Korean Tragedy

By Lee Keun-yeup

Historically, there had been only a few good relationships between Korea and Vietnam until the Vietnam War.

I'd like to introduce the story of a Vietnamese man named Mac Dinh Chi (1272-1346). Mac was Vietnam's ``Chang Wuon,'' a candidate who achieved the top place in the royal court examination.

At the news of the Chinese Yuan Dynasty's Emperor Mujong's coronation, he led Vietnam's tribute delegation to Beijing.

He got acquainted with a delegate from the Korean kingdom of Goryeo through literary exchanges under the literary-oriented Mujong's patronage in Beijing. (This part from Dai Viet Su Ky: Vietnam's authentic history.)

Mac followed the Korean to Gaegyeong, now Gaeseong, just north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and married the niece of the latter, having three sons. The Mac family settled in Beijing for five years.

When Emperor Mujong died Mac took his family to Gaeseong before his return to Vietnam. He asked his wife to preserve the Mac family name through his children. He bade a heartbreaking farewell to them and left for the faraway Southeast Asian country.

Ten years later while she was using a spinning wheel, a noble man appeared at her gate. It was Mac, her husband. He had traveled thousands of miles for more than one year, on foot, by carriage, on mule, by the Grand Canal, and by risky seafaring routes.

I think the motive of the story is more touching and stronger than that of Puccini's ``Madam Butterfly'' that was first seen in 1904. After a few months stay Mac left Gaeseong for Vietnam.

Later his wife became a Buddhist nun. (This part from Vietnam's unofficial history and from the Mac family lineage in Haiduong Province east of Hanoi where Mac descendents live.)

We come across Vietnam again when Korean fishermen from Jeju Island were blown adrift by a typhoon and landed in Hoi An after 35 days. A landlady there in a beautiful silk dress asked her people to take good care of them. They were free to travel.

They were later taken to the royal palace in Hue, where the king complied with their petition for safe return. The king hired a Chinese merchant ship and sent them back to Jeju supplying food and fare with an official letter requesting the Korean authorities to inform him of their safe return.

This account is in Chu Yong Peun (A Random History Book) written in 1805-6 by Chung Dong-yu (1744-1808).

The author deeply appreciates the Vietnamese kindness. But he laments and feels shame about the barbarity his nation inflicted on foreigners, to the killing of a Ryuku (now Okinawa) prince and stealing his belongings and the mistreatment of the Dutch sailors including Hendrick Hamel.

Is it in the same historical context? That the beautiful Vietnamese ladies Huan May and Tran Tay Lan died here on foreign soil ― one beaten to death on July 26, 2007 and the other ``committing suicide'' on Feb. 6 this year.

Huan Mai, 19, wrote a letter to her Korean husband on the day before her death. ``I do want to know what your favorite dishes are, what happened to you at your work, and about your health. Let me know about them that I may please you better,'' she said.

``But you do not. I am only one of many women you picked out if you liked. I will not resent you after returning to Vietnam. Only I wish you a happy life.''

Language barriers, cultural differences, and economic difficulties cannot justify her death. What matters is love, understanding, and the reverence of human dignity.

Tran Tay Lan, 22, wrote in her diary, ``I am only staying in this house as if a woman without mouth, Every day I long for the day I can return to Vietnam.'' Obviously she felt humiliation.

``It is they that asked marriage in Vietnam, We are all the same human beings. The difference is only nationalities. I want to go home. I am scared. What is going to happen here?''

She returned home as a small boxful of ash with consolation money. Now her mother is here in Gyeongsan City in North Gyeongsang Province in order to know the truth about what drove her beloved daughter to ``commit suicide.''

In the 1960s thousands of Korean nurses and young men went to West Germany to work in hospitals and mines to earn money. Did we hear any report of abuse and mistreatment of Koreans there during those years in Germany?

Has Korea ever been or is it an advanced country? We see a snobbish mentality prevailing in our society.

It is not that I want every Korean male to be a Mac Dinh Chi, nor that my wife is from Vietnam, but that I want to talk about the barbarity hidden in our inner selves and prevalent in our society that I write this sad story.

Lee Keun-yeup is director of the nonprofit Korea Center for Social Sciences and Humanities on Vietnam and a founding member of the Korean Association for East European and Balkan Studies. He is a regular contributor to The Korea Times. He can be reached at kylee300110@hanmail.net.

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