After The Cherry Blossoms

As small as it may be (it's the size of Indiana), Korea is a land filled with countless contradictions. There's a high tech edge to the place, with its nearly universal wireless access on the one hand, and its inability to provide simple, basic safety for the hundreds of student victims of the Sewol Ferry Disaster, on the other. There's the remarkable and clearly delineated respect shown to elders, teachers and parents here, and then, there's the unbelievable anarchy and terror of its roads, where caution and sensibility are thrown to the wind.

Captivating cherry blossoms as far as the eye can see

Korea is also the setting for an extravaganza each spring when cherry blossoms do their magical, short lived dance.  Shades of pinks, drifting to near whites, mesmerize nearly all citizens here. I think everyone can find agreement on this topic; there is nothing quite as beguiling as cherry blossoms in spring. Yet their petals are soon set free, creating a glorious but fragile and fleeting light-colored carpet.

And then, the remains of the day reveal yet another Korean contradiction. In nearly every nook and cranny: piles of trash. Walking around an otherwise scenic lake? Empty coffee cups on benches. Turning a corner in a pleasant residential neighborhood? Small mountains of trash adorn every intersection. Watching dozens of kids playing in a park? Shards of broken glass and spent cups from last night's revelers abound. Sadly, and in spite of every modern technology tool, Korea's streets are awash in trash.

Cherry blossom petals surround a pile of trash

What pray tell is behind this offensive cultural phenomenon? Like the lag time between its technology prowess and its safety awareness, some might say that this highly developed country still hasn't given birth to a sense of environmental stewardship. Others would say that Korea infamously spoils its children, especially its sons, who have come to expect that their mothers will do everything for them. Got trash? Well then, just leave it there, someone else will come and clean up after you. Some observe, quite accurately, that there are few garbage containers to be found anywhere in this country. Communities have tried, Koreans claim, to place garbage receptacles in public places, but people overwhelm them with their own household trash as they seek to save money they would have to spend on their own surcharged garbage bags.

Discouraging, if not dangerous, pile of trash adjacent to children's park

As spring's cherished cherry blossoms come, and then, ever-too-quickly depart, we are left, sadly, with another, less glorious aspect of this country, its year-round, ubiquitous trash "bouquet." Korea, I think it's time to clean up your act.

Korea In the Side-View Mirror: Reflections of a Former Peace Corps Volunteer

It was pure serendipity. The acceptance letter from Washington arrived September 2nd 1973, smack on my birthday. Wherever I was assigned, I thought, I was surely meant to go. Less than 3-months later, I found myself on a very cold hillside, overlooking a lake on the outskirts of Daegu, South Korea's 3rd largest city. Fifty of us, naive and hopeful Peace Corps Volunteers, from nearly every corner of the U.S., were about to embark on a transformative 90-day training experience that included Korean language training, cross-cultural understanding, and teaching English as a second language.

With Korean friends at a local park, Spring 1975

After our swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, I was assigned to teach English at Keimyung College in Daegu. Korea in those days was a developing country; there was virtually no middle class, few private cars, our classrooms were either freezing cold or sweltering, and always poorly lit. But Korean students then were all on a mission--working hard to succeed in school and to learn English to help propel their country forward. Little did they know they were indeed participating in a historic economic miracle.

Life as a Peace Corps volunteer then was challenging. There were few expats, fewer phones, and if you sent a letter home, you'd be lucky to hear back in 4-6 weeks, if at all. Communication was face to face. You would make arrangements days in advance to meet at a specific time and place, write it down and keep your fingers crossed. Students clamored for time with you to practice their English and to find out as much as possible about the world outside Korea. It was, as the Peace Corps ad says, "The toughest job you will ever love."

Several of my students at Keimyung College in Daegu in 1974

When I left Korea in the mid-seventies I was certain I would never see it again. As the years passed, the recollections of my life in Korea crystallized into increasingly romanticized memories. They became nearer and dearer to me in my life's side-view mirror.

Caution: Memories Are Closer and More Powerful Than They Appear

I married, raised a family and enjoyed a career in human resource management, banking, teaching and consulting--all of which allowed me to travel internationally and to keep the wanderlust, first acquired during my Peace Corps days, well nourished. Much to my surprise, business took me back to Korea, first for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, and then on several trips to lead management seminars for Korean managers. Korea just kept calling me. Eventually, I answered.

Fast forward to 2011. Korea, now the 15th strongest economy in the world, welcomed me back as a professor of English. I have returned to the same metropolitan area I once lived in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I am now on the faculty of Yeungnam University, a vibrant, international campus with 27,000 students.

Current students enjoying a lighter moment before
the start of class. Yeungnam University, Fall 2014.

My Korean students today are the sons and daughters of those very spirited students I taught years ago. My two stints in Korea have become bookends on my life. Who says you can't go home again?

