in Korean From grammar to word breaks, there are many noticeable differences between “Schrödinger’s Box” and “My Home Nowhere in the World,” which was published in South Korea. This is because Geum Hee was educated and writes her stories in the Korean of her Korean-Chinese hometown — which is closer to the Korean used in North Korea — and also because China has more in common with North Korea in political and economic terms. Although “My Home Nowhere in the World” was written with South Korean readers in mind, Geum Hee did find it difficult to smoothly manipulate the language. Some parts by design have been deliberately written employing expressions used by Korean-Chinese people.

These aspects of her writing actually help it come across as fresh and textured. These expressions, unfamiliar to South Korean readers, meld naturally into the context of the stories so they do not hinder understanding; they instead inject authenticity and realism into her narratives.

Although Geum Hee strives to read as many Korean books as possible in order to familiarize herself with South Korean expressions, she admits that there are limits.

“I can learn the art of narrative from Chi-

nese literature or novels from other countries, but I can learn about the construction of Korean sentences only from Korean writings,” she notes. “Because I’m writing in Korean, even if I can’t make my wording particularly artful, I think that at least I have to make sure that I write in a way that is not off-putting to Korean readers; that actually takes a lot of effort. But even so, from where I am it is difficult to immerse myself in well-written Korean sentences. All I can do is search through the Internet and pick out the most well-known works by the writers I really want to read and go through those.”

Strength of Experience, power of narrative The diaspora experience which Geum Hee’s works deal with is one of the major subjects currently being explored in Korean fiction as a whole. The reason that she is receiving so much attention from South Korean critics and readers is because of what she focuses on within this subject — the elaboration of real-life experience, which makes her work much more vivid, and cuts close to the heart.

As Geum Hee now approaches her late 30s, after getting married at the relatively young age of 22, as a wife, mother, and daughter-in-law, she has experienced life’s twists and turns far more than most of her contemporaries. The humaneness that has grown out of the experiences of that tough life imbues her works with depth and richness. Geum Hee, too, agrees on this point.

“If I hadn’t had my children so early I probably would have been able to make my literary debut a little sooner, but I think my writing wouldn’t have been able to achieve the same depth as it has now.”

Geum Hee has been lauded by literary critics for having a natural talent for creating energetic narratives that pierce through reality, and describing emotions in precise and careful detail. Geum Hee stresses the importance of narrative in fiction: “Narrative is the energy that drives a story. It seems to me that Korean novels place much less emphasis on narrative than do Chinese novels. It seems [in Korea] that lyricism and atmosphere are considered much more important. In China, if a work of fiction has no narrative structure, it is not considered a novel. From a young age I was infatuated with the ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms,’ which has a wonderful narrative style.”

Geum Hee began her writing career in 2007, winning the Yun Dong-ju New Writer’s Prize awarded

by Yanbian Literature for her short story

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“I think being Korean-Chinese and speaking Korean are merely my outer layer. Peel them back, and all that is left would be the soul of one person — a person called Geum Hee. That’s why I want to write novels that deal with universal sentiments that transcend everything else.”

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“Spoon Worm.” In the beginning it wasn’t the question “What kind of stories should I write?” that she had to worry about but rather, “Should I keep writing stories?” This was because of her concerns about how difficult it would be to map out a future for herself as a writer in the small and declining Korean-Chinese literary niche, which belongs neither to Chinese nor Korean literature.

Shrinking literary landscape “Chinese writers can live on the money they make by writing.

That’s impossible for us,” she says. “Right now those who should be in their most productive years of writing have to struggle with the hardships of life, and so they leave the literary sphere, and then there is a big gap in their careers and they are caught in a vicious circle. Quite naturally, the reputation that Korean-Chinese literature once had within China has also declined. Even for the few literary magazines that still remain, it is really hard to keep going.”

Despite such circumstances, Geum Hee writes and keeps writing because she feels acutely that writing fiction is the only thing she can do. “I’ve had lots of different jobs but they weren’t interesting at all. I couldn’t find any satisfaction in them. But then I worry, when I turn 40, or 50, will something called Korean-Chinese literature still be in existence? I think my generation of Korean-Chinese writers will probably be the last to write their novels in Korean.”

Although the Korean-Chinese population in the region numbers around two million, there are only around 100 writers in the literary community. In Chinese society, the Korean-Chinese represent a minority group in terms of literature as well. Among the 55 ethnic minority groups in China, all the others apart from the Korean-

Chinese write fiction in Chinese. Even in the case of the Tibetans, Uighurs, and Mongolians in China, who have their own languages and writing systems, and far larger populations than the Korean-Chinese, there are almost no writers who create fiction in their native languages.

Geum Hee describes how she came up against formidable obstacles in the Chinese literary arena. “Throughout my entire education I attended Korean schools so my writing ability in Chinese is of course inferior to that of Chinese writers. If my stories were to become known in the Chinese literary sphere they would, first of all, have to be translated into Chinese. In realistic terms, that wouldn’t be easy.”

She says that it was the great range and number of books she read as a child that had the greatest influence on her becom2 ing a writer. Her mother was an elementary school teacher throughout her work1 Geum Hee’s first ing life and so their house was always full short fiction collection of books; to friends and neighbors it served “Schrödinger’s Box” as a local library. “Geum-hee’s Place” was (inset, background), was published in the only one among 500 or so homes in China by the Liaoning the largest Korean-Chinese neighborhood National Publisher in in Changchun that had bookcases filled 2013. Her latest short fiction collection “My with traditional tales and story books. DurHome Nowhere in the ing her elementary school years, when all World” was published her friends were playing outside, Geum in Korea in 2015 by Changbi Publishers, Hee would be absorbed in reading stories and won the 34th Shin like “Arabian Nights.” Her favorite novel is Dong-yup Prize for Literature earlier this Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the year.

Sea.” 2 When Geum Hee Guilin Road in Changchun City, which gets an idea she first writes it down by hand features prominently in many of her works, before typing it up on is noted for its many Korean shops and resthe computer later on. taurants and a bit like the Hongdae area in Seoul, it is popular with young people and particularly bustling at night. The conversation with Geum Hee over dinner at a restaurant on this road drew to a close thus: “What I dream about is writing on universal subjects and being able to connect emotionally with readers from many countries.”

“I think being Korean-Chinese and speaking Korean are merely my outer layer. Peel them back, and all that is left would be the soul of one person — a person called Geum Hee. That’s why I want to write novels that deal with universal sentiments that transcend everything else. It is also the path by which I can go in search of my own true identity.”

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 59

In lOvE WItH KOREA

DARCY PAQUET ADvOcAtE FOR KOREAn InDIE FIlM

Kim Hyun-sook CEO, K-MovieLove

©FILM Pas Mal

Film critic Darcy paquet organized the third Wildflower Film Awards this year. The awards liken Korean independent movies to wildflowers in the sense that they blossom even in barren land. In love with Korean cinema for 20 years now, he has found a way to channel his devotion into producing some meaningful outcomes.

60 KoREANA autumn 2016

e met at a subway station exit in the northern part of Seoul on a rainy afternoon in June. Darcy Paquet was holding an umbrella with “Waiting for the Snow” written on it. He had visited Indie Space nearby to see the movie and received the umbrella as a gift. He guided me through narrow alleys to a café with a Korean-style front gate and small garden. He had a soft voice and his Korean pronunciation was less than perfect. We sat quite close together, so that I could understand him better, with our noses almost touching.

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third Wildflower Film Awards First, I asked Darcy about the movie that he had just seen. “I liked Director Jang Hee-chul’s first movie ‘Beautiful Miss Jin.’ I remembered the name, and I went to see the movie on the last day.

I was the only one in the audience. I think less than one thousand people have shown up in total. Thirty-thousand viewers is enough to recoup the production costs and give bonuses to the staff. I’m sorry people only flock to see the blockbusters and big hits.”

The conversation naturally led to the Wildflower Film Awards, of which Darcy is the director. The awards were established in the spring of 2014 to encourage the production of low-budget indie movies. The third awards took place this April. They honor the achievements of filmmakers and low-budget movies made with less than 1 billion won (about $880,000). There is a perfect match in the barren land where the wildflowers grow and where indie movies are made.

“I had been thinking about it for a long time, but I never knew I would be the one doing it,” Paquet says. “I saw numerous movies lauded as beautiful and creative fail to get the right treatment and disappear from the scene, just like that, and always thought they should be reappraised. If film awards were created with emphasis on the award ceremony, then surely they would attract attention, I thought. People urged me to do it, but I almost gave up in the middle because of a lack of funds. The situation is much better now because we get support from film investors, importers, and distributors, including Showbox.”

The Wildflower Film Awards have gained some recognition and credibility. Paquet remembers how overjoyed he was when he received a phone call from a professor who said, “I have students in the Department of Film who are making movies targeting the Wildflower Film Awards.” If things get better, the first thing he wants to do is compensate Lee Harin, the potter who made the 30 trophies for the awards.

