Mark Peterson is associate professor of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
1965, Bruce Snow
My experience in Korea began almost 59 years ago — in November. Arriving one month ahead of me in October was my good friend, Bruce Snow. Recently, I met him and we had the chance to reminisce about the Korea of 1965.
In our recollections, one of the first and dominant themes was the poverty. Korea in 1965 was desperately poor. The per capita annual income was about $125, making Korea one of the poorest countries in the world. But the poverty was not inherent — there was a pervasive idea that the poverty was an aberration, that Korea was inherently a wealthy country. The poverty was temporary because of the privations of the Japanese exploitation of the early 20th century, World War II, and then the division of Korea and the tragic Korean War. Koreans, in their DNA, seemed to know that they would recover from these privations and become a country of wealth in the world of nations. In other words, there was hope in the eyes and the spirits of the people Bruce and I met in 1965.
Bruce spoke of the unpleasant topic of "honey buckets" and the cleaning out of the "byeonso" — a word we don't use in Korea anymore. The "byeonso" was an outhouse, a parallel term in Korean is "dwigan" — the "back room." He spoke of the first place he lived, nicknamed "The Rock" — a house at the crest of a small hill in Yurak-dong. It was walled on the sides and had a long, steep set of stairs to climb up to the house. The poor "honey bucket" bearers would climb the stairs with a long shoulder pole, with two buckets balanced, suspended from the ends of the pole, with empty buckets as they would climb the hill, and full buckets, sloshing and spilling, they would climb down the stairs. And the whole neighborhood would clean out their pyeonso at the same time, leaving a heavy stink in the area for what seemed like days.
There was no sewer system, but many of the streams flowing through the city were virtual sewers. We talked of such a stream running from Samcheong-dong into the center of the city to the Cheongg Stream. We remembered the building of a covering over the Samcheong Stream and a road paved on top of that. And there was a similar covering over the Cheonggye Stream and even an elevated highway. That was progress at the time. Now, "progress" is tearing away the cover over the stream and taking down the elevated highway. The Cheonggye Stream is now a long, clean park that runs the entire length of the city center.
The poverty led many into crime, but it was "petty crime," as far as we could see. Pickpocketing and minor house break-ins. Bruce and I each suffered a nighttime break in where the thieves took everything they could haul off. In my home, they even unbolted a pencil sharpener from the desktop as they took suits, shirts, books, pots and pans — everything.
Despite such poverty, we were wealthy! I remember our living allowance from home as $90 per month, while Bruce remembers it as $45 per month. At any rate, we had lots of money! We could even take a taxi about once a week. Usually, we walked or took the bus.
The bus had two conductors, or "chajang," one for each door on the side — yes, there were two doors, one in the middle and one to the back. The chajang would take the fare, and then push passengers onto the bus, whereupon she would pound on the side of the bus so the driver could hear it was okay to pull out, and the chajang would call out "orai-i, orai-i", a version of "all right."
The taxis were old American cars or remodeled army jeeps. And only half of the taxis had meters — the other half, you'd have to negotiate the fare. Since "miguksaraml," or Americans — all foreigners were assumed to be miguksaram, were assumed to be wealthy, the fares for them were usually about twice that negotiated for Korean residents.
In 1968, Bruce and I were living in Cheongun-dong, near the presidential Blue House when a 31-man squad from North Korea came into our neighborhood with the goal of assassinating Park Chung-hee. They were detected and a firefight in the darkness ensued in our neighborhood. Bruce was sent down to shut the gate, down a long driveway. As he shut the gate he saw one of the North Korean soldiers bearing a rifle. He quickly shut the gate and ducked to the side. Two doors down from our gate an older woman came to her gate to see what was going on, and one of the soldiers passing by shot and killed her in the doorway to her home. Two doors down from ours.
Through all of our experiences in Korea in the 60s, we knew that Korea was on the rise. The hope, aspiration, education, drive and energy we sensed all testified of the economic phoenix that was Korea and the forerunner of the prosperous Korea we see today.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is a professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.