My Korea - Kevin O'Rourke

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visit to the East Coast was in the summer of 1965. We had just finished language school and were going on a holiday before reporting for duty in Ch’unch’ŏn. We hired an ancient hapsŭng, which broke down repeatedly. I remember half the engine on newspapers somewhere near Hoengsŏng. How the driver ever got it together again was a source of amazement. He turned the key and the engine fired. We took off again, broke down again. More newspapers, more genius. Back on the road again. It was late by the time we got to Kansŏng where we spent the night. The parish priest prided himself on his skill in making martinis. He always made them in the kettle. The recipe was simple. He poured in a bottle of gin and followed it with two teaspoons of martini. Add ice, shake like hell, pop in a few olives or cocktail onions. They were wonderful.

      Next day we went on to Sokch’o. The priest’s house in Sokch’o was the only house in Kangwŏn Province that you could say was beautiful. The beauty, I should add, was all on the outside. The location was wonderful; the house was perched on a height overlooking the sea, with a lovely bay window on the sea side. House and church were reputed to have tank tracks in the walls, courtesy of the American army who helped with the construction. Both buildings were whitewashed. A Cinderella house in an anything but Cinderella world. The house featured Bishop Quinlan’s usual back-of-an-envelope, multi-door design; a central living room with doors off it to every room in the house. The frugal nature of the previous incumbent had resulted in a paint job of the interior that had to be seen to be believed. Walls and ceiling were diarrhoea green, and I remember the woodwork as an awful brimsy brown. The paint was American army paint, guaranteed to be rust proof, damp proof, and virtually indestructible, which made it irresistible to the pastor, a practical man for whom colour was a very minor consideration. The new parish priest, a lamb of a man affectionately known as Frankie Ferocious, had done nothing about the décor. He probably wasn’t even aware that it was offensive. But some of his guests were very offended. Over a few cocktails and an endless succession of beers, they announced that something would have to be done. First thing in the morning, runners were sent to the market to buy paint and replenish the beer. Work began. It was hot thirsty work. More beer than paint was poured. By early afternoon, the eager workers, no longer quite so eager, declared a holiday. The project continued sporadically throughout the week. By Friday, half the ceiling was done and most of the walls. There was a problem. Danny Chi was due to be consecrated bishop of Wŏnju next day, and the leaders of the paint gang, after much theological toing and froing, had decided to go to the celebration even though they lacked the appropriate wedding garments. The ceiling was left unfinished in the style of Naeso-sa Temple in North Chŏlla. I’m afraid none of the painters had any idea of the Naeso-sa story, with its wonderful symbolism of the beautifully incomplete. Sŏ Chŏngju tells the story:

      Painting the Great Worship Hall in Naeso-sa entailed man power, bird power, and tiger power; and even that was not sufficient so that it remains unfinished today. On the West side, along the top of the inner wall, a master sits in meditation. Take a look at the mind-blowing incompleteness of the unpainted blank space beside the master. That’s what I want to talk about.

      When the Great Worship Hall was built and the search was on for a master painter, a nameless wanderer came from the west in the twilight of the day and accepted the painter’s task. After painting the outside, he moved within the shrine, locked the door securely from within and cried:

      ‘Let no one dare enter this place until I have completed my task.’

      But in the mundane world and in the temple, it is the foolhardy that cause the trouble. Thus, one foolhardy monk, unable to control his curiosity, stole over, bored a hole in the paper window and peered within. The wandering master was nowhere to be seen. Instead a lovely bird fluttered in flight across the ceiling, brush gripped in its beak. It dipped the brush in a dye that came from its body, thus painting the shrine, beautifully, beautifully. But at the sound of the intruder, the bird cried in bitter dismay and fell flat to the floor where it stretched four paws listlessly out: bird had become tiger.

