Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles

by Simon Winchester

  To celebrate this turning point (the only other points so celebrated are the second—or, in Western terms, first—birthday and the hundredth day from birth, when thanks are offered for the child having made it thus far) a great party is staged. It is known as the hwan-gap and has become such big business in modern Korea that special hwan-gap halls have been built in most big cities—places where families can entertain their elders in a style of which Confucius would have approved.

  The old man or old woman at the centre of the occasion sits, dressed in silks and satins and bows and furbelows, on a huge pile of multi-coloured silk cushions, like a large-scale Pekingese dog in a Barbara Cartland romance. Before him or her are ranks of gleaming candelabra and castles of sweetmeats—biscuits, ttok (rice cakes), apples, oranges, almonds, toffees—and beyond them an unceasing tide of youngsters who kowtow and in a myriad of other ways display their undying respect and affection for the Honoured One. (In the commercial hwan-gap halls the amount of food on display that you are allowed to eat depends, not unreasonably, on the amount of cash you have decided to pay up front. The rest of the food stays right on the table, all wrapped in plastic to keep it fresh-looking for the next celebrants on the day’s schedule.)

  After an hour or so of homage has been paid a party gets under way; there is music (cassettes in the hwan-gap halls, unless you pay a great deal for a live band; a friend on the drums and the zither if you’re out in the countryside); there is dancing; and there is a great deal of drink. Koreans are an unashamedly bibulous people, and no stigma will attach to those (unless they are Buddhist monks, of course) who stagger away from the hwan-gap several sheets to the wind.

  This celebration may have been a relatively muted affair, but it was a gastronomic triumph. There were dishes of rice (plain and glutinous) and many kinds of roasted meat; there were nine different types of kimchi (for Haedarng’s wife was celebrated all along the valley for the strength and piquancy and variety of her pickled vegetables, which—like most country people—she buried from November in the strong brown earthenware jars designed for kimchi manufacture); there were oysters, quails’ eggs bedded in straw, cloves of raw white garlic, yellow turnips, great scarlet radishes, gleaming piles of silvery whitebait, seaweed (in pressed and toasted squares, as well as in wild untidy masses); neat chunks of tofu, pink and shivering shrimps, various sauces and condiments of every colour imaginable, chillies (red and green); and strawberries, apples, pine kernels, and pears. If any dish was emptied, the monk’s wife scuttled off for more. Rice was consumed in prodigious amounts—the children fattening up before my eyes—so that after an hour of spooning the stuff in (and flattish spoons are provided, as are two pairs of chopsticks, one steel, the other wooden) their bellies were as hard and distended as drums. There was a great deal of contented belching, and legs moved beneath the table in a constant dance as everyone—all seated on the floor—squirmed for more space and more comfort as the meal progressed.

  Then a birthday cake, Western in appearance, was brought in, with a circle of twelve dark candles (for the completion of the yukgap) and the additional three in the centre. The old lady blew the candles out, there was much applause, and then the cake was put neatly back into its box to be taken back to Seoul. A huge crystal decanter was brought carefully into the room: it held a colourless liquid and a huge ginseng root that, with pinkish arms and legs attached to its thick and wrinkled trunk, looked like a headless little man floating in preserving fluid. The root was so huge, and the decanter’s neck so small, that I began to try to puzzle out how the one got into the other, but it took only about ten minutes for the soju (for that is what the liquid turned out to be—the grain-spirit firewater with a taste varying between paint thinner and formalin) to take effect, and I forgot my enquiry until the next day.

  Confucian drinking habits—and there is an organization known as the Korean Young Men’s Confucian Association that issues directives on how to drink properly—are exceptionally tough on unseasoned skulls. Koreans often drink with the specific objective of becoming drunk, and what might pass for extreme courtesy at table is simply an elegant way of ensuring that this happens. Basically it involves giving a glass (with both hands; everything in Korea is offered with both hands, indicating that no hand is free to aim a blow or draw a sword) to your friend at table and filling it to the brim with liquor. He will drain it at one draught, then pass it back to you and fill it for you, whereupon you drain it, and offer it back to him. You never fill your own cup; you never refuse drink offered to you; you will always be offered drink; you will get drunk very quickly; you will remember very little of the proceedings; and you will (especially if you drink soju) have the mother and father of all hangovers.

