Fifty Years of the American Dream (7)

Sungnyemun, to Which I Gave My Youth

Sungnyemun (Namdaemun, Seoul's South Gate) was the beginning of the architectural life to which I gave my youth, and after forty years of working as a modern architect in America, taking part once again in the restoration of Sungnyemun was the final event of my life in architecture.

On Sunday morning, February 10, 2008 (Sunday night in Korea), when I turned on YTN's 24-hour broadcast at 8 o'clock, the flames of Sungnyemun were burning like a great torch of our nation's soul in the dark Seoul sky. The gatekeeper who had guarded the capital for six hundred years was burning up its own body, rousing our cultural consciousness, which had been falling asleep. I had been about to go to church that morning, but I could not stop the endless tears and stayed glued to the TV. With a bang, oxygen cutters were thrown in, and in an instant the black smoke turned to white smoke; my heart could not escape from that last white smoke the screen showed.

In July 1961, at the review of architecture graduation theses, my presentation on Korean architectural style drew the professors' attention as a pioneering effort for our generation at the time, since studying our own culture had been forbidden during the thirty-six years of Japanese rule. I had prepared it by studying the book on Joseon architecture by the Japanese architectural scholar Sekino Tadashi from the colonial period and the archaeological materials of Mr. Go Yu-seop. Most of my classmates had already graduated in April, but because my period of military service intervened, I was to graduate in September.

Kim Hyung-gul, head of the Department of Architecture, reviewed it, and Professor Kim Jung-soo, the faculty advisor for the graduating class, was chairman of the architectural advisory committee for the Sungnyemun restoration project being run at the time by the Seoul Metropolitan City. I soon began reporting to the site office, which opened in July, and worked on measuring Sungnyemun together with seniors from Seoul National, Hanyang and Hongik universities. Meanwhile, the master carpenter Cho Won-jae, who directed the carpenters and stonemasons working on the site, was leading the work as a living witness of traditional architecture. Assisted by the deputy master carpenter Lee Kwang-kyu and the deputy master stonemason Kim Cheon-seok, they formed the finest team of traditional building craftsmen then living in Korea.

Yi Seong-gye put an end to the history of Goryeo, moved the capital from Gaeseong to Hanyang (Seoul), built the four great gates on all four sides, surrounded the city with walls, and built palaces. In the fifth year of King Taejo (1396), Sungnyemun was erected as the gateway to the capital, that is, the main gate of the Joseon kingdom, and it was completed two years later. It is recorded in the Annals that it was repaired in the twenty-ninth year of King Sejong (1447), but a repair in the tenth year of King Seongjong (1479) became known only through a record discovered during the construction work. There is also discussion of a repair under King Gojong after the Imjin War. From just before the colonial period (1907), when the city walls on both sides of the gate tower were torn down to make a broad road, it has been preserved in its present form. It was partly damaged by shells in the Korean War of June 25, and with the gate tower and stone base badly deteriorated, the restoration project was boldly undertaken in 1961, a decision made despite the military government's difficult economic situation.

Our Korean architectural style is best preserved in fortress architecture and temple architecture, and the architectural tradition of the hanok is also well preserved in palace architecture. The evolution of timber architecture is divided into an early style, influenced by the Tang and Song periods of China, from the Three Kingdoms period to early Goryeo, and a late style that developed in Goryeo under the influence of the Yuan and Ming dynasties. Among surviving timber buildings, the early style is found in most of the Baekje-culture buildings carried from Baekje to Japan, in the buildings of the Taoist temple Jinci in Shanxi Province, China, and scattered around Xi'an, the Tang capital. Korea's early timber style can be seen in Muryangsujeon Hall of Buseoksa Temple, and elements of it are scattered through temple architecture.

The architectural style of Sungnyemun is the most magnificent of Korea's late timber styles and the oldest traditional style among palace and fortress buildings. It is five bays wide in front and two bays deep, with the tops of the columns connected by beams, and it is of the dapo style, with bracket structures built up of countless bracket arms and small bearing blocks between the columns and the roof structure. The function of the dapo brackets is to distribute the weight of the roof evenly, with the result that the curve of the eaves is formed beautifully and maintained for a long time. The hardest part of the drafting and design was the work of finding and restoring the curves of the corner rafters and eaves. In timber architecture, the members gradually bend under the heavy load of roof tiles and the like on the roof. The curve of the eaves on a timber building is an inevitable result.

The Sungnyemun Name Plaque

The southern buildings of Asia have large eave curves, and the northern buildings comparatively small ones. By period, ancient buildings tend to have stiff eave curves, and the curves grow larger in later periods. The shape of Sungnyemun's corner rafters and of the corner brackets beneath them has a magnificent yet graceful curve, and each member, with artistic expression suited to its function, is full of the fragrance of history. When the tiles were taken down from the roof, we recorded their size, made rubbings of their patterns, and decided whether they could be reused. Every single member of Sungnyemun was so full of the refined and stable art and technique our ancestors had handed down through the generations for thousands of years that I could not stop marveling.

