Busan Journal, Day 16

UNMCK

Before we left for Korea, I read David Halberstam's book The Coldest Winter, which describes American participation in the Korean War. Like any book that deals honestly with the brutality and horror of war, it made for sobering reading.

Nevertheless, I felt it was necessary reading if I hoped to understand anything about the country I would be living in from February through June.

Among the sites I felt we needed to visit during these months in Korea are those related to the Korean War. So on a day in March at the end of a long visit to the Busan Museum, we walked over to the United Nations Memorial Cemetery, which lies adjacent to the Museum and the Busan Culture Center.

We arrived ten minutes before the cemetery was set to close. The guard, a Korean United Nations soldier, was not happy to see us, but he let us in and even reopened the memorabilia room so we could have a quick look. We could tell two things from our short visit: that the cemetery was well worth a longer visit and that we needed to see it when the cherry blossoms were in bloom.

So, a week ago, in the midst of cherry blossom season, we returned to the cemetery. We walked along the long rows of graves, read the various memorials and stones, mourned the dead, and pondered the evil that draws us into armed conflict over and over and over.

I am not given to expressions of patriotism and I do not imagine war solves any problems permanently, but I must say that I was moved by our visit.

We spent considerable time walking around the grounds, noting the contributions of various countries, and reading names. It is solemn business. The names of more than forty thousand UN soldiers, thirty-six thousand of them Americans, carved on black stone panels will make you think you knew these people. You begin to see yourself behind the names.

After our tour was finished we discovered there was to be a flag raising ceremony that afternoon, so we decided to hang around. We went back to the cafeteria at the Museum and ordered waffles, the closest thing we could find to sandwiches. After ordering I saw a bottle of what looked like hand sanitizer, so I pumped a healthy glob onto my hand. "Ah," the man at the counter said, "sugar!"

After that little misunderstanding, we ate our waffles and went back to the cemetery.

When the UN soldiers had marched in and the military band began to play, I noticed how young all these soldiers looked. Tall, strong, and well trained, but all boys. All about the ages of the dead soldiers in the plots around us.

That afternoon's representative country was Canada, so we stood with the others and listened to the band play O Canada while the color guard raised the Canadian colors. We may have been the only people among the viewers who recognized O Canada, even if our knowledge comes primarily from hockey games.

At ceremony's end, the band stood in their red uniforms while various groups, some very old and others very young, stood with them for pictures. While we sat and pondered what we had seen, one little girl began sliding down the granite slab bordering the stairs where we sat.

We watched and laughed, and her father seemed pleased that I was taking her picture.

I am not entirely sure what it is we learn from cemeteries like this one. In closing his account of the Korean War, Halberstam notes that even wars we needed to fight, like this one, are filled with misjudgments, self-serving political decisions, and incomplete conclusions. Sixty years on, Korea remains divided and America has a permanent military presence here.

I am no closer than I had been in thinking of war as a solution to human problems.

Still, as we walked back to our life in Busan, I could not help considering how bleak life would have been for these welcoming people had we refused to help.

Busan Journal, Day 15

A Ramble & the Asian Flu

A week ago Friday, we decided to see a bit of the city we had not visited before.

By request I brought my camera to photograph "ordinary" scenes along the route of our afternoon walk so that I could let everyone see what I see along the way.

We decided to take our first walk along the Oncheoncheon, a stream that flows out of the mountains to the north and joins the Suyeonggang, a river that empties into the sea. We have seen the paths many times from the elevated train and from street level.

To get to the paths we headed first for the subway station, which near us is actually an elevated train. The Pusan National University Station is built over the stream bed. In fact, a good bit of the elevated tracks runs on pillars and follows the course of the stream. In this telescoped photo, the subway station is the long horizontal building in the center.

The long view from our balcony shows the distance we have to walk to get to the subway station. It takes 20 minutes down and 30 minutes to walk back.

This sunrise view from our balcony shows the station in the lower middle. The view straight down, the entry area to our hi-rise, looks like a movie still.

From our apartment we walk down through campus to the gate. These scenes show the campus at various points on our usual route. The building with the round solar panels at the top of this next picture is where we live.

From the gate it is a straight walk of six blocks to the subway. A look back at the front gates to the university shows campus buildings and the hillside behind it. Our rooms are at the top of the campus.

At one time, I am told, there were actual gates across the road, but no longer.

Unlike London and New York, where pedestrians dart across the street during gaps in the traffic, nearly everyone in Busan waits respectfully at crosswalks until the green man shows up. I lingered in several intersections to get action shots, much to the irritation of my companion pedestrian.

