Our first Sunday in Seoul was our
first day off. I did not want to sit
around doing nothing and neither did Steve.
I had gone to Korea to learn something about a different country, a
different culture, so what better place was there to go than to a museum. The War Memorial of Korea was new, having
opened only two years earlier. It is
located in the Seoul neighborhood of Youngsan-dong on the grounds that used to
house the army headquarters. The
building is massive with six floors – four above ground and two below - displaying
various war and historical relics. The
moment you step into the central plaza which leads to the entrance you are
greeted by statue on top of a dome of two brothers hugging. Both brothers – the elder who fought for the
South and the younger who fought for the North – are still wearing their army
uniforms and a gun is slung around the older brother’s shoulder. The statue represents the Korean peoples hope
for a reunion with their brothers and sisters in the north. It is the first thing I saw, and it is the
one vision that has remained with me most clearly. There I was about to step into Korea’s past to
learn about its historical struggles, but before walking through the door I was
reminded that the struggle is ongoing and will not be over until the division
between North and South no longer exists.
Scattered around the museum’s grounds are the planes and tanks, vital
instruments of war, relics from the Korean War that are too big to be displayed
inside. Steve and I walked around outside
first, before the sun got too high and the humidity too oppressive. I took pictures fascinated by the fact that
the machinery had participated in an actual war. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it
must have been like to have been there, but images of war only come to those
who have survived the horror. In
retrospect, it seems rather insensitive to want to catch a glimpse of something
that others spend the remainder of their lives trying to block out and
forget. What was the collective memory
of all the planes, tanks, submarines, helicopters and other vehicles
surrounding me? How much action did they
see? How many men did they meet? How many of those men never returned
home?
While my camera snapped, Steve
picked up a pen and started to jot down notes.
What he wrote, I’ve no idea, because by then we were already starting to
drift apart. There was no direct cause,
no specific falling out, at least none that I can recall. I can’t even remember why the wall between us
started to rise, but it did and it happened before we even started our first
day of teaching. Looking back, it is
almost like his role in my life had only been to get me on the plane and to ensure
that I set my feet down in the direction of travel. Once that was accomplished,
even though we would work together for the next twelve months, he moved on and
so did I, without bitterness or regret.
So while we arrived at the museum together, once inside he went his way
with pen and paper in hand and I went mine with a camera draped around my
neck. We did, however, agree to meet for
dinner, since neither of us had yet formed other bonds of friendship.
My trip to the museum was merely
one of many realizations regarding my lack of a proper education in both
history and geography. History, if I may
digress for a moment, I have since concluded is taught horribly in the United
States. American history is important, I
won’t argue that it isn’t, everyone should know where they came from, but
American history is only a fraction of what happened between the dawn of time
and now. Why do American schools spends
years hammering in the names and dates attached to the Colonial Era, the
Revolutionary War and the Civil War, while neglecting hundreds of years and
oodles of countries? Perhaps, history
should be taught chronologically instead of geographically, and then Americans
wouldn’t be so ignorant of people and events that existed beyond our
borders. In high school, I vaguely
remember learning about China and having to memorize a series of dynasties, but
China was the only Asian country in my textbook that was taught as a entity
separate from the States. Hell, my
second and final year of American History in high school ended with the bombing
of Japan in World War II, which incidentally, never made sense to me. In school, the teachers and textbooks taught
me that we entered World War II because Japan bombed us in Pearl Harbor and the
War ended when the atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but
everything in the middle had to do with Hitler and Germany. No one ever bothered to connect the dots –
Iwo Jima, the Philippians, Guadalcanal and the Battle of Midway, just to name a
few – and so I had no idea that the Pacific front even existed. Really, how do you leave out half of a war
and pretend that you are teaching? And
since my history lessons ended with World War II, I had nothing more than a
vague notion that a war took place less than a decade later in Korea. It was
the forgotten war, the untaught war, the war that didn’t really seem to matter
– to Americans. For Koreans, it was a
completely different story. It was the
war that carved a deep political line between North and South, separating
entire families and ensuring that political ideologies would trump familial
ties for decades to come.
