Becoming Myself: A Korean Photographic Essay

"Home is not just the place where you happen to be born. It's the place where you become yourself."

Pico Iyer

On my 22nd birthday, my relationship with Korea began on the wings of serendipity. On that day, Sept. 2nd, 1973, I received an official acceptance letter from the U.S Peace Corps in Washington, D.C., telling me I was being assigned to serve in South Korea. 

Several months later, in Daegu, a city I had never before heard of,  I was about to complete my in-country training. As he did with each of the other fifty or so volunteers, Dr. Chae, the Korean director of our program, gave me a Korean name. That name, Song Su Nam, gave root to its own nearly novelesque imagery: an old wise man who lived on the Korean peninsula during the time of the Chinese Song dynasty. So I ask rhetorically, when exactly did my relationship with Korea really begin?

A family aboard an overnight ferry bound for Cheju Island (Spring, 1975)

Dining in a Korean Chinese restaurant (1974)

Is being home a place, a presence, or is it more like a journey? And what do we make of the places in between? 

Couple on a Daegu public bus (1974)

Korean elders. This man wears the traditional Korean horsehair hat (1974)

"Am I closer to some other power? Is some other source, some other energy, closer to me than I am to myself?"

Meister Eckhart

Downtown Daegu (1974) before the era of private cars

Downtown Daegu in 2013. In today's Korea, luxury cars hardly draw a second glance

The old and the new in the northeastern
coastal city of Kangnun

Young women in rented Hanbok, Korean traditional dress.
Here taking selfies in Seoul (2016)

Busan's Haeundae Beach during the off-season (Sept. 2014)

Living in Korea makes other parts of Asia much more accessible. By air, Japan is less than two hours away, as is Beijing. For non-Korean citizens, that city provides access to North Korea. Taiwan and Hong Kong are also popular destinations for Koreans and expats alike. Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, are following, or attempting to follow, South Korea's recent path from a developing country to a shining example of economic success. South and North Korea had nearly identical per capita GNPs as recently as 1974. Today, South Korea's GNP, per capita, is fifteen times that of North Korea.

Fashion makes a modest entrance on the streets of North Korea's capital
Pyongyang. This scene is on the main thoroughfare at the entrance of
the city's main subway station (Summer, 2014)

College students at Wonsan Agricultural University, Wonsan, DPRK (2014)

Hanbok-clad tour guide at Juche Tower in Pyongyang (2014)

Buddhist monks visiting ancient temple in Mandalay, Myanmar (2016)

The King of Chinese Chess reigns over all, Temple of Heaven Park, Beijing, China

Yeungnam University is one of Korea's largest universities and boasts a magnificent, sprawling campus. I spent 5-years here teaching, and learning to no end.

The university library is a campus focal point.
The pond in the foreground is a favorite spot of mine for
watching turtles sunning themselves and for enjoying
fried squid and potatoes sold by a local woman.

Tranquil "Lovers' Lane." Here pictured during Cherry Blossom season.

A quiet moment for a gentleman who sits alone
 in the stands of the old soccer field.

With a student during a Saturday Seminar when I had the opportunity
to give a presentation on my trip to North Korea.

"If the only prayer you can ever say in your entire life is 
'thank you,' it will be enough."

Meister Eckhart

Standing in a field of cosmos (Seoul, 1975)

In a field of cosmos (Gyeong-ju, 2014)

My Korean name, Song Su Nam, 
freshly tattooed (2015)

"Oh, how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so challenging and promising and nostalgic: a star in the evening, a blue harebell, a reed-green pond, the eye of a person or of a cow. And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a veil would drop from it all; but then it passed, nothing happened, the riddle remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew old...and still one knew nothing perhaps, was still waiting and listening."

from Narcissus and Goldmund, by Herman Hesse

Stop Trashing Korea

Haeundae Beach, courtesy of the Korea Times

A recent photo of Busan's famous Haeundae Beach awash in trash left me aghast and deeply saddened. My friends know that I love my second home, Korea. But as Korea continues to urbanize and modernize, the collective habit of impulsively leaving trash anywhere, anytime, must be addressed. In many places you simply cannot find a trash bin. Unseemly piles of litter grow on corners, next to poles, almost anywhere along Korea's streets. 

In my Korean neighborhood, trash piles up around a clothing donation box creating unsightly and unsafe conditions for children who play nearby

For reasons no one can quite agree on, many Koreans litter 
blithefully, as if someone else is going to come along and pick up after them. A number of people say it's due to the near universal absence of trash bins. Koreans, like folks in many other countries, must pay for municipal garbage bags which they use to dispose of trash at home. A popular belief is that left on their own, Koreans stuff these public trash bins with their household trash to save what amounts to a few dimes. In response, municipal officials avoid placing these bins in public places.

Wood, glass, refuse of all kinds, pile up in a children's park
in a Korean residential neighborhood

In our brave new world of high octane terrorism, the widespread availability of trash bins takes on new meaning. In Singapore, for example, the belief was that trash cans could house Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), and as a result, bins were removed to reduce the risk of terrorist attacks. Singaporeans, it seems, have readily learned to carry their trash. Their streets remain remarkably clean.

So too in Japan. I have walked in cities there for hours without seeing litter, even as much as a cigarette butt, along that country's streets. And yet, there are few garbage bins. What makes Singaporeans and the Japanese so different from Koreans when it comes to keeping their public spaces free of litter?

We have seen Koreans "step up" before in support of their country. During the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, when their economy was collapsing before their eyes, Koreans dug deep to proudly save their country. As reported by the BBC, "It's an extraordinary sight: South Koreans queuing for hours to donate their best-loved treasures in a gesture of support for their beleaguered economy." Most Koreans willingly donated their precious gold jewelry in the form of wedding rings, athletic medals and trophies and even gold "luck keys," a traditional present given on the opening of a new business or a 60th birthday--all to be melted into gold bars. Amazingly, ten tons of gold was collected during only the first 2-days of the campaign. All this to pay back loans granted to Korea by the International Monetary Fund. 

Understandably, Koreans want their country to be taken as a serious international tourist destination. Seoul is one of the world's most fascinating cities. Busan, and the ancient capital city of Gyeong-ju, rival their oft visited Japanese counterparts, Osaka and Kyoto. But streets and other public places lined with trash seriously erode realization of that vision.

South Korea will soon play host to the 2018 Winter Olympics. Surely, there can be no better time, or reason, for a national initiative to make Korea litter free. If Koreans could save their country from financial ruin, they can certainly save it from ruination by trash. It's time to stop trashing Korea! To my Korean friends I say, you can do better!

SooHorang, Mascot for the 2018 Winter Olympics,
Pyeongchang, South Korea