      ‘Tiger Monk, Tiger Monk, rise!’ The monks called on the tiger in their local dialect, just as they would call a fellow monk, but the tiger did not move. All they could do was wish the tiger reanimation in the next life. With this in mind, they called the temple Naeso-sa, meaning resuscitation in the future. Across the centuries the monks go up morning and evening to bow and bow again toward the blank unpainted spot.

      Two of the men involved in the aborted paint job took the wrong train in Samch’ŏk on the Saturday morning and ended up in Pusan, where they went AWOL for three weeks! The house in Sokch’o has been remodelled and extended several times since. Little of the old magic remains and there is no need to bow to the blank spot on the ceiling.

      A lot of water ran under the collective Korean cultural bridge between Tan’gun’s legendary founding myth and the momentous arrival of the Columbans in 1933. Tan’gun’s place is secure; I’m not so sure about the Columbans. Their memory, of course, will remain in the hearts of the friends they made and the people they served, but if the past is any guide to the future, you can be pretty sure that the great Korean collective memory will swallow their contribution without a gurgle. Of the foreigners who left a mark on Korean society, Hamel’s name is probably best known. I stress the name bit because apart from his name most folks know very little about him. Among the knowledgeable unknowledgeable, some say Hamel and his crew were responsible for the red tint in Korean hair; others cry, ‘Nonsense! The red tint came from washing the hair with beer.’ Take your pick. I have no idea when the red tint first came to the fore, or when beer was first made in Korea, but I can assure you that the beer in the ’60s would turn more than your hair red. You see the odd photograph of Paul Georg von Molendorff, dressed in court clothes, but he’s not much more than an image any more. Molendorff served as director of the maritime customs and as deputy foreign minister to King Kojong.

      No one remembers the Irishman John MacLeavy Brown, another director of the maritime customs and Kojong’s chief financial adviser, although his name adorns a plaque in Pagoda Park. William Franklin Sands’ book At the Court of Korea is an intriguing account of Korea’s people and institutions around 1900, a must read for anyone interested in colonial Korea, but man and book are long forgotten despite the reprint by RAS in the eighties. Horace Allen, missionary and diplomat, introduced Western medicine to Korea. He was physician to the court and a confidante of Emperor Kojong. Korea has made little effort to ensure that the memory of these foreigners survives. The Protestant missionaries fare only marginally better. Yonsei University preserves the Underwood name, but Gale, Trollope and the other prominent Protestant missionaries are mostly names in history books, known to historians and literature buffs but for practical purposes forgotten. Francesca Rhee, Syngman Rhee’s wife, is well remembered, but I doubt if very many Koreans (or foreigners) know her maiden name. When I tried to write an obituary for Phil Crosbie, who had been on the Death March with Bishop Quinlan, one of the big Seoul English language dailies refused to print it on the grounds that no one would know him.

      I suppose the tendency to forget is part of the loss of inshim, the natural benevolence on which Koreans traditionally pride themselves. Inshim has been in steady decline over the last forty years, part of the fabric, I believe, of rapid industrial development. I’ve noticed the same thing in Ireland. The loss of inshim resides in a fundamental intolerance, an obsession with my rights and an insensitivity to yours. Money takes over; traditional values die. In the old days Korean folks were always very helpful; they smiled all the time. The immigration office was not yet the most dreaded office in the land. In fact, you never had to go there in person. I was once top of the most wanted list in Korea for failing to renew my residence permit, a designation I maintained for six months. I was living in Ch’unch’ŏn at the time, and Mukho was the port of entry for Kangwŏn Province, which meant that papers for renewal of residence filed in the provincial office in Ch’unch’ŏn had to be sent to Mukho to be processed. My residence permit lay in the bottom of an official’s drawer in Ch’unch’ŏn for six months. The residence thing was so relaxed that it didn’t even occur to me to go and pick up the permit until someone – enjoying himself enormously, I should add – told me I was listed with hoodlums anonymous on the walls of Mukho Immigration Office under the title Most

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