Meeting Mr Kim

by Jennifer Barclay

  ‘No, I’m here because my boyfriend is a drummer and works in the Hyatt Hotel, at JJ’s.’

  ‘Ahhh!’ Sean translated for his friend and they both voiced approval. ‘Nice place!’

  Sean was friendly and I enjoyed meeting a Korean in Seoul I could actually talk to.

  He told me Koreans were scared of foreigners because most Koreans didn’t speak English, and therefore didn’t know how to communicate. In the main, only older Koreans, who learned English from American soldiers during the war, spoke the language with confidence. Americans had remained here since the war broke out, though, so it seemed odd to me that so few Koreans picked up the language. I supposed there hadn’t been much contact. I thought again of the beer labels in English (’Health! Fresh!’); was it for the Americans, or was it trendy? English was taught in schools now, but I expected it would be grammar-based with few opportunities to practice speaking. I’d have thought English would be more popular, as the language of international commerce.

  Still, perhaps because I was happier and smiling more this week, I’d noticed more people smiling back at me, and when that happened it always made my day.

  Gav and I browsed the shops along Itaewonno, where the salespeople spoke English and there were signs advertising custom-made suits for bargain prices. When Gav tried on a black leather jacket, the salesman desperately tried to convince him that it fit by pulling on the shoulders and sleeves.

  ‘Very nice!’

  ‘No, it doesn’t fit,’ said Gav, who had a pretty good idea of when a jacket hung properly and when it didn’t. He worked in a suit shop one summer and was surprised how many customers, especially the shorter and stockier ones, tried to convince themselves something fitted when it looked dreadful. ‘Have you got it in a larger size?’

  The man pulled out a jacket in a completely different shape and colour, and handed it to him, seemingly baffled when Gav said he wasn’t actually interested in a red blouson-style alternative.

  In the evening, I went down to the posh end of Itaewonno again, and found another lovely coffee shop called ‘Chocolate’. It had taken the idea of comfort to kitsch extreme, with loveseats and glass tables, pretty lights, French ballads and Spanish serenades playing through the speakers. My hot chocolate came with whipped cream in a mug, and an artsy handmade folder for the bill. It cost the same as a bus ticket to Kongju or a meal, but hey, I deserved it. The waiters were all smiles, and mine was sporting short cycling shorts, an ankle-length black apron and ‘long shoes’ with square toes and buckles reminiscent of renaissance courtiers. He was rather well built and somehow didn’t look ridiculous, or at least no more ridiculous than the average runway model.

  I probably cut a strange figure here myself in my extrashort green shorts (Abercrombie and Fitch, made in Korea, bought from a stall in Itaewon), army T-shirt (genuine US army article, from Namdaemun Market), rugged black running shoes (Timberland, bought in Canada, undoubtedly the most useful item I brought), and black army shoulder bag. Maybe people in Seoul thought I was with the army. I’d taken to wearing my hair in a ponytail to stay cool; it got so wavy with the humidity that it was easier that way. It was a brutalist look, but I felt in better shape after getting some exercise and fresh air and sunshine during my trip into the countryside, so I didn’t feel nearly as awkward as a month ago.

  People in Seoul took great pride in their appearance – even if the effect was unusual. Lots of young Korean men liked to dye their hair bright primary colours. One I saw had dyed his hair the same striking royal blue as his suit. Generally men wore loose casual trousers and shirts, but that day on the edge of Namsan Park I’d seen a bent old man with a white billy-goat beard wearing a light fedora and a beautiful white hanbok, the traditional pyjama-like suit, the jacket crossed in front in a V like a martial arts jacket and tied with ribbons at the side. His baggy trousers were tucked into his socks, which some men seemed to favour, perhaps as a precaution against mosquitoes bites?

  One afternoon we went to Myungdong, one of the city’s most youthful districts, devoted to fashion and cosmetics. We wandered hand in hand around streets filled with crowds of teenagers buying eyeliners and hair gel, loud music blasting in every direction. The three-storey Starbucks was the biggest in Asia when it was first built. Doll-like girls in space-warrior outfits and leg-warmers promoted cell phones outside. Did anyone in Seoul still not have one?

