Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon
Friday gratefuls: Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur. L’Shanah Tova. Opening the Book of Life. Chesbon nefesh. A time for accounting for our souls. 5784. Judaism. Israel. Conversion. D.P. My son and his compassion. Seoah and the fried chicken last night. Authentic life. A dog’s life. Rain in Songtan. My son’s cookout tonight with the ROK Air Force controllers.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Accounting for our souls
One brief shining: Walked up Songtan-ro past the restaurant with the image of a man about to eat an uncooked fish, up past the sheet metal shop with grime on its windows and duct work stacked alongside a rarely used front door, past the apartment buildings with narrow parking lanes between them, past the draft beer joint with an official sign that read Draft Beer Hygiene, turned left and back into a residential neighborhood with a mix of low rise apartment buildings, the occasional single family home with a gate, a garden with squash and peppers and a couple of plants I didn’t recognize, left again now going downhill, a sleepy twenty-something came out of an apartment door, looked blearily at me as I continued toward Seoyang-ro, the small commercial area that serves the locals, once there my feet took me left and back toward the 15 building complex where I’m staying for the month of September.
And now for something darker. Long before my son and Seoah moved back to Korea for their four-year stay, I’d become enchanted with K-dramas. One of the things I love about Netflix. All the country specific shows. Turkish. South African. British. Japanese anime. Chinese movies. Israeli shows. Directed by natives and acted in by natives. Story lines peculiar to the sensibilities of other cultures than my own. It’s an unusual moment, being able to see the ordinary entertainment of people’s around the world. How I got to watching my first K-dramas.
Perhaps you’ve seen Vincenzo or Extraordinary Attorney Woo or the Hotel Luna, Stranger, Itaewon Class, Sky Castle. Perhaps not. I have. Yesterday I began to watch D.P. Yes, my misspent old age. I know. But I forgave myself for this habit a long time ago.
Particular themes critical of contemporary Koren culture begin to emerge. The tension between prosecutors and the National Police. Misplaced reverence for chaebol CEO’s. And two that have interested me especially. The punishing competitiveness of the Korean school system and the harmful affects of bullying in many sectors of Korean society.
Skycastle for example follows four families living in a gated community for the rich, powerful, and well-educated. Skycastle. Without spoilers its theme of hyper competitive students, but even more their hyper competitive, win-at-all costs parents, shows how such a system distorts family life, childhood development, and the culture of Korea itself. I asked Seoah and her sisters about this and they acknowledged that Skycastle accurately reflected a small segment of Korean society, like the cheating ring uncovered in 2019 that included actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin reflects a certain segment of ours.
Yes. Skycastle probably exaggerates. Yet. One of Seoah’s nephews, a bright young guy with a talent for the piano as well, often studies until midnight. Not because his mother pressures him but because the school system itself implies that’s the way to educate yourself.
Tomorrow we’ll look at bullying at schools and in the universal military service required of as the law states, all male genders.