From English Teacher to Korean Movie Expert Darcy Paquet has been immersed in Korean film-related work for the last 20 years. I know many young people from Western countries who fell in love with Korea after watching movies by the likes of Kim Ki-duk, Bong Joon-ho, and Park Chan-wook, and ended up coming here to live. They teach film classes at university, introduce Korean works at foreign film festivals, or produce movies themselves. And you could say it all started with Paquet.

When Paquet first came to Seoul in 1997 to teach English at Korea University, he asked his friends to recommend some good Korean movies. But they all shook their heads and said: “There isn’t much.” “Don’t bother.” “They’re not worth seeing.”

Who knew then that a huge wave was building up in the Korean movie scene? Movies like “The Contact,” “Christmas in August,” “Swiri,” “Green Fish,” “The Quiet Family,” “An Affair,” “Girls’ Night Out,” and “No. 3” came out. And he was mesmerized.

“It was perfect timing. The next five years after my arrival in Korea was like the Renaissance of Korean film. The movies were that good. Hong Sang-soo, Kim Ki-duk, and Kim Ji-woon all debuted as directors during that time,” he says.

The young Darcy Paquet who loved Dostoyevsky and Chekhov had majored in Russian language at Carleton College in Minnesota.

He planned to get a Ph.D. in Russian literature at Indiana University.

But he changed his mind and switched to a master’s program in applied linguistics. Having made many Korean friends in graduate school, he ended up taking a job at Korea University after finishing his degree. His stay in Korea was meant to be brief, for he planned to go on to the Czech Republic. However, Korean movies changed his fate.

The Korean Film Council caught wind that there was an American who loved Korean movies and asked him to write press releases and marketing materials. Based on this experience, Paquet set up his own website, koreanfilm.org, and for the first time he came to realize there were so many Korean movie fans out there.

“I posted reviews, and shortly afterwards I was getting 30,000 page views per day. There were 7,000 daily visitors and the discussion room was literally on fire,” he recalls.

The international editor at Screen International, a British film trade magazine, liked the material on Paquet’s website and asked him to be their Korea correspondent. He accepted, and wrote news stories about the Korean film industry, first for Screen International and then for Variety.

Darcy Paquet, a U.S. movie critic and longtime resident of Korea, played a part in Lim Sang-soo’s 2012 movie “The Taste of Money” as an American who arranges for delivery of black money from a chaebol family to a political figure.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 61

Summer Camp since 2009. Every summer he teaches 40 hours English Subtitles and classes over six weeks. This year, he reviewed the work of Yu Hyun-mok, Paquet spends most of his time making movie subtitles, teachwho shot the Korean classic “Aimless Bullet” from 1961. Later he ing at Korea University’s International Summer Camp, and providplans to look back on Korean masterpieces of the 1970s and 1980s, ing assistance to foreign film festivals in programming their selecincluding “Chil-su and Man-su.” tion of Korean films.

Since 2002, he has been serving as a program consultant or panHe has been working on subtitles for many years now. To date, his name appears on the credits of 150 films. He took a break elist for the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, thereby introducing because of the tenosynovitis in his right arm, and took it up again in Korean cinema to a larger audience. In 2012, he organized a Kore2014 with “Ode to My Father.” He was especially busy in March this an movie retrospective at the festival, screening 10 films from the year, having had to deliver Park Chan-wook’s “The Handmaiden” 1970s, including the works of Yu Hyun-mok, Ha Gil-jong, Im Kwonand Na Hong-jin’s “The Wailing” in time for Cannes. taek, and Kim Ki-young.

Now he is working on two of Hong Sang-soo’s films. “Right Now, “Titled ‘The Darkest Decade,’ the retrospective introduced KoreWrong Then” had already been done by someone else, but Hong an movies produced under military dictatorship. There were explahad rejected the subtitles, saying the nuances were “all wrong.” It is nations about the social circumstances at the time and limitations now Paquet’s job to redo them. due to government censorship. The “Every director has his or her movies were shown twice a day for own style. Park Chan-wook wants five days, and there was a big turnDarcy paquet’s top ten Korean Indie Films to see all the lines in there, even out,” Paquet notes. the World of us (2016) Dir. Yoon Ga-eun if they sound awkward, whereas Since 2007 he has also served A Midsummer’s Fantasia (2015) Dir. Jang Kun-jae Hong Sang-soo likes to keep it as a delegate for the San Sebastian A Girl at My Door (2014) Dir. July Jung natural and simple. Director Hong International Film Festival in Spain.

10 Minutes (2014) Dir. Lee Yong-seung speaks good English, so before I Twenty years ago, Darcy Paquet the Russian novel (2013) Dir. Shin Yeon-shick start the actual subtitling I sit with had predicted that movies made in Juvenile Offender (2012) Dir. Kang Yi-kwan him and read some translated senKorea in this far corner of the world the Winter of the Year Was Warm (2012) Dir. David Cho would someday be recognized on tences and have him choose the the Journals of Musan (2011) Dir. Park Jung-bum world screens. But now he says style he likes,” he says.

Daytime Drinking (2008) Dir. Noh Young-seok something entirely the opposite Paquet has been teaching at Sundays in August (2005) Dir. Lee Jin-woo about Korean movies.

Korea University’s International

“Korea has a huge power that no other country has — the local audience.

In no other country do local movies boast such a high market share as in Korea.

I ask you to please go and watch more low-budget indie movies.

You’ll find them unique and artistically refreshing.”

62 KoREANA autumn 2016

Audience power “Frankly speaking, Korean movies don’t excite me the way they used to. No movie made in Korea over the past five years has moved me. A few days ago I saw ‘The Wailing,’ and said that it was the best Korean film of the past five years,” Paquet says. He believes that the partnership with 20th Century Fox gave the director, Na Hong-jin, more room to flex his creative muscles.

Reflecting on the filmmaking system in Korea, he notes that it is very strong and rigid. “I doubt whether anything new can come out,” he remarks. “Even if the idea is good, if the movie doesn’t look like a box office hit then it is not produced at all. Every movie is made in the same way.”

Paquet did not directly mention the big business monopoly of screens, which is the Korean film industry’s biggest issue. Perhaps it was due to his cautious temperament, combined with a concern of losing sponsors for the Wildflower Film Awards. But he seemed firm in his belief that indie movies are the only way out for Korean cinema.

In Korea, artistically acclaimed movies are considered failures if they cannot recoup their original investment. Directors who don’t succeed at the box office have a harder time getting support for their next project. Paquet established the Wildflower Film Awards in the hope of breaking this vicious circle. The winning filmmakers will at least have a shot at their next movie.

“Other countries have their own problems concerning the movie industry. However, Korea has a huge power that no other country has — the local audience. In no other country do local movies boast such a high market share as in Korea. I ask you to please go and

watch more low-budget indie movies. You’ll find them unique and artistically refreshing,” Paquet says.

Wife and children In his second year in Korea, Paquet met Yeon Hyeon-sook, whom he dated for three years before marrying. They have two sons, one in third grade and one in sixth grade, who attend a public elementary school in Mia-dong, in an older area of Seoul.

Paquet and his wife watched a lot of movies when they were going out, and translated “Memories of Murder” together. His wife, her hands now full with two children, has drifted away from film.

She recently got a nail art license and hopes to open a shop.

“There are so many differences even if you grow up in the same neighborhood, so how different would we be? We were mindful of that from the very beginning, so it’s worked out well for us,” Paquet says.

Having watched so many Korean movies has surely helped him to understand Korea, Korean culture, and Korean women much better. He has even appeared in seven movies including “Almost Che” and Darcy Paquet poses with Oh “The Taste of Money.” He likes to get Dong-jin (far right), movie a feel for the shoot and enjoys colcritic and head of the 3rd Wildflower Film Awards laborating with the crew. So he rarely Steering Committee, and refuses when someone asks him to other supporters after the act in a movie. Someday, he hopes to awards presentation held at a downtown café in Seoul on co-write, with a Korean writer, a movie April 7 this year. Paquet is script about Korean politics, especially director of the annual awards about the elections. for Korean indie movies.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 63

On tHE ROAD

“Flying Rubber Shoes of Peace,” an art installation on the DMZ Eco-Museum Trail along the Imjin River in Paju, uses the concertina-wire-topped fence along the civilian control line of the Demilitarized Zone as exhibition space. People’s longing to set foot on North Korean land is expressed as potted seedlings set into hundreds of pairs of rubber shoes hanging on the wire fence facing north. Created jointly by Seong Yeon-gwi and Yang Si-hoon, it was chosen as an outstanding work in a competition for university students held in 2010.

