Up the stairs, down the stairs. Up the stairs, down the stairs.
This week, it all came flooding back. Vivid memories of the constant fitness challenge of the Seoul Metropolitan Subway System, the most efficient way to get around this enormous city of now 26 million people.
Back to 1986, a time of my life when I was at my most idealistic, a thin, healthy, mostly vegetable eating shy badass, wide-eyed at my first hand glimpse of human rights violations on a global scale and tear gas, where my BFF and I teased Korean police following us on the train down south with “resistance” style giggles. It was such a different time, a dramatic time.
Long ago arriving in Seoul in autumn, fresh from a summer of dealing with my difficult father while waiting for my visa to Korea, I remember how somehow the application had been misplaced in a drawer. There had been some Korean government consternation about my government data-entry internship with USIA, parent agency of Voice of America. Out of the gate, a naïve pixie treated like a “spy” – this crazy story wrinkle was going to have to be in a book at some point. Visa finally in hand, with a promise of a $6K annual stipend and housing, I marched across the tarmac of the Asheville Airport — where I had played clarinet in the band for Jimmy Carter’s reception — in my home-sewn yellow windowpane plaid dress, the skirt billowing behind me. Energized but apprehensive to be leaving home in light of my mother’s tears (sorry, Mom), I didn’t think about the fact that I had never flown before.
But deep down, I knew it was well past time to leave home. I could no longer accept the old rules of patriarchy, the misogyny, the disapproving glances because I resembled my dearest grandmother, her dark hair, tiny stature and fast walk. All because I was outspokenly different…an empath, a creative, a non-conforming rule breaker. I walked…I race-walked to the waiting plane dragging a giant steamer trunk of handmade clothes because in Molly Ringwald “Pretty in Pink” style, I couldn’t afford mall ones. Hoping that I would fit in, that I would be smart enough, trendy enough. That I could have an interesting life and make a difference.
I made a difference, but not in the way I had anticipated. I worked to build tiny human bridges, face-to-face conversations with visiting groups trying to understand Korea and students eager to practice English trying to find a path to make Korea more open like the West. I moved endowment funds globally and guarded the keys to the safe where the “dojang” 도장 (rubber stamps) were kept and worked to erase the remnants of colonialism by helping with land transfer paperwork…handing property back to Korean institutions rather than American ones. I tried to understand human trafficking issues and the pain endured by the “comfort women” of WWII. Sensitive, rarely discussed topics in 1986 such as women’s ordination and family reunifications with North Korea are now widely discussed. Families having a few unifying celebrations with the North’s approval in 2018. Women pastors and female public servants today abundant. It was a positive assignment. My American colleagues wrote a funny tribute poem about me. After 3 years, I had hopes to have stayed as I was contemplating grad sc
hool at Yonsei University and a cross-cultural marriage proposal all at once. Not to be, a family emergency came up and I returned to the States. I took a different road.
Fast forward 32 years. An opportunity came about.
While helping a client over dinner pre-prep financials for a business plan, he mentioned he was headed to Korea to research suppliers for an industrial project…heading to a trade show in Korea in late October. A serial entrepreneur, this was the 3rd business pivot I had helped him with. I immediately said “Cool! I used to live there!” We joked a bit about what he could expect culturally o
n his trip and by the end of the evening said: “Come with me…I’ll pay your way. I just don’t want to be over there as one of those Ugly Americans. I want to see the real side of Seoul. But I only have a day to do it.”
Although we had had a 10-year professional client relationship, my business and life partner had just died and I was a little freaked out about such a long journey so soon – but also professionally flattered that he would ask for my help on this project. He said I impressed him with my Korean knowledge.
We kind of left it that I would think about it, but he needed to know in a few days because flights were filling up. He emailed me the next morning again imploring me to take the chance….
“So, what’s holding you back???”
I could have written multiple Wikipedia entries of what was stopping me at that point but I kept my thoughts clear, made my own decision without checking in with my tribe and oh so professionally wrote back, “Okay, yes, thank you for your kind invite…Yes, I would like to join you. Sounds like a fun adventure. :>)”
My phone rang immediately and we made our travel plans. He reserved my ticket and separate hotel in a trendy district that I knew nothing about. We set up some dinner meetings for his chopstick practice at Riverside Korean in Covington, KY. I made sure we got a western table…I didn’t think he was quite ready for sitting on the floor yet.
