Miriam Reed

Tag: Korea

  • Tuesday 6 November 2018

    Tuesday, 6 November 2018

    A day on the subways. This was not the plan for the day, but that is what the day brought. I forgot the exiit or I got on the right train but it was the wrong direction or I misunderstood the Hangul or I misunderstood the directions given me by the Tourist personnel or I just got tired. Endless walking of endless stone corridors, endless steps, endless machines (Pepsi made it; Coke did not), endless ads, endless signs, endless shops offering things I thankfully do not need, endless food (probably not organic), more signs. Now here is a sign to the clean and much appreciated rest rooms. In the ladies room fine art work and a urinal. For the Transgender? And two potties, one for big people and one little people, side by side. More steps. Only the last set of steps was fun. When people walked on them, the steps lit up!

    And then the day was redeemed  Now I knew the subways. (Boy, do I know the subways.) But now that I knew the subways, I was able to slip two stops away from the subway closest to my room to see the Tapgol Pagoda that Clarence Gamble saw and photographed in1908.

    This time an elevator (elevators are relatively rare within the subways, but the government does build them where people have to be moved up into the center of a tight street corner too small to accommodate large entry steps). Out of the elevator onto a busy busy commercial street replete with sirens, neon-lit signs and stores – and street vendors with wares spread out on blankets – even one food vendor (food NOT spread out on blanket). And at the end corner of this very commercial street a classic Korean wooden entry into a classic Korean park, well swept walkways, trees and bushes in their fall colors of yellow and burnt orange, and all quite peaceful. Behind a decorated wooden rotunda, completely encased in reinforced glass, stood the Tapgol pagoda, the very one Clarence saw. Difficult to photograph it through the glass, but here is the base and here it is today.

                                                                          

                                        

    The Tapgol has a rich history. The ten tier pagoda, or the Wongaksa pagoda, was built of marble in 1467 became part of a Buddhist temple when the king was a devout Buddhist, but when the government changed and Buddhism was no longer the fashion, everything was destroyed except the pagoda. Around 1900, an Irishman, Brown McLeavy, persuaded King Gojong to create the first public park in Korea with the pagoda as its centerpiece.

    In the twentieth century, the declaration that sparked the March First movement was read in the park. The resulting resistance against the Japanese military control brought many deaths and further repression. Today, it is a beautiful and restful place to visit, an oasis in the center of the commercial bustle of Jong-no and surrounding streets.

             

  • Monday 5 November 2018

    Monday, 5 November 2018

    As much as I would like to walk the city of Seoul to know it, it’s fairly clear that to walk the entire city would require walking the rest of my life. And so I took a City of Seoul Tour Bus. We rode and rode and rode. The autumn is a beautiful time to come to Seoul, and I have been blessed to enjoy these clear days, though today more than a few were wearing masks, and the air quality was not perfect. But yesterday, Sunday, it was quite good, and as we rode and rode I marveled at the cleanliness of the city. Everywhere the streets are clean. The wide boulevards are clean. The sidewalks are clean. The subways are clean, The buses are clean.The toilets in the subways are clean, very clean. The house fronts are clean. The cars are clean. Everyone is dressed respectably. I did not see any homeless or derelicts or weirdos or beggars. It is almost scary – this order and respectability and cleanliness that is everywhere.

    I had been looking forward to exploring the foods sold by street vendors. All gone from the streets. Instead, neatly lined up in fields or along the edges of parks or in the middle of the parks are neat and tidy rows and rows of white peaked roof tents – reminiscent of the Klu Klux Klan – an unhappy association. For the merchants, they are surely a boon, for contents and merchants are protected from inclement weather and dust and wind and location is set – no worry about being asked to move on by the police. For the buyer searching for atmosphere, a bit disappointing. But these rows and rows of white antiseptic tents are entirely in keeping with this great order that envelops Seoul.

                                 

    Today I visited the Tourist Center for the joy of speaking English – which they do perfectly – and asked my Korean Tourist  person if any parts of Seoul are dirty or ill kept. Did she know of any? No, she did not. Is everywhere in Seoul so clean?  Well,yes, as far as she knew. 

    And along with the cleanliness are the plantings. Most streets that I saw have trees planted on either side, which in this fall are bright in yellow or red in color. The city with its endless rows of skyscrapers and wide wide tree-lined streets is easy to walk in, and safe. You feel very safe in Seoul.

