Hungry Ghosts: Part 2
by Leigh Hellman, ETA Alumni This is part 2 of a 3 part series, published weekly here on Infusion’s website. hungry ghosts “What did they say was going on? What did the broadcasters say?” “Mostly just to stay inside. They said it was North Korean spies who were making trouble and getting everyone worked up, and that the government was taking care of it.” “Did you believe that?” “I guess.” They look away. “몰라.” [1. ‘Mulla.’ “Don’t know.”] — Gwangju is a city for the brash, for the bluster, for the underdogs. It’s built on the backs of the farmers and the fishermen who brought the central business of the region to it and is sealed up with the sneers from the north and the east that brand it the equivalent of a hick town in a backwater province. Even its dialect—according to posh Seoulites and midland conservatives—is crude and harsh. “Gwangju?” People—Koreans and foreigners alike—laugh brittle like they’re sucking on sour sugar drops. “Can you even understand what they’re saying down there?” “I don’t know.” I smile without teeth. “Can you even eat the bland, limp kimchi up here?” Koreans tell me that I speak with a Gwangju accent myself, although that only ever seems to come up after I’ve mentioned my hometown. Gwangju is more thready back alleys—dotted with neon-tarp fortune teller booths and striped awnings shading food trucks selling cups of spicy fried popcorn chicken and sweet red bean-filled pastries pressed into the shape of carps—than it is ritzy thoroughfares, especially in the older east district. As the tendrils of urban sprawl creep farther out, the roads become wider and the steel-and-cement buildings grow up instead of over. In the west across the river, in the north past the public university, and in the south under the shadow of Mt. Mudeung (Gwangju’s favorite local landmark) neighborhoods that desperately aspire to the wealth, the sheen, the excess and the legitimacy of the nation’s first cities have taken root like garish weeds. Ask a person in Seoul, in Busan, in Daegu or Incheon or Daejeon—ask them if regionalism is a historically relevant problem and they’ll probably say no. Probably say that people who complain about it are just disciples of conspiracy who can’t let things go. Say that some places are simply better—cleaner, richer, more developed, more invested-in. That’s how it is; there’s nothing else to it. This doesn’t even feel like Gwangju might be taken as a compliment by the city’s nouveau riche but a one billion won[2. $1,000,000—give or take.] address can’t unmake a history, and Gwangjuans tend to give themselves away rather quickly. If it’s not the aggressive slang, it’s the contentious mix of city naiveté and a combative unpretentiousness. The joke is that a Gwangju man—a South Jeolla man—would much rather fight than talk. At least, that’s a joke in the city; I’ve been told it again wide-eyed and straight-faced outside of the region. Gwangju is a city with something to prove, a city that cares too much or none at all. Gwangju is proud like a twice-mended school uniform and defiant like cinderblock walls without insulation, daring the February frost to bite back. And maybe I’m drawn to it because it matches a streak of me that’s already there—an echo of a train yard jungle, a city of big shoulders that has always tried to elbow its way to the top. The new city hall looks like a bloated white ship, everyone says so. Fifteen minutes down the road from the glitzy bus mega-terminal, smug faces and shiny oversized suits and white envelopes stuffed with green and yellow bills are in the perpetual process of rebranding the city on paper in bold, swooping fonts: Dynamic! Colorful! Creative! A Global City of Light! Twenty minutes in the opposite direction, the road dead-ends at a massive roundabout and a perennial blue construction wall. Silk-screened signs announce a new pan-Asian cultural complex in the works; eventually, it will occupy the same block that housed Gwangju’s original Provincial Office three decades ago. — Park Chung-hee is often celebrated as the father of modern Korea, a nation categorized by economic prosperity and social restructuring. But it was a feat achieved while Park declared martial law, dissolved the National Assembly, and recast the still-young Constitution as an authoritarian document that granted the president theretofore unprecedented power. Although the Park regime had resembled a military dictatorship from the start, noticeable backlash only began surfacing after the new Constitution was introduced in 1971. For eight years, protests flared up and were suppressed in cycles but never gained enough momentum to pose any real threat to the increasingly totalitarian state. Park survived numerous assassination attempts over the years—including one that ended up killing his wife instead. And then in 1979 one of the highest ranking members of his government sat down to eat dinner with the president, pointed a gun at him, and pulled the trigger. — May in Gwangju is just on the uncomfortable side of spring, when sweat stains start soaking through thin t-shirts and gauzy blouses. The days stretch long and the air hangs rank with pollen and arid dust swept across the Yellow Sea from the far western deserts of China. The humidity is thick like four layers of spongy foundation; it won’t dissipate until the rainy season breaks in July. The cherry blossoms have withered off their branches—for the most part—so there’s not much urban greenery left to distract from the exhaust fumes and grit kicked up by cars-motorcycles-taxis-trucks that weave in and out of traffic like it’s the last day they’re ever going to drive and they have to make it count. Kids are restless in their academic shackles come May, even though they still have two months of school to go until summer break. Winter uniforms—thick wool blazers, white button-ups, sweater vests, and dark skirts or pants—are traded out for their material and pigment-ally lighter counterparts. Name patches, sewn onto breast pockets, start to show their
