국제 시장 - "Ode to My Father"

In Korean class, we watched a film called "국제 시장". The Korean title translates to "International Market", a reference to the famous traditional marketplace in Busan, but its English title is "Ode to My Father".

"The greatest story of the most ordinary father"

I didn't know too much about the film beforehand, only that it is currently South Korea's second-highest grossing film ever (despite only being released last December). Also, people tend to describe it as South Korea's version of "Forrest Gump". I could certainly see many thematic parallels: both movies follow the life of one man across a backdrop of important national events and tell tales of loss and reconciliation, change versus tradition, and hope amidst terror.

The story is about a man named Deok-soo who, as a child, loses his father and a younger sister during the Hungnam Evacuation (during the Korean War). Along with his other younger siblings and his mother, the family relocates to Busan and struggles to get by even after the armistice, with Deok-soo begging for change and chocolate bars from American GIs after school. Always needing more money to support his family, Deok-soo spends his entire adolescence and early adulthood working odd jobs and even moves to Germany to work in dangerous coal mines. The dramatic and colorful stories from the past are interspersed with scenes in present-day Busan, when Deok-soo is an old man (who speaks with some excellent Busan satoori) reliving his memories one by one.

Everyone says that "Ode to My Father" is a sad movie. While that is certainly true -- I cried more than once -- I think it's more accurate to call it a movie that exemplifies the Korean sentiment known as 한 ("han"). Now, han is hard to explain. According to this article in the Korea Times, it is a "deep-seated sense of grief and grievance [against] very powerful agents of injustice." It is a mixture of sorrow and resentment in response to wrongdoing and manifests itself emotionally in a variety of ways, not just sadness. More peculiarly, however, han can accumulate, both within a person and among a community, or even, as it is most often cited, throughout a nation. Han can become the emotional vehicle for a national lament, and it is this kind of han that "Ode to My Father" so masterfully epitomizes.

Deok-soo as a young beggar boy in 1950's Busan

You see, South Korea possesses a history that bursts at the seams with woe. It may be a developed country today, but for the past seventy years, it has struggled with brutal colonization, abject poverty, a civil war that divided its people, utter dependence on Western nations, and throughout all of this, a sense of shame that it could not provide for its people until it finally pulled itself by its bootstraps into the twenty-first century. Thus, Korea as a nation feels han: because families like Deok-soo's were separated by a war they did not start, because it could not afford to educate all of its children, because young men had to labor and die in far-flung foreign countries in order to make enough money to send home. Every remarkable event in this one character's life was connected in some way to the constant struggle against an invisible -- or perhaps many-headed -- oppressor.

It's no wonder that this film's most ardent fans comprise the generation that lived through all of these atrocities. Korean 할머니 and 할아버지 (grandmothers and grandfathers) now in their seventies and eighties, as well people who grew up in the tumultuous decades following the Korean war, really drove the tickets sales that boosted its ranking. It's said that the older generations watched and rewatched the movie not just to experience the catharsis that came with two hours of nonstop han, but also because of 그리움 ("keulium"), or nostalgia. Despite the bleakness of the characters' lives in the movie, there are small moments of joy and a dogged determination to hold on to the past.

Deok-soo dancing with his first love in 1960s Germany

For example, although Deok-soo's life in Germany is almost literally a hellhole (for twelve hours a day, at least), he still gets to meet the love of his life, a Korean nursing student at the local hospital named Young-ja. There's a sense in their scenes together that the wonders of youth and infatuation can make months of eating stale bread while covered head to toe in coal dust worthwhile. And as the present-day Deok-soo continuously refuses to sell the humble imported goods shop he inherited from his aunt, we see a familiar narrative: the small business owner in conflict with with impertinent developers who only want high-rises and care nothing for tradition.

It is in this area, however, that one might be able to pick at a weakness in the film, namely the way it has whitewashed or wholly ignored certain parts of Korean history, under the guise of patriotism. This is a tricky issue to handle, because the director, Yoon Je-kyoon, has already stated that the film has no political aims or undertones. However, it isn't possible to create a movie meant to inspire a love of country without at least passively taking a stand on certain very unlovable things about Korea's recent past. Even I noticed the lack of any mention of the huge political unrest during the early 80s. And while Forrest Gump got to meet US Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, Deok-soo doesn't even brush the collar (옷깃만을 스쳐도 인연이다!) of any of his country's leaders, whose regimes were often dictatorial, and the absence is more than a bit conspicuous.