  All I recall is, very soon after lunch, when the rest of the household was sliding into hazy slumber, that I insisted on getting going again. They didn’t want to let me go, nor did I much want to leave; but eventually I was given a crumpled piece of paper with an address scrawled on it—the address of another monk who lived at a monastery in the Naejang Mountains. ‘He helped to tutor me,’ said Haedarng as he and I stumbled along the pathway from his little one-man monastery. ‘He will look after you. A good man. Anyway, it was an honour, a real honour. I wanted to tell you one thing: I am reminded of our great cartographer, Kim Chong-ho. He walked through Korea many times and made the first real map of Korea. It was in 1861—a date many of us remember with pride. You are like Kim Chong-ho, in my mind. So thank you for coming. And thank you for sharing in our little birthday. My mother was honoured too. I hope you like my theory. You will keep in touch with me, yes? There is so much more to say.’ Then he giggled and belched and turned very red in the face. ‘Farewell, my friend. The Lord Buddha will watch over you. Farewell.’ He turned and in an instant was gone, swallowed up in the shadows of the balsam firs, a good and remarkable man in a good and remarkable place.

  I wound my way on tiny country lanes up and through the eastern edge of the range of hills. It was warm and hazy, there were a few puffs of pure white cloud, and the countryside and the smell of warm greenery made me think of a late spring day in Kent or Suffolk. Had I been in England there would have been the first practice games of cricket on the village greens, and a few energetic gardeners would be edging their lawns or out on their hands and knees bedding in the summer’s roses. It was a Sunday, and all would be quiet. But here a bright blue cement truck rocketed past me, throwing a trail of stones and dust in its wake. It bumped noisily up the hill to a distant site where I could see a drainage culvert being built. Here everyone was working: there were the silhouettes of the planters, bent double and moving slowly like huge black snails across the glistening plates of the paddy; chige men, with their ancient wooden A-frame carriers strapped to their backs with thick baling twine, staggered past carrying their loads of green leaves or vast bundles of twigs; two roadmen were sitting in the shade, waiting for a fresh load of gravel to pour onto the tar—they offered me a drink from their jug of milk-white makkoli and handfuls of rice. Nowhere in this immense Sunday panorama did I see a single Korean taking his ease, enjoying the warmth and the pleasant sights and sounds of the season, taking pleasure in doing nothing.

  I startled a snake—or rather, we startled each other as I nearly stepped on it and shot about six inches into the air. It was a green beast about four feet long, not, I hoped, a specimen of something called Agkistroden halys pallas, which is the only local snake with a potentially fatal bite. Had I been a Korean I probably—even if it had been A. halys—would have given chase, caught it, whirled it around my head and smacked it against the ground, cut off its head, unzipped its skin, and boiled it up for soup. Snake potions—for treatment of neuralgia and TB (vipers are favoured for these ailments), for longevity (albino snakes are said to help here), and as cures for everything, with yellow python being the favoured generalist—are expensive and highly regarded; and in the better restaurants paem tang, or snake soup, and paem sul, or snake wine, are taken for pleasure to
o, like dog soup and ginseng tea.

  Back on the metalled road I did eventually come across Koreans who were trying to enjoy their Sunday off. But even they were working at enjoyment rather than indulging in the ‘creative loafing’ that grips the West (and that indeed is the title of a magazine in Atlanta devoted to the more mellow pursuits). So, in large groups, they cycled or walked past me (cheerily, always waving, even the fellow who rode straight into me and knocked himself and a half-dozen others to the ground) or they went off to rock climb: In every case they were kitted up in brand-new expensive gear so that they all looked the part, even if they didn’t particularly care for the sport for which they had dressed themselves. (‘The rules for mountain climbing,’ one writer on Korea noted, ‘demand not that you climb a mountain, but that you dress up in heavy boots, alpine hat, coloured jacket, and have a knapsack or pack over your shoulder. If you are thus equipped you are “mountain climbing”, even if you get on the wrong bus and end up at the seaside.’)

