14 February 2023

H: Hayen

K: Kyenghui, my mother

Please note this transcript was translated from Korean.

H: I was talking to grandmother on the phone this morning, and I heard from her for the first time that my great-grandmother used to own the business of selling American products coming from the US military base PX in Busan when they were making their living down in the South. Did you know that?

K: Mm. Yes, we used to call those open markets where people sold American products tin can market깡통시장 because the most popular items being purchased were the canned products Koreans got from the nearby US military bases.

H: Yes, I actually read about that in a thesis. Someone had researched how the image of America was brought close to South Koreans through the American products that were brought into Korea through the US military.

K: Right. Korean people found those products intriguing, at least until the 1990s, because they were very different from what we were used to. Back then, people in our country were fascinated by American materials. So, there formed a business where Koreans got the products left over from the US military bases and sold them at open markets. You know the Bupyeong-dong area? That’s where the tin can market깡통시장 still is. I told you before that I had American canned goods, cosmetics, cooking appliances, and digital electronics lying around at home when I was little. Your granny had the singers, and my dad used to collect vinyl records, so we had a few audio devices that were either American or German. Back then, our country didn’t have such things because we weren’t that strong in manufacturing, so we had to depend a lot on them.

H: America in Korea had been framed very positively – a friendly country with all the signs of advancements, which would have hyped up the curiosity among Koreans, and the trend of using American products across the country would have also encouraged more people to buy them.

K: To a certain level, it is true that they brought many things that our country did not have before. We were used to seeing American products with awe or envy. I used to think when I was young that we were losing our pride as Koreans by using so many American products. You know, there was a trend in Korea where people were obsessed with buying the Japanese elephant rice cooker or buying an American fridge and German vacuum, at least until when you were young.

H: That is true. My other interviewees also said the same thing. Would you say Koreans preferred Western brands over ours, then?

K: Yes. We started having companies in the 1980s and 1990s that began to make appliances, but there still was a tendency of people to see products from the West being more credible than domestic ones. Or at least we believed in the high-end image because the Western products were pricier.

H: Well, I think that continues how our country still prefers vehicles from the West, right? You can see BMWs and Landrovers every five seconds on the roads in Busan or Seoul.

K: I’m telling you, our parking spaces are tiny in our country, but people keep buying those bulky Western vehicles. Koreans tend to believe in the image of American and German cars being the strongest. There’s a saying in our country that if you get in a car accident, those Western cars don’t break down, but ours do.

…

H: You know, Korean people love to put ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ in front of the names of countries. When I was searching for research articles on our country’s Americanization, there popped up several texts that were connecting criticism of the US military with the leftists, or the anti-US activists. I mean, do we not have the freedom to even discuss some things in our country?

K: Well, the extreme end we see on that matter is the current president.

H: How many times have we seen in his speech that people are a leftist if they criticize America? My interviewees were joking that if I were to do this research back home right now, I would be categorized as a pro-North Korean and an anti-US writer.

K: I think it’s difficult not to have a critical eye if you know what America has done to our country. It gets beautified here and there, but if you see what Rhee Syngman did to our country – we don’t even have to go so far back to the past. If you look at what is happening now, you cannot not criticize the US.

H: I was reading about the anti-US protests in the 1980s, during Chun Doo-hwan’s term. Apparently, South Koreans got upset about Chun Doo-hwan collaborating with the US military to oppress the South Korean public. But our country’s government had worked together with the US military ever since Rhee Syngman’s term. You know, I was reading this thesis on the US military oppressing our local press to filter all criticism on America in the 1950s and 1960s. It said that all left-winged Korean press that spoke on the side of liberals got shut down, and South Korean governments agreed on the US military doing that. They must have been so desperate to keep their power. I got curious about how the anti-US protests started in the 1980s, so I looked up the dates, and apparently, the one in Busan cut the starting line of the movement.

K: Yes. Busan marked the start. Then it went to other cities like Daegu and Seoul. Do you remember the Modern and Contemporary Museum right on the way to the post office? The one you went to with your friend a few years ago? That’s where the US Cultural Center in Busan used to be. There was one per city at that time. University students in Busan set the building on fire, upset about the US observing and controlling our country. Soon after, university students in other cities threw explosives and occupied the US Cultural Centers in their areas.

H: Dad was saying that it was the university students that led the protest because they were the only ones who could access the updated knowledge to see what was happening where.

K: It was mostly the university students. Your dad was one of those too. He sometimes came to my home covered in ashes from the tear gas, almost unconscious, and your grandmother and I put toothpaste under his eyes and nose. Back then, it was a common thing to do to make people stop crying from the tear gas. Some people agreed with the students protesting, but the press and news talked about it negatively.

