Hello everyone. My apologies for not posting last week, but I think I have a pretty good excuse. In my last post, I told you I would be doing a home stay weekend at a traditional Korean home. Shortly before leaving, I was asked by the program director, Choi So Jin, to write an article for the UNIST magazine detailing the adventures of the weekend. I figured, since I had to write a blog post anyway, I would do both at once. The week was more full of homework and activities than I had anticipated, and then I had another weekend adventure that I just got back from, so this is a little late coming to you. I'll get a more informal post up in the middle of this week, but in the meantime, this is the article I wrote about the trip.
It is lengthy, and formal, so if it bores you I apologize. I included some pretty pictures, and this blog's first ever video(!), so hopefully that is entertaining enough to compensate for the long blocks of text in between them.
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Until stepping foot on South Korean soil, I had never left the North American continent. The only cultural excursions I had taken were expositions of my own culture – ventures to New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C. gave me a deeper sense of what it meant to be a citizen of the United States, and what that meant to different people around the nation. I stepped on the battlefields of the conflicts that birthed our nation from British imperialism, as well as those that reunited a nation divided along cultural and racial lines. I walked through the streets of Chinatowns, Mexicantowns, and Little Italy's, where people from all over the globe conglomerated to share their culture with the native people, who are almost all immigrants in their own right. In school, I've learned about American government and history from a very young age, but it is only in person that I have been able to fully realize the impact it has had on the culture I've grown accustomed to. It follows, then, that it is only by immersing myself in Korean tradition and history that I realized the cultural enormity of the small country I am visiting.
[Introductory paragraph about program excised for redundancy.]
On the first two weekends, UNIST arranged for all of the Michigan students to pair up with UNIST students for a home stay weekend in their home town. This was an excellent opportunity for all of us to experience Korean hospitality first hand, as well as witness for ourselves the values and operations of the Korean family. I was paired with Kwon SeongWoo, a junior student in Urban Engineering, whose home is the small rural town of Bong-hwa. Seong's family owns a traditional Korean home, which has been passed down through the Kwon family since his ancestor, Gwon Bul, first owned the structure. Gwon held a title similar to prime minister for the region during the Joseon Dynasty, in the mid 15th century. This made my experience especially unique; I was given the opportunity to walk through the halls of Korean history, and see for myself a piece of what has given this peninsula such a rich cultural heritage.
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On the left, you see the 21st century. On the right,
you see the 15th. |
Seong's grandparents are the ones who live in the home, but since they weren't around, we did not get the opportunity to enter the home itself. Even so, the tour was impressive. The home is structured in a rectangular shape, with an entrance on one side, and an open area in the middle. On either side of the entrance there are living spaces for children and guests. The open area stored many things, including large Onggi pots where sauces were stored, a small garden with tomatoes and other plants, and various other modern tools and living accessories. The right side of the building (immediately after entering) was a storage area, which is currently not in use, but was used for rice, grains, and other food stuffs in older times. The left side is a kitchen area, complete with a modern refrigerator and cookware, but also large wood-burning stoves in the far left corner which were intact from the original construction. Finally, the far side featured the main living quarters for the masters of the house (Seong's grandparents), as well as an open area towards the right where meals are taken. I'd never seen this style of construction before. It struck me as odd, because I have only been accustomed to modern homes, with one contiguous roof surrounded by the outdoors – this home was the opposite, surrounding the open outdoor area with rooms and storage compartments. However, I do think it is a little more efficient (if less spacious) than many homes today, in that you can get from any part of the home to any other by simply walking through the middle. In modern homes you often have to pass through several other rooms and/or staircases to get to your destination.
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"No, Johnny, you can't go through the door yet, you'll have
to wait until you're older... and dead." |
The area also had several other buildings and annexes. From the home, we went to the ancestor home. This building, as Seong described to me, was used for ceremonies and holidays, where they invoke the spirits of their ancestors. It had the traditional red and green paint, several pillars, and the style of roofing that I recognize from ancient temples and spiritual areas. Outside of the structure's entrance, there was an additional entrance closer to the road. Seong explained that people were not allowed through this entrance – it was only opened in times of ceremony, so the spirits could enter, and be present when the living family members invoked them during the ceremony. I had only heard of the customs of ancestor worship in Eastern religions, because America, founded by Christian settlers, has no comparable traditions. It was a fascinating glimpse of both the beliefs of Joseon-era Koreans, as well as the traditions from which modern Korean culture has evolved.