Korea's Comfort Women: The Remorseless Tragedy

It's a tragedy that asks little of us. Instead, many look away, ignore, or avoid the matter altogether.  It is easy to claim that nearly all the victims and perpetrators have long since passed. True enough. But the indignities are timeless; they continue today. They are monumentally exacerbated by Japan's unwillingness to apologize for its actions. The Japanese occupying force not only pillaged the Korean peninsula from 1910-1945, but the Japanese Imperial Army raped tens of thousands of women, and did so repeatedly, during an extended period that included the years of World War II.

For those of us not clear about that record, a new book Daughters of the Dragon: A Comfort Woman's Story, by William Andrews, reveals the story, snaring the reader into its web. This compelling tale will not allow you to look away or ignore the stark reality experienced by its main characters, two sisters living in the north of Korea who, like many others, were given written orders to leave home and support the Japanese war effort by working in a boot factory.

The historical account should be required reading for every Korean, friend of Korea, and anyone concerned with the abuse and torture of women anywhere. The story of the Daughters of the Dragon is riveting and searing and at times, unrelenting. But being drawn out of my comfort zone, I think, was part of my due diligence to more fully appreciate this important piece of history.

This bitter history continues today. The few surviving comfort women continue their weekly protests in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. And on the recent 96th anniversary of the Korean uprising against the Japanese occupation here, South Korea's president Park Geun-hye speaking before a national television audience "urged Japan on Sunday to have the 'courage and honesty' to admit to its historical wrongdoings against Koreans and other Asians, including its enslavement of Korean women in military brothels during World War II."

The president noted that “This year alone, two of the old women passed away with no healing of their sufferings" and "that the average age of the remaining 50 known South Korean comfort women was close to 90. Time is running out to restore dignity to their lives.”

In the Q & A section at the end of the book, Andrews shares that the book was influenced by his daughter who is from South Korea. He says (modestly) that he "learned about the country and thought it was fascinating." That is an understatement. The story of Anna, as revealed through the life of her maternal grandmother, Hong Ja-hee, is an intense and unrelenting emotional journey down Korea's roads and inside its relationships. It reveals a raw and real Korea like few other western books have done.

I am reminded of the powerful Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden, intriguingly also a book seen from a woman's perspective, likewise written by a man. Like Memoirs, Daughters of the Dragon is a mesmerizing story, one difficult to face, yet nearly impossible to put down. 


Note: The author of Daughters of the Dragon, William Andrews, is currently seeking a translator and Korean publisher for a Korean language edition.

Stones For Korea

I am sitting here in my room in Ajijic, Mexico reflecting on life as an expat. It occurs to me that shortly after graduating college I took off and have been zig-zagging the world ever since. The overhead fan whirls, a soft high-altitude breeze blows though the sheer curtains, and the quietude here, now, belies my more frenetic life as an expat in South Korea.

I recall being a twenty-something gallivanting around Hong Kong. Late one night I perched myself atop a stool in an Australian bar somewhere in Kowloon--celebrating, as it were, the single most "international moment" of my young life. Here I was, an American English teacher, visiting from South Korea, sitting in an Australian pub, in Kowloon, sipping a Fosters (I guess there is no accounting for taste) that, moments earlier, had been served up by a pretty Portuguese bartender, who was speaking Mandarin Chinese. I raised my glass in a toast to the world of all things international.

More recently, my itinerant life found me befriending Sara, a main character in a well-worn paperback I found several weeks ago in Zihuatanejo. In the book, "Stones For Ibarra," Sara and her husband, Richard, shake off their uneventful lives in San Franciso, squeeze all their worldly belongings into an old Volvo wagon, and head to the tiny village of Ibarra, Mexico. To the utter consternation and criticism of all their friends and relatives,  they're off on an adventure to reopen a long abandoned mine, once owned and operated by Richard's grandfather.

The skepticism they encountered from loved ones reminded me of what a few family members and friends expressed when I left for Korea to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer ("Be careful, they have dangerous jungles there."), then again later when I departed for graduate school in West Texas ("They think Jews have horns down there."), and more recently, when I took off to visit North Korea ("You'll be tossed in one of those prison camps."). While I don't seek affirmation for these choices, I found myself quietly comforted recently when I saw a waiter sporting a t-shirt in a Zihuatanejo restaurant which read, "I drink upstream from the herd."

Nearly every overseas adventure, including my current one as an English professor in Korea, proves to be noteworthy, if not extraordinary, in terms of learning, growth, and the making of special relationships. In "Stones For Ibarra," Sara, finding an old, well worn map, reflects on her journey:

"Tracing the marked route, Sara recalled the motel where Richard killed a cockroach, 

the one where he crushed two scorpions. As she folded the map she foresaw that future

sorting might prove difficult, so faint and uncertain was the line that separated the significant

from the trivial.