64 KoREANA autumn 2016

Keep The poeTry GoinG TiLL The Day oF UniFicaTion

Gwak Jae-gu Poet Ahn Hong-beom Photographer

the Imjin River originates in the rugged highlands on the eastern flank of the Korean Peninsula. It flows southwestward 244 kilometers down through the southern borderlands of North Korea, dipping into South Korea along the Demilitarized Zone, until it meets the Han River and runs out into the Yellow Sea. The Imjin ferry landing in Paju, Gyeonggi Province was a strategic transit point for inland marine transportation before the division of the country.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 65

he thick scent of wildflowers is carried on the wind. I’m walking along the riverbank with two old friends. We went to high school together in the early 1970s, the three of us, with the same outlook on life. That is, we all wrote poetry. When I think about it, even now, it’s incredible that all three of us decided, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, to write poetry for a living.

T

‘that's not poetry!’

When we were in high school, we would meet twice a week to discuss poetry. One day we would read and discuss the latest published works of established poets. And on another day we read and talked over our own poems. It was strange, but at the time we thought our own works were much more beautiful than the poems we saw in literary journals. Our discussions were also much more heated when we talked about our own poems. When we analyzed each other’s works there was an exclamation that came to our lips almost as a force of habit: “That’s not poetry!” No matter how beau-

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66 KoREANA autumn 2016

tiful or profound the poems one wrote, this was the usual response.

One day, one of my friends read to us his latest work. He had worked on that poem with greater passion than usual. But I told him: That’s not poetry. It’s hopeless. It reeks of the ready-made. Tell me what makes it a poem. My friend began to rummage around in his school bag. He eventually drew out a huge army knife. The night before our debate, having poured his whole soul into his writing, he had purchased the knife at the old market. To his mind he had made the perfect preparations. And he vowed to himself: Whoever hears this poem and tells me it’s not poetry is no longer a friend of mine.

We jumped up and fled from the classroom. Brandishing his knife, my friend followed us. At the sight of a couple of students being chased by another student threatening them with a knife, passersby notified police and we were caught and hauled to the police station.

Why were you chasing your friends with a knife?

They said my poem was not poetry.

The policeman was not able to take this in. So he asked again.

Why were you chasing your friends with a knife?

They said my poem was not poetry. They called it garbage.

The policeman shook his head again, and at that moment our teacher walked in. The policeman showed him the report he had just written.

This boy claims he was chasing his friends with a knife because they said his poem was not poetry. Does that make any sense?

The teacher read the policeman’s report. His answer was short.

Yes, it does.

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1 The military patrol path, off limits to civilians since 1971, was transformed into an eco-trail along the Imjin River and opened to the public for the first time in 45 years. By booking in advance, anyone can take part in the guided tours.

2 During the Joseon Dynasty, the Imjin ferry landing was an important stop on the road from the capital Hanyang to Uiju, far north on the border with China. Today it is a forlorn place beyond the civilian control line where only a few locals’ fishing boats come and go once in a while.

3 From the viewing deck of the observatory at Imjingak Park in Paju, 7 kilometers south of the Military Demarcation Line, one can see the Bridge of Freedom crossing the Imjin River as well as the mountains and fields of North Korea.

Under the teacher’s recognizance, we were released. And we continued to write poetry at school until we graduated.

the painful path by the River I’m now walking along the riverside with those two friends.

More than forty years have passed. Time has turned one friend into a doctor, while I and the other friend both teach poetry at university. As far as a poet’s class goes, nobody can beat the doctor. Two years ago, a great tragedy unfolded in Korean waters. The Sewol ferry sank, and 304 lives were lost. Among the dead, 250 were high school students on a school trip. My doctor friend wrote a poem every night, one each for all the 304 souls who had perished. The poems that he wrote deep into the night, after treating his patients all day, fighting back an overwhelming sadness, will be published this autumn. As for my other friend, he released an epic poem titled “The Imjin River” in 1986. It tells the story of Kim Nak-jung, a young man in his twenties who crossed the Imjin River to North Korea in June 1955 and returned to South Korea in June the following year.

It’s 1954, not long after the Korean War ended with an armistice.

Kim draws up a unification plan titled “action plan of the indepen-

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KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 67

The best thing that could happen for Koreans is unification. Creating a habitat for the cranes by the Imjin River, where the spectre of war still casts its shadow, and praying for the cranes to come back every year is for us a form of totemism.

dent youth community for unification.” The plan calls on youths under the age of 20 to create a community where they acknowledge neither South Korean nor North Korean nationality, and both sides help them to autonomously run the community. When confronted with this romantic but unrealistic scheme for unification, the Syngman Rhee regime brands Kim a lunatic. At the risk of death, Kim crosses the Imjin River and delivers his unification plan to North Korea. But the response in the North is no different. The North Korean regime accuses him of being a spy and eventually sends him back to the South, where, over his lifetime, he is sentenced to death five times and spends 18 years in prison.

The Imjin River flows peacefully, carrying the history and tragedy that marked that young man’s life.

The path that we’re walking along was opened to the public in March this year and is known as the Imjin River Eco Trail. It is a 9.1-kilometer trail leading from Imjingak Park, the northernmost point where South Koreans are allowed to access, to the Yulgok wetlands. Flowers that I’d never seen before are growing by the roadside. My friend who wrote “The Imjin River” knows the names of more plants than anyone I know. He’s the best companion for walking along this path. We walk along the southern side of the barbed wire fence dividing the two Koreas. The breeze is soft and the river, reflecting the color of the sky, is so blue it couldn’t be any bluer.

After walking about two kilometers, we come upon a couple of art installations mounted on the barbed wire fence. One piece is particularly eye-catching: a collection of white rubber shoes arrayed on the fence. There must be hundreds of pairs. Inside each shoe is a wildflower in fresh bloom. They are symbols of people who yearn to set foot on North Korean land, a place where they cannot go. Everyone who walks along the Imjin riverside must feel the same. Our hearts ache and ache.

On June 30, 1983, the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) began a campaign to help people find their flesh and blood, family members from whom they had been separated by the war. In 453 hours and 45 minutes of live broadcasting over 138 days, through November 14 of the same year, 10,189 people were reunited with their lost relatives. In 2015, the broadcast archives were listed on the UNESCO Memory

DMZ

70km

Yeoncheon County Seoul

Yeoncheon County

Imjin River Taepung Observatory Peace Wetland Park Mt. Gunja Imjin ferry landing

Bridge of Freedom, Imjingak Park Paju City

68 KoREANA autumn 2016

Sites to visit in paju and Yeoncheon

“Faction,” a large-scale painting by Han Sung-pil installed on the DMZ Eco-Museum Trail, depicts a scene imagined by a South Korean soldier extending his hand to an impassive North Korean general as the signboard on the North Korean pavilion Panmungak is changed to Tongilgak, or “Unification Pavilion.”

of the World Register. The live broadcasts remain as vivid records of a cruel tragedy created by human action and the pain of love that cannot be matched by any work of literature.

‘I didn’t think I’d live to see the day’ In April 1999, the three of us actually did set foot in North Korea. Tourism to Mt. Kumgang (Geumgang) had been opened for South Koreans in November 1998. When the boat drew into Changjon Harbor at dawn and let down its anchor, I couldn’t think of anything to say. The northern territory spread before us was tinted brown. The mountains, the boats, the buildings — everything was the same color.

Our hearts raced as we entered the customs building for immigration procedures, wondering what words to use to greet our northern countrymen. We tried out a few greetings but nothing seemed quite right. To the man who took our entry papers, I finally said, “I didn’t think I’d live to see the day.” Curtly, he nodded.

Our guide to Kujong Peak on Mt. Kumgang had lovely peach-tinged cheeks. I wanted to say something to her. But I remembered the warnings against engaging the guides in conversation. The rhododendrons are so beautiful, as if they’d been colored with rouge, I mumbled to myself behind the guide’s back. She responded: “They are beautiful, aren’t they?” That was the start of our conversation. What do you do, comrade? I write poetry. Never before in my life had I stated my occupation with such a stirring emotion. I hope you will go on to write a lot of fine poems. That’s what she said. No greeting or farewell

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 69

remarks in my memory can match this brief exchange.

About seven kilometers along the hiking trail we come to the Imjin ferry landing. During the Joseon Dynasty, this was an important point along the route from Hanyang (today’s Seoul) to Uiju in Pyongan Province on the Korea-China border. In the Three Kingdoms period, this was where the borders of the Silla, Goguryeo and Baekje kingdoms intersected, and therefore the site of frequent battles. During the Korean War, the soldiers of the South and the North advanced and retreated, back and forth, each side seizing the area in turn.

At the landing, about ten wooden boats are roped together. They are fishing boats used by the local residents. Surrounded by barbed wire, the ferry landing has a military lookout nearby and access is barred to all outsiders. As an important stop along the old national highway No. 1 to Uiju, I had imagined it as a large place, but it turns out to be a stretch of sand no larger than a volleyball court. Boats no longer cross the river here so it’s a ferry landing no more. When we reach the Yulgok Wetlands Park, our eco-trail comes to an end.

