Korea, Are You at Peace?: Tales of Two Women Travelers in a Troubled Land

By J.A.V. Simson

Is there hope for peace on the Korean peninsula?
These deeply personal stories of two Western women reveal the almost unimaginable transformation of Korea from a culturally and politically united peninsula at the end of the nineteenth century into todays dangerously divided land.
These two womens experiences bracket the twentieth century, a dark time in Korean history, when the peninsula was occupied by Japan, divided into North and South, and wracked by internal warbecoming an unwilling pawn of Cold-War superpowers. Despite everything, South Korea has emerged as an international economic success story, whereas North Korea has become a totalitarian ideological nightmare in which leaders spew the rhetoric of aggression and develop nuclear weapons.
What would it take to heal this political schizophrenia that endangers our entire world?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abbott Press
• Release date: Aug 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781458210364

J.A.V. Simson

Jo Anne Valentine Simson is a biomedical scientist who has lived and traveled extensively throughout the globe. For two years, she was an instructor on American military bases in South Korea. Dr. Simson’s writing explores the jagged interface between science and human culture. She currently lives in South Carolina.

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Copyright © 2013 J. A. V. Simson.

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ISBN: 978-1-4582-1038-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4582-1037-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4582-1036-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013911480

Abbott Press rev. date: 8/8/2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Section I: Culture Shock In The Hermit Kingdom

Chapter 1.   Arriving In Asia

Chapter 2.   Buying A Car In A Buddhist Eatery

Chapter 3.   Three Foreign Cultures

Chapter 4.   The Demilitarized Zone (Dmz)

Section II: Into The Korean Backcountry

Chapter 5.   Out Of Town And Into The Mountains

Chapter 6.   Temples, Tombs, And Time

Chapter 7.   Cars, Bars, And Military Bases

Chapter 8.   Monsoon

Chapter 9.   Taegu, Where The Livin’ Ain’t Easy

Chapter 10.   Southern Comfort, Korean Style

Section III: Reflections On The Korean Way

Chapter 11.   Language, Class, And Culture

Chapter 12.   Religion, Belief, And Hope

Chapter 13.   Women In Korea

Chapter 14.   Environmentally Friendly Korea

Chapter 15.   Lasting Impressions,

Land Of Morning Calm

Overview Of Korean History

Transliterations of Korean Words

Suggested Readings

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

This book is dedicated to the Korean people, particularly to the women of Korea, many of whom were kind and helpful when I was in their land. I would also like to honor Park Geun-hye, the first woman president of her country. Stand strong.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PROLOGUE

W hat I really wanted to do after retiring from the Medical University was to travel and have someone else pay for it. When a call came that summer from the University of Maryland, University College (UMUC) Overseas Division offering a teaching job in Asia that fall, I made hasty arrangements—house, mail, bills—and left Charleston, South Carolina for Korea, a part of the globe I had never seen before. UMUC had offered me a teaching position overseas twice before, but other commitments had gotten in the way. I knew if I declined this time, there would be no fourth offer.

For two years I taught on American military bases and lived among the Korean people—on the economy as it’s called. When I use the word Korea, I mean South Korea, or the Republic of Korea (ROK). Historically, Korea extended the entire length of the peninsula that lies between the island nation of Japan and mainland China. It became divided into North Korea and South Korea shortly after World War II and has been since then a potential political tinderbox.

While in Korea I became increasingly aware of deep differences between Eastern and Western cultures. I came to realize the prime importance of respect—even more than trust—in interpersonal relations in Korea. I also experienced the problematic nature of an American military presence in another sovereign nation. In part, Korea, Are you at Peace? is an attempt to record this unfolding awareness.

This book also narrates my efforts to understand the tragic history of the Korean peninsula during the twentieth century. Late nineteenth century Korea was the last Asian country to be penetrated by the West. Soon thereafter, the horrors of the twentieth century overwhelmed the country: Japanese occupation, two world wars, and a national schism, with Korea a pawn in a power struggle between East and West.

As a foil for this historical approach, I compare my observations and insights with those of another Western woman, a Victorian travel writer named Isabella Bird Bishop, who had explored Korea a century previously.