It occurred to her this evening in Ibarra, with rain at the window and Richard four months

dead, that nothing ever happened on either numbered or unnumbered roads that could be

classified as unimportant. All of it, observed by dark, observed by day, was extraordinary."

Countries, adventures, encounters all become stones one places on a pile along the side of the road. They remind us of our dreams, of the people we've shared the journey with, of the pot holes we fall into; each and every stone, in its way, extraordinary.

Sometimes the stones have served to humble me, like years ago when several Korean students asked me incredulously, how could I possibly have majored in American history. "American history, it's only 200 years old, how could that be a major?" Korean history, they noted proudly, was over 5,000 years old. Now that is a major!

Once while visiting Syktyvkar, a city in northern Russia near the Arctic Circle, I had a chance to experience a traditional Russian sauna. To my surprise, my soaked and naked body was repeatedly lashed with birch tree branches. Then to my amazement, I was told to run out and leap into the fresh snow of the Russian tundra. I reluctantly complied and the stars I saw that night, will be forever frozen in my memory.

I recall a visit I made to a Palestinian friend, Ahmed, who owned a clothing store in the Old City of Jerusalem. There had been no tourists in a season marred by fighting within Israel. Ahmed literally had had no customers for months.  Yet after proudly welcoming us into his shop, he insisted on giving my wife and me a vest and dress as gifts. His generosity, in the face of dire economic hardship, reached deep into my soul.

The late afternoon light in Mexico wraps everything in a deepening bronze blanket. Tomorrow night my bed will be in Portland, Oregon. Two weeks later, my feet will be retracing the familiar paths of my neighborhood in Gyeungsan, South Korea. This, the life I have chosen as a curious expat and veteran explorer.

Remember the moments, and the people along your journey. Remember the places. And always remember too, the stones.

Enjoy your travels. Remember to leave stones.

* Stones For Ibarra, by Harriet Doerr, is a wonderfully written story set in rural Mexico. I think  expats and everyone who enjoys traveling will find the book especially appealing.

Sometimes the Stars Align

Sunset, Yeungnam University,
Fall, 2014

Sometimes you dig your feet in at the plate. You sway your body just that little bit, to and fro', so that you can feel the steadiness in your stance. You try a few swings before the pitch is thrown. You look around the field searching for an empty space where, if everything goes just right, you might be able to place the ball. The ball comes, you swing and somehow, you hit it on the sweet spot. It streams on an arc right to the location you had imagined just a second before.

Sometimes on a sunny day, just off the coast, you are sailing along without a care in the world. The only sounds are the wind filling the sails and the drunken gulls screaming aloft. You have, as mariners say, fair winds and following seas. Everything is moving you just right.

Sometimes you are in a place in time, between the bookends of your life. There amongst the tales and stories that are your own unique experience, all the people and places intersect. Traffic stops.

Sometimes the stars align as they did at our recent faculty party this December 2014. The Fall semester came to a glorious close with colleagues      and friends, as these photos attest.

Gyeungsan, South Korea.
Photos thanks to Lindsay Nash, Nash Photos.

Sometimes all the people and places intersect
With John Healy, Dec. 2014

The Center of The Universe

The university students here always asked me the same few questions. "Professor, where are you from?" "Professor, where did you graduate from university?" "Professor, what was your major?"

At the time, I wasn't exactly sure what accounted for the remarkable consistency in the questioning. As it ends up, much of what happens in Korea is remarkably uniform. The voice of the Korean teacher meanders down through generations of students. At the end of that river, spills out those repetitive questions, rounded stones shaped by endless classroom drills.

"Well, my hometown is New York," I would say. I always drew the distinction between New York State and New York City, hoping to throw in the small learning opportunity about the difference between a state and a city. "And, I graduated from Boston University." That diploma, was newly minted, at the time. I had only graduated the previous May. "My major, well, I majored in American history."

That particular response would sometimes elicit curious reactions.

"Professor, how could American history be a major? It's only 200 years old. Korean history," it was pointed out, "is 5000 years old. That would be a major."

The mind of a freshly minted Peace Corps volunteer can handle only so much dissonance. I was already dealing with drastic differences in food, living and sleeping arrangements and language between Korea and the U.S. But even this contradiction, was hard to ignore. It was around this time that I realized my country was not the center of the universe, but rather, just another country in a world of nations. At that time, our chapter in Vietnam was just drawing to a close. And so, our more recent story of military excursions with questionable victories was just being written.

