Day 353, March 3, 2021

Mansei!

Tonight's soundtrack: Bob Marley and the Wailers, Harvard Stadium, Boston, 1979

I missed the anniversary of Korean independence on March 1st. I didn't learn about Korean independence as something to celebrate until I was an adult and had my own children, and suddenly my parents started playing hand games with them that culminated with hands raised over their heads and calling out, "Mansei!"

We recently discovered a branch of our
family arrived in this country around 1914.

I had, of course, learned about the history of colonialization by Japan,  and then the post-WWII colonialization by America and China, and my own family's history with the Korean War and the fits and starts of a fledgling democracy. But, I did not have a sense of pride in that history, that identity. Well, let me restate that, I did have a pride of that history in a very personal sense, in terms of viewing my parents through the lens of children who had survived the tragedies of war, and in the perspective of my grandparents who actively struggled with and against the legacies of colonialism. But, the way the Korean Quarterly writes about the Samil Movement, it is suddenly a source of cultural pride and strength. It is an embedded heritage of resistance and empowerment, an alternative narrative to the one of intergenerational trauma, or as the article calls it, han.

When I visited Korea 17 years ago, I had dinner with a nursing professor who tried to explain han to me as a solely Korean affliction that was definable as a specific affliction, one that KQ describes as, "anger, unrequited sorrow, resignation to an unfair fate, and quiet despair. Like dripping cave water forms stalactites, bitter experiences of millennia has solidified han in the Korean soul." I was both skeptical, doubting the confluence of folk medicine with western medicine, and simultaneously, I thought I found a diagnosis for my wanderlust, my unsettled feeling of suffering, or as my Chinese tour guide named it, my melancholy. This han emanated from being a people on a land bridge, surrounded by aggressors. But the Samil Movement was the beginning of a coming of age, when Korea adopted models of freedom and independence from the United States and nonviolent resistance from Mahatma Gandhi.

Talking with one of my cousins in Seoul, I marveled at how amazing the city was, how modern it all seemed. She reminded me, everything was destroyed by war, they had to start over. Even the historical sites are mostly recreations. Nothing remained. I remembered the Seoul I visited as a child where there were still dirt roads by my grandfather's house, twenty two years after the end of the war.

There were Koreans in America trying to 
promote independence for their home country.

Today, of course, the legacy of the Samil Movement means that even in Greenfield, Massachusetts you can find kimchee in the grocery stores, and local restaurants proffer Korean fusion cuisine. Such an utter embracing of Korean culture in this country seemed unfathomable a childhood ago. I feel pride when I see K-pop music videos, order Korean fried chicken wings in downtown Amherst, read Korean authors, or watch modern Korean cinema. It is an incredible thing to see yourself represented. 

Growing up, I had always stereotyped my own people as mostly materialistic and overly interested in flash over substance, epitomized by the fake Polo shirts with the floppy collars, knock off Louis Vuitton bags, and jackets with an over proliferation of zippers. While there is still some of that, there is also the creation of real art, the translation of heritage into a global asset, the realization of an identity on a global scale. It is a recognition of the history of a people. It is a recognition of the diaspora that has spread a small nation's people across the globe.

It is an incredible thing.

Take care and be well,

Leo

I love that Koreans didn't miss out on the fabulous hair styles of the time.
That is an auntie siting on the lap.

Korean women, in my family, and in Korean history, were integral to the independence movement.