  A handful of Myungdong’s streets were lined with cheap, cheerful cafes. Ladies sat in the window wearing aprons and plastic gloves, making Korean snack sushi, kimbap. They scooped a spoonful of bap, rice, and layered it onto a paper-thin black square of kim, seaweed, adding strips of luncheon meat or tinned tuna, pickled radish, cucumber or steamed greens, or kimchi; then rolled it up tightly into a fat sausage using a slatted wooden mat, sprinkled it with sesame seeds, and sliced it into bite-sized circles. I asked Gav if he was up for going inside, and he was all for it.

  Inside, the menus and walls featured photos of the colourful food: red sauce, green leaves, bright orange carrot, white rice. A plastic jug of ice-cold water was brought to our table and eventually one of the waitresses overcame her embarrassed giggles enough to take our order. It was steamy in the cafe, smelling of garlic and soybean paste, and noisy with slurping and chattering and people shouting Yogio! for the waiter to come, and waiters shouting hello, annyung haseyo! or goodbye, annyung kyeseyo! Kimbap was eaten with chopsticks and a side helping of hot broth delicately seasoned with green onion or seaweed. Mandu were sweet pork dumplings served with soy sauce. Stews bubbled in black earthenware bowls that retained the heat of the oven. Dolsot bibimbap kept cooking as you ate, leaving lovely crispy bits to be scraped of the bowl. Noodles came with fresh cabbage, carrot, cucumber and beansprouts, mixed with hot sauce, bibim naengmyun. This type of Korean food was wholesome, satisfying, unrefined but rough and crunchy and chewy, all buckwheat noodles and barley rice, and everything was priced very reasonably between 2,000 and 4,000 won.

  On other days in central Seoul we battled thousands of umbrellas thrown up against the rainy season. It rained for twelve hours one night, and was still pouring when I woke up, in the dark, to the sounds of lovemaking. Neighbours left their window open. The air was cool and fresh in the morning, the streets a little cleaner, and that afternoon the sun came out while I was reading and sitting cross-legged on a wooden bench in Namsan Park. How civilised that taking off your shoes in public was considered good form. That night the sky was clear enough to show some stars – I’d never noticed them in Seoul before. It even felt refreshingly cool when I finished my writing session at Click. I’d taken to writing there since the laptop stopped functioning. It was more atmospheric, anyway.

  Tokjokdo, one of about three thousand rocky islands around Korea’s coasts, is in the Yellow or West Sea between Korea and China. Nearly eighty kilometres from the mainland, it was an hour-long, high-speed ferry ride from Inchon. We were off to the island for what we hoped would be a romantic Sunday together. Through the window we saw the craggy rocks of islands, Tokjokdo’s coastline dotted with coves.

  We arrived to a glorious, blue-skied afternoon and an empty kilometre or so of fine sand, a perfect arc of white shelving gently down into shallow waves. The backdrop of low hills was covered with an uninterrupted blanket of green forest. Fishing boats bobbed at anchor as we walked around the bay. There was little to do except watch the crabs scuttle into their holes in the sand as you sipped a cold maekju and prepared yourself for diving into clean, salty water. The tide was out and the water balmy.

  When you’ve been cooped up in a city for days, the body hunched and slumped, what a pleasure to stretch out the limbs in the sun, glide through saltwater, tighten the muscles and breathe deeply. We spent a couple of hours messing around on the beach, then put up our tent on a pristine stretch of sand, with only the seagulls for company. It was good to get away together. Gav looked lovely with a bit of sun on his face, sand in his ruffled golden hair, combat pants rolled up to his knees. />
  The village was set back some way from the beach and hidden behind pine trees. There were upmarket guesthouses and a few restaurants, but most people had set up picnic mats on the beach and were quietly enjoying the cool evening air and the sound of the waves. After the expensive ferry ride we didn’t need an expensive dinner – we were happy to eat kyeran ramyun, spicy instant noodles with an egg cracked into them.

  As we settled into the tent later, some men came by and asked us to move. We were disappointed: this seemed so perfect. It turned out, however, they were only asking that we move up the beach to avoid being washed away by the incoming tide, plus a mere 1,000 won for camping fees and use of the shower-jang. We enjoyed a calm night. Clouds obscured most of the stars, but it was easy to imagine what a wonderful sky you might see otherwise. Lights revealed one or two fishing boats out at sea.