This excerpt from an LA Times review brings up another point I wanted to make: Lee Taek-kwang, a professor at Kyunghee University in Seoul, [says] that "Ode" reflects the conservative ideology that for many years exhorted South Koreans to forego individual rights in the name of national development. Referring to one scene in "Ode" where Duk-soo shuns a discussion with his wife to stand at attention for the national anthem, Lee told the Kyunghyang that "Ode" "effectively endorses the idea that the state can exploit its people."

At first I found the aforementioned scene to be funny, but after a moment's thought, I realized that it was actually convicting. The film's protagonist is endearing and the sacrifices he makes for his family are awfully inspiring, yet a close scrutiny of his life and ideology from another angle reveals that he is no more than the model citizen that an autocratic, brutally capitalist government wants. Although Deok-soo ostensibly joined the Korean forces in Vietnam because he needed money to help his family, the narrative is structured such that it is his patriotism that brings him back to the battlefield. He is not a powerless refugee, but a savior to the people fleeing war, as he did when he was a child; and there is a hefty message in that.

Yoon created "Ode to My Father" as a dedication to his actual father, who died when the director was in film school. He claims that he wanted to help Korea's younger generation understand the tribulations that their parents and grandparents had to endure to help bring the country to where it stands proudly today. In this sense, he has certainly created a masterpiece tear-jerker that drives the point home. A simple scene in which Deok-soo pens a letter from Vietnam to his wife really struck my heart: in it, he wrote, "It’s such a relief that it was us, and not our children, who were born during such a difficult time," and Young-ja sobbed on the floor of her home while I cried silently in my seat. The singular thought that filled my mind as I walked home that day was, "How little I know about what life was like for my father and grandfather and their generations! How scarcely I've asked them about their past sufferings!"

I wonder, often, how much today's young Koreans, including those in this country and in the global Korean diaspora, understand the concept of han. It's supposed to be a national sentiment, so can someone outside the country's borders carry it? Or is it solely the ethnic connection, which even a child adopted from Korean is meant to be able to feel because of the blood that runs through their veins? Or both? (I am certain the director intended both.) So then what about a random non-Korean American like me, who has learned about Korean history and spent a good chunk of his adult life living here? When my soul hurts with compassion and sorrow from watching a movie like "Ode to My Father", I don't know if I can call that emotion han. I have built jeong (정) with many Korean people, some of whom feel like family, but does that make me a part of the in-group? Can han be learned or appropriated? Tough, abstract questions, these...

But I can say at least that watching this film has not only given me a better perspective on the historical context that grounds both Korean ipseity and collective identity, but also enlightened for me parts of the unique debate over how this identity ought to be preserved and represented now and in the future. Besides all of this, "Ode to My Father" is a beautiful and satisfying film, so I highly recommend it.

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P.S. There is a very cool story about the casting of one of the actors in the film. I vaguely recognized her when she first appeared on-screen, but I never would have guessed exactly where I'd first seen her. But after I read an article about how she was cast, I was extremely surprised! You can read the article here, but I warn you that there are major plot spoilers in it. So if you plan to watch "Ode to My Father" but haven't yet, save this article until afterward. Seriously.

The War Memorial of Korea

Color guard rehearsal at the War Memorial of Korea

One of the last things on my Korea bucket list was a visit to the War Memorial of Korea, a museum dedicated to Korea's bellic history. It may not be as exciting as shark diving or bungee jumping, but I enjoy visiting museums on my own. When I go with a tour, there is never enough time scheduled to see everything at a properly slow pace, and when I go with friends, we always end up separated anyway because our interests differ. So, I first paid a visit to the museum with Monica on Monday, and although we caught the tail end of a really interesting color guard rehearsal taking place in front of the museum, we found out that the museum itself was closed, as is the case every Monday.

So, I went by myself a few days later, and the following photos are from this second visit. I'd heard that its exhibits are extensive and worth an entire afternoon's visit, and indeed, I spent a good four hours wandering its halls.

A South Korean flag carried by a member of the student soldiers' battalion during the Battle of Pohang (August 1950).

Memorial to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives at White Horse Hill

What surprised me straight off the bat was that it was not a museum about just the Korean War, fought from 1950-1953. True, the museum had more than two floors dedicated to this important and transformative period in Korean history, but it actually was meant to cover the entire war history of Korea. That being the case, the exhibits actually began with coverage of the wars fought between Korea's ancient kingdoms, as well as confrontations with Japanese invaders leading up to the twentieth century. I didn't find these very interesting, though, so I hurried on through.