Hungry Ghosts: Part 1
by Leigh Hellman, ETA Alum The following is part 1 of a 3 part series, which will be published weekly on here on Infusion’s website. hungry ghosts “Tell me a Korean ghost story.” “Like Frankenstein—or Twilight?” “No. Those aren’t Korean. Aren’t there any Korean ghost stories? Any Korean monsters? There have to be.” They shrug. “몰라.” [1. ‘Mulla.’ “Don’t know.”] —– Park Chung-hee was assassinated on October 26th, 1979. He was shot in the head and in the chest by his security chief—and director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency—at whose safehouse he was attending an official dinner. Born in a single Korea strangled under Japanese annexation and colonial rule, Park rose through the Imperial Japanese and Republic of Korea Armies to the rank of general and finished his career off as the third president of the post-war Republic of South Korea. This Third Republic framed itself as a return to democratic civilian rule after a two-year military junta, and for the seventeen years that spanned the Third—and later Fourth—Republics, the Korean national economy witnessed staggering levels of growth that would ultimately set the stage for what Western capitalists sanctimoniously termed “The Asian Miracle.” In huge stretches of the southeastern province, which houses two of the six largest cities in South Korea as well as Park’s comparatively small hometown, he is a legend. In the province that helped elect his daughter as Korea’s first female president fifty-one years after her father’s reign began, the Parks are immortalized on screen-printed banners strung between street light poles at major intersections. There, Park Chung-hee is a national hero. In its neighboring province to the west, he is not. — It’s easy to forget that South Koreans have only lived under democratic rule—as propagated by American ideology so hopped up on misarticulated amendments that it can barely tell its Socratic from its Thermidorian—for less than thirty years. Gazing across the LED-backlit supernova of Seoul, weaving in and out of impeccably dressed herds with bi-gender heels clacking and the fastest fingers in the world typing texts out on domestically-engineered smartphones screens, in a land where calls don’t drop in tunnels or elevators and public subways have heated seats and run on military-precise schedules, foreigners can be forgiven for their misconceptions. When subtitled CNN newsfeeds telegraphing over plasma-screen TVs anchored delicately to corner walls in cafés aggressively debate on the despotic state to the north, I and you and them and we don’t remember what we were never truly taught to begin with. — “What was it like back then, during that time?” “It was different. A lot of things have changed, but not everything.” “What happened?” “We don’t usually talk about it.” They pause. “몰라.” [2. ‘Mulla.’ “Don’t know.”] — We say—us expats who land in Incheon as updated MacArthur pantomimes, full of millennial swagger and skin-language-passport season passes that whisper an inheritance to rule this place like our high-waisted ancestors ruled every place before it—we say that Korea gets to you. Gets in you. Korea grafts itself to your flesh and burrows down into your marrow and it becomes you, even though you can never become it. Stay long enough and you won’t be able to shake it, like a peculiarly virulent cold. Korea becomes an impulse to push through crowds without apology, a repetition of the question “밥을먹었어?” [3. ‘Babeulmeogeosso?’ “Rice ate?” (“Have you eaten today?”)] instead of “How are you?” It becomes assertions that sweet plum juice can help with digestion and that a scalding hot bowl of whole chicken stew on the hottest day of the year is objectively refreshing. It becomes an appropriated resentment of Japan, a fierce attachment to two craggy rocks [4. The islands of Dokdo.] that jut out of the sea between the Korean island of Ulleung-do and the western shores of Okinoshima. It becomes V-signs in pictures and staring at yourself in any passing reflective surface without shame and without arrogance—without realizing it at all. It becomes brushing your teeth after breakfast, lunch, and dinner and slurping hot noodles through lips and teeth and grilling meat with metal chopsticks. It becomes being surprised by shower curtains. It becomes waking up to phantom scents of spicy pickled cabbage and dropping articles in spoken English and a suffocating fire in your belly of you’ve got to get out got to escape that turns to chalky, ashy, lingering embers once you’re gone. — More than Korea, it’s Gwangju that’s sticky thick in my blood now. — Park Chung-hee and his Third Republic promised a reprieve they couldn’t—perhaps never intended—to deliver. The preceding ten-month military junta (known as the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction) had been touted as a temporary transition between the autocratic governments of the First and Second Republics and a more democratic system; it began as a coup orchestrated by then-Major General Park himself. As the junta’s power buckled, now-General Park left his military post so that he could run in the civilian elections—elections which he and other influential junta members had pledged not to enter. On October 15th, 1963, Park Chung-hee was elected president of the Third Republic of South Korea. Records indict that he defeated the Second Republic incumbent (and US-backed figurehead) by a margin of only 1.5477%, or 156,026 votes. — Koreans, if they’re being traditional about it, don’t do cemeteries. That’s not to say that there aren’t cemeteries in Korea, or that every Korean is stuffed into the soil when they die. There are bureaucratically bland sand-colored buildings that are filled floor to ceiling with small-stacked marble lockers labeled by uniform white plaques with three Chinese characters[5. For administrative purposes—birth, marriage, death—Koreans use the Chinese characters that represent their name instead of the Korean alphabetic spelling.], written top to bottom. The implication is urns, although it could (in many cases) be symbolic. I never really found a good time to ask. “어머니, 도와드릴까요?” [6. ‘Eomeoni, dowadeurilkkayo?’ “Mother, help will give?” (“Mother, can I help you?”)] My Korean is stunted, like a frustrated five-year old
