Jack London in Korea

I am not a fan of Jack London. Anyone who writes a Marxist novel as embarassing as 'The Iron Heel' or anthropomorphises a stupid dog as in the children's 'classic' 'White Fang' is no literary hero of mine.

I like his quotes about his time in Korea, though. Some details from the site 'Literary Traveller'

Some examples:
Soju is ". . . white, biting stuff distilled from rice, a pint of which would kill a weakling and make a strong man mad and merry.", makgeolli "...a warm, sourish, milky-looking drink, heady only when taken in enormous doses.", and
Kimchi a pickle "... ungodly hot but which one learns to like exceeding well... It is a sort of sauerkraut. When it is spoiled it stinks to heaven."

His novel 'The Star Rover' has a section on Korea starting here: Star Rover chapter 15

The main character gets drunk, eats dog, has Duk crammed into his mouth by kisaeng, chases the local women and gets in trouble after a change in management. All fairly familiar stuff, really.

One quote from a book of reportage about Korea always makes me laugh. London writes "... the first weeks of a white traveler on Korean soil are anything but pleasant. If he be a man of sensitive organization he will spend most of his time under the compelling sway of two alternating desires. The first is to kill Koreans, the second is to commit suicide"

Not my experience, certainly, but then my organization is not as sensitive as it used to be.

Body and Soul

You may or may not already know this, but the concept of 'mind' is slightly different in Korea. Ask a Korean where their mind is and they may point to their chest. 'maum'/마음 is one translation of 'mind'. Koreans can seem very emotional, quick tempered and sentimental, though of course everything depends on the individual's temperament. My wife is all of the above, wears her heart on her sleeve, and, I guess, keeps her mind where her heart was.

Me First!

Just back from the UK. My first taste of Korea came at the airport. The plane was delayed and, when we got to the departure gate, there were alot of people already sitting there. Alot of Korean people. I queued up in front of the economy check about ten minutes before boarding to get the baby on quickly- airlines usually seat you first, away from the other passengers, if you have reserved a place for a kid under two years old. People queued up behind us. An ajjuma pushed me in the back and stared at me stone faced. Children ran around screaming while their parents gazed peacefully into the middle distance, doing nothing (Digression: the contrast with the shopping mums at TK Maxx was enlightening. I remember one Arndale mum threatening her kid with the unfinished statement "If you don't sit down in your push chair I will hit you so hard...". The kid sat down.). Finally, predictably, inevitably, a middle aged ajjoshi and his family sidled up to the side of the queue and started their own line. With them at the front.

At that point I realised I was still 12 hours away from Incheon and told him, in a crude combination of Korean and English to join the back of the line. I don't like personal confrontation, but it worked on this occassion. I wouldn't have bothered, but others might have decided to join the new queue, being as it was nearer the front, or maybe even started a third one. We all know what that means...

Psychedelic Traditional Modern Korean Art

Today I visited the Busan Museum of Modern Art with my wife and baby. The little one got excited, shouted a bit and threw cheese on the floor, but there were only about two other people in the whole gallery so no one was really disturbed. And that was just the wife, ho ho.

The best of modern Korean art can hold its own with the innovations from China and Japan. I remember seeing Japan and Korea share exhibition space at the Venice Biennale in 2004. One thing I don't like, however, is when Korean artists paint cherry blossoms, fish markets, mountains and other traditional subjects in a pastiche of 20th century western artistic styles (impressionist, cubist, can't be arsed to think of any more more so will write etc., just like my students).

Lim Nam Jin, whose work I first saw at the Gwangju Biennale a couple of years ago and which is now on display in Busan, inverts this unoriginal approach. She- I of course initially assumed it was a he- treats modern Korean life as a sort of psychedelic piss take of traditional Korean painting. Visually her paintings look great- big, colourful, accessible, strange and full of vulgar humour. Above are a few examples. Lots of other interesting and exciting stuff to see in the Busan gallery at the moment.

I don't know much about art, but I know what I like quote unquote.

North Korean Art

I saw this picture on the 'Ask a Korean' Website.


















All I could think was, 'Nice carpet and...wait a minute... for a piece of totalitarian propoganda that painting looks KIND OF AMAZING'. The artists name is Kim Sung Geun (김승군) and, like the soju bottles below, it is hard to find images on Google. I think his style is fresh and original (not sure about the last picture, though) and I will be using it for my computer wallpaper at work. Imagine having an entire wall covered by an original...

Blue 007 Soju

Soju used to be more imaginatively packaged. I think these are some of the only pictures of the old blue soju bottles outside Naver.

I have two questions. Why did the soju companies change from blue to green bottles? And why aren't I drinking a bottle of awesome 007 soju from a blue bottle, wearing an official 금복주 T-shirt RIGHT NOW?

Definitive proof, as if more were needed, that everything in the past was better than it is now.

Korean Literature- The Good, The Bad and The Weird.

The best place to begin experiencing Korean literature is probably 'The Portable Library of Korean Literature' series, a collection of short modern novels. As this review from the blog Korean Modern Literature in Translation points out, these books do tend to dwell on the miserable experience and aftermath of the Korean civil war. Other themes to the fore include family relationships, food, sickness and poverty. To be honest, this came as a quite a disappointment to me after the technicolour violence and hyper reality of modern Korean cinema. Reading about the minutae of everyday rituals and the petty frustrations of economic reality in Korea is educational, even necessary, but not always appealing. Even very recent works like 'A Photoshop Murder' by Kim Young-Ha were heavy on the soya bean soup and complex web of social obligations.

I particularly disliked the (apparently much esteemed) Yi Mun-Yol's 'An Appointment With My Brother'. A quick extract: '"Your brother is more than ten years your senior, so I think you should make a bow" Mr Kim said to my brother...It was a great relief to me and helped make my first words to my brother easier to bring out. I returned my brothers full bow with a half bow, and could use the plain form of speech without any hesitation or uneasiness'. Would it be culturally insensitive to suggest that this is awkwardly translated and makes the author sound like a pompous arse/stuck up ajjoshi? Most of the book continues in this vein. I kid you not.

Yi Sang's 'The Wings', on the other hand, was a revelation. A vivid description of mental dislocation and disintegration, it seems to stand completely apart from the other works I have read in the series and has encouraged me to look out for more translations of Korean novels. Yi Sang was heavily influenced by European writers, and and this may have made his work more accessible to me. Still, he is something of a national hero (having spent time in a Tokyo jail for 'Thought Offence') and most Koreans, young and old, will have studied his work in high school. See perhaps the only photo taken before his death in 1937, aged 27, below:



















Finally, a poem from the poet Ku Sang, from the 'English Translations of Korean Literature Series'. I am not a fan of his work, finding it laden with heavy handed (Xian) religious imagery and simplistic appropriations of Western culture.

You've just got to love this one, though:

Even the Knots on Quince Trees, part 3:

In Minor Seminary,
early one New Year's Day,
having cut out from the newspaper a picture
of Her Imperial Majesty all dressed in white,
I rushed straight to the toilets.

Having done like the serpent in Genesis
who, squirming his whole body, expelled
like pus a blasphemous passion,
I turned my back on that monastery
in which I had spent three years.

And I became a follower of isms.

ㅋㅋ