One Foot in Front of the Other

I'll begin by quoting again this passage from Shin Kyung-Sook's novel I'll Be Right There, which I wrote about here.

I made the right decision to learn about the city by walking around it.  Walking made me think more and focus on the world around me.  Moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other, reminded me of reading a book.  I came across wooded paths and narrow market alleyways where people who were strangers to me shared conversations, asked one another for help, and called out to one another.  I took in both people and scenery.

This uncannily describes my peregrinations around Seoul for the past three and a half weeks.  I've spent a lot of time on buses and subway trains, of course, which are also full of people.  But more than during past visits I've walked around.  The autumn weather has been more comfortable for walking than the stifling, humid summer weather of my past visits, and I'm not worried about getting lost, as I used to be.  Which doesn't mean I can't get lost -- even born Seoulites do -- but I know that if I walk for a few blocks in almost any direction I'll come to a subway station, and from there I can get back to some place I know.

One of the benefits of my exploration has been interactions with people, despite my nearly non-existent Korean.  (I feel guilty, ashamed, and frustrated for not having worked on learning more.  I've resolved to do something about that.)  The easiest of these interactions is giving up one's seat to other people on the subway.  There are, as in other cities around the world, seats reserved in each car for the elderly, the infirm, and pregnant women, but they fill up, and people freely offer their seats elsewhere in the cars.  Even when I was a few years younger than I am, people offered me their seats, and though I sometimes resisted, if I was tired enough I would accept.  Soon I got into the spirit of it, and I had enough basic vocabulary to play the game.  "Sir [or Ma'am], sit!  Yes, sit!*  No no, I'm fine!  I'm only going to the next station!"  If someone older than I got on, I'd be on my feet (just as the others would), offering a space to them.

Now, for about the past week, this hadn't been happening.  There weren't any opportunities to play the game on the trains I was on while I was on them; no other seniors offered me a seat or needed one while I was there, there were enough seats for those of us who were riding.  But today it was different.  I was reading in my seat when an older heterosexual couple got on, and there was only one seat so I gave mine; I had to insist, but after one refusal the seat was accepted.  At the next stop a seat opened up opposite to where I'd been, so I sat -- but at the next stop I gave that seat to a young mother carrying her toddler son, and another seat opened up for a halmoni (grandmother) next to her.  We all beamed and nodded and thanked each other happily.  As we moved to the end of the line where I was bound, more seats opened up and the game was over for this ride; the young mother spoke to me, and her son was looking at me.  I said hello to him, and she said hello for him -- he was too young to speak, and probably wouldn't have spoken even if he were a year or two older, children are shy sometimes.  But then she was giving him some dry cereal to nibble on, and he held it out to me.  I thanked him but didn't accept it, not being sure I should.  He gave it to his mother instead.  And then it was my stop.

I've long wanted to live in Korea, and this trip has confirmed and strengthened that wish.  I think I could live comfortably here, and I think I'm going to take more serious steps toward doing so.  Of course, I must learn to have conversations in Korean.  If I could do that now, there would have been conversations on the train today, not just thank yous and head bows.  And those conversations must be in Korean, so that I'm the one who has to work harder to express himself.  (This is how I feel about conversations in Spanish with my Mexican friends.  They get to correct my Spanish, and they do.)  Still, those are better than nothing.  Today made me think of Andrew Ti's fury at Americans who'd use the few words of Chinese they know, because (he assumed) they hope to be told "THANK YOU FOR BEING ONE OF US."  Of course the same gesture can mean wildly different things depending on the person who uses it, but his interpretation made no sense to me two years ago and it still doesn't.  We are already "one of us."  The task and obligation is to make the connections that follow from that: to learn more of the other's language and culture, and interact on that basis.

Something more about that.  Today as I was crossing the street to the subway station in the district where I've been staying, a middle-aged man who was riding his bicycle in the opposite direction called out happily to me in English, "Hello, sir!"  I replied happily, "Hello, sir!"  "Nice to meet you!" he called as he rode past, and I replied in kind.  I'd have spoken in Korean to him if there'd been time, but he was gone.  I'd like to ask Andrew Ti about that.  Did this man use his few words of English in hopes I'd tell him "THANK YOU FOR BEING ONE OF US"?  I doubt it. Should I despise him for a racist shitbag who had no reason for tossing out his pitiful store of English at me?  (I just looked at Ti's tumblr for the first time in over a year.  It's gone way downhill, and Ti's become a rote Obamabot.  Kinda sad.)

This doesn't mean I think I can "be Korean." If I move here, gain fluency in Korean, even become a Korean citizen and adopt a Korean name (as a few Westerners have done), I'll still be an old white man from the United States.  Korea is still too 'racially' homogeneous to have many Caucasian Koreans, but I suspect that will change in the next generation or two, and then there will be black and South Asian and white Koreans, just as there are black and white and South Asian and East Asian Americans.  Belonging is complex, but I feel like an outsider in the US too, so being an outsider in another country won't be that different; belonging is something you make happen, in concert with the people you encounter and live among.

