The lkl korea Trip 2010

Introduction

1: Royal Ancestors and Lee Young-ae

It is always an efficient process arriving at Incheon Airport compared with most destinations I can think of. Immigration and baggage reclaim takes no time at all. I am met at the exit from immigration by Morgan Park, released from her university programme in Advanced Interpretation and Translation at Joong Ang University. She is to be my constant companion and guide for the week, along with a driver. I am the privileged guest of the Korean Culture and Information Service, whose remit is to assist foreign journalists find out more about Korea – and where necessary to try gently to correct any misapprehensions: they are effectively the Government Press Office.
Every year they host visiting journalists, assisting in fixing interviews, providing translation and logistical support and showing off some of the many and varied tourist sites that Korea has to offer. Each programme is different: a French team recently did a feature on the decline in rice consumption in Korea and its impact on the farming community; a Polish team were interested in the economy and in relations with North Korea; a crew from India had a whale of a time wherever they went experiencing the tourist sites, clowning around wearing the pom-pom hats of the traditional farmers dancers and bouncing on the see-saw in the Yongin Folk Village. All good for promoting Korea as a tourist destination. The Iranians had the best idea: given the popularity of a certain TV drama in Iran and the Middle East generally, they did a feature on Dae Jang Geum – and secured a coveted interview with A-list actress Lee Young-ae.
I wish I had thought of that.
My own purpose, on behalf of LKL, whose main remit is to try to present Korean culture to non-Koreans in a user-friendly way, was to understand more about how Korea preserves and presents its intangible heritage and how it reinvents it for modern audiences. And, while in town, to do something topical on Seoul as World Design City 2010.
The visit was timed to take in the maximum number of UNESCO World Heritage points in one go: the Jongmyo Royal Ancestral Rituals¹, which are held at the Jongmyo shrine². The rituals are held every year, the first Sunday in May. An ancient ceremony not performed anywhere else, lovingly preserved and performed for the public, a ceremony moreover which scholars from China attend in order to rediscover some of their own lost heritage: surely a suitable, indeed the most suitable, case study for my project on cultural preservation.
Every Korean I spoke to thought I was mad. “It's so boring” they all said. A couple of Korean traditional musician friends in London confirmed the story: it's boring. If even the specialists thought I was crazy, what hope did I have? I polled the blogosphere for more input. “I'm a Korean and it's really really boring” said one, while a cultured and seasoned foreign Korea hand said: “It's pretty repetitive. Lots of old guys walking slowly, chanting, and setting tables in hanbok.” Hardly a way to describe a solemn ceremony with more than 600 years of history, but I’m beginning to get the idea.
A Korean architecture specialist, always to be found at the various cultural events in London, pondered for a while and recommended that I appreciate the scale, majesty and beauty of the shrine itself. He was evasive about the actual ceremony, but I could read what he thought in his worried frown.
Finally, quite by chance, the night before the rituals this year I had dinner in Seoul at the apartment of some Korean friends from London. The hostess had attended to the traditional music high school which provides the dancers for the Jongmyo rituals. Three years running she had performed at the ceremony, and had trained the dancers for another couple of years after that.
Her verdict? You’ve guessed it: really boring.
So, I had come to Seoul in order to experience a day of excruciating dullness. And to think I could have been interviewing Lee Young-ae instead...
But having come to Korea in order to experience its intangible heritage item number 1 in the capital, on my trip to the less-visited southern part of the peninsula I stumbled over Korea's most recent UNESCO heritage listing, the seventeenth century medical text-book compiled by Sancheong local hero Heo Jun. In a country known for its technology and internet speeds, a more ancient culture is never far away.

2. The Schedule: where next?

My schedule, prepared with great care by the KCIS team at the Ministry of Culture Sports and Tourism, contained a balance of sights and interviews that I had requested for my intended articles, together with sights which they thought might be interesting for me or which are on the normal programme for their visiting journalists. One or two things on the schedule I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen if I’d been organising things myself; and one or two sights on the list I had already seen. But I am always keen to be a good guest, and to seize the opportunity to experience new things: to see what it is that other tourists might be interested in even if I was luke-warm about them. And I don’t mind seeing the same thing twice, because you can always appreciate a different aspect. So whatever was on my schedule I was very happy to experience to the full. And as it happened, “experience” was to be a constant refrain I heard from the event organisers that I met throughout my trip. (The other one was: there's not enough time).

One of the destinations I had requested, after doing the heavy cultural projects in Seoul at the start of my visit, was Sancheong County in Gyeongsangnam-do in the far south of the peninsula: as well as there being a seasonal Medicinal Herb Festival (the Koreans seem to have a festival for everything, so I wanted to pick one at random to see what they were all about), I’d been told there was plenty of sights to see in the area as well. In particular, Jiri Mountain at tea picking time has for a long time been something I’d wanted to see³. A friend of mine was exhibiting at the festival, so it seemed like a good opportunity to kill several birds with one stone: see a friend, see how Koreans preserve and present what could loosely be called “culture” in a local festival, and see some scenery.
With utmost consideration, the KCIS had accordingly included the Sancheong Herb Festival in the schedule. On top of that, they had included the nearby Hadong Green Tea festival, a walk on Jirisan, a trip to a scenic bay in neighbouring Jeollanam-do, and also managed to squeeze in a temple stay in the middle of all this. Now that is what I call ingenious and thoughtful.
But my friend in Sancheong wanted me to spend longer there, and had rung my interpreter, Morgan, to see what could be done about it. Before I knew it my schedule had been changed, new accommodation fixed, and I am spending an extra day in Sancheong – of which more later.
I was learning that my schedule was not at all fixed if I did not want it to be.
On the way to the Yongin Folk Village, destination #1 of my first tourist day, Morgan asks me about some of the items on the schedule. “Have you been to the Suwon Fortress?” she asks (Suwon is destination #2 on the schedule). “Well, actually, I went there last year,” I said, in an embarrassed fashion. And after a pause, I added enthusiastically, “but I don’t mind seeing it again, because I didn’t see all of it last time.”
“No, that’s OK, let’s skip it,” she says, brightly. “Where would you like to go instead?” I hadn’t come prepared for spontaneity, and didn’t have my regional guide book with me. But after a bit of discussion we decide on the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwacheon (Seoul Grand Park), of which I never tire and where I have never on previous occasions had enough time (not that it was going to be any different this time).
Similarly, when I got down to Sancheong, the initial proposed schedule was subject to revision as my local hosts discovered what interested me. I have a slight suspicion that down in Sancheong I was gently hijacked by the local tourism promotion board, and they were keen for me to see everything. That was fine by me as I made discoveries that would never have happened had everything been set in stone from the start.
So the visit to Korea was full of pleasures both expected and unexpected.
With that, on to what actually happened.