I ordered two Korean phrase books from Amazon to refresh my limited vocabulary from the one semester of language study I had at The Korea Herald Hahg-won. A bit daunting when I opened them again, my brain cells more senior now, I was petrified of embarrassing myself with rusty Korean…especially with a client.
But I rose to the challenge by putting the books away saying confidently….”Oh, I’ll just study on the plane and wing it.”
Well, I didn’t have time to study on the plane because we were racing for it due to mechanical delays on a connecting flight. It was Amazing Race worthy to be one of those people paged by the gate staff. However, winging it went better than I had anticipated. We never got lost, we never got food poisoning even though my client was eyeing food on a stick from the night carts in Myeong-Dong. I kept redirecting him to higher end restaurant choices as a precaution. He wanted to eat where “the people” ate. We compromised.
We successfully made it to the trade show venue at Kintex which was indeed a wonder. As big or bigger than McCormick Place in Chicago, it was squeaky clean and all of the booths were technically top shelf. Our goal was to find a certain industrial supplier and do some business networking using my bad Korean. We were fairly successful, learned a lot but determined that we may need to go back and do more pre-trip research and get out of Seoul on our next trip. At least we now had some stronger resources. It was ultimately a lovely autumn trip. There was so much fall color, latte machine coffee shops on every corner, it was so cosmopolitan and I enjoyed the return to anonymity than when I had lived there with grandmothers squeezing my cheek every block saying “Yep-ah-yo!” 예쁜 여자 (pretty girl).
After the work meetings and chores were behind us, we walked and walked and walked and absorbed the vibrancy of Seoul. Up the stairs, down the stairs of the subways and the Bukchon artist district only stopping briefly for hot mugs of coffee and dinner in the evenings. We accidentally wound up in a mad cap romp in Itaewon with thousands of teenagers on Halloween night getting face painted. Caught up in the revelry I posed with the Dada Itaewon theatre troupe raising money for their production and we talked “hashtags” and Instagram. Eerily costumed impersonators of game characters and Kim Jong-Un roamed the tiny hilly streets. I rescued a baby’s wizard hat in the wind and his parents were thrilled when I spoke to him in Korean and he smiled. There was a freedom here that was new and fresh.
My client departed quickly for his next meetings in Europe, so left to my own devices and without a car I continued to walk and wander. There was so much energy. I marveled at what had been built since the 1950’s when the Korean War had flattened all of this. I delighted in being anonymous and away from the pre-midterm election toxic media in the States. I could breathe again.
Coming across the river walk where all of these magical characters were perched on platforms in the river was a serendipitous find. The river rocks reminded me of my recent rock scampering escapade on the Ocoee River in Tennessee and I was so drawn to the scene. It was a historical interpretation of the Korean Royal family going for a walk in the Secret Garden. The rocks were placed in orderly rows as stepping stones across the river.
I looked at the rocks in the river as refuge. I reflected on the breakfast conversation I had had that morning with a young woman from Singapore. She had taken a gap year to study Korean and was on sabbatical from her demanding job with an MNC. Her father had died many years ago (mine only recently). Her brother was newly married. I felt the unspoken anxiety in her words, some slight homesickness and also her desire for adventure. She told me she had been trying to figure out her “what’s next” and I shared a bit of how I had been going down the same path after my partner’s death and that I was also restoring an old house.
I could tell she was intrigued and wanted to visit. We exchanged business cards.
Her hardest question to me: “Is America really as dangerous and violent as we hear?”
It was so hard to figure out “how” to explain that nugget of a question, flashes of violence in my own past and recent shootings at the synagogue in Pittsburgh fresh on my mind hit me like an anvil.
We hugged after breakfast. She went to catch her flight. I went for yet another walk to the fabric market where I made a new friendship with Sunny, seller of fine silk. His sister (friend?) business partner showed me her Instagram page and sewing creations. They were professionally wonderful and very creative. Sunny posed for a picture making a finger heart sign as my partner had done in the hospital.
We are all so connected. Life is indeed magical.
It was a very healing trip. I garnished it with a celebratory Chocolate Donut with bitter dark chocolate filling and 2 orange peel slivers at the Krispy Kreme stand at the Inchon airport. I carried it around luxuriously eating it ever so, so slowly and looking at $1000 duty free designer purses. Not quite my Audrey Hepburn moment in Seoul, but I dearly enjoyed it.
“What’s stopping you?” still resonating in my brain. It sent me home eager to write and do.
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