Observatory at the Frontline On the second day, we head for Taepung Observatory in Yeoncheon County. It stands 264 meters high by the Imjin River, 65 kilometers from Seoul and 140 kilometers from Pyongyang. One can enter the observatory after a simple identification check. The compound includes a Protestant church, Catholic cathedral, and Buddhist dharma hall. A monument to the young soldiers of a Korean War tank brigade

70 KoREANA autumn 2016

1 A field abloom with wildflowers at the Peace Wetland Park along the Imjin River in Yeoncheon County.

Yeongang Gallery, visible beyond the park, opened in May this year after the former Security Exhibition Hall was converted into the first art facility located inside the DMZ’s civilian control zone.

2 Amid a mood of reconciliation between the two Koreas, travel to Mt. Kumgang by sea was permitted in 1998 and overland routes opened in 2003. South Korean tourists were able to enjoy a bus tour along the east coast to the mountain across the border until the bilateral tourism project was discontinued in 2008.

comes into view. While we were passionately discussing poetry during high school, other boys the same age were driving tanks into enemy lines. “United like steel as we advance / We are Company 57, the youth tank brigade.” This is part of the youth tank brigade’s army song, engraved on the monument. For these soldiers, who died heroically without a name or number, we raise a silent prayer.

Our footsteps then come to a stop before the monument to the 36,940 American soldiers who fought under the UN flag and died in the war. The dreams of 36,940 souls of making the world a better place and living their lives to the full were buried at the foot of a mountain on the Korean Peninsula. How should the living lead their lives to make it all worthwhile?

We enter the observatory building. From here the North Korean guard posts can be seen. The Military Demarcation Line separating South Korea from North Korea is only 800 meters away and the nearest North Korean guard post only 1,600 meters away, so even within the DMZ this spot is truly at the frontline. The landscape on either side of the Imjin River, which flows through both the South and North, could not be more different. The mountains and fields on the northern side are reddish brown. There are no forests or trees in sight. We don’t realize that the bare land, so clearly visible, is actually corn fields until one of the military guards tells us so. This hurts. How do the people who plant corn at the frontline feel? On a clear day, they say the North Korean farm workers can be seen with the naked eye. But on the day of our visit, there is no sight of them. All we can see through the telescope are faint glimpses of the North Korean village Ojang-dong. In front of us is the plateau named Nori-goji. During the Korean War, 4,500 bullets were fired at every area of one square meter, reducing the height of the plateau by some five meters.

Coming down from the observatory, we head straight for the Pyeonghwa (Peace) Wetland Park at the edge of the Imjin River. Every year, hundreds of red-crowned cranes come to spend the winter in this manmade wetlands park. Called hak in Korean, these white-bodied birds have a patch of red on top of their head. Weighing some 10 kilos and measuring about 140 centimeters in length, with a wingspan of 240 centimeters, they are considered to be auspicious birds. Koreans believe that the appearance of these cranes means that good fortune lies ahead. The best thing that could happen for Koreans is unification. Creating a habitat for the cranes by the Imjin River, where the spectre of war still casts its shadow, and praying for the cranes to come back every year is for us a form of totemism.

In the wetlands, the Yeoncheon county office has installed a “Slow Crane Mailbox.” Any letter written today will be posted one year later. This is a nod to the patient year-long wait for the cranes that will return the next year. Or perhaps it is an expression of earnest hopes that peace will suddenly come within the next year. I pick up a postcard. What should I write, I think. The guide’s last words on Mt. Kumgang suddenly come to mind. So I write, “Keep the poetry going, till the day of unification.”

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©Nam Dong-hwan

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KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 71

An ORDInARY DAY

MY NAME IS ‘GOSAM MOM’ the mother of a high school senior is a “gosam mom,” the word gosam referring to the third and final grade of high school in the Korean education system. A gosam mom cannot tell her child, “It’s your life.” For one year, she has to steel herself and with her child join the three-legged race for success.

But few mothers are able to run the race without agony and inner conflict.

Kang Shin-jae Freelance Writer Ahn Hong-beom Photographer

t’s getting close to seven in the morning. Son Ae-ran grows nervous as she watches her gosam daughter get ready for school. Her daughter might miss the shuttle bus, which arrives in five minutes. Silently seething, she is about to hand the car key to her husband when her daughter rushes out of her room and heads to the door.

“She can’t be late for school. That would go down on her student record,” Son explains.

“The school allows three tardy marks, but parents know a clean record is better. We try to have a perfect student record.”

I

Gosam Child, Gosam Mom When their daughter has left, Son and her husband leave for work. On the way, they check their daughter’s after-school schedule. Today, Son takes her daughter to the hagwon by eight in the evening, and her husband will pick her up at ten. This weekday schedule is easily manageable.

Weekends, though, are another matter. “On Saturdays, she has a class at ten in the morning. I take her to the hagwon and wait for two hours. When she’s finished, we get some lunch before her next class at one. Three hours later, I pick her up and come home. Then I take her to a hagwon in Gangnam, an hour away from home, for a class at seven and pick her up again at ten. Fathers sometimes help, but mostly moms do the driving. Sundays are similar,” Son says.

Obviously there’s a reason for the cars lined up in the neighborhoods packed with private after-school academies that specialize in training for the college entrance exams. Mothers willingly become their child’s feet and move around with their child as if one. To study is the child’s responsibility; the mother’s responsibility is to find the right hagwon for her child and 72 KoREANA autumn 2016

play chauffer, shuttling the child between hagwon and home. Many mothers willingly share the torment of staying awake late into the night for as long as their child is studying.

What’s it like to virtually become part of a 19-year-old student? Son seems to be walking that path rather calmly, the same path taken by the mothers of some 600,000 students every year. We can assume, however, that she’s living an “aberrant time” of her life, which calls for her to suspend some of her values for the sake of her child’s future. I asked Son, a high school teacher, about this difficult period. As she talks about her daily life, touching on the reality of the current educational system, one can sense the inescapable exhaustion of our time.

Son Ae-ran and her daughter examine the list of new courses offered by a private academy.

coping with private Education Fervor “Most kids in this Mok-dong area think that attending a hagwon every night is completely normal. Even children in elementary school study until ten at night without much resistance, though they will often rub their sleepy eyes. Because all the other kids are doing the same thing, no one thinks they are the only one having a hard time,” Son says.

Mok-dong, where Son lives, is a middle-class neighborhood filled with apartment complexes, located in the northwestern part of Seoul. It is known as the “hagwon Mecca,” along with Daechi-dong in Gangnam. Students typically throng to hagwon after school lets out.

Hagwon are places where not only their learning but also their time is entrusted. Students passively follow the schedule set for them without any question. They don’t try to manage their time on their own, and cannot anyway. Mothers may be skeptical about such an arrangement, but apart from those with exceptionally strong principles and inner strength most don’t have the courage to steer their children in a different direction.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 73

In terms of their hagwon, Son compared Mok-dong with Incheon, where she is a teacher.

Incheon is an area that hovers near the bottom in the nationwide trial exams for the College Scholastic Aptitude Test.

“Students are going through the turbulent period of puberty. When they have problems and start to rebel, the mothers in Mok-dong usually take note and try to find a solution. Actually, the hagwon don’t allow the students much time to go astray,” Son says. “But the situation is different in Incheon, especially in areas with many factories, like where my school is located. The students who don’t attend hagwon have a lot of free time after school.

They are not trained to use the time to study on their own, and their parents don’t have time to provide guidance. Unsure of what they want to do, they just hang around with their friends, but the problem is that they lack the kind of friends who could have a positive influence on them.”

The power of the hagwon is absolute, ruling over even the emotions and actions of adolescent students. Aware of this power, mothers are constantly swayed and intimidated.

“Mothers are ceaselessly worried. They compare their child’s grades with those of others and fret that their child might fall behind by studying alone. The academies know this very well, and even fuel such worries,” Son says.

Mothers therefore often switch from one hagwon or tutor to another in search of something better. To obtain the information about hagwon available only to the upper-crust minority, they put effort into forming relationships and even seriously consider special private lessons costing several million won per session. What comes out of this obsessive educational fervor is distorted advance learning through private lessons. For example, in areas where private education is overheated, an elementary school child might already be studying high school math. When this kind of abnormality is regarded as standard, those who fall below this standard are wholly excluded.

Son talked about living with this extreme obsession: “In the midst of all the information inciting parents toward private education, it is important to maintain balance. There’s no limit if you get too ambitious. But even for me, it was unavoidable to have my child learn one year in advance.”

concern for the child’s Self-Esteem Is there no masterful policy that can alleviate this fever?

“My daughter is taking the natural sciences track. Students with higher grades tend to choose natural sciences, and the competition for grades is extremely fierce. If you make just one mistake on a math test, you can instantly drop from the first level to the third level.

Studying is like walking on thin ice,” Son says.

In these circumstances, changes in college entrance policies have hardly any real effect in easing the burden on students, regardless of whether the school’s grade point average is given greater weight than College Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, or whether extracurricular activities and achievements are encouraged alongside school grades. Whatever the case, parents, students, and the private education sector scramble to adjust to the new policies. The students can never experience the joy of learning, and their inner world suffers as a result.

