Third Life in Korea

A cool crispness fills the air, like a tardy Michigan fall, encouraging the palette of color in the trees, entering one's lungs with greater density, coaxing pedestrians to don layers of wool and down, like fattened ducks before Christmas dinner. In this weather are promises of grinning pumpkins and costumes, food and family, gifts and decadence. It is holiday weather.

As I begin the morning walk from the subway to my school, I casually regard the people and buildings I see every day. Old, wrinkled faces smiling brightly and toothlessly as I walk past. Structures of brick that lean upon each other for mutual support. Laundry draped like Tibetan prayer flags atop the huddled houses. Businessmen wearing falsely enthusiastic suits, stepping like tall men on their way to work.

It is Korea. But today it is a different country from what I have known before. This thought struck me as I walked up the gently sloping road, barely large enough for a single car and pedestrians. The hills that people here call mountains rose from behind the buildings, showing off the colors of their trees like shiny political badges. I watched them as I walked quickly, the Eagles providing my morning sound track. I thought of home. I thought of how long it's been since I've seen the fall fireworks in the Michigan foliage. And then I turned my eyes down from the hill, seeing a staircase winding around the side of a house, snaking to the top where the Tibetan laundry froze in the early morning cold. A large sign was posted atop the shop in front, written in a language I recognize, but do not understand.

Suddenly I realized; I have entered a new country. This is a new Korea.

When I first came, I was slightly awed at the thought of being in a new country. I remember riding the bus or walking on the street, watching people and signs, and being overwhelmed with waves of excitement and amazement that I was here living in this foreign country. It was the classic honeymoon phase of culture shock. This Korea, the first I knew, was fun, interesting, and amazing.

Then I returned from traveling in India and Christmas at home. I began my second contract, also very excited about the various opportunities. But time passed and I entered a new Korea, one that I loathed and wanted very much to avoid. Everything around me grated on me; I found walking through the streets arduous and unappealing. I had entered the second phase, one I never thought I would encounter. I remember my Anthropology class had a formal name for it, but I cannot recall the name. Basically, it is one where you despise the host culture. Wikipedia calls it an "I hate everything" phase. A fitting title.

This is a new Korea, one about which I am yet unsure. Perhaps I can best describe through something I recently learned. Korea is still listed as a third world country, though the image that this title evokes is extremely different from what one encounters while living in the city. It has all the immediate signs of a modern city: electricity, public transportation, rows upon rows of apartment buildings. But when I discovered that this place, somehow, is still technically part of the third world, I had to look closer. Suddenly the pieces of the photograph became clearer, the pores and wrinkles showing. There is a certain beauty in her flaws, those ones that she works so hard to cover.

The third phase is entitled by Wikipedia as "Everything is ok." This may not be as applicable to my time here, as I still struggle with the second phase. But that serpentine street that leads me every day to my school holds in it the great beauty of a place so crossed between the old and new. Sometimes I see the trash that lies carelessly discarded on the street. At other times I notice the curious faces of strangers seeing me for the first time. But then I see my familiar buildings, the people I recognize. And I smile. Welcome to my third life in Korea.