By Dan Holt
Even after my nearly 41 years of experience with Korea, the country remains astonishing. Recently I traveled to Korea through the Peace Corps Revisit Program from Oct. 10 to 15.
The program, organized by the Korean government and U.S.-based Friends of Korea, gives former volunteers opportunities to witness the striking changes and contrasts in Korea, meet friends and former co-workers, and rekindle emotions and memories.
No doubt Korea has progressed faster and farther than anyone could have imagined. Yet one thing has not changed: Koreans’ allegiance to friends and their desire to deepen the amity of the relationship.
The Revisit Program itself is testimony to Koreans’ commitment to reciprocate acts of kindness. As I reconnected with friends, I was continually awestruck by the bond that remains forged between us, even with friends whom I had not contacted for years.
I became a Peace Corps TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) volunteer in 1970 and began work at Seongsu Middle School in Gangwon Province. At the time, my hope was to complete my two-year assignment and return to the U.S. as a better English teacher.
But into my second year, Korea began to grow on me, and I started to think seriously about staying beyond my assignment. In 1972 I joined the Peace Corps staff and remained in Korea until 1976. As I pursued my subsequent 29-year career as an educator, no matter how rewarding the experiences, I realized my years in Korea had been the best of my professional and personal life.
I felt the good fit with Korea in my head as well as in my heart. My intellect was more than stimulated by the complexities of the Korean language and culture. The heart hunts for love and compassion, and my Korean family responded by inviting me to live with them when I began teaching next door at Seongsu.
The home they gave me for two years still welcomes me today. The relationship I formed with my family taught me about the Korean concept of “jeong,” the bond of shared commitment and emotion between individuals.
Rooted in Confucianism, jeong develops through the roles and responsibilities expected of family members, co-workers, and friends. As I learned about jeong, I understood more about the hierarchical structure of Korean society and the morals and virtues that Koreans expect of each other.
Jeong is felt and expressed by both people in the relationship. During the Revisit Program, I witnessed manifestations of jeong by Koreans and former Peace Corps volunteers. Korean government representatives repeatedly expressed their heartfelt gratitude with moving stories about their experiences with Peace Corps volunteers.
Volunteers responded with their own heartwarming accounts of living and working with Koreans. True to the spirit of jeong, Koreans and volunteers alike could feel the depth of their relationships despite being separated for decades. At the heart of jeong is the sharing of obligations and benefits. During the revisit activities, the joy of reconnecting and the desire to reciprocate reverberated in the hearts of both volunteers and Koreans.
At first glance, Koreans’ emphasis on bonding may be a simple affirmation of the importance of relationships to social order in any culture.
However, jeong-based relationships have some distinguishing features: (1) a life-long commitment to the relationship; (2) the responsibility to reciprocate kindnesses that are extended or requests that are granted; (3) the interdependence that evolves between people who share their strengths and weaknesses for mutual benefit; and (4) the dedication to a goal greater than oneself.
Each feature illustrates how jeong represents a deepening of simple friendships and professional relationships. Each feature suggests a mutual obligation that is more formal than casual, more serious than friendly. Koreans treat relationships with respect because they realize they are expected to meet their responsibilities over the long term.
The features of jeong help explain how Koreans have stuck together to achieve so much throughout their long history, especially during the past 60 years. Their progress demonstrates the value of pursuing long-term commitments and goals that are mutually beneficial.
One wonders to what extent we Americans are losing sight of these values as our interpersonal connections become more competitive, confrontational, self-centered, and transitory. It seems that we think of friendships and teamwork as optional aspects of our life and work.
We may regard our capacity for relationships as finite, as if taking on another friendship may be too time-consuming. Perhaps it is precisely because Koreans must compete for benefits in a crowded society that they willingly nurture and expand their networks of helpful contacts.
Jeong may enable Koreans to retain their humanity in the face of the dehumanizing aspects of 21st-century life. Their strong sense of obligation to relationships may help moderate the future shock occasioned by the rapid pace of bewildering changes.
For example, rather than alienating Koreans, technology is powering jeong with cell phones, online chat rooms, social networks, and Internet search engines for finding lost acquaintances.
Technology may be a tool for making it relevant for the modern social fabric. Passed from one generation to another, jeong survives today as one of Korea’s most valued undesignated national treasures, one that may give Koreans peace in a chaotic world.
When I left Korea in 1976 my late friend and colleague on the Peace Corps staff, Song Yun-ki, gave me a scroll inscribed with a maxim he composed to express the connection he saw between jeong and the Peace Corps:
An understanding heart creates friendship, and where there is friendship, there is peace.
Dan Holt is former Peace Corps English teacher and staff member between 1970 and 1976.