Did you know that the Korean War
technically isn’t over? I didn’t. I knew that a television show titled MASH
took place during the Korean War, but I had never even seen a single episode. I think that was honestly the extent of my
Korean War knowledge – sad. I’m almost
ashamed to acknowledge how little I knew despite having earned a college
degree. The War is not over because a
treaty was never signed. On July 27,
1953, the North and South signed an Armistice which established the
Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) at the 38th parallel but neither side has
let down it guard or conceded victory.
Americans, whose involvement in the war was initially sparked by their obsession
with the Cold War, a war now over for more than twenty year, are still
stationed in Korea, promising to aid the South should the North attack. Anyway, you may be wondering what started the
war, and when I visited the museum I did learn one side of that story – that
the North fired the first shots. Since then, however, I have read a couple of
books on the war and I have learned that the initial spark of the war is
shrouded in controversy. To avoid the
possibility of boring you, I will leave it at that, especially since there are
people far more qualified than I to tell you the story of why brothers took up
arms against brothers, the role Japan played in the country’s division and why America
chose the side they did. If you are
interested in more, The Korean War: A
History by Bruce Cumings is a good read.
Anyway, overall, I was impressed by
the museum. The English, however, on most of the descriptions would have
benefited by being proofread by a native English speaker. The grammatical
mistakes were endless, but I will not complain because I appreciated the
effort, the fact that there was a translation, something I could read and
understand well enough to improve my own ignorance and naivety. When looking at displays grew tiresome and I
felt in need of a break, I found a bench where I sat down and wrote some
postcards to my family and friends back home.
I’ve no idea what I wrote, or what may have been the thoughts most
pressing at the time, but I do remember writing out the postcards and the urgency
I felt to communicate with my friends. I
had just spend hours traveling through time, and when I emerged what I most
wanted, in essence was to assess my own connections to the present, people who
at the time had already begun to slip into my own past and who in a few months
would only exist for me as part of my personal history.
When I met back up with Steve, he
suggested that we check out I’taewon and have dinner there. I’taewon or “Little America,” as we Americans
often referred to it, is one of the top tourist destinations in Seoul. Many restaurants serving international
cuisine are located in I’taewon. It is
the place to go if you are craving food from just about any corner of the globe
– Thai, Indian, Mexican, etc. It is the one place in Seoul where you will see
almost as many signs in English as you do in Hangul and it has a very active
Red Light District which the international military men refer to fondly as
“Hooker Hill.”
Since I’taewon is located near an
American Army base, it is crawling with American men who are in the military
and for me it was my first introduction to servicemen from my home
country. My first impression, however,
was not a favorable one. After just a
couple of hours in I’taewon it is no surprise that Americans are not looked
upon favorably by people from other countries.
For starters, the military men (and I say men because I didn’t notice
any women in the Army on most of my excursions to I’taewon) act like they are
at home and as if it is the Koreans who are the interlopers. When speaking to Koreans they generally spoke
only English, and if the Koreans to whom they were speaking did not understand
they would start screaming and grow agitated.
It may sound like a stereotype, but I’ve seen this one in action enough
to know that it is one stereotype that is squarely grounded in reality. There are loads of Americans out there who
genuinely seem to believe that speaking louder will stimulate a foreigner’s
brain just enough so that they will suddenly feel enlightened with a new
vocabulary. Some establishments in I’taewon didn’t even allow Koreans to enter
unless they were with an American for fear that a brawl might break out. How awful is that, to be denied entrance into
a place in your own country simply because your guests tend to be a little on
the hyper and aggressive side? Steve and
I sat down at the counter in one bar and an American guy roughly put his hand
on my shoulder and told me to move, “You’re sitting in my girl’s seat.” From behind, with my dark hair, I was on
occasion mistaken as a Korean woman, of course I only ever had to turn around
for whomever it was who addressed me to realize their mistake. Turning to my fellow American, I said rather obnoxiously,
“I didn’t see anyone.” He flexed his
muscles, reached for me and Steve, fearing a fight, grabbed me by the arm,
yanked me off the stool and dragged me back out into the street. In the
upcoming months I would have many fond memories associated with I’taewon, but I
do not count that first night among them.