H: Was it like the whole country participated in the movement?

K: We still had more people staying silent than being vocal because most salarymen and women feared getting cut off from their jobs for protesting. That is why the students were out there the most because they were the only ones in the country that did not have to be afraid of losing jobs.

…

H: I think the idea of refusing the North is so embedded in South Koreans’ minds. I was reading this article that talked about how the sentiments of South Koreans, especially in classrooms, are taught to stand far from signs of communism. And the writer’s argument was that Koreans learn to hate countries that follow communist regimes, such as North Korea and China, starting at school. We learn to put distance between ourselves from such countries and from communism.

K: Mm. That is somewhat true. It’s subtle but present everywhere in our country.

H: Did you also see that when you were growing up?

K: Oh, many. We used to draw anti-communism posters every year on the 25th of June at school. Now that I think about it, there were many things like that. The cartoons or TV programs I watched while growing up all depicted communism and North Korea as the devils, with wild boars representing Kim Jung Il.

H: Uh, I think I also saw cartoons like that when I was young. In the early 2000s. In a way, it’s propaganda. They brainwash you with such images and make them the standards among South Korean mentalities. It’s even on our country’s customs declaration form - not to bring North Korean propaganda. That is one of the first things one sees upon their arrival in South Korea.

K: It is raising consciousness. The consciousness of refusing communism and North Korea.

H: Mm, it must have been a lot stronger in the 1970s.

K: Yes. And if you think about it, it had only been a few decades since our country experienced the Korean War. Korean people still had a sharp memory of what it was like during the war and the years after. The fear of war was greater than anything then. It was a trauma that the country went through.

H: Koreans indeed still do have this fear of getting identified as the reds.

K: Yes. It’s part of the emotional traces that the Korean War left amongst people. And our country had many dictators that tortured and killed their political enemies by titling them the reds. So South Koreans have a fear of hearing the word the reds.

…

H: Although I don’t believe it is every single South Korean that falls in this frame of the leftist pro-North Koreans frame, most people around me still have the tendency to think that as the norm in our country. Although they know it is strange, they don’t quite refuse it because that is how our country still sees groups of people that criticize our country’s positioning with the US. I guess it is part of the way totalitarianism is still present in our country, even if we think a lot of it is gone by now.

K: Yes. And it’s hard for younger ones to think about it because teachers in South Korean classrooms are not allowed to teach students about political perspectives.

H: Indeed. You know, the ones I interviewed who were around my age all said the same thing. When I asked them whether they learned about America’s intervention or influence on modern Korea, all of them talked about how teachers could not do much of that because they would be identified as leftists just for criticizing Rhee or the beginning period of South Korea after the division.

K: I told you before – when I used to teach at middle schools until we left to go to the Philippines in 2007 if teachers said anything political in classes, parents would call the school and ask us what kind of ideology we are teaching the kids. So as teachers, we learned not to add any political tones. We just handled the content in the textbook as it was and did not add anything additional.

22nd March 2023

H: Hayen

K: Kyenghui, my mother

Please note this transcript was translated from Korean.

H: It’s sad to see how far our country has moved away from unification over the last two decades. When I was young, I thought we would be able to dream of a reunited peninsula before the generations of our grandmothers and grandfathers are gone. I thought unification was so close.

K: Yes, or at least a condition where we can let those grandmothers and grandfathers go meet their families once in a while. DJ[1] worked hard together with the North, and when you were just born, there was a project called Keumgangsan[2] Tour금강산관광산업. We had lines of buses with elders from the North that went to Keumgangsan with their children to meet their sisters and brothers they separated from because of the War.

H: Did our grandmother want to go?

K: No. We had asked her if she wanted to. But she refused. She said it would be more painful to see them once and not be able to see them ever again.

H: That’s sad. 

K: It’s not like she can call them or write them like she does with you. 

H: It’s sad – that it’s their home, but it’s also the only land where they are not allowed to go to or communicate with, just because of the reason that they are in the South.

K: Yes. Did you know we [South Koreans] are not allowed to talk to North Koreans even when we meet them outside our country by accident?

H: … That’s a thing?

K: Yes. It’s sad, isn’t it? We speak the same language, look the same, and are all Koreans, but we are not even allowed to speak to them because any exchange with North Korean bodies is forbidden by law. That includes talking or even just saying hi. So even if you meet someone looking like you outside of Korea, you have to pretend you didn’t even see them – if they are North Korean.

H: I think how our country emphasizes the need to stay away from North Koreans is so strong. It’s everywhere. It’s like a message that you cannot not see.

