Sadness upon returning to Korea

By Mark Peterson

After three years of carefully observing COVID-19 restrictions at home in America, I decided that, with five vaccination shots and a decline in the number of illnesses in both America and Korea, it was time for me to return to Korea. I have been struck with so many things about Korea after this long absence, but the most unfortunate, of course, is the tragedy in Itaewon.

I've been positively impressed with the seriousness with which Korea has taken to wearing masks all the time. Currently, guidelines indicate that one can take off one's mask outdoors, but most people here, probably 90 percent, still wear their masks outdoors.

On the plane coming to Korea, my estimate is that 80 percent of Koreans were wearing their masks, whereas only about 10 percent of Americans were. I've been impressed with Korea's diligence and unimpressed with the American distorted view of "freedom."

I've had a rented car this trip ― to keep more isolated from subway crowds and add to my COVID-19 protections ― and I've discovered a part of Korea I have never known before: the number of underground parking garages in Seoul. And in many ways, "my old 1965 eyes" (my perspective when I first came to Korea) are repeatedly impressed with the high-rise buildings, the straight-as-an-arrow freeways (tunnels and bridges), and the foreign cars I've seen showing off Korea's wealth: Mercedes, BMWs, Porsches and even Bentleys. In the midst of all these signs of prosperity and order, the chaos and senseless deaths in Itaewon stand out as being even more out of place.

Coming from the spacious American west, the density of the population here in Korea is matched with overwhelming aspects of social order and social organization. Traffic can be slow and congested, but the "navi" (GPS) in the car tells you you'll arrive at a specific time, and you do. The way everything works, everything seems so well organized ― everything except the loss of the lives of so many young people innocently celebrating Halloween in Itaewon.

I've been thinking about writing this month about my positive impressions of Korea: the resounding orderliness in this densely populated city, Seoul. But now I have to write about the incongruous scene of so much death in spite of the striking images of order that have impressed me on this trip.

I was in Korea when the Sewol ferry sank off the southwest island of Jindo in 2014, and my initial impression then was one of thinking that the passengers would certainly be rescued. I watched live TV news coverage while in a restaurant that morning. Helicopters were circling over the listing ship and watching the disaster unfold. My thoughts were, this is going to be okay ― Korea has a good military, police and coast guard ― they'll rescue the passengers.

I wasn't worried because I had confidence in Korea's security forces as capable and well-organized on the scene to save the situation. Sadly, I was very wrong. The Sewol ferry sinking turned into an inestimable tragedy that led to the impeachment of the president, and is still painful for us in Korea today. The tragedy in Itaewon has vividly brought up the pain of the Sewol tragedy in our minds once again.

The huge loss in both of these cases was all the more painful in that those who died were so young: school children in the Sewol case, and youth in their late teens and 20s in the Itaewon case. The victims' young ages place the pain and burden of mourning on the parents. In Confucianism, it is an offense to die before one's parents ― it's a classic manifestation of "bul-hyo" ― being an unfilial child.

And if a child dies before their parents, the parents can no longer rely on that child to care for them in their old age and tend to their needs the way the parent cared for the child from birth to adulthood. There is a saying that a parent "never" gets over the loss of a child. Life goes on somehow, but one never loses feelings of loss and grief. "Life goes on," we say, but life is never the same.

We are all saddened by the loss of so many young lives from so many countries ― 26 from outside of Korea. But the parents have the greatest pain a parent can ever have. As the father of two children, and the grandfather of four children, my heart just breaks for the parents and the grandparents of the young people that died. Most were of the age that their grandparents are still living. In the Confucian world, life and death are upside down for them.

But through it all, in 57 years, I've seen so many tragedies in Korea, and I've seen how Korea handles these things and comes out stronger through it all. I hope that Korea will set up policies to reassure us all that such a thing will never happen again. But more importantly, we will remember. We will remember and those lost lives will still be with us and remind us to be safe, to do what we should so that this never happens again. We will remember. We will mourn, and we will remember.

Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is a professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.