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| Scene from "Miryang, A Welcome" |
For the first time in my life I am identifying myself as
indigenous. That is, I belong to a land and a culture that goes back many
generations, perhaps thousands of years. I am not a visitor, an immigrant, or a
colonizer, but a member of a nation not defined by a state. As far as I know,
my ancestors are as much a part of this peninsula as the pine trees on
mountainside cliffs and the currents of the Han River.
It’s an awesome sense of belonging which I am only just
beginning to find the words to describe. Everywhere I look I feel affirmed,
mirrored, connected, familial. As I gaze at all the different hair styles on
the subway, I know that if I ran my fingers through one or another person’s
hair, it would feel almost exactly like my own thick, dense hair. Amid the
variations, the prominent cheekbones are familiar, the broad noses, square
feet.
And yet I feel deeply alienated and conflicted about so much
of modern Korean culture: the suicide-inducing, uber-competitive school system
which almost invites cheating because of its unrealistic demands and aggressive
gatekeeping; the heteropatriarchy that keeps women subordinate and dependent on
men; the incessant, unrelenting pressure to consume; socially-condoned
addictions which include workaholism and binge drinking, and other issues as
well. These are not necessarily issues unique to Korea, but common in many
other countries including the US. However, they seem more obvious here for a
number of reasons, which includes living in a huge, extremely densely populated
metropolis.
So my task has become learning to distinguish between the
aspects of Korean culture that resulted from colonization and the aspects of
Korean culture that are truly indigenous. Perhaps it’s impossible to completely
distinguish between them, and these cultural practices, values, and beliefs run
on a spectrum rather than on opposing sides of a clear boundary.
For instance, the prevalence of plastic surgery is literally
changing the face of Korea. What does it mean when one no longer resembles
their mother, father, grandmother, grandfather? When one has changed the shape
of the eyes and eyelids, and shaved the sides of the nose to make it narrower?
What happens when their child is born with the hooded eyelids and flat noses of
their grandparents? What happens when you no longer recognize your close friend
or family member because the structure of their face has changed?
I remember in the 1990s and early 2000s when yoga was
becoming popular, especially “flow” styles in Los Angeles. It seemed like every
actress in every film had the same yoga-toned body, the same deltoids and pecs
and lean abdomen, as if they all had the same personal trainer sculpting the
same body over and over again. Here in Korea, there is a certain “look,” almost
like a mask, which you see repeatedly in ads and movies and music videos,
especially among women performers. The same wide, round eyes with the necessary
double lid, the pointy narrow nose, and pert chin, surrounded by long flowing
brown, or sometimes shades of blond, hair.
But this is not indigenous culture. This represents a sliver
of the Korean population, whose obsession with a certain definition of beauty
results from internalized racism and a conscious or unconscious acceptance of
white supremacy. This past week, Korean Clara Lee was named #2 Most Beautiful Woman in the World. Flanked by white women at #1 and #3, the announcement raises a slew of questions. Who gets to choose? Based on what kind of bullshit? Does Clara Lee represent indigeneity? What does it mean if a culturally-defined beauty is surgically produced? This is a layer of modern
Korean culture I need to remove to access indigenous culture.
Similarly, I wonder about the Korean idealization of
education, the cut-throat competition, and status based on and informed by this
system. My understanding, which needs to be backed by much more research and
discussion on my part, is that Korea’s emergence as a major economic power
stems from the American occupation in the 1950s, following Japanese
occupation. Primarily, the US goal was
to make South Korea a fertile ground for capitalism and a worthy trade partner.
South Korea, a small and mountainous peninsula lacking many natural resources,
made policies to invest in human capital, its greatest natural resource, and
decided to emphasize education as the path to global success. Instead of education
limited to the yangban class in the old feudal system, everyone was encouraged
to study hard and go to university.
Sounds good, right? But the reality on the ground in 2014 is
that Korean college grads, like their global peers, face high unemployment,
frustration, and debt. They’ve subjected themselves to at least 16 grueling,
often oppressive, years of schooling which, for many, entailed classes well
into the evenings and weekends, and a harrowing testing system designed to
continually weed out students less skilled in a narrow measurement of aptitude.