  It was a long afternoon, and I had to fight off the effects of the morning soju session as I marched on northward. I sat for ten minutes in the sun outside a small shop, but so many people came up to me and wanted to shake my hand, denying me the very peace I craved, that I gave up and marched on. But by seven, when the sun was sliding down behind yet another range of hills, I was at my destination, the Zen Buddhist temple of Paekyang-sa, where I was to meet the man whose name was on Haedarng’s piece of crumpled paper.

  The setting was near perfection. I had been walking into a deep valley in the Inner Sanctum Hills, the Naejang-san, the slopes on either side covered with maple and oak and cherry trees, with thick clouds of pink-and-white blossom and pale green early leaves. The river beside me was full and rushed over the stones loudly. The roadway was thronged with walkers streaming out of the national park after the holiday—so this is where they had all been going—and when I came to the gate I found myself the only person wanting to go in, and the park officials very confused.

  ‘Nine hundred won,’ a man demanded. I tried to explain that I was to be a guest at Paekyang-sa temple, but when I mentioned the word for sleep—chada—he pointed to a hotel sited just outside the gates. No, I said, I wished to go inside. ‘Nine hundred won,’ he said. I was about to pay when I thought to mention the magic word sunim, the word that had worked so well in finding Haedarng’s home. There was a chorus of relieved sounds and nodding heads, the gate slid open for me, and I went through—the remaining walkers now dribbling out looking at me very curiously.

  By the time I reached the temple itself all the remaining visitors had gone and the place was silent and empty. A placid lake—the river had been dammed by logs—reflected the long curving roofs of the temple buildings beyond the high walls; smoke curled lazily from one of the buildings; the faint sound of chanting could be heard from within. I crossed an old, moss-covered bridge, then passed beneath the entrance gate and its traditional four enormous statues of the guardian kings—their eyes bulging, their piglike nostrils flaring, their faces a strange mixture of menace and benignity. A fence of red palings kept them at bay; but in any case they let me pass unmolested, their purpose being only to halt the passage of the foes of the Buddhist faith. (They have been tested only twice in the thirteen centuries since Paekyang-sa was built in AD 632, and on both occasions they failed. The temple was sacked twice by invaders and was destroyed on two other occasions by fire.) The buildings now grouped beside the lake and beneath the vast exposed cliff of White Mountain were built in 1917 by a Zen master—the temple being a classic Zen structure of the Chogye sect. A single bo tree—a ficus tree under which the Lord Buddha meditated and found enlightenment—stands in the temple courtyard, having seen many of the buildings’ previous incarnations and listened to the striking of the temple’s bell and gongs.

  Do Yaun Sunim, tall, shaven-headed, about thirty years old, and with a face of immense kindness and sagacity, stood near the entrance, his long grey robes stirring in the evening breeze. His trousers ended in what resembled old army gaiters, and he had on thick grey socks and slippers. He seemed very pleased that I had found him.

  ‘Haedarng telephoned me. He said you were walking here, so I knew what time you would arrive. You are right on time. I hope I may walk with you when you leave. You will be staying, of course?’

  He took me to his rooms—two small ondol-floored cells, with paper screens and, in his work room, a desk and a chair. Books on Buddhism were piled on his desk and by his dressing table. He sat me down, took my bag, and began slicing an apple. ‘We will eat after prayers. But you might like this to start with?’ I chomped hungrily on the apple: he took down his prayer robes, his cowl, his belt—all of the same grey woollen cloth, all perfectly clean, impeccably folded—and one by one put them on, tying the ribbons that fastened them, aligning belts and straps with a precision born of habit and intense training. (I once met an English Buddhist in training at a monastery in Hong Kong; he had spent several days learning the exact way—the Zen way, the meditative, pleasurable, meaningful way—of folding his scarf.)

  Outside a young monk was beginning the sounding of the temple bell—an enormous, acorn-shaped iron bell, ornately carved and chased—that stood on a covered podium by the entrance gates. The monk drew back the four-foot striker that hung beside the bell suspended on thick ropes; he looked at his watch; he looked at the sky; he muttered a soothing sutra or two, and struck the bell with all the force and weight of two hundredweight of wood.

