The Long Road Back to Korea

It's gotten to the point where there are way too many "formers" on my Facebook bio: former associate professor, former consultant, former facilitator at a conflict-resolution camp. One "former," in that long parade, was an early one, my stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Korea.

Recently, I was reminiscing about the feelings I had more than four decades ago as I was preparing to depart the U.S. and head to Korea for the very first time. I didn't have much to go on. I had a sense it was far away from everything I knew growing up in the suburbs of New York City. But I knew nothing about the food, the culture, its history, only a few general things about a war we had fought there in the early 1950s.

Once again, I'm getting ready to go to Korea. In a few months I hope to return and I'm awash in feelings of excitement and reminiscence. This time, I have a million hooks to hang my emotions onto. I can picture the many places I yearn to return to in Seoul, Daegu and Gyeungsan, the latter two, locations where I taught English to Korean college students. I recall the smells that wafted along side alleys, redolent in garlic, kimchi and silkworms steaming in the pots of street vendors. The vague, implausible excitement of my youth is far different from the impatience of returning home to a familiar place.

One of my university students rests his hands on my shoulder, as
we pose with high school students in their uniforms (Spring, 1974)

Korea has filled seven years of my life to the brim. I did my first real teaching there in a heatless classroom with poor lighting, filled with students hungry to improve their English. Living in Korea I delved into my earliest understanding of another culture, one with 5,000 years of history behind it. Here I was, a naive 22-year old recent college graduate, replete with my American history major, then only a 200-year old story. Yet, due to my role as a college instructor, I was the beneficiary of almost automatic respect.

Korean village (1974)

Korea is no longer the country of dirt roads and meandering village lanes that I once explored. Its old-school tea rooms of a past era have morphed into Starbucks and popular Korean coffee shop chains. Today, Korea has the eleventh strongest economy in the world--this from a country that is the size of the U.S. state of Indiana. Korea's Internet is the world's fastest. Its literacy rate is at 98%. Korea, a country with few natural resources, other than its remarkable people, has leveraged generations of hard work, and a near unified vision of middle-class success, to become the Korea that exports its cultural, industrial and high-tech proficiencies throughout the world.

Daegu's monorail, launched in 2015, combines Korea's transportation
and high-tech prowess. The driver-less system slices through the
heart of the city connecting riders with the three older subway lines.

Koreans rarely, if ever, forget a good deed. The Korean government, in a singular show of appreciation, graciously hosts former Peace Corps Volunteers who served there. I plan to return to Korea in October for a reunion program in Seoul, and the chance to visit the campuses where I once taught English. I gaze ahead with excitement and the humbling realization that the very road that leads me to Korea circles back to where my wanderlust first took hold.

With a Yeungnam University student, Gyeongsan, Korea (2014)

Lost in Time: Returning to Places of the Heart

Only thirteen years had passed.  Returning to Korea to witness the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics was no ordinary adventure. My good friend, Soon Chul, had picked us up at the airport and the drive to his apartment was an eye-opener. Mile after mile we saw huge apartment buildings, walls of lights narrating a story of almost inexplicable change. Personal cars, subways, video billboards, countless new bridges; the unmistakable signage of a vibrant, new middle class. The trip was already spell-binding and we hadn't even arrived at his apartment.

After thoroughly enjoying the Olympic Games held at dozens of newly constructed venues, we headed south by train to visit Daegu, the city I had lived in for nearly two years as an English instructor while in the Peace Corps.  My wife, Marsha, visiting Korea for the first time, escorted me to the campus and I happily gave her a tour of the place, pointing out the buildings which housed my classes, the dignified old administration building, the campus amphitheater, and the red brick building which housed my office on its second floor.

Standing outside my office building at
Keimyung Christian College in Daegu (1974)

Students walking toward the administrative building on campus

We wound our way down a short hill and came to the school's rear gate. I knew that just a short distance from there I'd be able to show Marsha my old neighborhood including everything from the local dry cleaners and little convenience store to, more importantly, the modest rooming house (yeogwan) where I lived for over a year and a half in a small room on the 2nd floor.

The courtyard of our Korean rooming house. Sign says "Yeo-gwan," Korean for inn.

We turned the corner and I was stunned. The old neighborhood was gone! In its place were new stores, buildings and paved roads. The entire neighborhood had been razed and replaced in the intervening 13 years since I had left Korea. I began to feel dizzy and lose my bearings. I sat down to regroup and to deal with the lump of emotions that was growing in my throat. There was no going home.

Trying to return to a place once called "home" can be an
emotional roller coaster.

Apparently, this was not a rare experience in Korea. A number of Korean friends and students have told me about similar experiences when they returned to their villages or old neighborhoods; this sense of home-loss dissonance accompanied by feelings of confusion, loss and disorientation.

This highly emotional experience is timely as this week marks the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps service in South Korea. The first batch of volunteers arrived here in Korea in September of 1966. That group was quickly followed by well over two-thousand other volunteers who served in Korea from 1966 through 1981. Each group was designated in numerical order preceded by the letter "K." My group, K-30, focused on English education at the university level. My nearly fifty colleagues served in universities scattered across the country.

This week many veteran Peace Corps Volunteers will be returning to this country for the first time since their days of service here. In all likelihood it will prove to be nothing less an amazing adventure; at once deeply personal and meaningful. I suspect for most it will also prove to be a breathtaking experience as well. Returning to familiar places and old haunts can be a challenging emotional roller coaster ride. To them I say, may all your journeys conclude in the safe embrace of warm memories knowing that your efforts here were indeed well done.

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?