The students on the other end of the spectrum suffer as well. “These days, there are

To study is the child’s responsibility; the mother’s responsibility is to find the right hagwon for her child and play chauffer, shuttling the child between hagwon and home. Many mothers willingly share the torment of staying awake late into the night for as long as their child is studying.

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many supoja [students who have given up on math],” Son explains. “They didn’t learn the basics properly in elementary and middle school and can’t follow the lessons in high school.

Math lessons have no meaning for them. But there is something they are really interested in and can get good scores in. That’s online games. Naturally, they become obsessed. I often see students who play games till late at night then come to school after barely managing to crawl out of bed.”

Even those students who are unable to reach the top in academic competition have their own ambitions and self-esteem to uphold. But our society is not generous enough to understand their loneliness and offer support to them. All things eventually come under the charge of the mothers. Son says, “I try to pay attention and take care that my child can maintain her self-esteem. We talk a lot about how to be humble and still have a proud heart.

With self-esteem, she can endure and survive any hardship. She can believe in herself.”

It seems Son’s efforts are working, for she says her daughter is going through the tunnel of her final school year without much trouble. “My daughter is the type who keeps her troubles to herself, so I try to read her heart better and help her out,” she adds, her eyes revealing deep understanding. Her peace is probably from the alchemy that transforms the harsh and unfair burdens of our times into a mother’s boundless love.

As her daughter goes through her tough final year of high school preparing for the university entrance exams, Son encourages her and tries to make sure she doesn’t lose her self-esteem.

charles la Shure Professor, Department of Korean Language and Literature, Seoul National University Kim Hoo-ran Culture Editor, The Korea Herald

BooKS & more 76 KoREANA autumn 2016

Autobiography Offers a Rare Glimpse of North Korea “the Girl with Seven names: A north Korean Defector’s Story”

By Hyeonseo Lee, 304 pages, £12.99, London: William Collins [2015]

In this moving memoir, the eponymous “girl with seven names” relates the story of how she grew up in North Korea, escaped to China, and eventually came to live in South Korea.

It is not, however, the tale of hardship and woe some might expect. Somewhat surprisingly, the narrative begins in an idyllic tone, painting scenes of halcyon days in the “greatest nation on earth.” Although not of the Pyongyang elite, Lee’s family was of good songbun (a measure of social standing in North Korea based entirely on a family’s perceived devotion to the Kim regime) and fairly well-off, so her childhood is one of mostly happy memories. “We sang a song called ‘We Are Happy’ and meant every word of it,” she writes, recalling her elementary school years. “We felt loved, confident and grateful.”

As time goes by, though, she begins to see hints of the disconnect between reality and what she is taught. When the days of plenty give way to the dark times of famine and want in the 1990s, the regime turns its citizens against each other in a paranoid (and ultimately effective) attempt to maintain control. “Kind people who put others before themselves would be the first to die,” Lee realizes. “It was the ruthless and the selfish who would survive.”

Yet it is not until she leaves North Korea that the scales begin to fall from her eyes. Even then it takes many years for her to accept the truth about her homeland. She understands now how odd this might seem to others. “It is hard for outsiders to grasp how difficult it is for North Koreans to arrive at a point where they accept that the Kim regime is not only very bad, but also very wrong.” It begins to make sense, though, when Lee describes what it is like growing up under that system and knowing nothing else. Part of it, of course, is indoctrination: if you are fed only lies from the time you are young, those lies become the truth. But how can a nation exist entirely on a foundation of lies? This is where the Kims’ brand of mutually assured destruction comes in. Lee explains: “In truth there is no dividing line between cruel leaders and oppressed citizens.

The Kims rule by making everyone complicit in a brutal system, implicating all, from the highest to the lowest, blurring morals so that no one is blameless.”

Lee takes great pains throughout her story to explain how all of this could be so normal to the people of North Korea. Though the tale is told in a dramatic manner, the goal is not to present a sensational story but to show us a deeply flawed country through the eyes of someone who still loves it very much, despite the pain of knowing the true cause of its suffering.

For although the author’s life in the North covers only the first third of the book, it occupies such a huge place in her heart — and plays such a central role in her fragmented identity, symbolized by the seven names she takes through her life — that it remains with her wherever she goes. There is no doubt this is a fascinating and touching story. More than that, though, it is a glimpse into North Korea as a real place and an opportunity to understand that, while it may not make sense to the West, it does indeed have a sense and logic of its own. Perhaps coming to this understanding is the first step in healing a wound that has kept the peninsula divided for nearly seventy years.

Women Writers Describe the World They Inhabit “the Future of Silence: Fiction by Korean Women” Edited and translated by Bruce & Ju-chan Fulton, 193 pages, $16, Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press

This slim anthology presents stories by nine women writers, a sampling of five decades of Korean fiction penned by women.

O Chong-hui, So Young-un, Pak Wan-so and Kim Chi-won, who began to publish their works in the late 1960s and 1970s, write from a distinctly conventional female perspective. In the protagonists of O Chong-hui’s “Wayfarer” and So Young-un’s “Dear Distant Love,” we can glean an image of the typical women of that period: longsuffering, their needs made subservient to the needs of those they love.

Yet these women also harbored deep-seated longings that were quietly repressed, to be played out only in their heads. Kim Chiwon’s “Almaden” is a short story set in New York City where the Korean-born author moved to in the 1970s. The protagonist, a Korean immigrant who works at a liquor store with her taciturn husband, daydreams about life with a young regular customer, a fantasy that is soon dashed.

In “Identical Apartments,” Pak Wan-so succinctly captures the mood of the residents of the cookie-cutter apartments that were just being introduced to Korea at the time and regarded as the height of modern living. For the stay-at-home housewives, life is as monotonous as the apartment buildings they occupy. Bored out of their wits, they become overly curious about the life of the woman next door. Unlike the woman in “Almaden,” the heroine of “Identical

Archive for Multidimensional Studies of the DMZ http://www.realdmz.org/

The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea is the last remaining vestige of the Cold War. A constant reminder for Koreans of the possible recurrence of armed hostilities, it is actually one of the most popular tourist destinations among foreign visitors. The painful irony is that, contrary to its

Apartments” takes action.

If the women writers of the 1960s and 1970s seem to be venting their own inner turmoil as well as the anguish and desires of their sisters, the following generations of women writers appear to be taking a very different approach in coming to terms with Korea’s patriarchal society.

Kong Son-ok’s protagonist in “The Flowering of Our Lives” is a widow with a young child who is not shy about expressing her desires, “rebelling” as she describes it. She willfully subjects her daughter to the same pain she suffered as a young girl when her mother, also a widow, abandoned her to take care of her own needs. By questioning the existence of maternal instinct, Kong Son-ok challenges society’s notion of the sanctity of motherhood.

Bruce and Ju-chan Fulton’s selection of short stories provide insight into contemporary Korean society as seen through the eyes of women writers. Each story also reflects the stylistic preferences of each generation of writers, making reading this book something of a rollercoaster ride through rapidly changing terrain. Readers should note that the authors’ names, like those of many other Koreans, are Romanized in different ways from the McCune-Reischauer system uniformly applied in this volume.

name, the DMZ is one of the most heavily militarized borders in the world.

In 2011, Art Sonje Center’s special curatorial office, Samuso, initiated a project to study this strip of land cutting across the Korean Peninsula from multidisciplinary perspectives. Dubbed the “Real DMZ Project,” it is an international contemporary art project based on research conducted on the DMZ. Since the opening of the first edition, held in July 2012 in the border area near the DMZ, in Cheorwon County, Gangwon Province, the project has taken place annually, both near the DMZ and at the Art Sonje Center in Seoul.

All annual editions from 2012 to 2015 have been carefully archived on the website realdmz.org. Here, visitors are guided through the various art exhibitions, which have vastly expanded in terms of genre over the four years. Also invaluable for anyone interested in the study of the DMZ are the various lectures and forums held in conjunction with the project, which are also documented.

The Real DMZ Project is an earnest artistic and scholarly endeavor to explore the DMZ as a subject of multidimensional research. The well-organized archive attests to the significance of this initiative. (See page 30 for more about the project.)

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 77

EntERtAInMEnt

More PoPular than ever, KiM KWanG-seoK is BacK the public’s love of the modern folk singer Kim Kwang-seok and his music grows even deeper long after his death 20 years ago. this year, exhibitions about his life and concerts featuring the late singer in holographic images are drawing endless streams of fans.

Kim Go-geum-pyung Deputy Culture Editor, Money Today Shim Byung-woo Photographer

n June 13, the hologram concert hall K-Live, located on Eulji-ro in Jung-gu, central Seoul, staged a concert that featured the late Kim Kwangseok. Kim was resurrected as a 3D image on stage thanks to cutting-edge audiovisual technology; he sang old favorites, such as “Letter from a Private” and “Around Thirty,” accompanying himself on the harmonica and guitar just as he did while alive.

