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Travelling together in Europe, the wonders and surprises I had experienced so many times in Korea were mirrored on my friend's face. In Britain, Holland and Italy, we met other Koreans. In one Korean restaurant, in Amsterdam, an ajummah was hanging around. She looked sadly out the window to the people in the street. We thought she was a staff member. We later learned she had been travelling with her Korean husband and a tour group. However, when her husband and the group continued on their journey, she chose to stay in Amsterdam, spending all day in that restaurant. Why? She could not manage the experience of discovering strange countries anymore. She had found peace of mind in the confinement of the Korean restaurant, a small island-like home in the hostile sea. She had chosen to stay there until the tour group returned for her. "This travelling is terrible," she said, "and all those people smell!" Her words echoed what I had heard Westerners often say of Koreans.
We met other Koreans who coped differently with the frustration of the continuous absorbtion of the strange food, the strange people, the strange languages. In Venice, the beautiful city of canals instead of streets, and boats instead of cars, my Korean friend called a traditional human-powered boat, the gondola, a "banana boat". Finding this amusing, I didn't make her wiser. Walking through Venice we crossed a narrow canal as a banana boat was drifting by. Venetian gondoliers in the old days were famous for singing opera songs during their work. In the name of tourism, this is still done. A popular opera song for this is "Santa Lucia". As we crossed the bridge, in this banana boat however, the gondolier wasn’t singing, but the Korean tour group leader was. He sang to the melody of "Santa Lucia", but with Korean words. "Tangsin-dul dong pari, tangsin-dul wang pari!" ("You're all shitflies, you're all kingsize flies!") His singing echoed in the Venetian canals and made the other boat passengers, six ajummahs, giggle while they hid their mouths behind their hands. The tour leader kept singing as the gondola-banana boat glided past us, his frustrations filling Venice’s canals with Korean language. We both laughed. Before returning to Korea, we sang "tangsin-dul d..." many times together.
Another aspect of travelling with a Korean is to see what sites caught her interest. For Westerners, a historic site should be authentic. An old wall is only interesting if it was really built by the Romans, and a painting is only valuable if it was really painted by Van Gogh. Replicas only have a fraction of the value of the real thing. Koreans in general, however, have a different attitude. When I visited historic sites in Puyo, Yosu and Kyongju the first time I came to Korea in 1993, I was surprised to find "old" shrines under construction and well-maintained tomb hills (like new!) of ancient kings. Museums exhibited items which, in many cases, the guide did not even bother to distinguish between as being authentic or a replica. Koreans value more how people lived and how things looked like in the old days, than actually seeing the "real object". When we drove by car through the old center of the historic town of Oldenburg in Germany, I exclaimed, "Look, all those buildings are really very old." My friend answered, "Oh no, they don't look that old!" She Korean-meant, "You don't need to feel ashamed of those old and worthless things in your country!" During our travels through Europe we visited Korean restaurants on a few occasions, in the larger, capital cities. I thought she would be pleased and I also fancied a kimchi pokum-pap once in a while. In Paris, when we sat at a table enjoying our food in a space full of Korean tourists, I asked, "Do you feel at home here?" She said that she did not. Being in a foreign country, dining with a non-Korean man and speaking English made all the familiar food, the pictures of the tile roofed houses and the Hangul writing seem out of place and unreal. Like the ajummah waiting patiently in the Amsterdam restaurant, for my friend, a Global Village’s differences overshadow the similarities.
That is no threat to our relationship. On the contrary, the culture shocks we experience broaden our views on life as we explore it together. The more we discover, the more we see how fascinating the world is. In these days nationalism and regionalism is reviving, as in the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and many other nations. This gives more attention to regional cultures. People may feel lost in the "Global Village". It may not be good for a nation to relinquish its identity too much to join "the Global Village". Cultural differences are to live with and to enjoy. Trying to force a global environment is like levelling the Alps or making kimchi bland - it only dulls what provides so much mental and emotional adventures.