The next thing that surprised me was -- for lack of a better way to describe it -- the entertainment value of the exhibits. Of course, I don't think a museum should be boring, but the way this museum chose to keep up interest for visitors, particularly children, was rather odd to me. Take for example the re-enactments of famous battles using animatronics and CGI bombs and explosions. It reminded me, unfortunately, of North Korea's war museum in Pyongyang, which I visited last February. Having been recently renovated, that museum made use of state-of-the-art technology to immerse visitors in as "realistic" a recreation of the war as possible. I use scare quotes because the information presented as fact in Pyongyang's museum is clearly distorted to present a DPRK-positive account.

Life-size diorama and multimedia display of one of the battles along the Han River during the Korean War.

"Shooting Area" for the kids to experience what it's like to use an assault rifle in a wartime situation. Classy.

In any case, I remain amused at the cornier aspects of the museum, but at the same time impressed by the depth and breadth of the exhibits. All the important information was provided in English and Korean, and many interactive screens provided additional facts in Japanese and Chinese. There were many tour groups visiting, as well as many people just wandering the halls on their own, children running from the prop guns to the model fighter planes. This was one drastic difference from my experience in Pyongyang: there, I had to stay with the tour guide at all times and listen obediently to her propagandistic explanations of history. There was only one other tour group in the museum, and otherwise all was silent and cold. In Seoul, I had the freedom to go anywhere in the museum that I wanted, and overall it was louder and felt more alive.

On that note, I also happened to visit on a "fourth Wednesday", which is the one day each month when soldiers from a local garrison give a free public concert in the main hall of the museum. The performances were extremely diverse, from traditional Korean instruments to classical opera to a guy who played "Fly Me to the Moon" on the harmonica. I like how a museum can be an active performance space that engages the community instead of just an inert building to walk through.

These tenors sang "Funiculì, Funiculà", and they were really good! This was the firs time I've seen opera performed live by Koreans.

These two soldiers performed the traditional Korean instruments 해금 (haegeum) and 장구 (janggu).

I think my favorite exhibit in the museum, or at least the one that touched me the most, was the hall on the third floor dedicated to the UN forces sent by sixteen countries to aid in the Korean War effort. Not only was it well designed, it was also extremely detailed. The exact statistics on how many soldiers each country sent, who led them, and what special things they did were all listed, and their uniforms were on display along with small things like soldiers' diaries. I think it was noble of South Korea to devote so much space to thank the international community that helped them.

In contrast, Pyongyang's war museum presents the conflict as one of Korea versus the evil United States and barely mentions Russia, China, or the UN. There is supposedly an exhibit that covers the Chinese troops' (invaluable) participation in the latter half of the war, but it certainly was not part of our tour.

A memorial for the UN soldiers who participated in the war effort. The words on the wall read, " With the US as main force, 21 countries dispatched combat froces and medical aid units for the freedom of the Republic of Korea.

The last part of the museum that I visited was its outdoor display of ships, plans, tanks, and rockets used in various modern war efforts. Again, I couldn't help but compare it to the display of military artifacts in Pyongyang's museum, which consists entirely of abandoned and captured enemy vehicles. American and British tanks, planes, and even the USS Pueblo. North Korea keeps all of these old hunks of iron as "war trophies" and uses the more-recently captured vehicles liberally in its propaganda. In Seoul, however, all the vehicles are replicas, just another exhibit.

A few tanks, including one that looks almost cute!

Ships and planes at the War Memorial of Korea. You can see Namsan Tower in the hills in the background.

Well, that's all for the War Memorial of Korea! I spent a good, long afternoon there and learned a lot. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about modern Korean history. It's especially important for people living in Korea to understand the Korean War and get the story as told by South Korea (while comparing it with other accounts for balance and perspective).

The museum is located in Yongsan, not far from Itaewon. To get there, you can take the subway (lines 4 or 6) to Samgakji Station (삼각지역). From Line 4, leave from exit 1 and turn right, then following the road for less than five minutes. From Line 6, leave from exit 12 and follow road until you reach the museum. It is open from 9am-6pm every day except Monday. More visitors' information can be found here.

War Memorial of Korea

SNL Korea fail in their attempt to satirize Korean adoptees

This news story has been making the rounds on Facebook, and I thought I'd share if you weren't aware.