An audition was held ahead of the concert to select the person whose facial features, bearing, and movements most closely resembled those of the late singer. A professional stage actor was selected, and he had to train rigorously for two months so he could move like Kim and mimic his facial expressions. When the actor was ready, he put on the outfits that Kim had actually worn during his live performances, and his lip-synching was recorded at a chroma key studio, capturing even the subtlest movements of the actor’s facial muscles. Anything that seemed to be lacking was added in by professional animators who overlaid 68 images of Kim Kwang-seok’s unique expressions. As part of the Ministry of Science and Future Planning’s Digital Heritage Program, the holographic concert was produced by 3D Factory; the project took nine months and cost some 550 million won.

O

78 KoREANA autumn 2016

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A Short, Intense life “I used to feel sorry for him, but now I envy him,” said singer Park Hak-gi, who was a close friend of Kim. “Is there a singer who is loved so much for so long? He left behind a real story about his life deep inside the hearts of people who listened to his songs.”

Kim Kwang-seok first made his name known in the 1980s when he joined the working-class singing group Song Seekers and the band Dongmulwon (Zoo). He became socially conscious singing protest songs that were refined in pop style. He

sang the songs that his contemporaries wanted to hear but at the same time he never wavered from his personal principles. He was an insightful singer in that regard, for which he was widely respected.

He later went on to become a solo performer. From his first album “Kim Kwangseok I” in 1989, to his remake album “Resinging Kim Kwang-seok II” in 1995, he sang more conscientiously than anyone else and reached out to a wider audience, calling himself the “singer worker.”

Kim held his 1,000th concert at Hakchon Theater in Daehangno on August 11, 1995, where he said: “I read a book written by the go player Cho Chikun [Korean name Cho Chi-hun] when I was in middle school, in which Cho said that he does not play to win. He said he just places the stones [on the board] one by one, with as much care as possible, and he became a Kisei [“Go Sage”] and a Meijin [“Master”]. I never aimed for a 1,000th concert. At each concert, I just performed every song with all my heart, and here I am. I owe this to you. What are my plans after this concert?

Nothing planned, really. Just go on living.”

But the following year, on January 6, 1996, he committed suicide at the young age of 32. It remains a mystery to this day why he decided to take his own life.

2

Icon of contemporary Folk Music Kim Kwang-seok’s music is unique in that it sounds like typical folk music at first, but when you listen more closely you realize that it is a combination of several genres. His enunciation and on-beat, forthright singing style is compatible with protest songs or folk songs, but his melodies also include elements of pop and jazz.

When he sings, it isn’t the songs themselves that we appreciate but “a montage of paintings.” He painted onto his songs the tapestry of life, including feelings of happiness, sorrow, friendship, and love. His singing style could have gone the way of musical cliché but because of this his songs struck a chord deep in people’s hearts.

Kim was a short man, with rough features. His appearance was nothing like that of a star, but the voice that came from his heart was enough to bowl over his audiences and leave them mesmerized. Few other pop culture stars have the ability to overwhelm an audience like Kim, and his unique, powerful music comforted and healed so many weary souls. He has been lauded as a pillar of contemporary Korean folk music and icon of lyrical pop music, and his music is still being reinterpreted today. A youthful singer, Kim Kwang-seok was suddenly gone like the wind, 20 years

1 Kim Kwang-seok healed many wounded souls of his generation with his singing, to his own accompaniment on guitar and harmonica. Kim took his own life at the age of 32 in 1996. Twenty years later, he continues to be loved by many Koreans.

2 Kim Kwang-seok Street in Daegu, created to honor him in 2009, has become a tourist spot frequented by 800,000 visitors every year.

ago, but his memories linger on, laying a solid foundation for today’s pop culture.

‘Re-singing Kim Kwang-seok’ The annual “Re-singing Kim Kwangseok” concert has been staged since 2008.

It serves as an opportunity for audiences to be reintroduced to Kim’s songs. The memorial concert, where musicians in tribute to the late singer replay and reinterpret his music, is now celebrating its ninth year.

In 2009, his hometown of Daegu dedicated the Kim Kwang-seok Memorial Art Street, also known as Artists’ Alley. This 300-meter-long street is lined with large murals of iconic images of the homegrown singer-songwriter, painted by local artists, and sculptures of Kim from when he was a young boy to when he attained fame as a singer. The street has become a tourist spot attracting 800,000 visitors every year.

At Theatre Bundo, a holographic Kim concert is presented from Thursday to Sunday

every week. The 20-minute show is free; it only requires an online reservation. The 70-seat theater is rarely empty as people steadily flock in to see the show.

An exhibition, “See Kim Kwang-seok,” was held at Hongik University’s Daehangno Art Center Gallery in Seoul, from April 1 to June 26 this year, displaying Kim’s handwritten music scores, diary, memoirs, and his favorite guitar. It was a large-scale exhibition that included eight themed spaces, where his music came together with the works of artists who paid him tribute.

Another memorial exhibition is under way at the nearby DDP Design Pathway, from July 16 to September 11. It is titled “Kim Kwang-seok in My Heart: wkf tkfwl?” The cryptic sequence of letters was the last message he posted on “Round Sound,” the bulletin board of his online fan site, just before he died. Decoded into Korean, this odd sequence of letters may be read as “are you well?”

Kim Min-ki, a singer-songwriter and impresario, who is heading the Kim Kwang-seok memorial program, sums up the inspiration behind the many efforts to keep the late singer’s work alive through the decades: “The DDP exhibition is all about extending ‘my’ Kim Kwang-seok to the realm of ‘our’ Kim Kwang-seok.”

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 79

ESSEntIAl InGREDIEntS

ENDLESS VARIATIONS ON

RICE September is the month of newly harvested rice, the tastiest rice of the year. A bowl of good, freshly cooked rice is the main dish of the Korean traditional meal.

80 KoREANA autumn 2016

Kim Jin-young Representative, Traveler’s Kitchen Shim Byung-woo Photographer

uring a long overseas trip, anyone would sometimes miss the accustomed food of home. That happens to me, longing for a very simple meal: ripe cabbage kimchi, soybean stew, and a bowl of freshly cooked, fluffy rice. In my travels, I sometimes discover different rice dishes. But they are mostly unexpected encounters with unfamiliar rice.

D

Japonica and Indica Rice can be largely classified into two types: japonica and indica. Korea, Japan, and parts of China consume the former, and most other regions the latter. The difference between these two varieties lies in the starch composition of grains. Rice starch is composed of amylose and amylopectin, and the level of amylopectin determines the level of gluten that makes rice sticky. The indica rice, with its higher amylose content, comes from a taller plant, such that its grains are longer and can be easily broken. When cooked, it is less sticky.

The japonica rice, with its higher content of amylopectin, is from a shorter plant, and its grains are rounder, thicker, and harder. When cooked, it is stickier. Of the most well-known international rice dishes, Italian risotto, Middle Eastern pilau rice, and Southeast Asian stirfried rice are better suited to indica, while Korean bibimbap (rice mixed with vegetables) and Japanese sushi use japonica.

It is not clear exactly how long Koreans have eaten rice as their staple food. Based on wild rice seeds discovered in prehistoric settlement sites, it is estimated that inhabitants of the Korean Peninsula began gathering and eating rice about 15,000 years ago during the Old Stone Age.

the centerpiece of Korean Meal It is not an exaggeration to say that rice is the main dish of the Korean meal; side dishes tend to assume a supporting role, to add flavor to rice. It almost seems as if condiments such as red pepper paste, soybean paste, soy sauce, and other fermented foods like kimchi and pickled vegetables have been developed to make a tastier meal by complementing the rice. It is when the main and supporting dishes are in harmony that a good meal can be had. A bowl of freshly cooked rice, a soup or a stew, and a fish or meat dish, with kimchi, a couple of vegetable dishes and a little salted seafood added, and finally some roasted laver, will make an ample meal. A spread of home-style dishes of this kind, called baekban, can be easily found on the menus of Korean traditional restaurants.

For foreign visitors unsure what to order in Korean restaurants, I would recommend this type of home-style meal. If they want to try certain dishes, such as bulgogi or kimchi stew, that would be fine as well since the basic side dishes of the baekban will also be served for free.

In convenience stores, particularly those near hotels, you can easily find ready-to-eat Korean rice meals. Instant pre-cooked rice packed in single-serving containers looks and tastes just like freshly cooked rice, complete with a pleasant aroma, after being heated for three minutes in a microwave. Recently, a wide variety of packaged toppings and sauces have been added to convenience store offerings, so you can pick up a handy ready-to-eat meal of rice topped with a savory sauce. In guest houses, where visitors can use the kitchen, packaged instant rice has become an essential part of meals for cost-conscious travelers. It

The rice eaten by Koreans as their staple food is the japonica type, whose grains are round and sticky when cooked.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 81

is popular even in home cooking due to its convenience and consistent quality. Exports of instant rice are also increasing notably.