The stone base beneath the gate tower was built high of huge granite blocks dressed square and fitted together, with a rainbow-shaped arch forming the gate passage, hung with iron-clad doors. The times when the city gates opened and closed were announced by striking a bell. The brilliantly colored dancheong painting mostly used mixtures of the two colors red and green. The name plaque hung at the center of the gate tower is said to be in the handwriting of Grand Prince Yangnyeong, and the meaning of its being written vertically is sometimes connected to the geomancy of Gwanaksan. According to Jibong Yuseol (芝峯類說), the plaque reading Sungnyemun (崇禮門) was written vertically by Grand Prince Yangnyeong (讓寧大君) in order to suppress the fire energy (火氣) of Gwanaksan. The records of our fortress construction are accurately and minutely recorded in the Hwaseong Seongyeok Uigwe (the royal protocol for the construction of Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon).

The construction management under Seoul City, which began in July 1961, was discontinued, and from March 1962 the work proceeded with the cooperation of the Ministry of Education's cultural-heritage committee members and the National Museum.

Keeping All the Records of Sungnyemun

Without rest, I assisted master carpenter Cho Won-jae and the newly appointed supervisor Kim Jung-ki, measuring and recording every single member as it was dismantled. I recorded each of the thousands of building members of Sungnyemun one by one to find the original form, and I have kept all those records to this day. I lodged at master carpenter Cho Won-jae's house and went to and from work with him, so that I could understand the vanishing techniques of traditional architecture and record the terminology to pass on later to the architectural academic community. With the help of my classmates Yeo Sang-hyun and Jang Seok-jin, I drew up the measured drawings and restoration drawings without delaying the construction schedule. .

To satisfy the public's curiosity during the course of the work, I also reported on it in the daily newspapers of the time, and I still keep the handwritten manuscripts from then. The records and relics unearthed during construction left questions to be studied further in the future. For example: when in late Joseon was a hurried repair carried out without leaving records? Was the architectural style of King Taejo's time not altered in the time of Sejong or Seongjong? Was the present hipped roof originally a hipped-and-gabled roof? I earnestly hope that the process of finding clues within this National Treasure No. 1 building, where so many questions lie hidden, and clarifying them will continue as our scholarly duty to find our own roots and as an effort to make our culture known to the world.

At the completion ceremony on May 14, 1963, four people—site office chief Choi Bong-ju, supervisor Kim Jung-ki, master carpenter Cho Won-jae and draftsman Choi Yong-wan—received commendations for their contributions to the restoration project and cash awards from Seoul Mayor Yun Tae-il. My parents, who lived in Gwangju, attended. After that, Minister of Education Yun Chun-joo appointed me a Ministry of Education cultural-heritage specialist for architecture, and I worked busily at the young age of twenty-five, researching while also teaching Korean cultural history and architectural history at the civil service training institute under the National Railroad Administration.

My father, an education official, also came to the institute, and while going through the training program he attended my lectures. Professor Kim Jung-soo was appointed dean of the College of Science and Engineering at Yonsei University, and I gave special lectures to the graduating architecture class. A graduate program had been established at the time, and the students Lee Kyung-hoi and Joo Nam-chul were preparing theses related to Korean architecture. I did field surveys and research together with Professor Yoon Chang-sup.

The Cultural Heritage Administration says that, fortunately for Sungnyemun, there was data captured by 3D laser scanning by the digital surveying company Wifco, commissioned by the Administration in 2002, and there were also handwritten (手記) drawings of Sungnyemun, but that this 3D laser scan data helped with the restoration.

Founded in the Fifth Year of King Taejo (1396)

It is said that the people of old sought out in the mountains the various trees suited to the uses of each building member, felled them at the most suitable time, soaked them in seawater for several years, then dried them in the shade for several more years, and shaped them along the grain of the wood into forms suited to each member's use. Park Won-kyu, a professor in the Department of Wood and Paper Science at Chungbuk National University, said, "If you know the year a building's wooden members (the important materials forming the framework) were felled, you can estimate when it was built," and "as a result of dating the tree rings of sixty-eight wooden members of Sungnyemun, we found traces of major roof work in the 1860s, and we also identified wooden members with the architectural style used in the time of King Taejo of Joseon." Sungnyemun is known to have been founded in the fifth year of King Taejo of Joseon (1396) and rebuilt when its site was newly prepared in the twenty-ninth year of King Sejong (1447). There is also a record of large-scale work in the tenth year of King Seongjong (1479). After that, the only work was that carried out from 1961 to 1963 to repair the parts damaged in the Korean War.

However, this tree-ring dating showed that seven corner rafters, the wooden members supporting the upper and lower roofs of Sungnyemun, were felled in the 1860s. He said, "Personal records appear from around the fifth year of King Gojong (1868) saying that 'repairs to the gate tower and gate of Sungnyemun are urgent,'" and "we can presume there was large-scale work at that time, even removing the roof."