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| ...looks fairly rock-colored to me. |
The final building was farther removed from the main home, closer to the home's museum. There is a small stream that runs around the complex, and Gwon Bul had constructed a large space for gathering in the middle of the spot where the stream bends. To enter, you cross the stream over a stone slab, then walk up the steps to the main structure. The building itself is just an open space under a roof, with a small porch area on the far side enclosed by a wall and a couple of doors. It has the traditional roofing, as seen in the other buildings, as well as the traditional green paint and red trim that is common of buildings of the era. The interior is decorated with several frames filled with Chinese characters, as well as a large Chinese character nameplate in the middle that reads "Chung Ahm Jeong" (translation: "blue rock building"). The building was used for large gatherings and ceremonious meals during the time of Gwon, but nowadays, some people like to sleep in the room in the summer time when it is nice enough to do so. It is a very picturesque scene, as the building is surrounded by the surrounding stream, as well as the several bushes and small trees that are growing on the island area. I was struck by how this simply constructed (though intricately designed) building meshed so perfectly with the surrounding natural landscape, and for this reason, it is an image that I will hold in my memory for a long time to come.
The last stop on the visit to the traditional home was the museum. Gwon Bul was a very well-educated man for his time, and the museum gave evidence to this. Though it was a small room, there were many exhibits of artifacts from his personal life and accomplishments. They preserved the exam that he had passed in order to be educated in the first place, as well as many letter correspondences between him and other government officials and friends. There were several banners that had hung in specific parts of the building on display, as well as very well-preserved examples of some of the books he owned, wrote, and collected. However, I thought that the most interesting thing about the museum was not one of the ancient artifacts, rather, the living artifacts that Gwon has passed on through many generations of that family name. There was a wall-sized poster of the lineage of the Gwon/Kwon family name, tracing the generations from Gwon himself all the way down to Kwon SeongWoo. He pointed his name out on the board (all the way at the bottom), as well as pointing out where Gwon had turned into Kwon. I had known that the family name was important in the Korean culture, but this gave me a firm understanding of the rich tradition involved therein.
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| Homestay family! (minus Seong) |
I would be remiss if I forgot to mention the excellent hospitality provided by Seong and his family. When we returned to his house, his mother had prepared delicious home-cooked Bulgogi, as well as many other side dishes. Though we were not able to communicate very well (neither of his parents spoke English), they went out of their way to ensure that I was comfortable. His father drove us to the traditional home, and his mother was so kind as to drop us off and pick us up after we went to a restaurant in nearby Gyeongju. On the next day, we went to a larger traditional village* with a Confucian temple and large culture museum describing the historical significance of the area, and they paid for an excellent lunch at a restaurant just outside of the facility. Finally, even when I waited for the bus to come and take me back to Ulsan, they waited with me for almost an hour just to ensure that I got onto the right bus and made my way home. I felt very comfortable and welcome during my entire stay, and I am very grateful to Seong and his family for being such wonderful hosts.
I came to Korea with only a little in the way of cultural foreknowledge. I knew about some modern culture points, and I knew of the family-centered mentality that the Korean people have. In terms of history, however, all I was really familiar with was the Korean war. I knew very little Korean history before the Japanese occupation, and even less about the culture. This trip was truly enlightening; I was introduced to, and familiarized with, aspects of the old and ancient culture that I would not have really understood had I not seen it for myself. The museums I toured displayed many artifacts and exhibits about the Gyeongju civilizations during the different dynasties, and getting to walk through the traditional home allowed me to infer much more about daily life and habits of long-ago Koreans. As a result, I learned more about the peninsula in one weekend than I had all my life. In the remaining weeks, I hope to expand on this early experience, and learn as much as I can about the Korean peninsula and its people. I realize that, through UNIST and the University of Michigan, I have been afforded a magnificent opportunity to do exactly that. I feel that taking full advantage of such an opportunity is the least that I owe.
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*I didn't include a whole lot about the village in Gyeongju because I'd already written like ten thousand words on the traditional home, but that was also pretty cool. There was a much larger museum than at the Gwon home, and the village consisted of many smaller renditions of the Gwon home, as well as a couple of other random buildings and annexes. Beside one of the buildings, there was set up a game called "Tuho," which is a simple game of rings and sticks. Throw the sticks in to one of the rings on either side of the tube, you get a point. Throw the stick in the tube, you get two points. This is me playing that game:
Not bad for a rookie, eh?
There are more pictures from the visit and the village on this brand new flickr account I set up for all the stills I've been plucking from the FlipCam videos (in lieu of having an actual camera). I literally just set it up for this blog post, so right now it's just mine, but I'll snag photos from the other 3 and make it bigger.
On the next installment of this 'ere blog, I go to Daegu, ride roller coasters, shop around an 11-story department store, go to the club, and encounter the most hilarious English fail of the trip thus far. Stay tuned, kiddies!
