You Can't Go Home Again

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to attend a very unique and rare show at the Yecheon Cultural center: a performance by a troupe of dissident North Koreans.  Though the show was hardly advertised (if at all, officially), I got word of it less than an hour before it began and was off to see what it was all about.

The entertainers had been a troupe in North Koreas capital, Pyongyang, before they escaped to South Korea.  While their details were vague on their past history or the story of their dissent it was very clear where they were from.  Their manner of speaking was immediately and obviously different.  While I'm not versed enough at Korean to pick out the nuanced variations in their inflection from the general South Korean dialect, the leader of the troupe's speech resonated with the sharp, almost militaristic tone of the North Korean state television news broadcasts picked up by our media sometimes.  This in itself seemed somewhat sad, as the woman opening the show was clearly anything but harsh and militaristic--it was simply the way she had learned to speak the language, at least before an audience, and it's left to mine and anyone else's imagination how she grew up and what kind of life she led.  The thing I was most aware of each time she was on stage, moreso than how she spoke, was that when she smiled it looked like she was about to cry--a tendency I haven't seen on any other Korean's face.  Thinking about it later I realized that when her mouth was pulled into a grin her eyes didn't go along with it, narrowing as they normally would, giving the curious impression of someone who is distraught but ordering themselves to smile anyway.  Whatever it was, I was starkly aware that in some intangible way her features bore her past all too well.  "If you leave during the show, I'll send you to the North Korea," she joked darkly in Korean before the first performance began, and chuckles rippled thoughout the crowd.

I didn't know what to expect from the show, and indeed I suspect few did, besides that there would be singing involved.  The first act was some of the members performing a song which I assume was called Pangapsumnida ("nice to meet you") as this word, repeated, constituted the chorus.  On an enormous projector screen behind the stage video played of elderly Koreans finally being reunited with family members they lost after the border was drawn between the North and South in the destitute days following the Korean war (a reunion organized years ago in a rare joint agreement between the North and South).  I hadn't expected  to get teary during the show but around the auditorium I sensed there were plenty more misty eyes, perhaps none more so than the most elderly members of the audience.

The night featured plenty more songs, some of them North Korean in origin, other ones oldies well known by the audience.  At one point the singer came down into the audience and let some old women sing a few of the lines of the song on the microphone while the crowd intoned the lyrics all around.  As the singer walked down the aisle, women gripped her hand firmly as if they didn't want to let her go.  It was in some way a moment of fascination for all, the first encounter with a North Korean (or at least a former one), but in they way people held and reached for the singers hand with elated smiles on their faces there was also an air of reunion--of a long lost sister and daughter finally returned to them.

Besides singing the snow included plenty of dancing and also a bit of a magic act.  One dance by the troupe's young women was done entirely with pots balanced on their heads, and another was a traditional Korean fan dance.  The entire show was throughly enjoyable and the crowd couldn't have been more receptive.  The time passed quickly and when it was over I found myself still ready to see more.  I wished that I could meet with the performers and talk long with them--there's so much I want to know about their lives and so many stories I wish I could hear them tell, but alas, it wasn't in the cards (and even if I could meet them, I'm nowhere near capable enough with my Korean.)  Of my many questions, I continue to wonder who they left behind in North Korea when they escaped.  Do they have friends there, or family?  Is the troupe a family unto itself, or were they the only friends each other really had?  I suppose I'll never really know, and in a way maybe it's best that I couldn't speak to them and bring such things up.  Returning to the North would almost certainly mean imprisonment or death (the first one quickly leading to the latter, I don't doubt), and without a way to contact those inside I imagine they've had to move on and reconcile whoever they did leave behind in a way that most of us can scarcely imagine; the only option left on the table when you can't go home again.

Kim Jong-Il is Dead; Can We Hope for Something Better?

North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong-Il, died today, leaving everyone else unsure of exactly who is running the country at the moment.  Kim Jong-Il, who ruled with an iron fist over an isolated population brainwashed by an elaborate cult of personality, has left his youngest son, Kim Jong-un to succeed him.  While no one knows when exactly Kim Jong-un will take control of the country--or at the very least become a figure head for it's powerful military and propaganda engine--reports suggest that he's already been overseeing domestic affairs for some time now.  The question is this:  can South Korea, East Asia and the world expect something better in the future?
 
I'd like to think there's a glimmer of hope.  Kim Jong-un was educated abroad in Switzerland, which is neutral towards the North/South Korea conflict, at the International School of Berne (an English-language school).  This means that he has to at least have some idea of  the international community and has probably interacted plenty with many different nationalities.  Whether he's adopted an attitude and outlook on his country (and place in it) that is different from his father's remains to be seem.  Any hope I have rests mostly on the idea that he is ready to open North Korea to the world a bit, if only enough to feed the starving and destitute North Korean people whose lives and well being his father sacrificed mercilessly in favor of building nuclear weapons, fortifying his massive army, and providing disgustingly unjust luxury for himself and top elites in Pyongyang.  Perhaps Kim Jong-un has simply been biding his time until his father's death and he is open to the world to some extent.  If not, I suppose North Korea is only headed to more of the same: a starved and miserable future with a deluded population kept purposefully ignorant of the reality beyond their borders.  It's very possible, and unfortunately likely, that Kim Jong-un has been brainwashed beyond repair, in which case his father's inhumanity will live on in him.

Only time will tell.

Flowing With Yecheon

Yecheon is the name of my town, which translates into English as sweet water.  Apparently it's long been known for its clean wells, though my students tell me that the river running through it, the han-cheon, shouldn't be fished anymore as it's "dirty" (people still do it anyway).  In fact, just several minutes walk from my apartment there's what is considered the signature old well in the town, sitting rather inconspicuously just off the street.
   
After nine months here Yecheon is now a true home.  I can't say that impression came to me during my first weekend here.  I arrived in the town after being in Korea only a week and was dropped off at a temporary flat that had belonged to the previous foreign teacher, where I would stay for a few days while my new currently-being-finished apartment was ready to move into.  I was left to explore the town freely for the next few days before my upcoming first day on the job.  At that time I naturally had no idea where anything was (except for a big yellow building I had been told was the grocery store).  I ate some of the food left in the cupboard by the previous tenant and then ventured out to explore, mentally mapping my route of wander carefully in order to make it back to the black iron gate that was the only identification of my building's entrance.  The first thing that struck me was the oldness of the place.  I don't mean this in an ancient sense, I mean it in the sense that everyone on the streets seemed late middle aged to elderly.  Old women (adjumma) squatted on the sidewalk beside baskets and trays of vegetables, fruit and fish.  Old folks hobbled slowly up the street in front of me and towards me.  I didn't know it at the time, but I was on the main street of the town.  It was awash with spring sunlight and on that first stroll everything appeared monochrome and washed out with that sunlight.  The color was all there, I just wasn't seeing it yet.  I wasn't really looking at buildings, just the road and sidewalk, feeling stared at and trying not to trip over or crash into anyone's stalls, boxes or baskets.  I wasn't used to such narrow or narrowed sidewalks.  In front of some building aquariums sat out in full view, displaying their close quartered eels and fish for the world to see.  I couldn't read hangul (the Korean alphabet) yet, and I saw absolutely no English written anywhere on that foray.  Eventually I wound my way back to the grocery store I had been shown earlier.  Here the hangul struck again.  Any time you go to a new grocery store you need to orient yourself to its particular lay out.  In a foreign country, with foreign foods packaged in unfamiliar containers without any English on them this becomes a bit more daunting (fortunately hangul is extremely easy to learn).