  The sound was huge, a great roaring gong sound that cannoned across many octaves and twined itself into many harmonies. It filled the air with vibrations, it echoed around the hills, it cascaded from within the bellhouse itself, and then, just as it was beginning to fade away, the young monk struck at the metal lips again and another layer of perfect clean sound overtook the now dying notes, and the old echoes were supplanted by new ones, and new harmonies came and went with a strange and beautiful but slightly unsettling effect. The temple bell had been booming out its evening call here for centuries; it was almost as much a part of the mountains as the rocks and the streams themselves.

  When Do Yaun was ready we went to the main Buddha Hall, the central Buddha glimmering in the candlelit gloom with his two attendant Bodhisattvas, the deities who, the teaching has it, postponed their own enlightenment so they could help novices on their way to nirvana. The hall was huge: at one end there were perhaps twenty monks, including Do Yaun, who stood, tapping on their wooden moktak clappers and chanting sutras to the time of the slow bell beat. Now that I had had some practice, I found the kneeling rituals less of a problem, though climbing socks on a freshly waxed wooden floor do not make for great adhesion, and I stumbled my way through some of the faster changes. A disciple noticed my clumsiness, and placed a silk kneeling mat on the floor for me, which made at least the impact a little softer.

  Dinner was simple—two bowls of rice, tofu soup, and an apple—there is a strict rule in Buddhist temples that not a grain of rice can be left in a bowl nor a drop of water in a glass. A large and cheerful woman was on hand to do the washing up.

  And then, it being all of eight o’clock, Do Yaun suggested sleep. He unrolled the yo and the ibul, gave me a proper pillow in place of the wooden brick on which he, too, chose to rest his neck, and he turned in and was sleeping like a child within minutes. It took me a little more time, but the creak of the trees in the wind, and the cry of a distant owl, and the occasional clap of a moktak from some cell where private devotionals were taking place set me drifting off. All my muscles ached pleasantly—it had been a long and strenuous walk—and no matter how hard the floor (and tonight there was but a single yo on the ondol floor, Zen concessions to Western needs only going so far) it was wonderfully good to relax and let consciousness fade slowly away.

  The alarm jangled tinnily. I looked at my watch. It was 2:45 A.M. and Do Yaun was dressing, as quietly as he could. He saw me awake. ‘Sorry,’ he shushed. ‘Meditation time. You will hear the b
ell, I am afraid. But try to sleep.’

  Zen meditation in Korea is said to be very different from Japanese Buddhist meditation—though both aim to produce the same end result, the enlightenment that goes hand in hand with attaining a near-unattainable state of Buddhahood. In Japan the common practice is for the disciple to meditate by ‘just sitting’ (and being beaten on the base of the spine by patrolling disciplinarians who can see if the back is becoming bowed by the intense pain) or attempting by deep thinking to answer a koan, a riddle set by the Zen Master. In Korea the koan’s essence only is studied—a single, outwardly simple though bafflingly pointless question known in the calling as a hwadu. The hwadu may be the expression ‘No!’ or the question ‘What is this?’ or ‘What is this mind?’

  (One of the more famous Zen masters in Korea was Hyobong, who was a judge during the Japanese occupation—in fact, the first Korean to be allowed to sit on the Colonial bench. But after having to sentence a man to death, he became suddenly disenchanted with the whole idea of colonial justice, resigned, and became an itinerant toffee seller, during which time he thought deeply about how he could best lead a decent life. He finally decided to become a Buddhist monk and to start proper meditation.

  He then chose the hwadu ‘No!’ and in 1931—though it might be difficult to accept this kind of thing happening so recently, so much does it sound the stuff of legend—had himself walled into a tiny hermitage, with only a tiny hole for food to be passed in and out. He stayed there for eighteen months, until one day in 1933 he realized that all of his doubts had been resolved. He had himself unwalled, and as a conclusion to his lengthy meditation on the hwadu ‘No!’ wrote the following lines: