LITMIR.BIZ

      Tadumi

      Some use a knife for peeling an apple, and some use it for killing people. The same goes for any other device used by man-its nature depends on the nature of the one using it, and on how he uses it.

      Take the strings of the bow and the harp. Both strings are of the same origin, but one is used to pierce the flesh and cause life-giving blood to flow, while the other is used to pierce the air and cause the most beautiful strains of music to flow. So a person's nature can be defined by the instruments he uses, and how he uses them.

      They say the cudgel was the first device used by man, and he used it as an extension of his fist. We can see this when we consider those circumstances in which he uses his fist. Not in love. Not when he is resting in the shade, wiping his brow, after plowing a field. In love and in rest the hand is relaxed, open. The clenched fist is used when we want to smash something into pieces, to beat on something, to strike a fellow being. The human arm was the handle of the cudgel, and the fist was the head of this blunt, insensitive object. How this tool was used depended, like every other tool, on the nature and intent of the one wielding it.

      The fact that the first device made by man was an extension of his clenched fist, not his open hand, is evidence that inherent in man's devices and his civilization is the inclination towards some quite nasty reflexes, resulting often in violence and war.

      But look at what the Korean has done with the cudgel. The Korean changed it into a bat, for both washing and ironing clothes. When the cudgel came to Korea, women took this tool of aggression from the hands of their men. In using it to wash their family's clothes at the washing rock of a fresh spring and, in the women's quarters deep in the night, to smooth and soften the clothes, our women pacified it. This labor of renewal begins and ends with the laundry bat, the tool that started off as a cudgel.

      This is why, when we Koreans hear the laundry bat at work, it is not the cudgel's cries of war and distress that we hear. We grew up with the heartwarming, consoling sound of mother or elder sister working in some cozy spot in the night, and the more we hear the quiet, steady drum of her bat, the more we want to hear.

      The solid oak bat on that smooth, glimmering washing rock gives off a clear, limpid sound. Together our women, as if they were playing in a percussion ensemble, drum away on the cotton clothes in harmonious rhythm, now and then varying the beat. Back home later, in unity, in counterpoint, they produce artful syncopation as they smooth the wrinkles and soften the texture.

      Yes, fire and water will always be opposite extremes, but if you put a full cooking pan between the two you get a wholesome meal; in just the same way, put a piece of cloth between an organic piece of wood and an inorganic rock, and you will get a lustrous sheen. Put a piece of clothing between a laundry bat and a washing rock, and their three distinct natures work themselves together into a melodious tone.

      At such a time this bat displays its difference from the cudgel. It is a child of the same wisdom with which the ancients in their day gathered their swords and melted them down into a temple bell, the wisdom with which we will pick up our shell casings and turn them into church and school bells.

      Friendly Walls

      Dam

      In any village in Korea, even the lowliest, humblest wattle and daub hovel will have its own wall around the small patch of land it occupies. There is no way such a wall would ever stop a thief, in the first place because that hovel inside it shows there is nothing there worth stealing, and in the second place because the wall is probably too low and old and weak to keep the thief out. And even if some thief were inclined to enter, he would not have to go through the trouble of climbing the wall. He could just use the dog's door at the bottom of the wall's gate. with the Korean country wall, anyone can come and go as he pleases.

      Why a wall, then? The Korean wall functions as no more than a demarcation between inside and out. Regardless of how meager his house, the Korean will build his castle wall and rule inside that wall as if there were his own sovereign domain.

      In this sense, Japan's traditional nagaya house is inadequate, for it has no walls. The system in Japan mandated that no wall could be erected without the consent of the feudal lord. In Korea, on the other hand, even with its history of oppression and exploitation in the era of absolute monarchy, the one who had his own house reigned supreme over the territory protected by the wall. And so the Korean wall, whether a strong country rock wall, a dilapidated mud wall, or even the wicket fence that looks as if it will fly away with the first strong breeze, is as good as the massive, impenetrable wall of some feudal lord's castle.

      The distinctive wall of Korea is the rock wall. This wall has a beauty which is lacking in brick walls. Instead of the standardized size and form of the brick, each rock in our kind of wall is of a different size and shape and color. It is rather because of the difference in each rock that all of them are able to unite into such a distinctive wall. They say the reason the rock walls of Cheju Island are able to withstand all those typhoons without so much as a tremor is that each differently sized rock diffuses shock in several directions.

      When we consider the way in which the variegated rocks of Korea's wall consolidate to resist with more strength than can be summoned by the brick wall-in which every brick is uniform-we can understand the reason for the Korean people's strong solidarity. They say the Japanese act together like one brick wall, every one of them uniformly adhering to their society's set of standard dimensions, but the solidarity of Koreans is a harmony of all sorts of individual forms, like Cheju Island's rock walls.

      With such nice walls, though, why on earth do Koreans leave their homes unsecured with no lock on the gate or on the front door of the house? The gateless rock wall is a special feature of Cheju Island, but seen often enough throughout all of Korea.

      Japanese and Westerners have a front hall in their homes, but the equivalent does not exist in the traditional Korean home. Instead, in the Korean home it is always "open house," where anyone can come and go as he pleases. It is the character of the Korean's home and of his heart that once you pass through his wall, you have a free pass all the way to any room inside of the house.

      In the Japanese home it is easy to get into the front hall, but difficult to get any further inside. In the

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