Snacks and Delicacies In the past, mothers would hurriedly soak one or two cups of rice in water when someone in the family caught a cold or was sick. A mother’s rice porridge of every Korean’s childhood is an iconic comfort food, painstakingly prepared for a loved one who has difficulty ingesting regular meals of rice and side dishes. The mother would finely chop seafood or meat, along with vegetables, and stir-fry the ingredients with the soaked rice, adding a few drops of sesame oil. The mixture is stirred slowly, adding a little water at times, until all the ingredients are blended into a flavorful and easy-to-eat porridge. This is a traditional slow food called juk. Juk can be made with rice alone, without any other ingredients, which is known as “white rice porridge.”

The juk originally prepared for the sick in the past has been adopted as a popular health food for people today. Though its calorie count is low, the dish is filling. By using different grains or vegetables as starch base, endless forms of porridge have emerged, transforming this simple dish of old into numerous variations of a healthy one-dish meal, such as pine nut porridge, abalone porridge, kimchi porridge, jujube porridge, and tuna porridge. Juk restaurants and manufacturers of instant juk products are continuing to create ever new varieties of this quintessential comfort food.

The traditional Korean rice snack hangwa, which used to be served mainly on festive days or for ancestral rites, has become popular

1

82 KoREANA autumn 2016

1 White rice mixed with red beans or with brown rice is nowadays increasingly preferred as the healthier choice over polished white rice alone.

2 Gangjeong, a low-calorie sweet snack, is a variety of hangwa, or confectionery made with fermented glutinous rice, syrup or honey, and puffed cereal, traditionally served mainly on festive days or in ancestral rites. It has recently become popular as a finger food.

3 When a baby is 100 days old, the family makes baekseolgi , a traditional white rice cake, to share with neighbors, to wish the child a long and healthy life. The cake is made by soaking rice in water, grinding it finely, and steaming.

2

Rice can be largely classified into two types: japonica and indica. Italian risotto, Middle Eastern pilau rice, and Southeast Asian stir-fried rice are better suited to indica, while Korean bibimbap (rice mixed with vegetables) and Japanese sushi use japonica.

recently as finger food to accompany coffee or tea. Gangjeong is a typical kind of traditional snack. This light, crispy snack is rather complicated to prepare. Fermented sticky rice is ground into flour and kneaded into thin strips, as long and as wide as one’s middle finger, and then dried. When the strips are deep fried, the dough swells up in layers, the result similar to a Western puff pastry. The deep-fried pieces are coated with grain syrup made from rice and rolled in popped rice crumbs to become gangjeong, with its distinctive texture and taste. At least 15 days are needed to make this rice-based snack. By applying Korea’s traditional fermentation methods to Western-style snacks, new fusion snacks are being developed, sweet and soft outside but crispy inside.

Another traditional Korean food made of rice, tteok, or rice cake, comes in an amazing variety of kinds and shapes. Rice cake has long been a symbolic food for conveying special blessings and good wishes, which thus plays an essential role in ceremonial events such as birthdays and weddings, as well as funerals and ancestral rites. Even today, when a baby reaches 100 days of age, a white rice cake, called baekseolgi, is made and shared with neighbors, to express wishes for a healthy and long life of the child. Sirutteok, a rice cake garnished with red beans, is prepared for good luck and is shared with others when a new business or store opens. For Chuseok, Korea’s Thanksgiving Day, songpyeon, the half-moon shaped rice cake, is made using newly harvested rice. Koreans visit the tombs of their ancestors to offer this special food in memorial rituals, an ages-old custom held sacred by all Koreans, whose staple food of rice is a source of spiritual as well 3 as physical sustenance.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 83

lIFEStYlE

THE RESURGENCE OF

SMAll BOOKSHOpS Small bookshops are all the rage, again. the inspiration that drives the

owners of these shops, despite their modest financial means, is that they are not simply selling books but also providing a versatile cultural space.

And in fact, this trend has been embraced by the public. In recent years, bookshops where you can enjoy a beer or a cocktail while browsing books have been popping up all over, gaining popularity with office workers who stop by to unwind and recharge at the end of a hectic day.

Baik chang-hwa Book Curator, Little Bookshop in the Forest

84 KoREANA autumn 2016

rom the quiet garden of a bookshop the sound of a child’s laughter suddenly rings out. Looking outside through the window, I espy a girl with a pink clip in her hair, wearing a pink tutu and smiling like a flower. She is seated on a wooden bench in the shade with her mother, who reads to her tenderly from a picture book. A little while later the girl comes into the bookshop and buys a picture book about the story of a dancer who is wearing exactly the same outfit as her, and then leaves hand in hand with her mother.

Everyone who is spending a weekend afternoon in the bookshop looks affectionately at the mother and daughter as they depart.

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publishing Industry Shrinks, Booksellers close Shop The bookshop that I run well matches its name. Little Bookshop in the Forest is a small bookshop in a refurbished house by a forest, near a secluded countryside village. When I opened this bookshop in the rural Goesan County of North Chungcheong Province, which is sparsely populated with some 35,000 people, and in a small village with fewer than 100 residents, everyone around me was filled with doubt. Why on earth would you open a bookshop in an out-ofthe-way forest when even the local bookshops in big cities are being forced to close down due to lack of business?

But two years since we opened, on average more than 500 people a month have come to this out-of-the-way place from large cities like Seoul and all over the country, and our revenues have steadily risen, meaning that the bookshop as a business can look forward to a stable future. Even though online bookshops have become the norm for most people who buy books, I am constantly bowled over by the number of people who make a day trip to the remote countryside to spend time in a pleasant space and pick out books from our shelves.

According to this year’s “Korea Bookstore Handbook,” published by the Korea Federation of Bookstore Associations, at the end of 2015 there were 1,559 bookshops that deal solely with books in Korea. Compared to 2,103 a decade earlier in 2005, the number has decreased by 544. Compared to the high point of 5,378, reached in 1998, the 2015 numbers indicate a drastic decline of 70 percent over this 20-year period.

In the 2000s, due to the rapid expansion of online booksellers, large brick-and-mortar bookshop chains were forced to downsize and many local small and medium-sized bookstores ended up closing their doors. In fact, of the 226 local administrative areas that make up Korea, as many as six do not have a single bookshop, while 43 others only have one bookshop, and therefore may have no bookshop at all anytime soon.

With the situation being so dire, people began calling for measures to save the faltering publishing and distribution industry, which encouraged the government to establish various support policies. The most notable measure has been the fixed price system for books that was introduced in 2014. The system limits discounts on book prices to 15 percent as a means to boost the competitive-

ness of small publishers and local bookshops, and ultimately benefit the general readership. Now, with the fixed price system in force for the past two years, public opinion is divided over its actual effectiveness. For people like me who run small local bookshops, the initiative is certainly having a positive impact on our livelihoods.

Spaces Defying Stereotypes Although it cannot be seen entirely as an outcome of the fixed price system, the downward trend in the number of bookshops has eased up somewhat since 2013. Indeed, in the bookselling industry the hot topic over the past couple of years has been the recovery of the local bookshops from their dire straits.

At the forefront of this revival is Thanks Books. Five years ago, this bookstore opened in the heart of Hongdae area, a vibrant cultural hotspot in Seoul, bringing a new and vigorous presence of books and reading into the streets that are crowded with clothing stores, restaurants, cafés, and other venues for entertainment and consumption.

“I really wanted there to be even just one local bookshop that office workers could stop by on their way home from work,” Lee Kiseob, owner of Thanks Books, says. Just as Lee had hoped, shortly after 6 p.m. every day, his store suddenly comes to life. With a café where you can enjoy a drink and a gallery where local artists can exhibit their works, it has become one of the “must-visit places” in the Hongdae area. The most unique aspect about the place is the sophisticated way in which the books are displayed. The shelves are filled with books that have been ingeniously designed and put together, which have a refined feel that appeals strongly to young office workers and tech-savvy hipsters.

Another place that has shattered the conventional bookstore stereotype in an even more drastic way is BOOK BY BOOK in the Sangam-dong district, northwestern Seoul. It has found a sweet spot in the hearts of young people as a space of a whole new concept where they can browse over books while having a beer. This bookshop really comes into its own when it hosts lectures, author’s talks, and various literary events. Indeed, almost every evening there are book launchings, musical performances, or other creative events.

“I like this place because as soon as you walk in you feel the vibrant energy of youth. They hold an author’s talk as soon as each new book comes out, and the musicians that come here to perform are so talented and ingineous that I wish I could listen to them all the time. In the hope that cozy local bookshops like this one don’t disappear, but stay open for years to come, I now buy fewer books online and go out of my way to come here when there is a book I want to buy.” These are the words of a local housewife, Kim Suhyun.