Saturday Night Live Korea has a history of performing skits that poke fun at various members of Korean society in a way that outrages Western audiences. In the past, they (along with many other TV shows) have used blackface to satirize Africans and African-Americans, and this drew ire from the international community. Perhaps you could point to cultural ignorance in defense of their choice of comedy, but what they've done now is pretty much inexcusable.

A recent sketch parodies the reunion of a Korean adoptee arriving in Korea for the first time to meet his birth mother. What starts off as an emotional meeting quickly descends into idiocy as the adoptee butchers his Korean, uses improper honorifics, and asks his mother extremely rude questions. The humor is supposed to come from the adoptee's complete unfamiliarity with the Korean language and culture, but the international Korean adoptee community is not laughing at all.

One of my best friends in Korea is an adoptee, and she has never met her birth mother. I can't imagine what it must have felt like to watch this video and think about how this video reflects what Korean society thinks of her. Was the audience laughing because it's funny that a person separated from their family and raised on the other side of the world has difficulty communicating their thoughts and feelings? Do they find it funny that what could be the most emotional moment of their life is reduced to an overwrought demonstration of kicking and flailing that is meant to be taekwondo? Are they aware the adoption is in many ways an industry in South Korea that began with the orphans from the Korean War and continues today with babies of underage or unwed mothers being exported all around the world?

SNL Korea's skit is insensitive at best and utterly heartless at worst. In choosing to satirize this very painful reminder that the Korean diaspora is irreversably split and scattered, they show disrespect not just to adoptees, their birth families, and their adoptive families, but to all of Korea, all around the world.

Some links:

KoreAm Magazine coverage, a summary of the issue as well as a link to the original video.

Open letter from Jane Jeong Trenka, a very heartfelt and beautifully-written plea for #AdopteeDignity.

Reddit discussion of the skit.

But the most convicting thing I've read by far was the dozens of comments left by the international adoptee community on SNL Korea's Facebook page, blasting them for their poor taste and cruel sense of humor and relating some very personal stories about their experiences as adoptees. These comments are real. I hope the folks over at SNL Korea get them translated and actually read them. We'll see what happens...

Being gay in the DPRK - article from NK News

Just a link today to a story I read in the NK News about attitudes toward homosexuality in North Korea (DPRK).

It is striking that there is reportedly a complete lack of awareness of sexual minorities in the communist state. I mean, when it comes to countries like Iran, where the conservative (and willfully blind, in my opinion) leadership claims that, "We don't have any gays", the denial is outright preposterous, since, well, it's Iran, and its religious revolution didn't happen so long ago that people have forgotten how liberal it was before.

But North Korea has been shuttered away from the world for sixty years, which is enough time for a few generations to become convinced that the only reality that's ever been is the one their government has taught them. And in this reality, homosexuality cannot even be conceptualized. It's so invisible that there aren't even any laws against it.

I don't expect things to stay this way forever, though. The more North Korea opens up, and the more exposure it gets from South Korea and other neighboring countries, the more the conflict between homosexuality and the pro-heterosexual nuclear family ideals of the communist regime will grow. I mean, surely gay-positive South Korean dramas like Life is Beautiful and Reply 1997 have made their way across the border via the black market by now?

One more thing: a Westerner who organizes tours of North Korea (Yes, it's a thing. You can visit NK for vacation.) said that the country is "attractive as a gay tourist destination for the militarism, the kitsch, the innocence too."

Um, no. That's offensive. Can you please explain how militarism and kitsch appeal to gay tourists?

P.S. Crazy news: A US veteran was detained by North Korea just before he finished a tour and made to apologize for "war crimes" committed during the war sixty years ago. It's a strange story, and I could comment on it further, but... you should read about it, too. I hope and pray that he is released soon.

The Media and North Korea (Part 2)

A continuation from yesterday's post about the bias I saw in Western media reports about North Korea. Admittedly, only one of the three articles I shared yesterday was a decent example. In any case, here are three more links for you all: one interview, one news story, and a website for a documentary, followed by my own commentary.

Sixty Years After the Korean War, the Cold War's Unending Conflict Continues (TIME, 7/7/13)

This article is an interview with a professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin and author of a new book about North Korea. In the interview, Jager lays out an easily-digestible overview of North-South Korean relations since the end of the Korean War. I appreciate that she gives the side-by-side histories of both nations and strives to highlight the lasting cultural significance of the technically still-ongoing conflict.