    I took the subway – the clean subway – to the world famous Severance Hospital to inspect their history of Severance exhibit, which I had heard referred to the contributions made by the Presbyterian missionaries who founded the hospital. Indeed, two large spaces are devoted to documenting the work of Dr. Allen, who founded the beginnings of a Western type hospital in Korea, and to Dr. Oliver R. Avison, who from his first days in Korea had the vision of a medical college that would train Koreans to be doctors. The result was the fine medical college at Honsei University and the vast medical complex that is now Severance Hospital, where Asians from all of Asia come for treatment.

                             

    The hospital building is almost beyond belief – so modern, so spacious and elegantly designed. A large solarium, the plants ten feet tall, a veritable forest in which relaxing patients and their visitors can sit amidst the greenery. Everything and the furnishings the couches and easy chairs, the artwork, all appear to be of the best in taste and finest in quality. Along with the Christmas trees already in place. Rather like the Joseon Dynasty tradition.

                                 

    I was able to meet with the curator of the historical exhibit and show him and his assistant and translator the two photos taken by Sidney and Clarence Gamble at the graduation ceremony in June 1908 of the first graduating class of seven of Severance Medical College, the first Korean-trained doctors, all of whom put their training into the service of Severance and into training more Koreans for the field. I also showed them the photo taken by Clarence of the son of one of the graduates, a photo that is not in the Severance archives.They were cordial and interested, as they should have been. And it is a satisfaction to know that the work of these Presbyterian medical missionaries continues to be recognized and honored.

                                  

    A walk from the subway in twilight with these great tall buildings in such a variety of styles on either side.

     

  • Sunday 4 November 2018

    Sunday, 4 November 2018

    A trip to the Folk Museum, which is situated by the vast Gyeongbokgung with its spacious courtyards and many ancillary buildings. The Folk Museum building is beautiful and spacious and within are displayed the common tools, farming implements, looms, bowls, kitchen aids used by the Folk. These are, of course, much cleaned up so that the functional beauty can be appreciated. Everything is brown, of wood or clay, practical and useful and attractive in it simplicity. Such a contrast to what you see in the Palaces Museum.

       

    But this is the way ninety percent of the people lived, so it is fitting that  their lives should be set out and recalled. Reproductions of the houses of the peasants and middle class are inside the museum as well as of the clothes worn by both classes. The Curator must have a sense of humor. Under the caption “Water Management” is set on a manikin a straw raincoat, just as were used in Japan and exactly like one worn by Clarence Gamble for a photo when he was in Japan. 

           

    It was pleasant and easy to walk through this spacious museum in the pleasant lighting on the polished floors amidst the order and cleanliness and streams of sunlight through the windows. It was a compelling experience to step outside and enter the reconstructed house of the lower class peasant: a rough stone foundation supporting small dark rooms set around a small courtyard with dirt floor. Dark brown wood and dark brown wooden rafters, windows in every room but small and the rooms more dark than light.The cold of the stones and the roughness of the swept dirt courtyard, the darkness, which kept things cool in the summer but oh! the winters must have been so very cold. Wood kept the kitchen stove burning and the kitchen might have been warm, but I did not see any fireplaces or stoves in the other rooms. There is much to be said for central heating.

       

    Note to David and others interested in shoe-making. A large exhibit was devoted to shoe-making in the twentieth and twenty-first century. I did not see anything about the construction of the  straw sandals, which were such important footwear for centuries, but much about the highly constructed shoe of today. Curious!

          

     

  • Saturday 3 November 2018

    Saturday, 3 November 2018

    My friend Wayne says that the best way to know a city is to walk it. That works for me, but this morning I thought perhaps I might have to take a bus at one point and I should put Google maps on my new iPad. It seemed a good idea and simple enough, but somehow the iPad wanted to install Google maps on Numbers, which I don’t think was right. There were advantages to MS DOS: Fewer choices and you could type exactly what you wanted.

    Unaccompanied by Google maps, I set out on foot in another bright autumn day, though somewhat less bright and a bit hazy. Some perhaps more wiser Koreans were walking around with masks ala Ashland this past summer. But just a few. The rest of us – and so very many of us in the streets of the Palaces District of Juneau-gu were without masks. On a Saturday afternoon, the sidewalks were packed, and God forbid you dwaddled when the throng was charging or desired to charge when the crowd was slowing down.

