morning calm

Last day in Korea and I am somewhat sad to go. I have met some lovely people – academics who are soft and gentle but wry and bright eyed with a hunger for learning and a great openness to new ways of doing things – qualities so rare in anyone anywhere. I get invited to dinner at someone’s home and am in awe, I think of how rarely I would ever consider doing that for an international guest to our office. Probably never. Out to dinner somewhere neutral, somewhere where my own lfe is not opened up to them, where I can walk away and have someone else do the dishes and I can go back to my comfortable non-work nest – sure. But to my own home? Probably only if they had been around for several months and I felt like we were friends, then I would. But I can’t think of anytime I’ve been so welcoming to invite someone I’ve known for only a few days and who is about to leave into my home. It makes me wonder at this division between work-life and home-life and how we keep that wall up and why. It shames and inspires me into being more open hearted to visitors in future.

Three is something sweet about the culture here that I can’t quite put my finger on. Locals have talked to me about how it is competitive, how everyone tries to get ahead and do better than everyone else. They also talk about corruption and the very real struggle for job security. But from my comfortable salaried, outsider vantage point all I see is children being adored and being safe, young men who almost universally embody elements of well-groomed and gentle and don’t come across as aggressive or dangerous, the edges between masculine and feminine seem less ferociously guarded, women’s bodies are not uniformly used as commodity in advertising (but not due to any particular rigid religious prudity about bodies), and a softness in the faces of young people, without glazed disaffectedness or hostility.

Adults who wear bunny socks without irony because they’re cute and warm. Road blocks that have cheery faces on them. A transit system where instead of guards that vibe power and the threat of violence in their dark blue uniforms there are signs with pictures of guards as smiling uniformed cartoon squirrels who look joyous that you want to catch the subway and are keen to help. A downtown area where slick new bicycles are left on their stands and not locked up because no-one will steal them. I kid you not. Is that not amazing?