Korea and Peru

By Ray Stevens

The opening of the ``Myth and Mystery of Peruvian Civilization, Inca" exhibition at the National Museum of Korea has rekindled a train of thought I entertained upon first arriving in Korea. I lived in Peru for a year before coming to Korea, and when I got here I was struck by the similarities between the two countries, as well as the stark differences.

Peru and Korea have traditional, conservative cultures that are slowly adapting to a changing world. Both are patriarchal, hierarchical societies in which men wield most of the political and economic power. Men are granted great license: they carouse, get drunk together, and visit prostitutes. Public drunkenness is widespread. Abuse of women and children is common and rarely punished.

In governance, the typical developing world pattern is to alternate between fragile democracy and military dictatorship. Korea followed this pattern until the late 1980s and has maintained its fledging democracy since then. After many years of military dictatorship, Peru's democracy was restored in 1979, suspended by then-president Alberto Fujimori in 1992, and restored for the 2000 elections. In both countries, democratically elected presidents wield imperial power; witness Lee Myung-bak's ramming through the ``four rivers" project with scant legislative or environmental review.

In both countries, politics are a swamp of corruption, with millions in illicit payoffs sloshing among government and business leaders. The corruption has reached to the president's office in both countries: Korea's ex-president Roh Moo-hyun committed suicide over revelations of his multimillion-dollar bribery, while Peru's recent presidents have all been embroiled in corruption scandals. In both countries, incoming presidents launch investigations into their predecessors' malfeasance. Such a probe triggered Roh's death; while Peru's Alan Garcia fled to France following his disastrous first term, later returning to win the presidency again.

Korea and Peru suffer strikes by militant workers convinced that their grievances outweigh the convenience and livelihoods of everyone else. Destroying property, blockading roads, and a general contempt for the law prevail.

That contempt is nowhere more evident than in the streets, where the law of the jungle, not man, rules the road. Peru's traffic is notorious, but can't touch Korea's sidewalk motorcycle mayhem.

Education is a major issue in both countries. Korean parents are convinced that public school teachers are inadequate and send their children to private academies or overseas. Peru's public schools truly are inadequate, having been ranked second worst in Latin America (above only Haiti) by the United Nations Development Program. Teachers in both countries are prone to militant anti-government activity, though Korean teachers are sheep compared to Peru's, who destroyed an airport to protest education reforms.

A hallmark of developing countries is what I call Total Sensory Overload (TSO), an environment in which the senses are continually assaulted beyond all need or reason; perhaps the sensory assault, by obliterating thought, distracts from life's sufferings. Take a long-haul bus in Peru and you freeze in cryogenic air conditioning while Z-grade movies are played at an ear-shattering roar.

Transitioning from developing to developed, Korea still suffers from TSO. At last fall's ASEAN festival, dancers from participating countries performed on a stage to music blasting at such a cacophonous howl that my friends and I, standing behind the audience, had to scream to be heard. Visit an aptly named hypermarket and the din of bellowing salespeople fills the air. Google recently modified its minimalist home page, for Korea only, to mimic the TSO jumble of Daum and Naver. Video monitors are ubiquitous ― in every bus, train, and subway; in stores, restaurants, and saunas: a torrent of inescapable image and noise.

Of course there are vast differences between Korea and Peru, the most obvious being economic. Sixty years ago, both countries were among the poorest in the world. Images of Seoul from that time show the streets filled with shoeshine boys, a prime indicator of poverty. Those shoeshine boys still haunt the streets of Peru today, while Korean boys ponder split infinitives and differential equations.

A key factor in Korea's economic miracle is cultural homogeneity. Sandwiched amid giant and threatening neighbors, Korea developed an intense sense of ``Koreanness," a powerful binding force enveloping Koreans in a cocoon of shared identity. This facilitated the sacrifices and disruptions occasioned by economic growth: all was for the good of Greater Korea.

Peru, by contrast, suffers stark economic and political disparity between the Spanish-blood ruling class and the various indigenous peoples of the Andes and Amazon. Slaughtered and enslaved by Spanish conquistadors, and long shut out of educational or economic opportunity, the natives endure a resigned penury, hovering on the fringes of Peruvian society. Any exhortation for them to sacrifice on behalf of Greater Peru would be met with muffled laughter and studied indifference.

Korea is blessed with religious pluralism: no religion commands a strong majority of the populace, or is the official state religion. This spares Korea from the afflictions of Peru's universal and official state religion, the Catholic Church. The handmaiden of poverty and ignorance, Catholicism is a prime factor in Latin America's enduring misery. Condemning millions to lives of poverty, hunger, and AIDS with its ban on contraception and abortion; barring women from the priesthood; winking at centuries of sexual abuse by its priests; cozying up to a succession of murderous despots; all while demanding an infantile subservience to papal absolutism ― no other institution approaches Catholicism's tragic influence on Latin America.

Peru is a land of thieves; from the president's office to small-time pickpockets, thievery permeates the culture. I and everyone I knew were robbed at some point. Korea, by contrast, is among the world's safest developed countries, where street crime remains strikingly low despite persistent poverty.

I save the best for last: Korea is a small country of modest geographic, cultural, and historical interest. Peru, by contrast, is a vast phantasmagoria of kaleidoscopic geographic, historic and cultural fascination ― from the coastal deserts to the soaring, glacier-clad Andes plunging down to the Amazon, Peru hosts astonishing ecological and cultural diversity. Machu Picchu; the Nazca Lines; pre-Colombian cities and pyramids; Inca roads, walls, and temples, remnants of an extraordinary empire; Quechua-speaking peoples herding llamas on the altiplano; Stone Age tribes prowling primordial rainforest; charming colonial cities-in a lifetime of exploration one could never exhaust the splendors of Peru.

I respect and admire Korea ― but my heart lies in Peru.

Ray Stevens teaches English at a hagwon in Gangnam, Seoul. He may be reached at rs2ray@yahoo.com.