                    

    Bad air or not, the petunias are still happy in this fall weather, and my wanderings – such as they were in accord with the movement of the mass – brought me to the National Palaces Museum, a pleasantly designed new building with walls and form in line with Joseon traditional architecture. Once inside the museum, the exhibit rooms were spacious and well lit, and here were many viewers but not suffocating crowds.The exhibit featured portraits of the kings of the Joseon Dynasty, which held sway in Korea from 1392 to 1910, with a very slight hiccup along the way.

                  
    The long dynastic reign was meticulously documented over the centuries in records entitled EXEMPLARY ACCOUNTS OF THE MONARCH. (And there were the records. On display behind the glass,) I wonder how exemplary were the acts of the monarchs, but since the writers of the accounts were subject to regular scrutiny from their subject, it is possible that the accounts could have been just slightly slanted.

                  
    But never mind. The Joseon managed to stay in power for some five hundred years – an impressive record. The king – and the queen – although she had almost equal power and responsibilities in her management of the internal and housekeeping affairs of the palace and its female contingent – I have not found any mention of exemplary accounts of the Monarchess. Nevertheless, the king (and by extension the queen) was supposed to embody the wisdom of the Universal Creator, of which he was considered a direct descendant, to be thereby infinitely wise and upright, and he was expected to be frugal.  Ostentatious the Korean royals were not. And in this way possibly they were frugal.

    Consider this simple wooden bench, the throne on which sat his Highness, a “bench” of the finest wood crafted by the best craftsmen. Occupants of the royal household enjoyed clothes and linens and housewares made of the finest and most expensive materials fashioned and created by the most highly skilled artisans. Much of such is beautifully exhibited in the Museum of the Palaces. The wooden chests, dishes, and silverware are distinctly Korean. The royal silverware is elegantly simple and this style of silverware is in use today and was included in my flight on Asiana when dinner was served.The array and type of small bowls used by the royal family are also part today’s typical Korean meal.

          

    The clothes were colorful and full – fine silks, carefully placed embroideries, in bright and rich colors. And these. Clothes, or rather simulations of these clothes but not of fine silk, are worn by many Korean nationals, particularly the young men and women, when they visit the palaces and historic Korean sites. Their dress allows them free entry, and it is delightful to see so many colorfully dressed people in the natural setting of the period to which the costumes belong. But these decorated costumes of today do not speak of Korean royal frugality.
           

  • Friday 2 November 2018

    Friday. 2 November 2018

    Rooming in Jongno-gu of Seoul, the area where the Korean Royal Palaces are located, allows me to walk to many of these historic sites.  Here and there remains a patch of road constructed of very old and difficult-to-walk-on stones, as well as serious stone steps.

            

    This magnificent tree stands in front of what used to be the main post office – I think. My guide said as much, and now I can read Korean – I have learned the alphabet – but of course I have no idea what the words that I am reading are all about – anyway – next to the what was apparently the post office is an impressive Buddhist temple dedicated to scholarship. There, anxious parents and aspiring students hoping to ace the university entrance exams come and pray.

        

    The garden in front of the temple was celebrating the fall with chrysanthemums. Banks and banks of chrysanthemums of every color were on every side. The golden statue of the most important Buddha was encased with massed chrysanthemums over one shoulder as were his golden all male, of course – followers. Acolytes? Here are sacred animals built entirely of chrysanthemums.

       

    It was all quite overdone and ornate and rich ad impressive in the Buddhist-style and amazing to see. And I marveled at how many hours of painstaking work must have been required to insert and put together all those many many many chrysanthemums.

    Next was seen, standing between the chrysanthemum grounds and in front of the temple itself, another magnificent tree, thankfully unadorned with chrysanthemums. A line of people were entering the main entrance door of the temple,and I did not want to miss anything, so I followed along. Inside, the temple was close to crowded, quite full of devotees.

    I felt annoyed with myself for intruding, but took a fast photo of more Buddha’s and scurried outside. Apparently, I need not have been concerned, Many more of the curious were tromping in and out, and the curious and the devout seemed accepting. It would seen to me to be a great impediment to devout devotions to have to deal with all that commotion, but where so many people are crowded together in a costume – off what is it these days – twenty million – no doubt Koreans have a different regard for activity of this sort.

    The exterior of the temple, which was wood, was decorated with these lovely paintings. The  colors are pure and yet earthy. The differences between the Korean aesthetic and that of the Chinese and Japanese is interesting. The Korean choice of soft but bright color and decoration just short of excess is its own. And so on into the fall day.