  In the morning, fog rolled in so heavily we could barely see the hills, though the sun was hot. Women were walking down the shoreline picking up seaweed, as we saw them the night before picking shellfish from the sand – both would go in a noodle soup or stew, mostly likely. A wizened old lady came by and sold us hot corn-on-the-cob for breakfast. The mist continued to roll over the island, one moment clearing and revealing the rocky cliffs, the next covering it entirely. It seemed a shame to leave, but Gav had to get back for work. We were packing up our tent for the journey to Seoul, when the lifeguards told us the ferries wouldn’t be running because of the fog.

  In any other circumstances, we’d have happily been marooned here, but Gav had to be on stage in the evening. You can’t hide the absence of a drummer, unless you have an electronic replacement. The others in the band already thought Gav was doing something wrong by exploring the country on his days off. What if he got stranded somewhere? We’d laughed and thought they were being ridiculous. This was a disaster.

  Seeing our panic, a kind man offered us a lift to a village where he thought a different ferry would be more likely to leave from. We packed into his car and were thrilled to see the ferry standing by the dock. Thanking the man profusely, we rushed to the ship – and stood on deck for hours as the crew waited for the fog to clear. Many nervous hours later, we made it back to Seoul just in time for Gav’s Monday night show.

  Gav once again needed new drumsticks, so that week we went back to Nagwon where he tested some out. Who knew there were so many different kinds? The cost was higher than in Canada, so Gav didn’t like to buy too many at a time. Finally, when I was yawning and slouching like a bored teenager – I tried to make up for the difference in our ages by being more immature – we decided to spend some time around Chongno Samga, in the centre of the city, checking out the antique shops around Insadong and then Tapkol Park.

  Tapkol Park was full of hundreds of old men. Some in straw fedoras were reading newspapers on benches, some sat on newspapers in the shade of the trees. Others played a kind of chess called paduk, snapping down black and white counters with a vigorous flourish. One crowd was gathered around a man demonstrating calligraphy, using his wide brush to paint Chinese characters on long sheets of white paper. There was a tent set up in one corner offering other old men acupuncture sessions. Groups of men sat on the steps of the pavilion in the middle of the park, arguing the question of the day.

  The park boasted several national treasures including a beautiful fifteenth-century stone pagoda, tapkol, its ten layers engraved with scenes of Buddha and ferocious animals. The glass that protected it was so discoloured by the smog, slats were made in it for looking through. There was also a giant stone turtle; turtles are a symbol of old age. But the most prominent and moving piece by far was a monument to Independence and to the Sam-il Movement, thirty-three heroes who rebelled against the Japanese occupation in 1919. During the occupation, crops – and even farmers – were sent to Japan to keep its armies fed. Korean children were taught to speak, think and feel Japanese. Many of these old men relaxing in the park had lived through that occupation. The murals depicted defenceless women and children being shot by expressionless, efficient Japanese soldiers.

  The Koreans had resisted so vehemently that the Japanese built a prison in Seoul, ironically right beside the Independence Gate, which was erected at the end of the 1800s to show Korea’s independence as a nation from the old mother state of China. The prison was built to torture and execute insurgents and was still standing, a grim reminder in red bricks. Guerrilla groups had abounded as Japan tried to suppress Korean culture. A group of teachers worked together to preserve the Korean language, which had been banned, and others published hangul newspapers, calling for freedom. Many writers were arrested as ‘thought criminals’ and died in prison.

  Inscribed in stone in Tapkol Park were the words of the Declaration of Independence, drawn up on 1 March, sam-il in Korean, 1919. The declaration seemed to make great efforts not to be antagonistic but to look to the future:

  We have no desire to accuse Japan of breaking many solemn treaties since 1836, nor to single out specially the teachers in the schools or government officials who treat the heritage of our ancestors as a colony of their own, and our people and their civilisation as a nation of savages, finding delight only in beating us down and bringing us under their heel.

