Magic, anxiety, and modern Korean life

Courtesy of Greg Rakozy

By David A. Tizzard

Life in 20th century Korea was a trip. The land bore witness to foreign invasion, the devastation of civil war, and the upheaval of rapid urbanization ordered by men in military uniforms. Rice fields gave way to apartments, bicycles to Sonatas. It was a whirlwind of ideological change, physical transformation, and compressed time. And, it worked. Modern South Korea is an economic and cultural powerhouse deserving of every accolade it receives.

More has been written about that era than any other period of Korean history. Those one hundred years in which everything happened: Everything the people wanted, and everything they didn't want; everything they had dreamed of, and much that they could never have imagined. It was a time of intense transformation. The rapid change was even more pronounced and traumatic because of what preceded it. Life is defined more by contrasts than sameness.

The slow past

The slow meandering centuries of the Goryeo Kingdom (918-1392) and Joseon Kingdom (1392-1897) breathed in-time with the seasons. The sun and the moon kept to their regular schedules. Spring followed winter. King followed king. The people lived, but in the history books they were not yet sovereign. History was told through royal genealogy; everything else revolved around that stable center. The palaces were home to the Korean nucleus: the repository of Korean genetic information, culture, and power. They were the control center.

The Goryeo capital was Gaesong. It was alive with noise, commerce, and the clattering of Mongolian horse hooves ferrying Korean princes to Beijing to marry young Khan princesses of the Yuan Dynasty. In the mid-14th century, Queen Noguk became the last ethnic Mongolian to be part of the Korean royal family. Yi Seong-gye then overthrew the Goryeo and shifted the center to what is now Seoul. Buddhism gave way to Neo-Confucianism and a new set of centuries slowly began unfolding. The scholars debated abstract principles; the slaves toiled the fields; women gave birth to children; grandfathers passed away. The waves crashed, the rains came. The sun warmed everyone up again. And such was Korean life.

And yet despite the largely unrivaled longevity of these two remarkable Korean kingdoms, as is ever the case, things fall apart. The center cannot hold.

Blood on the mountains

The twentieth century in Korea was not one of stony sleep but rather a vortex of passionate intensity. Blood ran down the mountains as quickly as skyscrapers grew alongside the Han and the Taedong. American bombs flattened mountains. Japanese bayonets skewered citizens. Soviet troops mapped out logistics. Communists died in caves. Capitalists were put on trial. Presidents assassinated and impeached. Heroes championed. Even the land on which people walked was divided. People ripped and torn apart, separated by an act more powerful than any god or spirit had ever been capable. A barbed wire fence became a landmine, and this eventually grew into hell on earth. An immediate death sentence for any person that dare step foot on it.

Farms became cities. Slaves became citizens. Families became individuals. Mothers became women. Children became adults. Centuries were replaced by decades. Decades gave way to years.

Now, time is measured in days, if not less. Things have sped up. Where once there were centuries in which decades happened, there are now months in which decades happen. Information, polls, charts, surveys, data, and statistics assault us at every turn. How many people have had COVID-19 in the last 24 hours? How many people got married this year? What happened to Samsung's stock this morning? Who's streaming what? Who's voting for whom? Likes, tweets, opinion polls, and people on the streets. Banners and glass ceilings; mental health and school kids' feelings. We know everything.

But we can do nothing about it. Our knowledge is sterile. Information on a screen that provides the briefest of flickering lights, but nothing capable of warming us through the dark nights.

Each number brings with it analysis, despair, hope, and cries for change. Social media reminds us how bad things are getting. The television filled with arrows soaring up and down. But these are not the wings of birds or dragons. The newspapers provide accurate analysis but science, for all else good that it does, is a poor replacement for spirituality.
The magic has gone. Buddhism is confined to temples; the cults are laughed at on Netflix.

Korea and its development has become predictable and intellectualized. Social issues such as fertility rates, divorce numbers, suicide cases, and animal cruelty are addressed in a rational manner: they are allocated a certain amount of the country's budget. Quantified as deserving either more or less than other problems. People with academic degrees are placed in charge. Progress is measured every six months, if not more. Human worth is counted in fractions and with decimal places. Life is monetized. We are part of a GDP: contributing, feeding, worshipping the machine.

New stories

And it's working. Kind of. Korea has become disenchanted. But it is, at the same time, disenchanting. It is alienating. The magic-free world is a source of what is known locally as "bulan." Dr. Kim Kyung-il says of it that the only person without "bulan" is a dead person. Moreover, he continues, this anxiety enables rational behavior.

But with everyone alive, rational, and anxious, where are we? Where is the food for the soul? Of course many of us are satiated today. We do not suffer. We find solace in groups, music, art, computer games, beauty, sports, v-logs, and everything else the modern city has to offer. But we are not everyone. We are but an individual. Society, however, needs the collective. It needs people. It needs magic.

This is not a rallying cry for the religions of yore. Those beliefs were useful once. In the past. When the seasons rolled slowly and the kingdoms stretched out for centuries. Today, however, they would likely provide an inferior solution to what is a modern problem. Their unfettered adoption, unlikely as it is, would represent a regression. A reverse into the obsolete and unfounded.

New stories are needed. New Korean stories. The Korean answer to many of the problems the country faces will be found in those stories rather than in Venn diagrams. The politicians in charge seem more intent on belittling each other than creating such a vision. Their animosity and hatred for each other becomes the national narrative, which, in turn, influences the national character. If only they realized.

And so to the people once more the country will turn. The people who have suffered and succeeded more than most the past hundred years. The next century awaits. It could do with some magic.

Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social/cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the Korea Deconstructed podcast, which can be found online. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.