WILL OLYMPICS SHOW THERE’S MORE TO SOUTH KOREA THAN THE DMZ?
The young Korean couple strolling the streets of Bukchon Hanok Village appeared headed to their own wedding ceremony. About a century ago.
Resplendent in traditional Korean hanbok outfits — her in flowing scarlet and royal blue, him in full-length regal maroon — the pair wandered through Seoul’s historical district of homes and businesses from another time. But for his white sneakers, the couple were a picture of Korea in 1910. That and the selfie sticks. At every turn the teenagers in heritage garb found a suitable backdrop, then hoisted the telescoping rods with their phones at the ends so that they both could take photos of themselves taking photos of themselves. They’d review the snapshots, which logic dictates would create a stereographic image if combined. Then they’d laugh. What they didn’t look like were people living in terror under the threat of invasion by a bat-guano-crazy leader next door. They looked like they were just living.
Seeing South Korea only as a conflict zone is one of those assumptions that Westerners tend to make, fueled by the fact most Americans only know three things about the country: K-Pop culture, spicy kimchi and the DMZ, the demilitarized zone along the border with North Korea that is the most heavily guarded stretch of land on the planet. It’s understandable; Western media doesn’t cover much else about the culture, and few Americans go there — a number that isn’t likely to go up soon. Travel is a slayer of assumptions and stereotypes but, in general, you have to get off the couch.
That isn’t true, however, during the Olympics, in this case the Winter Games that started Friday. The global broadcast is a 17-day window through which we can learn about the host’s culture, people and places (presumably while still on the couch).
If, however, the networks are predictably disappointing and only highlight the aspects of South Korean life that we already know (video of a K-Pop boy band eating kimchi in the DMZ), here are a few things I learned about Korea during a trip last year that you might not discover from Winter Olympics coverage:
North or South, they are all Koreans: It’s easy to fixate on the political and military conflict that has plagued the Korean Peninsula since the 1950s, but the truth is many residents on each side have family, friends and hometowns on the other side. Nearly all the Koreans I met said they don’t see the North Koreans as enemies, they hate the political forces that seem to have no interest in peace and reunification.
Greener than you think: Thanks to seeing South Korea primarily through the sprawling economic engine that is Seoul, it’s easy for us to picture the entire country as subways and skyscrapers, condos and construction. In reality, 90 percent of the land is mountainous, and more than 60 percent is forest. The latter percentage goes up in the Taebaek Mountains of Gangwon province, home of Olympics host Pyeongchang, a resort town surrounded by hundreds of square miles of tree-carpeted hills.
No time for constant fear: South Koreans have been living with some level of this conflict for well over 60 years, and long before that the peninsula was a convenient steppingstone for every time China or Japan felt the need to go conquer something. Even in April, when North Korea began testing missiles in earnest, the general attitude of folks I met was that you can’t put your life on hold every time leaders with more bravado than brains make yet another threat.
National parks a priority: Despite being smaller than the state of Virginia, South Korea has 22 national parks that represent about 6.7 percent of the country’s total area. Even more surprising is that, unlike most Americans, Koreans seem to value their parks, which are well kept, well attended and affordable. Most parks are dotted with Buddhist temples, connected by lantern-lit trails, making the parks havens of both nature and culture.
There is food other than kimchi:
While the spicy pickled cabbage is an ever-present staple, Korean menus are packed with marvelous dishes and side dishes (banchan), from pork dumplings and hearty bibimbop to icy buckwheat noodles and creative soups — including haejangguk, a supposed curative known as “hangover stew.” It’s probably best to just assume it works.