I’m in the middle of writing an epic blog entry on my trip to Bangkok, but I wanted to give a quick summary of my feelings about the trip before I launch into the ever growing details.
This trip was enormously necessary. I’m reading an excellent book on modern Korean history and culture by a British reporter who lived in Seoul for many years. In describe Korean attitude identity, he writes
The Koreans use the image of the frog in the well to explain their own parochialism. All the frog knows of the outside world is the distant patch of sky at the top of the well. The only reality is what happens in the well where it lives. (Breen, 18).
I, too, have felt like a frog stuck in the bottom of a well, and my ideas of Asia have been shaped by the strange culture of Korea. It was a good thing I climbed out of the well, even if it was only for a couple days. My experience in Thailand has given me the perspective needed to make better sense of Korean culture.
Bangkok and Attuhaya were very interesting places, but I would not call them strange. I saw widespread hedonism and liberated sexuality in the bars and alleys of Bangkok, I saw a poverty and dirtiness in Attuhaya that everyone seemed comfortable with, I saw androgynous Thai dancers dressed in full golden regalia. But what shocked me the most? I didn’t find anything strange. There were moments that shocked me, but in a playful, good-natured way. I remember stopping across a bridge in Bangkok to watch a band of men dressed as nuns in blonde wigs dance and sing on the sidewalk below. It was shocking, but I didn’t turn my face in disgust. I laughed and smiled.
In Korea I feel like the perpetual guest. Most people are very kind to me, always willing to offer help. But I would not say Koreans have been friendly to me; there always seems to be an invisible wall that separates us, a distance they keep. During my travels in Thailand I thought about how easy it would be to make Thai friends. In fact, many Thais did stop to talk to me. Sometimes they wanted money, of course, but they didn’t seem to have any trouble approaching people they wanted to talk to. Koreans are far more shy.
Thailand culture felt very extroverted. Everyone and everything was on display for me to see, from the golden spires of the palaces to the enormous feathered costumes of the dancers at the Chinese New Year celebration. It almost felt like there were two lives in Thailand: the performance of traditional culture and the performance of life in a modern world. But Koreans have woven their culture so well into modern life that it is difficult to separate the two. Korean culture IS the way of life in 2011. Perhaps this is why I feel that Korean culture is more internalized than Thai culture. Or maybe I’m not quite right, and Korean culture IS naturally more introverted than Thai culture. Korea was, after all, nicknamed “The Hermit Kingdom” during the 18th century, while Bangkok developed into an international crossroad for trade and culture.
I’m just throwing whatever ideas comes of my mind, but there is something about modern Korean life that is more psychological than the upfront, extroverted, larger than life performances I saw from people in Thailand. Are Koreans repressed? Certainly none of the sexual liberation I saw in Thailand exists in Korea, and if it does, it exists not in the open streets and alleyways, but behind closed doors. The need to conform is so great in this country, writer Breen said “There is probably no more homogeneous a country on Earth” (Breen, x). It’s rare to see something truly shocking in Korea. Even Korea youth, while they seem to stray away from older conservative attitudes, they still conform, only to their own codes of manners, dress, and behavior. I can’t say how many Koreans I have seen with the same exact pair of tight, faded blue jeans and black pea coat, topped with one of three or four choices of hair style.
My feelings are, probably, a bit skewed from visiting two popular tourist locations in Thailand, and I wonder if my feelings about Thailand would change if I had been able to travel deeper within the country. Thailand is a very chill place; Korea, very serious. But look how much the Koreans have accomplished since the 1970s, transforming their rubble covered backwards country into the world’s 11th largest economic power in just 30 years!