The reason I'm sharing this article is that I believe it actually presents an unbiased view of how the politics are playing out at this time. Apart from the casual speculating about the North's nuclear arsenal (note that, of course, the interviewer had to end the article with the customary fear-mongering), I think that Jager gave a fair analysis of what's currently at stake for the North Korean regime in the near future. She did not focus on apocalyptic worse-case scenarios or call into question the sanity of the entire population. In fact, one gem in the interview was when she talked about the two Koreas' "legitimacy struggle". Mentioning that North Korea prides itself on the purity of its heritage, having avoided Japanese and American military and cultural influence (or contamination, if you will) over the past sixty years, she makes an unexpectedly valid point that there is not only one standard for determining which side "won" the conflict, if indeed there can be any victor. I know that Koreans from both the South and the North attach the utmost importance to their Korean identity, so I'm interested to see what they would each think of the other's claims to "true Koreanness".

North Korea Grapples with Crystal Meth Epidemic (Wall Street Journal, 8/20/13)

Okay, now this is the article that sent me over the edge. When I first read an article (or blog post?) in the Washington Post that was based on the information in this one, I was actually indignant because I felt that it was poorly-researched, misleading, and, of course, guilty of the same anti-North Korea rhetoric that has become all too common. The original article wasn't much better, as it turns out. According to these two pieces, it seems as if a North Korean province that borders China has seen a dramatic rise in users or addicts of crystal meth. The so-called epidemic began when North Korea's state-run meth labs become poorly regulated enough for common folks to take what they knew and conduct their own drug-fueled science experiments at home. Now, up to 50% (?!) of the residents of that region use crystal meth for recreation and as a home remedy for various illnesses.

When a fellow Fulbrighter shared this story on our Facebook group, I wrote that it sounded like rumor-mongering and that readers should take the articles with a grain of salt. But I should clarify: I am in no way contesting the truth of the article or the report in the North Korea Review upon which it's based. I'm not crying libel, and I'm not trying to defend North Korea.

The thing is, it is of little concern to me whether or not North Korea has a thriving underground meth trade. If it does, there's little chance of it spilling across the border and affecting me here (unlike the drug wars currently being waged in Mexico). If it doesn't, then that's fine, too. As it is, I have no way of knowing what's true or not. Furthermore, I think that the article's authors are also basing a lot of their story on guesswork. It really relies on the shock factor (I mean, look at that title: is that hyperbole or what?) for its substance.

Maybe there is a crystal meth problem, or maybe it's being overblown. But if I'm going to worry about the livelihood of North Koreans, I'm going to worry about their prison camps and starving rural villages first. You see, what concerns me most about this kind of story is how it typifies the way American media seize any potentially sensational headline related to North Korea and use it to fuel our own nation's xenophobia. It's always, "North Korea is going to bomb us!" "North Korea has spies everywhere!" "North Korea might have crashed the Asiana flight maybe possibly!" "North Korea is batshit crazy!" And now, "North Korea is drowning in crystal meth!"

North Korea is no longer a mysterious country. Though the public hardly knows anything more about it than it did years ago, it has come onto the international scene in an interesting way: it is now a half-feared, half-mocked blot on a map from which only bad news emanates. On the news, we never hear anything about its people. We are rarely encouraged to send aid or to help its purportedly starving millions, but North Korea is completely vilified. The journalism I see today seems only to aggravate this problem, because bad news sells.

We Americans are being fed only what we want to hear, and that, if anything, sounds like an addiction problem.

Letters from Pyongyang

Lastly, here is the website of a documentary by a Canadian-Korean filmmaker named Justin Lee who recorded the journey of his family as they tried to reunite with relatives in North Korea. Their trip played out like any other organized and monitored tour to the country, only they actually were able to interact with their North Korean family members (at least on a superficial level).

The trailer was full of pretty shots and boasted many film awards, but I couldn't find the actual film. In fact, I only happened across it from reading a review of it on 8Asians. The reviewer had an interesting take, calling it well-made but lacking depth, due partly to a dearth of original footage and partly to the absence of any real answers to the questions it poses. Perhaps another casualty of North Korea's information blockade -- not letting any secret information out -- and the Western media's entertainment filter -- not letting any relevant information in.

If I get a chance to watch it in the future, I will.

The Media and North Korea (Part 1)

Anyone who calls South Korea home can attest that the presence of a nuclear political enemy just a few hours to the north does not, contrary to certain expectations, pose such a great threat to the day-to-day normalcy of life here. No matter what propaganda North Korea sends out from behind its tightly secured doors, people in the South don't pay much attention.