I think I might even have pledged to myself that I wouldn’t return. I can’t remember where we ended up eating,
all that echoes in my memory from that night with Steve is the fact I was
learning what it meant to be an American from a foreigner’s perspective and
what I saw wasn’t terribly flattering.
(Here I must add a side note to state that my negative experience and
many of my negative observations regarding the American military men in Korea
do not speak for the military as a whole.
I have since met some men and women in the military who are incredibly
respectful of foreign cultures and of people in general. It is sad though that stereotypes are sprung
from the few knuckleheads that seem to forget they are guests in someone else’s
home.)
The following day, Dave told me
and Steve to report to Kangdong Wonderland in the afternoon to observe some
classes. The school was on the fifth floor of an office building so Steve and I
rode up in the elevator together. When
the doors opened we stepped directly into the school. Less than ten paces in front of us sat the
secretaries, including Robin who spoke a little English. To our right was the faculty room where all
the teachers – Korean and America – had their desks and where they spent their
time between classes doing all of their prep work. The teachers who did not have the morning
preschool kids didn’t start teaching until two but they were expected to arrive
by noon in order to plan their lessons.
Most teachers, however, used at least half of that block of time to go
out for lunch. The moment we stepped
into the faculty room, dozens of eyes turned towards us while several hands
shot out and bodies approached to welcome us.
Our supervisor, Mira, introduced us to fellow Americans as well as
Koreans, all of whom were required to chose an American name by which they
would be known in the school. One of the
teachers I met that afternoon was Kevin, a New Yorker like me. But not only did he come from my home state,
I later learned that he and I went to the same high school. He had been a senior my freshman year, but we
had to travel thousands of mile to meet.
Mira had drafted a schedule for
Steve and I of the classes we were to observe.
Since the teacher training classes had been a bust, I was hoping, beyond
hope at this point, that I would learn something valuable during these
observations. If learning to sleep with
your eyes open can be considered something valuable then the day was a success,
if not, well, I will chose to look on the bright side, obviously the
expectations for teachers were not high which meant this was certainly a job I
could do.
In the first class I observed,
the teacher was busy teaching eight year olds the phrase, “I have…” In a cup were several small laminated
pictures. The teacher would pick out one
at random and hand it to a student who would have to identify what the picture
was and then use it in a sentence, “I have cake.” “I have chocolate.” “I have milk.” And around the room the teacher would go as
each student got a turn. When all the
pictures had been used up, back into the cup they went and the activity started
all over again, again and again, over and over for forty long minutes. Half way through the kids had lost
interest. Some of them were going
through the motion, others were staring at the wall and one kid was busy doing
what appeared to be math homework.
The second class I had the
pleasure of watching was a group of six year olds who I must admit were rather
adorable. They were busy learning about
prepositions. The teacher picked up each
kid and placed them in a different area of the room to sit. He then pointed to each child and the class
had to identify where their classmate was sitting. “James is under the desk.” “Robert is on the table.” “Clair is in the closet.” For the first ten minutes, the activity was
entertaining and engaging, after a half hour I couldn’t wait to go home. The kids felt the same way and by the end,
they were so busy talking to each other in Korean, the teacher gave up trying
to instruct them in English.
So I take that back, I did learn
something very valuable that day, I learned that to be an effective teacher I needed
not to be monotonous and that was a lesson I carried with me through years of
teaching. If you are incapable of being
an entertainer, you’ll never be a spectacular teacher. I have no attention span, kids have no
attention span, so together we are a perfect match. As I leap from task to task, children always
seem to better keep up and follow along than adults. For the rest of that week, Steve and I did
nothing but observe classes and by Friday I was much more at ease. Teaching in real life back in a public school
at home might be a challenge I wasn’t up to but teaching in a Korea was
certainly something I could handle. I
only wondered if the parents of my students, all students in the academy,
really understood how grossly under qualified and unprepared we American
teachers were. Just because we had white
faces and could speak like natives didn’t mean we’d adequately be able to teach
English. But considering the volume of English speakers living throughout
Korea, the reality of our ineptness either never crossed anyone’s mind or they
didn’t care. The bottom line for the
businessmen running the academies was money; perhaps that is why within two
years most of the Wonderlands had crashed. On the outside they looked great,
but on the inside, how much learning was really taking place?