Yes, here I am on one of the stone bridges. The stream is about a foot deep.

The story of the river walk is that it is actually a very creative use of space. In addition to the walking and bicycle lanes, which are always busy, the river area has a host of exercise opportunities such as basketball hoops, badminton courts, and skating ovals. Here, urbanites, frequently seniors, make vigorous use of sturdy exercise and flexibility apparatus. It is brilliant use of otherwise difficult space, especially in areas of the city where parks are not available.

Friday evening, after maybe four hours on the river walk and dozens of pictures, I tried to put together my blog, only to find I was unhappy with the quality of the color in the photographs. OK, I know -- that is hard to figure given my photography skill. But, yes, I thought the pictures were fairly colorless, disappointing.

At that point I was also feeling what I thought were the effects of the sun, so I decided to return to the project in the morning. But on Saturday I felt worse and clearly it was not exposure to the sun I was suffering from.

By Sunday I was sleeping around the clock.

I tell you all this as a way of saying that the week slipped by quickly, first in sleeping and then in recovering. That, I hope, is the last of bad the news.

The good news is that I did not take any pictures.

Busan Journal, Day 14

Public Art: Strange Faces and Right Places

From the moment we passed through the Incheon air terminal in a travel induced stupor, we have been surrounded by art in public places. Had the circumstances been different, I might have started my public art photographs then and there. But we were muscling a suitcase-burdened cart through the terminal, trying to find enough signs in English or in internationally standardized images to find our way toward customs, immigration, and the free world beyond.

Of course, my camera was stowed safely in one of those bags on the cart, too, and recovering it for a few snapshots would have required major time and effort for unpacking, retrieving, and repacking.

Suffice to say, between the long plane ride and lack of sleep we did not seem ourselves.

These faces, traditional Korean dramatic masks, are actually from a station on Busan's extremely fine subway line. There are four of them, two at each end of a long mural depicting fishermen hauling a long net toward the water. All in stone. We had passed in and out of this station many times before I remembered to bring my camera along for the ride.

London tube stations, which we rode frequently during the fall months, are interesting, too, but for different reasons. I did not detect the same civic devotion to art on the London underground. I photographed a number of stations there as well but for far different reasons.

When we arrived at our hotel in Seoul, this painting in the hotel caught my eye.

Sometimes, as with this painting, the art is distinctively Korean, even with its modern feel. At other times, such as with this sculpture from Seoul, the piece is distinctively . . . well, weird. Oddly reminiscent of Alfred E Newman, for those who can reference the old MAD magazine covers.

The campus at Pusan National University where we live and work is full of public art too. Sometimes the piece outside the building is just too revealing. I think you can guess who was on the committee choosing this piece for their building's signature sculpture.

I can just hear the guy with the pen nest in the pocket liner asking, "Do you think they will make the connection?"

OK, I'm sorry. That was a cheap joke. After all, it's not that the piece outside the Humanities Building is all that hard to figure out.

My favorite pieces so far tend to be traditional, such as these figures in the outer courtyard at the Busan Museum.

Or this one from inside the Museum. I think this rabbit is from the Korean version of Animal Farm.

Of course, the real artistic treat is art in performance, as with these students on the PNU public soccer field performing traditional dances.

The public art is not all compelling, but I enjoy the fact that it's there. From what I have seen, Koreans have made a serious effort to make art visible for everyone who passes by.

In my view that is ALL for the good.

Busan Journal, Day 13

All the Little Children


Everywhere we have gone in Korea, we notice the children. Perhaps it is because our own grandchildren, all five of them preschoolers, are so far away right now. Maybe we just need a grandchild boost.

Or perhaps it is simply that the little ones are just endearing.

We found this little girl entertaining herself outside the Busan Museum, on a plateau between the museum grounds and the UN Cemetery where many Korean War dead are buried. She was energetically kicking her legs when I spotted her.

We have encountered many school groups at the educational venues we have visited. Trying not to draw attention to myself, I have photographed groups at the Busan Museum and this one at the Gyeonbok Palace in Seoul.

When the field trip to the palace becomes a classroom, the Korean children are like school children everywhere -- some are bored, some are distracted, and most are dutifully struggling to stay seated while the teacher talks.

One of the funnier aspects of encountering these groups is that the younger kids, all of whom are learning English, will take special notice of us, since we are nearly always the only non-Koreans when we travel around Busan. They will smile and giggle. Many will wave.

The braver ones will shout out, "Hi!" "How are you?" What's happening?"