K: And North Korea, by law, isn’t even our political enemy. We see it that way because North Korea and the US are opponents to each other.

3 May 2023

H: Hayen

K: Kyenghui, my mother

Please note this transcript was translated from Korean.

H: There was this show in Daegu that popped up on my Instagram suggestion posts, and you know the Lee Kun-hee artwork collection that Samsung donated to our country instead of paying their taxes?

K: Yes. Are those works on a tour right now?

H: Apparently. Well, one of the visitors took several photos of the works from the show, and I found this huge painting on a room divider병풍 that had mountains drawn in ink, and the title of the work was Keumkangsan-do! And guess what, the shapes of the mountains on that Keumkangsan painting were so similar to the Ten Symbols of Longevity paintings십장생도! It was a moment where all my curiosity about the shapes of those mountains got solved. I really wondered where you could see such mountains, but it was Keumkangsan!

K: Ah, that makes a lot of sense. I also learned when I was young that Keumkangsan is a mountain made of rocks with 12,000 summits. I only remember that because there was a song for children on mountain Keumkang when I was young. I think the lyrics also talk about how there are four different names for mountain Keumkang because the scenery of the landscape drastically changes each season.

H: That is so cool. What was the name of the song? Do you remember what it was called?

K: Mm, just “Keumkangsan”. It starts with, “Let’s go find Keumkangsan with 12,000 mountain tops, the more you see it, the more beautiful and interesting it is.” I’ll try to look it up.

H: Oh wow, I found it. I just looked it up on YouTube, and someone apparently put it up in 2021. That is so cool. So Keumkangsan is called Keumkangsan just in the spring, and it’s called Bongresan봉래산 in the summer, Pungaksan풍악산 in the fall, and Gegolsan개골산 in the winter? That is… that is beautiful. Our ancestors were so creative and wise.

K: Yes. You know, we call it “mountains changing their clothes”옷을 갈아입다 in Korean. Keumkangsan must have been very different each season every time it changed its clothes. Korean artists until the Joseon dynasty used to go to Keumkangsan to paint and write poems and song lyrics.

H: This explains a lot to me why President Kim Daejung chose Keumkangsan as the ground for the divided families to meet each other again.

K: Yes. It is very symbolic. South Koreans used to find not being able to go visit Keumkangsan just normally like we would go to other mountains incredibly sad because Keumkangsan was very beautiful. I mean, it still must be. We just don’t know because most of us haven’t been there at all.

H: Do you think our grandmother visited Keumkangsan?

K: Mm, I don’t know. We should ask. Perhaps her father did because he used to travel everywhere in Korea because of his work.

H: That is so wonderful. But also sad that we can’t go there. I mean, I really cannot imagine what it must have been like before the division. Grandmother told me that her father used to travel from Gyeseong to Yeongdo by train, and he would bring her all the goods from the South on that train going back home.

K: Yes. I also heard that he had a whole unit of the train carrier just for him.

H: It’s really sad that all of that got wiped away by the war. It must have been… so wonderful, just to travel the whole peninsula by train.

K: Yes, and back then, we could travel to China by land. That is why we say that we would gain so much if the two Koreas reunite and the land becomes one piece again. Imagine how much travel, exchange, and economy could happen and grow just by connecting Korea all the way to China and to Russia by train if we were to come together with the North. It’s one of the fears that the US has. The US never wants power in Asia to grow so big because they imagine it will become a threat to them. It’s one of the many ways in which America benefits from our tension with the North.

금강산 찾아가자가 일만이천봉

Let us go find Mt. Keumkang with 12,000 tops

볼수록 아름답고 신기하구나

The more we see it the more beautiful and interesting it is

철 따라 고운 옷 갈아입는 산

Mountain that changes its clothes every season

이름도 아름다워 금강이라네

Even the name is beautiful – mountain called Keumkang

금강이라네

Mountain called Keumkang

금강산 보고 싶다 다시 또 한번

We wish we could see Mt. Keumkang once again

맑은 물 굽이쳐 폭포 이루고

The clear water meanders to create a waterfall

갖가지 옛이야기 가득 지닌 산

Mountain that carries all kinds of our old stories

이름도 찬란하여 금강이라네

Even the name is brilliant – mountain called Keumkang

금강이라네

Mountain called Keumkang

[1] Initials of President Kim Dae-jung

[2] A mountain that sits just above the border line dividing North and South; many Korean artists used to go to Keumgangsan to paint, write poetry, or song lyrics.

Painting of Mt. Keumkang from an exhibition in Daegu in spring 2023.