  We have no wish to find special fault with Japan’s lack of fairness or her contempt of our civilisation and the principles on which her state rests... neither need we, who require so urgently to build for the future, spend useless hours over what is past and gone. Our urgent need today is the settling up of this house of ours and not a discussion of who has broken it down, or what has caused its ruin...

  Our part is to influence the Japanese government, dominated as it is by the old idea of brute force which thinks to run counter to common and universal law, so that it will change, act honestly and in accord with the principles of right and truth...

  As reserved as the declaration was, the Sam-il Movement was quashed, and as punishment the military killed and wounded thousands.

  In 1995, fifty years after Korea was freed from Japanese occupation, celebrations were held as trade and peaceful relations were resumed between South Korea and Japan. The history of trade between the two countries meant a rapprochement was inevitable at some point. Now, South Korea and Japan were preparing to host the World Cup together – a clock at the top of the city hall proudly counted down the days. The men in Tapkol Park had seen much.

  That night, we heard explosions, and immediately thought of North Korea and bombs, before realising it was the fourth of July, and the sound was fireworks at the US army base.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  THE MONK AND I

  Seonunsa, a head temple of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, was first built during the Paekche Dynasty. Once there were 3,000 monks practising asceticism there, 189 dormitories, 89 hermitages, 144 caves. The great hall was destroyed by fire during the Japanese invasion in 1597 and reconstructed over the next couple of decades. Seonunsa is the name of the temple (-sa meaning temple) and Seonunsan the name of the mountainous area around it (-san meaning mountain).

  Mountains have spiritual significance in Korea. In the country’s indigenous religion, which continues to be ‘an active cultural force’ (Lonely Planet), mountains are where shamans commune with spirits. In the countryside, the only clearings you see on hills are for ancestral burial mounds. Koreans believe that a well-chosen burial site brings prosperity to the family of the deceased. The burial mounds themselves look like miniature hills, in a tradition that stretches back to the Paekche and Shilla kingdoms of 1,500 years ago. Mountains are not cleared for building; however industrialised a valley may be, the forest-covered mountain retains its purity. Monasteries are often situated in mountains; they were forced out of the cities long ago, and although welcome there again, perhaps they chose to stay because nature is important to Buddhists, and peacefulness is good for meditation.

  After a few days in Seoul, I was ready to get back to my real Korean adventure. I’d had enough of late-nig
ht clubbing, day-trip sightseeing and rushing back for the evening show. Seoul had a cultural heritage to explore, well documented in guidebooks, but I wanted to wander again and see where I ended up. Seoul was beginning to feel superficial again; I wanted to engage with people. I wanted to be surprised. There was an old Buddhist temple called Seonunsa in a mountainous provincial park close to the sea, down the west coast again but farther south, and I hoped there’d be a bus going there when I got to the station that afternoon. If not, fate would send me somewhere else.

  Standing around wearing a backpack in the express bus station seemed to be one of the best ways to meet people in Seoul. Men of all ages would come up and ask, ‘Can I help you?’ They could be quite bossy, though. One man asked where I was going, grabbed my ticket and marched me all the way to the gate and insisted on sitting me down in the correct waiting area, even though it was forty minutes until the bus left. They liked things to be orderly.

  To escape more such assistance, I went for food. Korean bus stations, I was finding, are great places to eat. Two ladies were rolling kimbap at one of the food counters, and I ordered a serving, which came with a bowl of hot broth. I had also found service stations to have good snacks, and on the way to Kochang when we stopped for a break I bought hot pancakes fresh from the griddle, filled with honey, nuts and cinnamon. I ate four of them, standing in the warm evening air, surrounded by hills, pleased to be on the road again and already receiving curious smiles.

  I arrived in Kochang in the dark. At 9 p.m. the station offices were closed. I spotted the bus timetable on the wall and tried deciphering the place names from the Korean script to plan my onward journey the next day. As I stood there, a Buddhist monk with pale grey robes and a perfectly smooth head, who’d been on the same bus as me, came up and asked where I was going. I felt rather hopeful of a repeat of my Sudoksa adventures, so I told him that I was heading for Seonunsa, wondering if he lived there. When he asked me if I wanted to stay at his temple for the night, I readily accepted.