Anyang Haseyo :-)

안녕하세요- Anyang Haseyo, 

traditional way of greeting in Korea

It’s over a month from touching down on the Dae Han Min Guk as a stranger in the strange land. A day has not passed since without my discovering something new or interesting about the land and the people who had once followed an isolationist policy which earned them the western nick name, ‘the Hermit Kingdom’. I was consciously seeking similarities, not differences, which I thought will enable me to blend with the Korean way of life without much ado. And I was presented with a pleasant surprise on the very next day of my arrival by a group of children playing in a park adjacent to our apartment. They greeted me in the traditional Indian way: with folded hands. I also learned from them that they call their parents Amma and Appa and I felt elated, for obvious reasons, with the first two words in my Hangul vocabulary :-)

Later in the evening, I had my first glimpse of a Korean social gathering and the first taste of the local food at the banquet hosted on the lawns of the Daejoo Machinery Co. in honor of the CEO, Mr. Lee Jae Hyung who had received a Presidential Medal of Excellence. All employees of the company were in attendance along with their families. Everything was meticulously planned with detailed drawings made for the ‘seating and the eating’ arrangements. Passes and chest numbers were issued to each guest including the toddlers. May be the Korean way of respecting the individuality of the tiny citizens :-) There were various competitions and fun games organized by the younger employees to keep the children engaged.

A closely fought soccer match was played in the lawns and the children were given the opportunity to make their own candy.

All those present, irrespective of age, gender or position enthusiastically participated in the variety entertainments hosted by a professional anchor. Plenty of gifts were given away and the family members were also taken on a guided tour inside the company.

Of all the attractions that Korea had thrown up for me, the most captivating by far are the children here. They are so wonderfully charming and I’m already richer by my friendship with some of them, the little next door neighbor who bows every time he sees me with ‘anyang haseyo’ and the young lady in the adjacent apartment who walks around carrying a hand bag as if she is an office-goer like her mom, being my most favorites. The Korean children join the school only at the age of eight. Till then it’s all fun and games. But once they join the school, the life becomes hectic. On my way to office I pass by a Girls’ High School and I can see the students going to school at 7 in the morning and when I return at around 10 in the evening, there will still be lights in the class rooms and I can hear the chatter of the children from within the school compound. Uniform clad school girls could be spotted in the streets even as late as 11pm! I have been told that the South Koreans are the ‘hardest working nation’ in the world and it is apparent that the children can be no different.
A major hurdle for most foreigners journeying in these parts of the world is the language and communication. My friend Santhanu who had traveled to Korea earlier used to talk in Malayalam here because according to him English fared no better and I too have discovered why. The life in Korea could have been really tough for me had it not been for some wonderful persons I had met here. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine that one day I will acquire such close friends in a place so strange like this. With their help I have started learning the Hangul script and finished the alphabets. Now, after a month, I’m in a position to read and write the language at an ‘elementary school level’, as they call it. Also the language is more similar to Malayalam in pronunciation with letters like ‘ka, kha, ga, cha, chcha, ja, pa, ma, sa etc. In the meantime, I’ve also mastered the art of eating with the chopsticks.
My experiences so far make me wonder if I may be the first bearded South Indian at least in these parts of Korea. The children and the elderly send curious glances in my direction each time I’m out in the street. One Sunday as I was out to buy some food three young girls, probably just into the elementary school, ran towards me from the other side of the road. They were breathing heavily with excitement. “Philippino?” the smartest among then queried. “No, Indian”, I replied. “Indian!” she exclaimed, passing the confusion onto her friends. “Indo”, I tried the word used by our Professor while introducing me on the previous day. “Oh! Indo”, the girls were smiling again. The leader of the group then introduced herself as ‘Jong' and went on to explain to me that her name meant bell, “belle, bell” she smiled. :-)
The next evening I met an elderly gentleman as I was returning from the public telephone booth. He was dressed in western style, spoke in fluent English and introduced himself as Mr. Lee Ho Jin. He owned a spacious five story building and a large vacant plot used as a parking yard adjacent to it. In a locality crowded with high rise apartments, he appeared to be the only land lord. He bought me coffee from the restaurant functioning from the ground floor of his building. The owner of the restaurant was a picture of politeness and was ready with another cigarette and the lighter each time Mr. Lee finished one. Mr. Lee asked me about my family in India. “Whatever the problems that you may face here….” he reminded me with the air of a concerned parent, “…you must always tell your parents that you are happy here, when you call home”. “You tell them about me too” he added and I smiled in agreement. I asked him about his family. He was very proud about his three children. His elder daughter is an interior designer in Milan, Italy, only son a student of engineering at Penn State University and his youngest daughter, a Montessori trained teacher is living with him.
In the next one and a half hours the elderly gentleman provided me with a brief introduction to the Korean culture and history. A PhD in public administration, he had traveled far and wide and possessed vast knowledge on a variety of topics. He told me that he had greatly admired Gandhi and Nehru. He enlightened me about the transition he had seen in the Korean life over the years from the difficult days of the Korean War, through days of the hard work and struggles put in by his generation to the modern days of comfort enjoyed by the present generation of Koreans. He was circumspect about the Korean unification, its economic implications. He explained to me how hard it had been for the women in Korea in those early days when they could be divorced by their husbands if they couldn’t bear a son and how his Mother, a practicing Christian, visited one Buddhist temple after another for fear of divorce and was finally blessed with him! The divorced women in Korea continued to bring up their children as single Mothers, living with them as roommates, not as Mothers because they "ceased to be Mothers" once they were divorced as per the law of the day!!! This chauvinistic law was abolished by the Korean Parliament recently. Now South Korea “is the first Asian country to reverse the trend in rising sex ratios at birth”
Then he turned to India, Gautama, the Buddha and the holiest places of Buddhism were mentioned. He opined that in spite of the excesses suffered, the British colonial rule had benefited India in many ways, especially stressing on the advantages of the English education. Then he turned to the mechanism of caste and wondered how people can be divided on such lines at birth. “Do you support it?” he asked me all of sudden. For about three days I have been thinking of the things I hate most in my life after I had noted that one of my favorite students had tagged me with such a question. I couldn’t figure out any…but now rather unexpectedly faced with the prospect of defending my country in front of an elderly alien, I paused for a moment…… “No, Sir…I don’t, I said contemptuously…… Sensing my discomfort, Mr. Lee sought to cheer me up. He sang me a song originally sung by the late tenor Luciano Pavarotti. I thanked him and we bade good bye to each other promising to meet again on the next day.
I began my walk back to the room. It was the midnight hour....a young couple was walking ahead of me, clinging onto each other, drunk. Children from the neighborhoods were still playing in the school ground. An elderly woman was crossing the road and the fruit vendor in the corner was downing his shutters………from somewhere in the distant horizon, I could still hear the dogs bark,....... the noblest of them louder than the commons......