In Korea, I purchased a book entitled Korea’s Cultural Roots by Dr. Jon Carter Covell.¹ In it the author describes a Scotswoman, Mrs. Bishop who, at age sixty three, traveled around Korea on her own in the 1890s. Covell recommended . . .that the reader get a copy of this book, to contrast the pitiful conditions of life in the Hermit Kingdom of the 1890’s with the bustling prosperity and modernization of today. However, the author provided neither the title of the book nor its publisher, and Mrs. Bishop’s name was not given in full. After returning to the United States and pulling together some recollections of Korea, I decided to investigate. Who was this Mrs. Bishop?

A Google search turned up several references to Isabella Lucy Bird Bishop and to her written work, including a book on Korea entitled Korea and Her Neighbors.² It happened to be available in facsimile edition, and I purchased a copy. I soon became fascinated by Bishop and her Korean observations and stories, and I realized that her experiences in Korea contrasted with mine in almost every respect. Incorporating her stories into this narrative allowed me to frame my experiences in Korea against the backdrop of a Victorian lady’s travels in an unknown land.

Isabella Bird Bishop was already a world traveler and respected travel writer, known to most as Isabella Bird, when she undertook a lengthy sojourn to Korea and nearby regions of China, Russia and Japan (1894 – ’96). At that time, Korea was referred to as the Hermit Kingdom of Asia for its resistance to interaction with the West.³ Bishop was there when Korea was wrenched from its isolated, traditional culture and cast into the larger world through trial by fire. Our two journeys frame a long, dark century of devastation and chaos for this beleaguered country and its people. It was during the brutal twentieth century that the Korean peninsula suffered invasion by neighbors, a long, oppressive Japanese occupation, and two dreadful wars—World War II and the Korean War.

Indeed, the itinerary and timing of the last part of Mrs. Bishop’s journey was determined largely by political events, particularly the war between Japan and China of 1894 – ’95. Ironically, that brief war was fought to determine which of those two nations had the right to protect Korea’s independence, which effectively meant the right to exercise suzerainty over the country. Japan won the war, took political control of Korea, and ruled it as a Japanese colony for half a century. After World War II, the country was split—by an agreement between the U.S. and the USSR—into North Korea and South Korea. Shortly after the great powers withdrew in 1948, the Korean War convulsed the peninsula for another three years.

That somber past continues in the part of the peninsula north of the 38th parallel, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea), whose citizens remain locked in a totalitarian cultural nightmare. The Republic of Korea (South Korea) by contrast, has finally achieved a degree of peace, crowned by a new and vibrant economy. It is considered one of Asia’s four Little Tigers, small, economically successful countries of East Asia: Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.

Despite a century of war and turmoil, Koreans retain their traditional greeting, Annyong haseyeo, or ‘Are you at peace?’ This greeting reflects the Buddhist heritage of Korea, in which peace and harmony are expected to accompany wisdom and right behavior. Peace is a primary cultural value for Koreans—both as personal, internal peace through their Buddhist heritage and as public peace in the Confucian tradition. But peace is something that has eluded the Korean peninsula in recent history, and it is still tenuous. American military troops and materiel in the South still face off against the threat of invasion—even nuclear attack—from the North.

My job with UMUC was to teach biology on American military installations throughout South Korea. The people with whom I interacted in classes were mostly U.S. soldiers, although military contractors and Korean nationals with military connections sometimes enrolled. Outside the classroom, I spent some time with Koreans and with UMUC faculty. But mostly, I was on my own, wandering through towns and traveling around the countryside whenever possible, getting to know the country and its people. Like Bishop, I was able to see Korea in a way experienced by few Westerners.

Isabella Bishop and I each recorded our experiences from a deeply personal perspective. She was enthralled by the countryside but largely annoyed by what she perceived as the medieval behavior of its nineteenth-century inhabitants. I focused ever more sharply on the heartbreak of twentieth century Korea and the looming potential tragedy of the present century.

Bishop provided more informational details on the country when describing her travels than I have, but my narrative has the advantage of a unique historical perspective. I have woven her late-nineteenth-century experiences into my recollections and reflections on contemporary Korea at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

My main motive for sharing these impressions of Korea is to offer insight into a country that comparatively few Westerners have visited, that has had few literary champions, and that rarely makes the news unless North Korea rattles its missiles. Several chapters highlight the inevitable dissonances that occur when Koreans and American military personnel interact. Most Americans who have actually spent time on the Korean peninsula, especially G.I.s of the Korean War, are reluctant to talk about their experiences. Events and impressions are reported as I recorded and remembered them, but names of all those I met in Korea, both American and Korean, have been changed.