*Although manners and politeness as well as deference to the old are important in Korean culture, they aren't always expressed in the language as they would be in American English.  So one doesn't say "please" when inviting a senior to sit.  I've noticed that Korean (and Japanese) movies often put American-style politeness into the subtitles.  A child's answer to his parent may be translated as "Yes, father," when the original language has only "Yes" or a grunt, which can be transliterated as "Eung."  Manners are, remember, a social construction.

I'll Be Right There

While I'm at it, let me add another book I've read lately that I liked a lot: I'll Be Right There, Kyung-sook Shin's latest novel to be translated into English, just published in the US.  I was very impressed by its predecessor, Please Look After Mom, and I'll Be Right There is even better.  (Alert, for those who might be concerned: a possible Spoiler below -- not for I'll Be Right There, but for the recent Disney animated feature Frozen.)

I'll Be Right There follows three South Korean college students in the early to mid-1980s, when South Korea was still ruled by a military dictatorship, with tear gas wafting through the streets almost daily as police chase, beat, and kill dissidents.  It begins when Jung Yoon, the principal narrator, gets a telephone call from one of the other two, informing her that their beloved literature professor is dying.  Jung Yoon begins to recall her college days, when she first attended Professor Yoon's class and met the handsome Yi Myungsuh and the beautiful but mysterious Yoon Miru.  Gradually the three become inseparable; while there are romantic/erotic sparks between Yoon and Myungsuh, Yoon is intensely and physically fascinated by Miru and vice versa.  I don't mean to suggest that there are "explicit gay overtures" between them; what I find interesting is that Shin puts friendship, between women or between women and men, in the foreground in a way I don't see often enough in today's fiction.  The core relationship in the book is a triangle, but without competition or jealousy among those involved.

(The proliferation of Yoons in that paragraph might confuse some readers, not least because the publicity for I'll Be Right There puts the author's name in Western order, with her surname (Shin) put last, but in the text of the novel the names are in Asian order, with the surname first.  So Yoon is Jung Yoon's first name, but it's Miru's and Professor Yoon's surname.  Nor are Miru and the Professor related: in Korea there are many surnames, but a few (Kim, Lee, and Park) account for almost half the population, and Yoon is the eighth most common.  Until fairly recently, Koreans with the same surname couldn't legally marry, even if they were very distantly related if at all.)

By chance, I saw Disney's Frozen last night, for the second or third time, with a Mexican friend in his twenties who was delighted by it.  Frozen breaks with the convention that only erotic relationships count by making a heterosexual friendship (between Anna and Kristof) win out over a heterosexual romance (between Anna and Hans), but even more by reminding the audience that "love" doesn't only mean only an urge to copulate: the "act of true love" that breaks the deadly spell in the story's climax isn't between a man and a woman but between two sisters.  (I'm having trouble parsing the facial expressions on the sisters' faces, especially Elsa's, on Frozen's website, though: it reminds me of the looks butches used to give femmes on the covers of 1950s lesbian pulps.)  The interest between Kristof and Anna (which parallels that between Myungsuh and Yoon) is taken for granted, but not really developed, compared to other relationships that are at least as important.

Watching Frozen last night, I was struck again by how dark it is, with treachery, violence, and endless winter treated as real threats.  ("Oh -- I'm impaled!" says the magical snowman Olaf cheerfully when he realizes he's carelessly run onto a giant horizontal icicle.)  I'll Be Right There is even darker, set as it is against the backdrop of the Chun dictatorship.  Jung Yoon's mother, we learn early on, died of cancer just before Yoon entered college, and sent her to live with a cousin in Seoul to spare her.  Many more important people in the novel die by various kinds of violence, and Yoon herself is caught in the crowd when police attack a student demonstration with tear gas, driving them into a enclosed area to to round them up.  Yoon escapes, but many others don't.  Grief runs through the characters' lives, and if the overall tone is positive, its hopefulness is hard-won.

I'll Be Right There is well-written, and translator Sora Kim-Russell has done a wonderful job.  (It seems to me that the quality of translations from non-European languages has improved immensely in the past couple of decades.)  It's not only about grief and suffering; aside from love and friendship, it's also about literature as a broadening force for the intellect, and for that matter the rewards of living in the city.  I responded strongly to this passage from page 71, for example:

I made the right decision to learn about the city by walking around it.  Walking made me think more and focus on the world around me.  Moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other, reminded me of reading a book.  I came across wooded paths and narrow market alleyways where people who were strangers to me shared conversations, asked one another for help, and called out to one another.  I took in both people and scenery.

I know many of the areas of Seoul that Yoon explores, so reading I'll Be Right There filled me with longing to return.  Someday.  I'll be right there.

There Are Starving Children in Korea Who'd Love to Eat the Pepper Spray You're Complaining About!

