KANYE and AKEMI meet for black noodles; they laugh and converse and have coffee afterwards, but the sentiment has already begun to flow negative for AKEMI. She will reject him; the course was set. Yet although this happens, the fault for the failure to connect may in fact lie with AKEMI rather than KANYE. KANYE like most Americans failed; he did not pick up the subtle clues to the thinking of a subtle societist as AKEMI, but unlike AKEMI KANYE was exactly what he appeared to be, without artifice or design. AKEMI, small, quiet, controlled, almost doll-like, resented Japanese society and found in English a more natural way of interacting. Yet she never noticed how oddly different she was in the language; she never thought that she was deliberately deluding herself about foreigners because speaking in another language entails different rules and thinking patterns.
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Although everything looks really great on the surface, everyone looks really happy on the outside, you walk around Myeong-dong, you see the crowds of people going to karaoke, going shopping, spending money, actually there’s really so many problems inside, a lot of people are finding it really hard to keep going, they don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I know. You hear things as the daughter of a minister. It’s all superficial all this progress Korea has made. The last twenty years people have become rich, they think they’re as good as Americans or Japanese now, but things have really peaked, it’s not going to go on much longer.
It’s hard being a girl, growing up in this country. We have to be perfect on the outside and then we have to be perfect on the inside too. My school is good and the teachers try hard, but we can’t really get things started the way we should. I haven’t learned as much as I liked; I know that, but I’m hoping you’ll give me a chance anyway. I care about people. I want to make the world better. There’s a lot of people in this world who just want to make money, impress others, get ahead. I think my role in life is to heal and counsel.
This is the thing about Koreans. On the outside, there is this new pride and growing awareness that they can do things just as well as other countries. SAMSUNG, LOTTE, HYUNDAI, LG. Every time a Korean company sells something in the U.S., every Korean person is proud. It’s like, “we can do things better than our parents did. We can really be out there like France or Canada.” But you know, right beneath all that, it’s just the slightest of pushes and everyone is just 1950s again. Pushing, screaming, fighting Koreans while Japanese hide behind walls of polite faces. Americans standing around brash and confident, while Koreans feel inferior and then take it out inside their families, against people who won’t fight back.
We have a pastorship of about two hundred families. At least forty of them are having severe marital problems, at least another forty are experiencing a son going bad or business failure. Eighty huge problems out of two hundred people! Now you know why all those people walking around Myeong-dong are just walking ghosts. The clothes on the outside is clean and stylish, but on the inside, they’re thirty-thousand dollars in debt. Most of them live in houses they don’t own or apartments that aren’t paid for. No money whatsoever.
We can fix things, I think, if we just learn to work together. I don’t think Korea is going to last much longer—maybe another ten or fifteen years and then economic problems will just eat up everything. But if good people get together, if they learn how to help each other rather than just try to impress others or try to push ahead of another person just for the pointless pleasure of it, we can build a new city on the earth. That’s what fellowship is about, about community of people. I minister to families, I reach out to those who haven’t heard the Word. But it’s not just about Christianity. It’s about building out that hole in the inside. A God-shaped hole, yes, but one people will fill piece by piece. We can do this by trying to be a better person, day by day. It’s hard, it takes work, and then you fall back aways, but that’s what it’s all about.
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This concludes WEEK ONE of the FLOWERS OF KEIWHA, first year. Of the tiny missing pieces and uncovered items, the biggest is probably LINGLING-JOHANN, which was elicited by JOHANN but initiated by LINGLING, and according to later commentary (believed), a cynical face-activity by JOHANN to show himself desired and sought after. LINGLING had little English. She spoke Mandarin with JOHANN but attended a Japanese university and thus could speak Japanese with TUSK. She was an extrovert. She was the first to immediately call everybody “a friend” and she in her unsophisticated way believed the world to be a fundamentally friendly place. TUSK was cautious with her, the first few days; but then relaxed his guard. KANYE and LINGLING had no common language between them. JOHANN and LINGLING sang a love duet on Friday’s karaoke night, but they did not take their relationship beyond a few caresses at the door of the dormitory.
Second most important missing item was the impact of Facebook. To some degree JOHANN behaved different during the initial field trip because he saw the cameras around and knew photographs would eventually be taken. The foreigners were already beginning to friend each other and process friend requests; the American culture was to pretty much immediately friend any half-way decent person; the Japanese was to wait and see.
After this there are only little minor bits and scraps of facts to complete the portrait of the first week. AKEMI wore heavy eye make-up every day and continued this habit all three weeks. SHINO was similarly a good-dresser and all present carried off the task of looking presentable without being too fussy. Possibly TUSK was most self-conscious of the process; possibly RITSUKO was the least best dressed and LINGLING did not singularly impress. Most of the food eaten was Korean, although TUSK took advantage of being in Seoul to get the Western food he couldn’t get in China.
A certain symbolic analysis was briefly touched at earlier and deserves just a tiny bit more elaboration. One theory of people as herein presented was that the dividing line is that TUSK-JOHANN-SHINO are the clear cynics, ERI is not a total fool, AKEMI is flawed and innocent for a Japanese, and LINGLING and KANYE are the true innocents. This is possible. But it does not capture the Symbolic possibility of KANYE being Death. If Kanye is Death (innocent but unyielding), then SHINO is without question Sex. TUSK would be Information, JOHANN Play, AKEMI the Child, and ERI War. TABUN could be Music or the Tree, and we can mine all of these symbols until Kingdom Come, Hallelujah.
KANYE, if he consulted either TUSK or JOHANN probably could have landed AKEMI. AKEMI’s flaw was more structural, fundamental, putting an end-date to any possible relationship. But even a two year relationship would have taught both much. KANYE who was top 20% intelligence of Americans, could offer quite a sophisticated analysis of 19th century politics. It was only because TUSK and KANYE spoke totally sophisticated English they could argue on such a level. His position was also sympathetic because it’s true that though he was a gentle looking guy, harmless, and intelligent, one’s first feeling upon seeing him was “Black person.” This was the ongoing reality of American culture and identity. A Japanese girlfriend would have taken some of the feeling of estrangement out of him; it would have helped him to gain a better appreciation of human difference. And AKEMI probably could have found a way to get a few years living in the U.S. out of it; she wanted to leave Japan as soon as possible. As they sat on Saturday amidst the whirring crowds of Ewha students, with the orange-warm incandescent lights landing on blondewood, single moment captured, so much was acting to tear them apart. If only they could have settled the differences! In some alternate universe somewhere, they are still lovers; there are physics theories that postulate worlds in which all possible outcomes have occurred.
At the end of the first week, there has been one date. LINGLING has latched on to JOHANN, TUSK has been busy getting all of his things done but played social manipulator with large crowds, AKEMI and KANYE have made initial passes at each other, SHINO has entered the main arena and felt superior to all, QUARTERBACK has passed around his Fulbright business card, and people have actually studied some Korean. International language programs are sor
t of one large love game, where the quintilinguals look down on the quads, and the tri’s look down on the merely fully bilingual.
The Flowers of Keiwha Page 6