Places like Bookbar in Yeonhui-dong where you can read books while sipping cocktails mixed by the owner, and B+ where beer and house wine are served up with their books, are becoming the new KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 85

1 ©Little Bookshop in the Forest

playgrounds for office workers in their twenties and thirties. At the same time, bookstores like Booktique in Nonhyeon-dong, Gangnam, which now has another branch in Seogyo-dong, claims itself to be “an urban hideout for books and people” and stays open until 10 p.m. on Friday evenings to cater to the late crowd. It is a welcome oasis for professionals to kick off their weekends.

communities of Shared Interests The recent resurgence of small bookshops in Korea may be attributed to the following factors.

First of all, the number of bookshops that serve as multipurpose cultural venues is on the increase. In the past, events such as the authors’ talks held in bookshops tended to be merely part of publishers’ marketing campaign for new releases, which were typically one-off events. The new breed of local bookshops, however, functions as community venues for a diverse range of cultural events.

The activities include concerts by independent musicians and craft workshops by young artisans who are passionately pursuing their arts. They also host all-in-one exhibitions and talk sessions on a wide range of arts such as calligraphy, drawing, and photography.

These new concept bookshops are a vital community space where 86 KoREANA autumn 2016

people can enjoy the arts in their everyday lives.

Another trend is the rise of themed bookshops that sell handpicked selections based on such themes as travel, literature, or picture books. A travel theme bookshop, however, does not only sell books. The globetrotters who seek out these establishments are likely to join groups and attend meetings, and sometimes even plan theme holidays together, such as fair trade, and travel as a group.

The specialty travel bookshops carry everything from novels and memoirs of epic travels, essay collections, and photography books, to independent publications related to travel.

Many bookshops that specialize in independent publications have also opened up in recent years. Independent publication is a counterpoint to the sway of mass publication and distribution by the commercial publishing industry. These days, anyone can become an author thanks to the Internet and open access to publication technology. More and more people are crafting books as beautiful objects that are written, printed, and illustrated to their own specifications. Such books are usually produced in limited editions of 100 to 500 copies and reach their readers through the network of bookstores that specialize in independent publications.

Small local bookshops are a response to the growing demand

They have come to want things that may be small and simple but meaningful to them, and places where they can seek refuge from the world’s mindless cacophony and enjoy quiet interaction with kindred spirits.

2 ©Thanksbooks

1 In the garden of Little Bookshop in the Forest in Goesan County, North Chungcheong Province, participants in a one-day café event spend a relaxing afternoon over coffee served by a barista from a mobile coffee truck.

2 With its cozy café and gallery, Thanks Books in the Hongdae area of Seoul has become well known as a trendy bookshop, the perfect place to unwind on the way home from a tough day at the office.

for small-scale, interest-based cultural havens for communities of like-minded people. People who are tired of the prevailing trend toward uniformity in today’s society, based on mass production and consumption, have begun to pursue individuality in their leisure and cultural choices. They have come to want things that may be small and simple but meaningful to them, and places where they can seek refuge from the world’s mindless cacophony, and enjoy quiet interaction with kindred spirits. Places filled with books that cater to their personal interests are growing increasingly popular and drawing regular crowds.

The attraction of small bookshops, above all, are the people who seek them out. They are spaces that restore the heart and connection so often lost to modern-day individuals, who are left adrift and alienated by the anonymity of online media. These spaces are now thriving in the interstices of an industry which has grown to immense scale where only its products are visible. In these small cozy spaces, people are at the forefront and they speak to one another through the medium of books. This is both the reason why small bookshops exist and the secret to their success.

Laura J. Miller, the author of “Reluctant Capitalists,” noted that any type of consumer behavior, including shopping in independent bookshops, is a political choice. This is completely true. Choosing to buy books from a neighborhood bookshop, which is part of and attuned to the local community, rather than a large chain store or online bookshop, is a statement that you are a reading citizen rather than a mindless consumer. Nowadays, when it is possible to buy books with various discounts and the ease of a few clicks from the comfort of your own home, making the decision to go out to buy books, sometimes even spending a considerable amount of money on transportation to get to the small, local bookshop of your choice, cannot simply be dismissed as a peculiar consumerist behavior.

Cultural diversity, Thanks Books owner Lee Ki-seob observes, has had a highly positive influence. “For a long time in our society, cultural tastes, and indeed all sectors, were made uniform and even distorted to fit into a mold,” he says. “In these times of economic recession and slow growth I don’t think it is just the book distribution industry that is diversifying; the same thing is happening throughout society. Some of these new ventures will fall at the hurdles of trial and error, and disappear, but at the same time there will be those that stand the test of time, and I believe they will bring forth a new kind of energy and vitality in our society.”

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 87

JOuRnEYS In KOREAn lItERAtuRE

cRItIquE

AM I STILL THE SAME I AS I WAS THEN?

“I like walking through the streets of Seoul. From Jongno to the East Gate, from Yeongdeungpo to Hongdae area, from city Hall to Gwanghwamun Gate.

I have done a lot of walking over the years. ‘plaza Hotel’ is one of the stories that have piled up inside me during that time.” — Kim Mi-wol choi Jae-bong Reporter, The Hankyoreh lee Jun-ho Photographer

88 KoREANA autumn 2016

im Mi-wol’s short story “Plaza Hotel” was first published in 2011 in a thematic collection of stories by women writers, entitled “Seoul, Night Wanderers,” taking various places in Seoul for their backdrop. The hotel standing at the very center of Seoul, facing City Hall, is the main setting of the story. It’s the tale of a couple in their mid-thirties who, oddly, spend their vacations at hotels in the city center instead of holiday resorts in the countryside or abroad. This way of spending their vacations has been going on like an annual ritual for several years, but the hotel they have chosen this time, Plaza Hotel, comes charged with particular meaning.

The story moves back and forth between the narrator’s university days and the present, ten or more years apart. References to current events occurring in the story set the present in the summer of 2009. As the couple looks out of the hotel window at the main gate of Deoksu Palace, they talk about how it had been the site of a memorial altar for former president Roh Moo-hyun just a few months ago. A year or so after the end of his presidency, while his family was under investigation for alleged corruption, he put an end to his life, and citizens who admired him erected an altar outside the palace; the narrator’s wife queued for five hours to pay her respects.

When the husband steps out of the hotel to buy a lighter and coffee, he witnesses a small group of protesters quietly performing a ritual to honor the dead, each time advancing three steps forward then making a full prostration. The protesters, accompanied by some sympathizers, were relatives of the five victims of the “Yongsan Tragedy,” who died when the police stormed a

K

watchtower occupied by evicted tenants on the rooftop of a building that was due to be demolished. The narrator and the demonstrators are caught in a sudden downpour.

The contrast between “the perfect temperature, perfect humidity, perfect cleanliness, perfect service, a feeling of being perfectly pampered,” which the narrator had just experienced inside the hotel, having paid a tidy sum for such comforts, and the situation of those who are demonstrating in the pouring rain without umbrellas or raincoats symbolizes the reality of modern Korea, where capitalism and democracy, and socalled conservatives and progressives, are in frequent conflict. In this way, the author places the couple’s hotel vacation in the context of the socio-political situation of Korea in 2009, against the backdrop of an earlier tragedy, the Gwangju Massacre of 1980.

The fact that the hotel in which they are staying was close to the site of a demonstration in the narrator’s student days links to another theme. Yun-seo, then the narrator’s university contemporary and girlfriend, who “looked like Snow White,” overhears a middle-aged man on the street commenting critically about student demonstrators: “Young students think they know, then after they graduate they go out into society and forget it all, so why do they keep demonstrating? All they do is snarl the traffic; the world doesn’t change.” And this seems to have come to pass: the narrator has graduated, become a member of society, and reached a point where he can spend vacations in a downtown hotel. Has he forgotten the pure ardor of his student days just as the middle-aged man had said that he would?

Instead of replying directly to that ques-

tion, the author makes a slight detour. At the very end, the narrator asks himself: “I wonder if she would believe me now, more than ten years later? Would she even remember things from back then? Could I prove that I am the same I as then, that we are still the same we as then?” And the concluding thoughts conceal a kind of reversal.

Primarily, the question seems to be about an aborted Christmas Eve date in his youth, but that is not the whole story; it is open to interpretation. “The same we as then” is not about youthful dating, or not only about that, for if at the same time we understand it as referring to young students who were part of the scrum in a street demonstration then went running away and overheard the criticism of older people, the narrator’s question about whether he could still honestly say that he continues to care, does not simply concern the awkward, more beautiful pure love of days gone by; it is possible to understand it as also being about political fervor in quest of democracy.

Kim Mi-wol, who began her career in 2004, like other young writers of the time, has mainly focused on the poverty and struggles of youth. In her first collection of short stories, “Guide to Seoul Cave” (2007), she depicted hikikomori (socially isolated youths) who shut themselves up in tiny study rooms, attics, or basement rooms in complete withdrawal from social contact.

When she published “Plaza Hotel,” she was in her mid-thirties, like the couple in the story. Hence it might be possible to see the story as being about herself, looking back on her youth now that she has grown that much older, examining her present-day self in the mirror of her youth.

KoREAN CULTURE & ARTS 89

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