Occasionally, we will hear something genuinely off beat or surprising, like "I love you." One little boy shouted to Donna, "You're beautiful." Makes one wonder where those lines come up during language lessons.

One of the more entertaining aspects of the moving classroom is to really see it in motion. Yellow safety vests help teachers identify who belongs and who is wandering off; and, sometimes, a couple of border collies just might come in handy.

On occasion an older child will come up to us in a store and ask in a serious voice where we are from. Learning that we are from America or New York State usually is enough information for them; they say, "Thank you," and retreat. This kind of encounter has happened often enough for us to think that some English teachers must encourage their students to try out the phrases they have learned. "Where are you from?" is a rewarding question to start with.

We have also occasionally engaged children in other places. On our trip to Seoul two weeks ago we had the joy of meeting Grace Oh's three energetic children and her brother Andrew's daughter.

For grandparents deprived of their own little ones, it's great fun to have them around. No wonder Jesus reminds us that the kingdom belongs to such as these.

Busan Journal, Day 12

Ladies and Gentleman: Assistant Lee!

I have been negligent.

When we arrived at Busan Station on a cold afternoon in mid-February, accompanied by Mi-Sook, the first person we met was Joo-yub, who stood patiently at the exit with a sign bearing my name. As we were the last people to leave the train and he was the last person remaining at the exit and as we looked distinctly lost and distinctly American, he probably did not need the sign.

Still, it was a comfort to find him waiting patiently with a name we recognized. At last, Joo-yub from the email correspondence!

He had brought gifts for the two of us and for Mi-Sook who had sacrificed a free day to shepherd us through the confusion of both the Seoul Station and the Busan Station in those early hours of our visit.

How tentative those first steps in this, for us, foreign city.

In those days, Joo-yub did everything for us. He bought us lunch in the train station, then brought us to our new quarters in a taxi. That first evening he arranged to have Eun Jeong and another graduate student take Donna and Mi-Sook shopping for first necessities.

When we discoverd the rooms (we are living in a grad student dorm) had not been cleaned to expectation, he arranged to have a crew come in. He arranged for a plumber to fix an obviously faulty drain.

He sought out and brought us appliances we needed to sustain ourselves.

He brought us bread and snacks and books. He made visits and phone calls to "check on us."

He brought us a gorgeous flowering plant to brighten up our bleak "basic" living room.

The next day he took us to dinner, treating us to our first fusion restaurant, Taco's Family.

On Saturday he spent the day with us, riding the bus down to Haeundae Beach, treating us to lunch at Bulgogi Brothers. He showed us the huge Suyoung-ro Church and the even huge-er Shinsegae Department Store, noted by Guiness as the world's largest department store.

On Sunday, he picked us up at our dorm and rode the subway to church with us so we could attend an English language service before heading for his own church.

We knew we were finally making progress when his daily "check in" calls stopped altogether.

He came to the bank as interpreter so I could open a bank account.

He personally sponsored us so we could buy a cell phone, a process that is considerably harder for a foreigner in Korea than in either the US or England.

In those first day Eun Jeong, too, was a huge help, walking us down to the market street after her work day in the department office was over, showing us the way to the big HomePlus. When she found out we needed plates and dishes, she brought us pieces of her own set of China. I would display a picture of Eun Jeong right here but she has been unwilling so far to let me take one.

For the time being Eun Jeong will just have to remain a name.

But from here on, when you think of Busan think of Joo-yub. His face is truly the face of this city for us. To the extent Busan is no longer foreign and our steps no longer quite so tenative, it is a credit to Joo-yub, our extraordinary friend.

Busan Journal, Day 11

Culture Shock of the Weird Kind

We have had a number of cultural adjustments in our four weeks in Busan.

We have slept for weeks without a top sheet. We have learned to manage a shower without a tub edge or a curb to keep water from running across the whole bathroom floor. We have learned to expect greetings from the invisible electronic elevator lady when we leave our floor.

We have learned not to jump when the PA system beeps into our dorm rooms for important announcements that we do not understand. If there is ever a fire warning, we hope "the voice" will actually say the English word "fire!"

We have begun to make sense of the non-English layout of the grocery store, although we have a long way to go. We recognize categories -- fish, meat, vegetable, fruit, and so forth -- although finding familiar items is more difficult. And reading ingredients will remain a mystery.

On the positive side, every time we have eaten out, one friend or another will tell us "this is healthy, this is good for you." We have begun to recognize it as a kind of national refrain.

We are learning to manage without an oven, which is an immense obstacle for the chef, who uses her oven daily at home. Neither microwaves nor toaster ovens suffice. Sorry, the oven is just necessary for some things.

