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| A photo of the late-19th century Korea by Percival Lowell / Courtesy of Robert Neff Collection |
By Robert Neff
The winter skies of Joseon Korea were often filled with combatants both natural and manmade. Percival Lowell, an American who lived in Korea during the winters of 1883 and 1884, often encountered "groups of men and boys standing gazing up into the sky'' during the Lunar New Year season. These observers would often stand in the middle of the street requiring passersby to go around them or to join them as they watched kites battling in the grey skies.
Lowell later described one of his encounters:
"I saw far up a rectangle of paper sailing across the blue. And then, as my glance wandered, I discovered another and then another, and away off in the distance still others, hovering over the roofs of the city like great white birds. As they are not wholly white, but in part colored, there was at intervals a momentary flash of red or blue or brown to the distant sheen as the kites turned in the air.
''Sometimes they soared alone in solitary grandeur; sometimes they flew in pairs, and the two hovered about each other like a couple of angry birds. This betokened a kite-fight. Two kites are flown near each other, and then each so handled that the strings shall be brought to intersect. Then, by adroit maneuvering, each tries by rubbing against it to cut the other's string, until one succeeds.
''The severed kite falls fluttering to ear, while the victor relieved from the strain, rises with a mocking toss of triumph yet higher into the air. There is so much skill involved in the manner in which one string may be made to cut the adversary's without being parted itself, that it demands the appreciate sympathy of a large concourse of do-nothings, who completely surround the kit-flier and gaze, open-mouthed, up into the sky, utterly oblivious of aught else.''
Vanquished kites often found themselves entangled among the twigs and branches of the large trees that graced the gardens scattered throughout the city. ''The shreds, worn to differing degrees of ghastliness by the weather,'' hung like pathetic pendants – testimony to their having been "left to perish by their former owners."
One of Lowell's favorite places to witness these battles was the Hongsal Mun ― or, commonly called in English, "The Red Arrow Gate.'' He described it as a "double gibbet-like structure, painted a bright red; and it stands just off one of the main streets, at the entrance to another narrower thoroughfare. It is a magnificent post of observation for a kite…" He claimed he often found upon the upper beam of the gate "the perched motionless body of a kite, to all appearance stuck in lazy drowsiness, but whose winking eye nothing escaped."
But the gate was more than just a final resting place for kites. Lowell claimed that he "rarely passed under it, and over its ghastly, ghost-like shadow lying there black across the sunlit path, without seeing the silhouette of a bird projecting beyond the shade or the crossbar…"
The bird he was talking about was the great black vulture. He was one of the few Westerners to describe these birds haunting Seoul. They were, he declared "the scavengers of the town; or, more exactly, they share the disagreeable duty with the dogs." With their great motionless dusky wings they wheeled about the city in stately circles and rarely descended to the streets except on sudden swoops. They roosted in the great trees that graced some of the gardens scattered throughout the city. It was at these trees that they would congregate at dusk – a great flock of giant birds.
When these birds ceased to hunt the skies of Seoul is unknown but in 1922, an American newspaper claimed that the Korean emperors used to hunt wolves and antelopes with great sea-eagles. These eagles were said to be some of the largest in the world and had dark plumage that turned nearly black as they matured and pale ― nearly white ― beaks.
Although the vulture no longer haunts Seoul it does haunt the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Nearly 1,500 of these great birds can be found feeding upon the carcasses of animals ― victims of mines or of natural causes ― or upon strips of animal fat and flesh put out by local residents. But the DMZ is not the only place they are found. In 2003, 16 young vultures were released on Jeju Island, but apparently only three remain.
Robert Neff is a historian and colmunist for The Korea Times. ― ED.