Today it seems much clearer. Americans lash out as if we know on some subconscious level we are no longer the center of the universe. Around the world our signature is drawn by the deadly hand of drones and F-16's. At home, we witness and somehow tolerate, almost weekly mass killings wherever people congregate. Our country is run by politicians whose primary reasons for being are to sustain their own power while serving up laws and policies that fill the insatiable appetite of big business. The needs of their constituents are a distant third--if given any serious thought at all.

In his "The Geography of Thought," Richard E. Nisbett, notes, "that the past five hundred years of Western military, political, and economic dominance have made the West intellectually and morally arrogant." He points out that perhaps it's time for us "to consider the possibility that another valid approach to thinking about the world exists and that it can serve as a mirror with which to examine and critique their own beliefs and habits of mind."

In the so-called "3 most honest minutes in television history," actor Jeff Daniels, star of the HBO series "The Newsroom," offers a somber and thought-provoking critique of the United States in its often self-anointed role as "The Greatest Country in the World."

Forty years ago my young Korean students offered me a different frame of reference on the world. Reflection, soul-searching and a change in priorities should be a national agenda for the U.S. Our politicians may have to get out of the way if this process is to be successful. Otherwise, and quite likely, American history will indeed be "a minor" in the scheme of things.

North Korea Unplugged: Cries & Whispers (3rd in a series)

Not much longer ago than a wink of an eye in historical terms, as recently as 1974 to be exact, North Korea's economy was every bit the measure of South Korea's. Since then, the economy of this conundrum of a country has bit the dust. Today, the DPRK per capita income hovers at only $1800 a year. At the same time, South Korea's has risen to about $27,000. Those sounds drifting southerly from across the DMZ? They are the faint cries and whispers of North Korea's citizens, shackled to the walls of their failed system. It is hard to discern the boundary between their pain and the cacophony of incessant propaganda that seeps into their lives 24 hours a day. Here are a few of the cries and whispers I heard while visiting there recently.

The Red Hanbok at the Juche Tower

A North Korean woman wearing her red and white hanbok gave us a tour of the Juche Tower. The Juche Idea, a set of principles written by Kim Il Sung during the 1960's and 70's, has become literally a bible shaping everyday behavior and policy for North Koreans.  Reading them, I was singularly unimpressed. That notwithstanding, this woman seemed happy and proud of her job and her country. When the tour up and around the tower was finished, she escorted the group to our tour bus. As she walked alone back to her post at the tower, I followed her from behind and took this picture. I was fascinated by the contrast between the grey and red. The slivers of red reminded me of the more typical colorlessness of North Korea, and were a metaphor for dreams and hopes, in an otherwise dreary landscape.

Our Tour Guides

Ms. Kim, left, (not her actual name) was my small group's tour guide during the trip. She called me "Poppa," largely because I asked her not to call me "grandfather," as someone my age is typically referred to in Korea, North or South. Back in Beijing, at a pre-tour orientation, we were asked by our tour company leaders at Koryo, not to contradict or challenge our tour guides so as not to embarrass them, or put them at risk. But one evening late in our tour, while we were alone, she asked me why my wife wasn't on the tour with me. I hesitated, then took a risk. "She doesn't believe in Kim Il-sung's principles," I said. She looked back at me in total disbelief. "How could your wife disagree with you?", she asked.

Mr. Lee, soldier at the DMZ

Mr. Lee (not his real name) was our host for part of the morning at the DMZ. His was very friendly and personable. On the roof of one of the buildings there, he patiently posed for photos with nearly every person on our tour. Not wanting to bother him, I resisted asking. He noticed me (perhaps it was the chartreuse green shirt) and asked if he could take a photo with me. When I told him I was an American professor teaching in South Korea, he was very intrigued and curious. We shared genuinely good feelings for each other. Later, he sat next to me on our tour bus. I was sad to see him go.

Utility Poles Wear Sleeves
As our bus meandered in the countryside between cities, I noticed what looked like black sleeves near the top of some utility poles. I asked one of our minders, who happened to be sitting across the aisle from me, about them. His too-quick response, that he had no idea what they were, left me skeptical. I told myself to be on the lookout for more cues. Later, while reading Nothing to Envy and Dear Leader, the explanation for the sleeves became apparent. During the severe famines of the 1990's many starving North Koreans resorted to climbing the poles and cutting the lines to abscond with the copper wiring to sell on the black market in exchange for food. The black sleeves, with their protruding nails, still glare menacingly over the landscape.

Photo of Kids' Backpacks

I was walking alone, somewhat apart from our tour group, when I saw this pile of children's backpacks on the ground. They looked colorful and modern, many with Disney logos. In fact, I thought they looked exactly like a pile of elementary school backpacks you'd see here in South Korea. This new trend of modern and colorful clothing and accessories has recently caught the attention of many curious observers in South Korea. For them, it apparently suggests cracks in the walls that enclose North Korean society from the rest of the world.