March was a month filled with the mundane and paperwork. Not much of note has happened at work or my life in Korea, and I have begun all the complicated visa paperwork necessary to take a step back into Shanghai come August. Despite the boredom of a regular life, I have found the time for adventure. Spring is here, and the cold decay of winter has subdued! The cherry blossoms grow, and life is worth loving should we search for the beauty it can bring.
I, however, am now firmly in my 30’s. 30 is right on the cusp, an age when you can still pretend you’re in your 20’s through various mental gymnastics I will neither take questions for nor elaborate on. Once that 0 is gone, though, the brain can no longer ignore those crow’s feet or changing hairline in the same way it “erases” your nose from your vision. Despite this overtly negative interpretation of the yearly aging ritual, I did have one hell of a steak for my birthday.
In truth, I don’t feel terribly different from 30, or 29, or 28, even 27. Except I’m always tired, I have no energy, and the gym echoes in my muscles twice as long as it once did. That doesn’t stop me from climbing mountains or being that young-at-heart goofball I’ve always found myself to be.
That’s me, Pierre, and Francis climbing Inwangsan on my birthday. Fun fact, this place was on fire only two weeks later! But when we were there was a good time filled with memorable jokes and fantastic discussion. Taking place on a Saturday made it all the better as Friday involved partying until 5am and a two hour walk home. No hangover! Maybe I’m not quite as old as my age would suggest I am.
Wolmido
An old hobby of mine for years at this point has always been to pick a subway line and go to the very end. I did it constantly in Shanghai, have done it once or twice in both NYC and LA, and so far have done it three times prior to last weekend here in South Korea. Welp, for my fourth attempt I took a trip out to Incheon and Wolmi Island. I’ve been planning this excursion since I got here, but I’ve simply never found the drive to go.
The first thing I noticed when I got off the subway was the Chinatown. I do love me a good Chinatown. There was a wonderful series of murals for my all-time favorite historic epic, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but beyond that it was heavily commercialized and there wasn’t a terrible amount of “real” Chinese food. What “real” Chinese food is changes from country to country, and American Chinese is so different from Korean Chinese you might not think they have the same origin at all, but I’m always on the lookout for a Chinatown that can make me Yuxiangrousi, Roujiamo, and if I’m lucky, Hulatang. Thus far only San Francisco has scratched that itch.
Then it was on to Wolmi Park Traditional Garden. Here I got to see some representations of older style of Korean gardens and housing. This was the first day I’d probably call “beautiful” since the seasons began to change. Walking through to see these shrines wedged between the final detritus of winter and the growing buds of spring sparked a kind of calm joy in my heart. It instantly validated my choice to come out here before I set off to hike the small peak on the island.
At only 108 meters, Wolmisan is roughly 1/3 the height of Inwangsan. Neither is considered that difficult of a hike, but I like going up, looking at things, and then coming back down. From the top of Wolmisan I was able to see a great deal of Incheon.
There were shrines, there were recreations of defenses both from before Japan colonized the country and from the Korean War, but there was also a Viewing Tower that had a small café inside. Far too busy for my liking, but it was a nice place to feel the chilly ocean air after the sweaty ascent I undertook to reach it.
Museum of Korean Emigration History
The only other thing I did while out there was check out the Museum of Korea Emigration History. I don’t think I’ve seen a museum with this sort of theme before. It tracked the largest diasporas from the country since it opened up around the 1880’s, with a large focus on 1900’s and the first big wave to Hawaii in 1903. Personally, I found it very interesting and informative, though the layout was confusing.
Turns out that 1903, the very first Korean immigrants shipped off to Hawaii and within two years they numbered around 7000. Their coming to the USA was a strange happenstance of, honestly, racist legislation that excluded Chinese and Japanese immigrants in various ways. While those two countries and their people were disliked for reasons ranging from cultural insulation to labor strikes, fewer of the laws at the time said anything about Koreans and therefore created a niche market in the capitalist structure of the sugar plantations.
Over the years, Koreans eventually ventured forth to other countries around the world and for different reasons. Many of them were unfortunately duped into indentured servitude in Mexico working on henequen plantations where they were rather poorly treated. Their lives only got worse with the Mexican civil war, and shortly thereafter the meddling of Japanese authorities following the conquest of their homeland. When their brutal contracts ended, they neither had money for a return home nor even an independent home to return to. This led several to head for Cuba, where the Japanese again interfered (they wanted expats to register as citizens under their government). It is unsurprising, then, that many Korean expats chose to spend many of their meager resources overseas to work hard lobbying against Japanese control on their homeland.
Under Japanese rule, something like 150,000 Koreans were sent to live in Sakhalin. There they lived for around 15 years until World War 2 and the fall of the fascists. The Soviets came in and took full control of the island. So, what happened to the Koreans forced to move there for the lumber and mining industries? Sent home? Not exactly.
Something I had never realized was that between 1953 and 1990, South Korea and the Soviet Union basically had no diplomatic ties whatsoever. This makes a lot of sense because of the whole supporting a brutal war that ripped their country in half thing, but it never occurred to me that the two counties might not have even spoken to each other for nearly 40 years!
This is important because those Koreans, who had been forcibly relocated by the Japanese and then taken control of by the Soviets, had absolutely no means of returning to what was now South Korea. Granted, during the immediate end of the war all but around 43,000 Koreans were sent back to Korea via Japan (this I discovered on Wikipedia, the museum obfuscated some details to dramatize things slightly), but those 43k were stuck. No diplomacy means nobody to contact in resolving this plight. The Soviets and Korean government could listen, but they had no one to ask on the other side for ways to return these people.
The Koreans in Sakhalin worked hard to maintain their culture during that time, and in 1990, many of the old timers trapped beyond their homeland were finally allowed to return. Surprisingly, though, many chose to stay there coming to think of it as their home. An intriguing, yet small, curio from the last World War that defined so much of our modern era.
We move.
That’s it for this article! I’m on vacation this week and am determined to do something with my time that meets the definition of “Adventure.” This time next week I will have roughly 2 months left at my current position in South Korea, followed closely by two weeks of more vacation, followed by a return to the USA for a month. This year is shaping up to be a busy one, but maybe a little excitement is necessary for a life well lived. I have no intentions of ever officially growing old, and however I can remind myself of that the better.
Onto the next!