On Thursday this week, I had a different sort of culture surprise.

I left my classroom following a fun discussion of poems from Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind. Four or five doors down I passed the English office and looked in because the door had been propped open. [I note here that doors in my building are never propped open. In fact, none of them even have windows; they are all solid steel, close fitting fire doors.]

Consequently, a trip down the hall usually affords no sense of who might be in the building or what might be happening within. The offices and classrooms can be fairly "buzzing" with activity while the feeling in the hall is that you are alone, abandoned.

At any rate, the door was open and a group of students had gathered around something on the office counter. Several students I know waved me in.

The gathering parted to reveal a Smith-Corona typewriter.

Did I know what this was? Had I ever seen one of these?

These questions were as interesting as the fact of the typewriter itself.

Yes, of course, this was an old manual desk model typewriter. I originally identified it as "portable" like the ones we used in high school in an earlier century. But I realized later that it had an extra-wide carriage of the sort once common in offices.

These students had been trying to make it work. Joo-yub, the department's administrative assistant, who can solve any problem that comes his way, had no expertise to offer either. One of them had set a piece of paper sideways on the roller. The paper, naturally, would not hold still for the keys, which sent it sliding away when they crashed down.

The scene reminded me of the cooking sessions around our stove in Houghton. Everyone -- Chinese students usually -- took a turn in front of the stove, adding something, tasting, offering advice, stirring, reaching in to change this or that. Cooking is the ultimate group project!

The students were delighted that I recognized the machine. That is, I think they were delighted. They immediately switched from the English they were using for my benefit to excited Korean when I said, "Oh, yes, a Smith-Corona typewriter." I took this animation as encouragement to continue. Maybe it was simple admiration, who knows. Or maybe it was commentary on my age or the backwardness of American technology. It might have been anything.

As if I had done this just yesterday, I rolled the piece of paper into the machine and began to type away. I would like to say it was easy to do, but I have been spoiled by the ease of computer keyboards. I had forgotten how much physical force manual keys require, and this one was sluggish from disuse.

How old do you think it is?

Eun-jeong, who had brought the typewriter, no doubt as an alternative to discarding it, said her mother had used it twenty years ago.

Oh, fifty years, I should think. My quick answer. Likely your mother used it long after she needed to rather than switch to computers. To cement my place in their admiration, I went on to type a little note on the paper I had properly rolled in.

"Dear Joo--yub," I typed, "Thank you for the opportunity to relive my childhood."

Instead of the ground-swell of wonder I had expected, Eun-jeon gasped. "Oh, no! Don't use red," she informed me. "We would not use red unless he's dead."

Whoops! Sorry, Joo-yub!

Clearly, even the typewriter master has a lot to learn. In Korea as everywhere living is a continual lesson in humility.

Busan Journal, Day 10

Seoul Man

The monster earthquake that rocked Japan hit while we were traveling to Seoul. It may have happened while we were on the express train, the KTX, where extra rocking would not have been noticed. Or it might have happened while our taxi was weaving from lane to lane through heavy traffic between Seoul Station and the hotel.

Either way we felt nothing. From what I have been able to determine, apart from those who monitor seismic activity stations most Koreans were unaware of the unfolding tragedy until it appeared on TV.

Friday night we watched CNN to hear what we could hear in English and to watch the video loops that played and replayed in the now familiar pattern of "breaking news."

On Saturday we went to Gyeongbokgung Palace with our friend Mi-Sook and her friend Jong Myoung, whom she brought to help us bridge her weak English and our three word Korean vocabulary.

Like the royal palaces we visited in England last fall, Gyeongbokgung Palace is both hard to describe and hard to imagine from description. I took one of the English language pamphlets with its good and useful information, but found myself taking pictures instead.


What did I like best?

Well, aside from touring with Mi-Sook, was it the architecture?

Was it the painted surfaces with colors and patterns that reminded me so much of painted wooden structures in Russia.

The attention even to otherwise forgettable areas.

Struck as I was by patterned, painted beams and posts and railings, I was particularly fond of the carvings that appeared on gate posts:

on stairways:

or roof ridgelines:

After wandering and wondering the morning away on the palace ground, we decided to move on to Insadong Market, where we could bump through the crowded streets of this traditional market to paw and ponder strange goods in little shops.

Eventually, I remembered the unfolding tragedy in Japan. For a few hours we had been far away from it. How easy it is for those of us living in peace and safety to let the pain and suffering of others disappear from sight. No wonder it has often been observed of rulers that they grow remote and removed from their people.