The front piece map shows Korean provinces and metropolitan areas as they were named when I was in the country (1999 – 2001). The transliterations of Korean place names are those most commonly used at that time. Newer transliterations are now standard; these can be found in a table following the Appendix (p. 165). The back piece map illustrates Isabella Bishops itinerary (circles) as well as the places I visited (squares).

It was worth the effort to penetrate this small jewel of a country that could be considered the Switzerland of Asia. Charming, mountainous, and inhabited by honest, industrious, and fiercely independent people, South Korea and its energetic population do not deserve the intellectual neglect of Western culture.

SECTION I:

Culture Shock In The Hermit Kingdom

Isabella Lucy Bird Bishop, a Victorian travel writer, and I, a biologist under contract with the U.S. military, arrived in Korea by way of Japan—she in 1894 and I in 1999. We were both seasoned world travelers and women of the same age when we came to explore Korea, a country that was hardly on anyone’s travel wish-list. We both experienced culture shock despite many prior experiences of foreign cultures; Korea, the erstwhile Hermit Kingdom, was unlike any country either of us had visited. After initial dismay and disorientation, we both managed to accommodate to our surroundings—she with the aid of missionaries and the British consulate, and I with help from UMUC Overseas Division and the U.S. military abroad. Our separate journeys bracketed the twentieth century, a century of deep cultural dislocation for Korea and its people.

Chapter 1

ARRIVING IN ASIA

W hen Isabella Lucy Bird Bishop arrived in Korea in the winter of 1894, the port of Pusan was crawling with Japanese officials, merchants, and military men. She was already a seasoned traveler, who had visited and written books on North America, Australia, the Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands, Japan, and India. Indeed, she was an exceptional nineteenth century British woman, who supported herself by the sale of her travel books. She had been transported to Pusan from Nagasaki aboard a Japanese steamship, the Higo Maru . The large number of Japanese operating in this Korean port might have signaled that something was amiss, but in early chapters of her book, she does not dwell on the paradox.

Pusan, which Bishop transliterated as ‘Fusan’ throughout Korea and Her Neighbors (and which is now generally transliterated ‘Busan’) is the major port in southeastern Korea. It was the city from which General MacArthur mounted the defense of South Korea after the invasion from the North in 1950 that started the Korean War. When Isabella Bishop was there, Pusan was controlled by the Japanese, who had made it a treaty port in 1876, using a form of gunboat diplomacy similar to that previously exerted by Western powers on Japan and other Asian countries. This was part of a long-term Japanese strategy to control shipping and trade in eastern Asia. By the end of her stay in Korea, Bishop appeared to be sympathetic to Japanese imperial impulses in Asia, perhaps reflecting the British imperialistic worldview of her time.

When Isabella Bishop initially arrived in the port, her impressions of Koreans were positive. She found the white-suited Korean a "novelty, and while resembling neither the Chinese nor the Japanese . . .is much better looking than either, and his physique is far finer than that of the latter."⁴ She also declared that "mentally, the Koreans are liberally endowed. . . The foreign teachers bear willing testimony to their mental adroitness and quickness of perception."⁵

I also arrived in Korea by way of Japan, seriously jet-lagged and disoriented, having spent more than twenty hours in the air from Charleston, South Carolina to Los Angeles and then across the Pacific. I was one of fifteen faculty members newly recruited to teach college courses to American military personnel in Asia for UMUC in the fall of 1999. We flew into Tokyo for our initial orientation to the unfamiliar Asian culture and to the almost equally unfamiliar American military culture within which we would be working.

Following three days of orientation in Japan, those of us teaching in Korea flew on to Seoul to complete training on the Korean peninsula. I was to teach biology at Osan Air Force Base (Osan AFB) near the town of Songtan, about forty miles south of Seoul. In Seoul, we filled out official documents and forms for military passes, heard lectures on Korean history and culture, and toured Seoul and the nearby countryside.

During that time, we made several trips to monuments, temples and museums within easy driving distance of Seoul. We spent one afternoon at Independence Hall, the national museum of culture in Chungchongnam-do. For those interested in language, do means ‘region’ in Korean. Another day we