Impressions of S. Korea: Insadong

I want to visit a place in Seoul, a place that is memorable, a place that is atypical or unique. She suggests Insadong. She says that it is a very traditional village. That's the way I understand her, but my Korean is not very good. Sometimes, I completely misunderstand.

We get on the train. We get out of the train. The crowded streets of Seoul. There are streets vendors, selling various things: food, DVD's, clothes, toys, etc. My wife, Inji, purchases some DVD's for our little sons, Daniel and Samuel. They cost around 2 or $3 for new DVD's. They have been copied from American originals. Although I feel bad about the violations of intellectual property laws, I love the price.

I ask Inji where Insadong is. She asks various people where Insadong is. We are pretty close. I'm waiting. In one sense, I'm not all that excited about going to Insadong. I've seen traditional Korean villages before. It'a not all that exciting. Mostly you learn about the lives of the nobility. When we imagine ourselves in the past, it is never as a peasant or some annoying bum. It was always as a princess, as a noble or as someone noteworthy. The peasants are a sidenote to history, sometimes not even of interest to Marxists. My young niece in America is obsessed with princesses. Barbie is not exactly a normal, everyday person. Traditional villages, sometimes I am bored of them.

We are walking through the streets. I notice that all the retail stores are Korean stores. There's not as much English as before. Is this the real case or am I dreaming? Inji goes into a store and looks at Korean linen or other handiwork of Korean craftsmen, Korean seamstresses, or Korean.... After about the third or fourth store, I grow tired. Shopping is one of my least favorite activities. I ask Inji when we are going to Insadong. "This is Insadong," Inji declares. This is Insadong? I thought she said that Insadong was a Korean village. "You misunderstood," she declares.

All or most of the retail store sell items that are genuinely Korean. Korean ceramics, Korean clothes, Korean artworks, Korean food, and other products of Korean hands. I wonder what it means that they are genuinely Korean. What kingdoms are considered more Korean than some? How is their influence seen in modern Korean culture? What are the characteristics that make it Korean? Who or what ideology determines what it means to be Korean? I do not know the answer to any of these questions.

I smell a food that I distinctly recognize. It brings back memories of childhood. I have warm memories of childhood. I remember and then I don't remember. The smell is coming from a street vendor who is selling fried or steamed caterpillars. Fried caterpillars? It's disgusting, I think. Why would have eaten fried caterpillars? Did I eat them when my family was poor? I buy some and eat some with a toothpick. It tastes good at first. My wife eats some. I quickly grow tired of the taste. I feel bad for the caterpillars. "Have I become too Americanized?" I wonder.

Inji has studied architecture at school. She loves museums. She wants to go to a museum. We enter one museum. It is on the third floor. They are featuring the illustrations of a children's book writer. At least I think that is what Inji said. I'm so sick of asking people to translate what they are saying or to simplify what they are saying. The illustrations... they are dreamy and lyrical. Perhaps because many Korean work so hard, they spoil their kids. They come home from a long day at work and see their children. After all the criticisms that one can get from work, the happiness that a child can bring is a welcome relief. Koreans do punish their kids, but they also pamper their kids. They also make their kids sing, make their kids dance and look lovingly upon their mistakes. They also have a human heart that longs to be made whole. "Why had I looked at Koreans so harshly most of my life?" I wonder. I remember a Korean who said, "Koreans are rude," after the LA riots. What does that explain? Who chose him as a representative of Korean people?

The lyrical memories of childhood on these visual artworks, they remind me of my happy childhood when my mother used to prepare birthday parties for me. I remember walks to and from school during which I would buy food from street vendors for $.20... was it? I remember going to school and making other students laugh. I remember moments of real happiness, moments of having a home.

We go into another museum by a Korean artist. The colors are stark, black and white. Sculptures, made out of an undefined material, have been pasted onto the painting and are jutting out toward the viewer. Most of the artworks here leave me indifferent. I can already see the American influence. I have no idea what the American artworks that are cited here mean. Why should I care what the Korean translations of those artworks mean? Modern and postmodern art, most of it, leaves me indifferent.

On another floor of the same museum, there are paintings that leave me partially indifferent. I see flowers blooming from a portrait of a king and his wife. I see tigers, one after the other, in a whirl. It's kind of childish but at the same time endearing. Bruce Cummings, a famous historian of Korea, says that the age of maturity in Korea is 34. I can understand why it is so hard to grow up in Korea. You have to be like Nietzsche's camel and bear all the "Thou Shalts" of one's parents and culture. It is very difficult to become a lion or a tiger in Korea's case (The tiger is the national symbol of Korea). "I shall" can put a terrible strain of guilt on you, especially if you are going against the culture.

I grow thirsty. We go to a traditional tea house that is also a tea museum. People are drinking tea surrounded by a museum. We start to talk. I am trying to understand Inji who is the first daughter, who had to be a model for her younger brother and still younger sister. I am the last son. By the time I came along, my mother was probably exhausted. She wanted to shape us into the model figures she saw us as. As a ceramic artist shapes the matter into the jar or artwork it is supposed to be, so my mother wanted to shape us. It can get tiring, all this time one puts into training a young child to be an adult. But all this respect for nature, what does it mean?

"Insadong," I think, "It's a lovely set of shops." Koreans don't have to "come and go, talking of Michelangelo" (T.S. Eliot, The Love Songs of Alfred J. Prufrock). History is continuous. All the past is present in current Korea. Koreans don't have to look back on history and feel that they are infinitely less significant than past personalities or artists. Modern Americans live under the shadow of the "Greatest Generation" who saved the world by winning World War II. Modern artists live under the shadow of Picasso, even now. In an episode of "Will and Grace," I think I saw the faces of Joyce Carol Oates and others on dishes as characters were chatting or doing something else. Many Koreans speak disparagingly of distinctions between fine wine and less fine wine. I'm sure there are many Koreans who do make distinctions too.

"What did you think of Insadong," Inji asks. I don't say anything but I must confess, I really, really loved it.