The same can't be said of Americans, who seem to fear North Korea more than is warranted. I think that the American media has a lot to do with this. While I don't obsess over the latest news pieces that address North Korean issues, I have been paying enough attention to notice that there is a strong negative bias against this subject. Not only is there never good news from North Korea, journalists tend to blow up the bad news, making problems out to be worse or more worrisome than they have to be.

I am not comfortable with the image of North Korea that Americans are being fed. To them, North Korea is a backwards country and a dangerous threat, a nation of brainwashed Communists who are all starving but also diligently training to go to war against the US as soon as the order is given from their dictator-king. It's like our own propaganda, supported by classic American xenophobia and the need for us to have an enemy so that we can feel protected from them. The more I read about North Korea on American news sites, the clearer this bias becomes.

Here's what I've been reading (3 links out of 6; the rest I'll post tomorrow):

While the Rest of North Korea Struggles, Pyongyang's Fortunate Few Go Shopping (TIME, 8/19/13)

This article seems to give some insight into the changes that are occurring in the North Korean economy, particularly highlighting the signs of an emerging middle class in the capital city, Pyongyang. However, it seems to be more important to the author to sharply contrast this with the survival struggles of the rest of the country, providing caveats to each sign of growth previously mentioned and ending with a criticism of the DPRK's human rights issues.

Now, I know that news reports must give a balanced view of any situation, and I don't deny that the social and economic problems in North Korea are very real. But I'm curious to know what the point of this article was, if not to contribute to the already well-established trope of North Korea being an incomparably problematic country. Even the headline says nothing new. The title could have been, "North Korea Is Just as Unequal and Scary as It's Ever Been, Or Maybe a Little More So". Breaking news, everyone.

Life Inside North Korea Revealed by College Student (Yahoo! Flickr moment, 6/13)

Benjamin Jakabek's flickr photostream

This short video (along with second one on the site and an accompanying blog post) displays some photographs taken by a college student who visited North Korea on a guided tour. I genuinely enjoyed seeing his photos and the moments he captured of happiness and leisure in Pyongyang. He visited during May Day, one day out of the entire year when people were allowed to "wander around freely without anyone following them." He got to see kids playing and families having picnics in the park.

On the other hand, I'm not as impressed by his attitude. Thanks to him being a Canadian "with no real political agenda," he was able to visit the "mysterious" country he's always been interested in. I wonder if he realizes how much privilege he actually has, as a white male Westerner with the means to travel? Did he ever reflect on how much his experienced depended on this privileged identity? I was a bit rattled by his insistence that things in North Korea looked normal, as well as his comparison of the morning Communist broadcasting to the daily calls to prayer of Muslim countries. It reeks of exotification.

At least he was smart enough to acknowledge that his tour was very tightly choreographed and monitored, but I'm afraid that what he's sharing, as well as the way in which he's sharing it, does exactly what the North Korean regime wants out of its rich Western visitors: paint a purely positive and humanistic portrait of the country.

It's difficult to strike a balance between constant vilification and broad stroke of propaganda; in my opinion, Jakabek's skewed piece falls too far on the end of the spectrum that brushes aside the country's problems in favor of a slick slideshow. It wasn't really a "glimpse of what ordinary life looks like for North Korea's 25 million citizens," especially since 22 million of them live behind the curtain he tried to peek behind but never did.

In 1983, All of Korea was Crying (KoreaBANG, 7/24/13)

Jo Rim-hwan's photography

Speaking of photography, this article from KoreaBANG has some very touching portraits. It also taught me something I definitely did not know: in the mid-1980's, about the time when South Korea's economy was rocketing skyward while North Korea's began to crumble, a South Korea television show called "Reuniting Separated Families" aired. This show aimed to bring families separated either by the 38th parallel or by other factors surrounding the Korean War, including Koreans who grew up outside of the peninsula. During recording sessions of the show, "thousands of people brought posters and signs to the front of the National Assembly, where television cameras would pass by and give them a chance at a nationwide audience." A Korean photographer took some very sad and moving photographs of them in their desire -- or desperation -- to see their families again.

This hope and heartache is one aspect of South Korea that I have hardly seen. Since the cessation of the Sunshine Policy, attitudes toward reunification and North Korea in general have cooled considerably. I hear South Koreans talk about the shift in public opinion somewhat sadly but without any conviction that things will change for the better (whatever that may entail).

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Well, it does seem as if the links I posted went off tangentially from my main point. I do have a few more to share, but I'll post them tomorrow. I hope you enjoy reading and looking at those photos! What do you think about North Korea and the American media?