Leaving Seoul

(After a little less than three years in Seoul we departed for a new life in North Carolina. This was my diary entry.)

End Game And so we leave Korea. The tiny nomadic tribe of Fenton pulls up its stakes and sets out yet again into the day. I hope these words have marked our passage and told a tale worth telling. Truth is we all have our Seoul Stories and only require a few willing (or unwilling) ears to listen or eyes to read. For lending me the use of your sensory apparatus, I thank you.

We are off to the great state of North Carolina, one of the best parts of the United States I am told. I realized the other day that I have never worked as an adult in the continental US, having left there for Hawaii in 1969. I wonder if things have changed? Do they still have Slurpees? Is the Vietnam War over? And how about that wacky President Nixon?

My family has never lived in the continental USA. The Seoul Foreign School has a program called Re-entry of Third Culture Children into the USA. ‘Third Culture’ that’s pretty good. It’s also two and a half more cultures than I currently possess, meaning I’ll probably make a complete fool of myself before I begin to figure it out. And how exactly will that be different from all your previous life experiences, Mike?

Mime-ic Stephanie and Matthew have discovered mimes, the grayscale troubadours forever trapped in their invisible boxes. Our apartment now festoons with mime-compatible doors, forming a veritable mimefield of unseen barriers ready to block the way of those lacking sufficient mimesense. A trip from the bedroom to the kitchen, a journey of hundreds of inches that used to take thousands of milliseconds, now requires entire minutes as your personal mime patiently finds the key to each door, opens it, leads you through and locks it behind.

One day Stephanie signaled to me in silent mimespeech that she was about to leave the room. As she walked toward the invisible door, she turned back to me to wave goodbye, and proceeded to walk into the *real* door, which unfortunately remained closed. This door now bears, in testament to the physical universe, a Stephanie-shaped dent.

PokeyMon

Unless you reside under an enormous boulder you are aware that Pokemon creatures have taken over planet Earth. You are most likely unaware that Matthew and Stephanie have taken to creating their own Pokemon characters. For example, Matthew invented one called the DiceMaster, a Godzilla-sized reptile with a large pair of dice on its back. Strength = 10,000, Weakness = 0

Stephanie got into the act as well, and I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw one Pokemon drawing that looked like a little girl:

Name: Sharon; Strength = 0; Weakness = Everything

Sharon is a classmate who for some reason doesn’t like Stephanie. Rather than getting mad, Stephanie got even by consigning Sharon to lowest rungs of Pokemon Hell. As I travel through life, remind me not to get on my daughter’s bad side.

More Doors I read a story once about a futuristic house only for the very wealthy. It’s “doors” were actually matter transporters, meaning that each “room” of the house could be on a different planet, or in different galaxies if you are willing to crack the rules of the universe wide open. But what if transporters operated at the speed of light only, and you sent yourself 12 light years away? I’ll bet it would take a lot longer to get from the bedroom to the kitchen, mimes notwithstanding.

More Rules If you follow the written rules in Korea, you will be considered the stupidest person alive or an imbecile like me. This goes for driving, paying taxes, taking tests, and so on. The lack of due process in business dealings is one thing — perhaps this will merely result in lower quality work, a few bridge collapses or some department store structural failures. But the ‘white envelop’ prepayment for services extends far beyond that. To be assured that your son or daughter receives proper attention in school, one had better grease the wheels of the education system so to speak. If you want the best treatment for your sick loved one in the hospital, then you had better see that the doctor gets a little something extra. I am all in favor of local customs, but this aspect of Korea seems to me to be self-limiting. It is pay-to-play, meaning excellence may be absent — or simply no longer required.

The Name In ancient times Korea was called The Hermit Kingdom, and more recently The Land of the Morning Calm. For me She remains as always an enigmatic, divided land that is somehow united in spirit. She is joy and sadness, anger and envy, honesty and deceit. She can be as wide and slow as the Han, as high and pure as Sorak-san, and as hard and cold as the granite monoliths surrounding Seoul. And for those who have, for a little while shared her pride and her passion, we know her by one other name: Home.