Like the limited definition of beauty that enriches surgeons, the limited
definition of intelligence creates an elite class based on exclusion.
Meanwhile, everyone is encouraged to spend, spend, spend,
even money they do not have. If your child is dreamy and disinclined toward
rote learning, with enough money you can buy private schooling, tutors, and
hagwons to train those traits out of them. If you did everything right but
cannot get the job you’ve been training for, and have to settle for demeaning
work, you can still find fulfillment, or at least let off some steam, in the
latest fashions, the coolest phone, a new hairstyle each month, and weekend
binge drinking. If you look like you’re succeeding, that may just be enough.
This should all be quite familiar to Americans, for this
pyramid scheme is the modus operandus of capitalism. Masses at the bottom doing
service work for those above, a middle class impossibly striving to climb to
the next rung, and a little triangle on top becoming more desperate and
aggressive to preserve their power.
These are just a few examples of what I deem non-indigenous
culture. So what is actually indigenous?
This week I watched a remarkable film called "Miryang, A Welcome" (미량, 방가운 손님),
about a rural community responding to an extensive installation of power lines
through the mountainside. Seeing the fierce village grandmothers protecting
their ancestral land was awe-inspiring. They had been there for generations, farming,
and their ancestors were buried in mountainside graves, about to be plundered
by a power company. The grandmothers sat down in the middle of the road,
refusing to move for workers. They took turns camping in hoop tents in the
mountains to protect the land with their bodies. In a showdown with the power
company they chained themselves to each other and to the tent, wailing,
weeping, and singing, refusing to leave.
Slowly I am beginning to
recognize indigenous culture. Like indigenous cultures worldwide, it has
everything to do with the land, the rivers, the oceans, the wind, stars, and
native animal and plant life. Here in the city, it’s easy to feel out of touch
with nature, with all our artificial lighting, protection from the elements, so
much concrete and so many distractions. Indigenous culture also entails all the
arts, completely aside from K-Pop and mass media.
In the states, I took little
interest in rural life, which is overwhelmingly white, conservative, and dominated by pesticide-sprayed monoculture industrial farms.
For people of color, rural life, especially in the northern states, can feel
quite unsafe. Add the layer of gender and sexuality, and for queer folks, small
town America can be downright dangerous. Korean villages, often populated by
the elderly, also tend to be politically conservative. Yet it’s much easier to
access indigenous Korea in the countryside. Here in the city, I can learn
poongmul, Korean traditional drumming, music, and art. But if I want to grow
food, learn about native plants, and live more harmoniously with the land and
be more conscious of the elements, I need to go rural.
Mountain hiking in Korea is not for the faint of heart. Every weekend the Seoul metro teems with serious, usually middle aged to elderly hikers going to their favorite mountain. They bring walking poles, kimbap, thermoses of barley tea. It's easy to make fun of the 등산 아줌마 (mountain hiking aunties) and I even dressed as one for Halloween.
But I'm beginning to understand that this devotion to weekend hikes is a response to the call of the indigenous for big city dwellers. After all these women are the sisters of the warrior grandmothers of Miryang. They say the nature spirits are strongest in mountains and rivers. I've begun keeping a stone from the Han River in my pocket. Walking down city streets, my left hand toys with it and it sings to me.
Perhaps living in the countryside will be the next
leg of my pilgrimage, after my semester ends in a few weeks. As I type these
words my anxiety level leaps and my mind immediately starts making excuses: no one will speak English, they’ll regard
you as an interloper, you’re too old/not old enough, it’ll be too cold, blah blah
blah.
I bristled when I typed the
title of this piece: why "Part 1"? I felt like I was making a promise I was
afraid I would not be able to keep. And yet how disingenuous to believe that
reindigenizing happens all at once. And so it goes, two steps forward and one
step back, working through layers of colonization, trying to be patient yet
firm with myself.
In love and struggle,
Sister Gwi-Seok