Seoul police used water cannons the other night on demonstrators who objected to the passage of the Korean-US "Free Trade Agreement." (It still hasn't been signed by President Lee, but it's hard to imagine what would stop him after he's pushed it so long.) According to the Hankyoreh, this happened in sub-freezing weather:

Participants struck by the cannons said the cold was such that the water froze on their clothing. A 27-year-old participant named Kim recounted that police even fired the jets indiscriminately at people on the sidewalk.

“It was so cold out that my clothes froze, and all the friends who came out with me to the rally caught colds,” Kim said.

A 31-year-old named Ahn said, “The cold was unbearable. I was only sprayed a little while I was in the street, but I was shivering terribly.”

Criticisms of the police’s failure to take into account the cold when using water cannons were not limited to civic and social organizations. Lawmakers with the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) also issued notably stern statements against the decision.

That is surprising, because it was the GNP that pushed the FTA through in the first place. But don't worry, it's all standard police procedure.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA) Security Department chief Yun Cheol-gyu said, “The march itself was illegal, so we fired the water cannons after first broadcasting an order to disperse according to procedure, and we took direct aim after they did not.”

Yun added, “There are no standards for the use of water cannons according to weather conditions, and everything was done in line with legitimate procedure, so there is no issue.”

So, that's all right then.

Water cannons were used for "riot control" in the US during the 1960s (we got the idea from the Germans in the 1930s), and Prime Minister Cameron authorized their use against "rioters" in the UK this past August. The Italian police used them against the Occupy Rome protests in October, too. Last June in Chile (during their winter, isn't it?) students protesting against education cuts threw a molotov cocktail at a water cannon that had been used against them. I've seen talk about deploying them against peaceful protesters in the US; I figure it's only a matter of time.

The Other 99 Percent

From today's Hankyoreh:
Independent opposition candidate Park Won-soon won the Seoul mayoral election on October 26 handily, and he's already on the job -- he even took the subway to the office.

This was an off-year election, with the big one coming up next year, and there's good reason to expect that the ruling Grand National Party will take a beating then. President Lee Myung-bak has been running a thoroughly corrupt plutocratic administration, and his GNP has repeatedly been defeated at the polls, so it will be interesting to see how things turn out in 2012. I should see if I can arrange my travel plans so as to be in Korea for one or the other election.

I get the impression that some Koreans, at least, are getting their hopes up too high. Park's support was strongest among what Koreans call the 2030 Generation, today's 20 and 30-year-olds. (The GNP also lost support among voters in their 40s, however.) But I remember all too well how the 2030s' older siblings (the 386 Generation) celebrated the election of Noh Mu-hyeon to the Korean Presidency in 2003. Noh, a very courageous human rights lawyer, had no real political experience, and he was up against international pressure to continue the neoliberal assault on the Korean economy, which he didn't really know how to fight. He quickly disappointed his supporters without appeasing the Korean Right, which continued to hound him even after he left office. I worry that Park Won-soon will disappoint many of his supporters too.

The Hankyoreh is optimistic but skeptical too:

Park pledged that he would run a participatory model of government, installing a city management council under him to this end. It is true that some are worried that the involvement of different forces could leave the city’s administration in chaos. We hope that the new major will show the political skill to create a new model for cooperative governance. Attention is also sure to focus on Park’s actions in discussions on opposition party integration and solidarity in the wake of the by-election. This, too, requires a thoughtful response. Park must be prepared to cooperate equally with the Democratic Party (DP) and with progressive parties like the Democratic Labor Party (DLP).

He also needs to work to build his abilities as a leader. In television debates during the election campaign, he became flustered by questions from the rival candidate that were not especially tough. This may have been because he had little experience with criticisms or attacks over the course of his civic organization activities. The mayor of Seoul occupies a high public office. It is difficult to hear people speaking honestly when you are surrounded by government employees. We hope that Park Won-soon does not lose the readiness to listen he showed during the election, and that he creates opportunities for himself to hear some strong criticism.

This is the ongoing problem with elections as a source of change: the GNP has given Korean ample reason to vote against them, but that doesn't mean that the opposition will come up with effective replacements. The GNP, like the ruling parties in the US, has big money behind them, and the GNP gets along well with international business and political interests. George W. Bush liked Lee Myung-bak much better than his predecessor Kim Dae-jung, and I've seen no indication that Obama likes Lee any less. Mayor Park should prepare himself for the usual storm of abuse and misinformation that any opposition figure, no matter how mild, can expect.

Free Gaza Protest, Seoul

Thanks to a link at The Distant Ocean, I learned that there would be a demonstration today in protest of Israel's murderous attack on the Freedom Flotilla. It took me a while to find it because the Israeli Embassy is not on Embassy Row like the heavily fortified American Embassy a few blocks north, but on the sixteenth floor of an office building owned by one of the big Seoul newspapers.

It was quite small, not like the ones in Chicago, New York, or London: about thirty people at most, three of whom were Americans; the rest were Koreans, mostly young. The only media in attendance was a Reuters photographer. But it's a beginning, and it was important that there be demonstrations worldwide to make it clear that the revulsion at the hijacking is worldwide.

(To see larger versions of my photos, click on the Picasa symbol in the lower right hand corner of the slideshow.)