Army Lessons
by Leanndra Padgett, ETA ’14-’15 When I began learning Korean, little did I expect that I would need to know the sentence, “저는, 군대에서, 군인에게 영어를 가르칠 거예요,” or “I will teach English to soldiers at the army.” But after moving to Hwacheon, a South Korean town close to the northern border, it has become an essential phrase which I have often repeated. The middle school where I teach has an agreement with the military police wherein the middle and high school foreign teachers lead a weekly English class at a local base. In exchange, soldiers tutor our students. Every Thursday, a fellow native English teacher and I walk to the base, which is only about five minutes from my homestay. As we approach the gate, the guards say “Hello!” wave and smile at us before raising the barrier. Then we eat a slightly awkward dinner in the dining hall that is known for quantity over quality. We usually sit at the officials’ table, and the younger guys who we teach are either quite friendly or ignore us completely (usually indicating whether they plan to attend or skip our class that particular week). After eating copious amounts of the rice, greasy fried chicken and kimchi that we have generously been offered, we walk to the conference room that doubles as our classroom. Once the officials clear out, the students make their way in. I have never quite understood how the participant selection process works, but I know that some are there by choice while others are under a type of obligation to attend our class. Different soldiers come each week, but after several months, we have our regulars who keep the visitors and new students on track. There’s Shawn[1. Names have been changed.] who is highly motivated because he will move to Australia soon. He often stays behind after class to ask questions about living abroad. Then there’s Doug, who spoke English while living in the Philippines and has the skills of a native speaker. We rely on him and a couple of others to help translate when our lessons are misunderstood. Others come and go but by now, we have worked with many of the men of this division. Eating army meals, walking through the base and interacting with soldiers gives us, young foreigners teaching soldiers close to our own age, a blurry view of the world of the ROK army. Before Hwacheon, I never envisioned that my time in Korea would include glimpses into such a world, but it has, resulting in unique memories and unexpected lessons. I have been most surprised, not by the discovery that soldiers are just ordinary people, but by the realization that ordinary people are soldiers. South Korea’s compulsory service regulations mean that every Korean man will serve in the army by age 35. While there are career soldiers, many of these men (if not the majority) are just recent high school graduates and college kids fulfilling their national duty. As I consider the danger and solemnity of their roles, I am shaken to think that every one of my rambunctious middle school boys, every one of my adorable male host cousins – every Korean man – will serve in active duty. I understand why my host mom once said that she was happy to have only daughters. While they have various motivations and causes for doing so, all American soldiers choose to enlist. For Korean men, it is a predetermined course; they must join, just as they must attend grade school. This leads to a unique combination of people from all walks of life, many of whom are not individuals that I would peg as soldiers. They are just ordinary people in a situation of conflict, patriotism and camouflage. Even after months of living here, I am still surprised and affected by the mingling of the military world and the Korean Mayberry that is Hwacheon. For instance, one day a few weeks into my grant year, I heard what I assumed was a train roaring by my school, only to wonder how I had missed seeing the train station before. Looking out the school window, past the soccer field and convenience store, I saw tank after tank charging down the main street. It’s just not what I expected in this town with only one traffic light. Then again, I didn’t expect to find a combination stationary and army supply store either. Colorful stickers and notebooks are shelved next to camouflage jackets and army paraphernalia. But no one in Hwacheon seems to question this unlikely combination. Locals know that you have to get to the bus station early on weekends in order to reserve a seat to or from Hwacheon before the soldiers take them all. I have made the rookie mistake of showing up too late and missed my ride because there were so many soldiers going or coming from their weekend vacation. Daily I see mothers, fathers and girlfriends making the most of their beloved soldiers’ time off, as they walk the streets hand in hand. While in no way does the village feel occupied or in conflict, the military presence is strong here. Hwacheon seems to be, not a military town full of ordinary people, but an ordinary town full of the military. Perhaps the most poignant demonstration of this was a moonlight festival that I attended. It was held at an elementary school a few kilometers north of my town, and a few kilometers south of the DMZ. A fellow native English teacher had invited the foreigners in the community to come participate in her school’s festival. There were carnival games, cups of odeng [2. Odeng is a fish cake on a stick, often sold as street or festival food.] and other traditional foods, group aerobics, field day competitions and a concert put on by students and their teachers – who were also soldiers. I had expected to have fun and see something new, but had not anticipated to be