Headline Coverage of My Records after the Fire

When I hurried off to America in 1966 for graduate studies at the University of Minnesota, which had a sister relationship with my alma mater, I left the Sungnyemun materials at my parents' house. Some years later my father passed away, and when my mother was clearing out the household she kept the Sungnyemun materials safe, and when she immigrated twenty years after I came to America, she brought all the Sungnyemun materials intact. After that my mother also passed away, and I am grateful that it was through my mother's devotion that I was able to keep all the Sungnyemun materials for another twenty years. Even though Sungnyemun burned, the records of the lost members were alive, so I believed that if the lower story, which did not burn, were restored and the upper story restored according to the records kept here, Sungnyemun would recover from its burns as National Treasure No. 1 and return in healthy form. That six hundred years of history would once again be passed on to future generations felt like the most important mission given to me in my life.

After the fire, between February 11 and February 25, 2008, the daily newspapers in LA, including the Korea JoongAng Daily and the Korea Times, as well as Korean broadcasting stations, gave headline coverage to the Sungnyemun measured drawings and materials I had kept. I heard the news that the measured drawings and restoration drawings made in 1963 and given to Seoul City had all been lost in the course of their transfer to the Cultural Properties Administration of the Ministry of Education, and I learned that the measurement data I possessed was the only design data for the restoration of Sungnyemun.

Cho Sang-soon, a curator at Korea's Cultural Heritage Administration, soon sent me a request to visit Korea with the Sungnyemun measured drawings and materials. I hurried to Korea, went to the Sungnyemun site, and met Choi Jong-deok, head of the Administration's Architecture Division, Lee Jung-yeon, an official at the Sungnyemun site office, other Administration staff, and Shin Eung-soo, the master carpenter of the restoration. Master carpenter Shin Eung-soo was very glad to meet me again, because in 1962 he had been a young carpenter working at the restoration site, assisting deputy master carpenter Lee Kwang-kyu.

The next day the Cultural Heritage Committee of the Cultural Heritage Administration was convened at its office in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, and I explained the materials to the committee members. I also met Mr. Kim Jung-ki, who had worked as site supervisor of Sungnyemun in 1962. Lee Kun-moo, Administrator of the Cultural Heritage Administration, appointed me a member of the historical-research subcommittee and the technical subcommittee of the Sungnyemun restoration group. I left some of the materials copied by photographing them and returned to America.

The Cultural Heritage Administration announced that it had secured and was surveying and analyzing the dismantling and measurement records held by Mr. Choi Yong-wan, who had taken part in the measurement survey during the Sungnyemun repair work in the 1960s. It said that the dismantling and measurement records document in detail the process of the Sungnyemun dismantling and repair work carried out between 1961 and 1963, and in particular set out very minutely the dimensions of members and the locations and quantities of repaired members, so that they were judged to be very important materials for restoring Sungnyemun to its original form. It reported that Mr. Choi, now appointed a member of the historical-research subcommittee of the Sungnyemun Restoration Advisory Group, had been in charge of preparing the drawing records at the time of the Sungnyemun dismantling and repair, and had recently visited Korea bringing, besides the dismantling and measurement records, rubbings of Sungnyemun's roof tiles and members, photographs and so on. It said Mr. Choi had made public the records he held to the Sungnyemun restoration group, and the group planned to analyze them in detail and use them in the restoration design of Sungnyemun.

Appearing Live on KBS-TV

While I was staying in Seoul, through the arrangement of the Cultural Heritage Administration, I received a request for an interview on the KBS TV 9 o'clock evening news on October 14, 2008. I did a live broadcast conversation about Sungnyemun with the announcer Jung Eun-seung. I emphasized that Korea's heritage architecture and modern architecture must be connected: that the study of traditional architecture should be part of the curriculum in university architecture departments, and that Korea's own characteristics should appear in the design of modern architecture.

On February 10, 2010, the groundbreaking ceremony for the restoration was held, attended by Cultural Heritage Administrator Lee Kun-moo, Architecture Division head Choi Jong-deok, master carpenter Shin Eung-soo and the heads of the agencies involved, and the dismantling of the remains of the fire began. Based on the excavation and research of Sungnyemun, the dismantling and measurement finally proceeded. The Cultural Heritage Administration's Sungnyemun restoration organization was made up of three teams—the restoration construction team, the measurement and historical-research team, and the administrative support team—and the restoration advisory group was made up of three advisory subcommittees: historical research, technical, and disaster prevention. I served as a member of the historical-research and technical subcommittees. Every year I went to the Sungnyemun restoration site, watched the progress of the work, and assisted master carpenter Shin Eung-soo, cooperating on historical and technical matters. But I saw from the fact that the work proceeded without detailed drawings that Korea's heritage repair work had completely parted ways with modern building technology. We all felt together that it was truly a sad reality of Korea that the restoration of Sungnyemun, Korea's National Treasure No. 1, depended on measured drawings owned by an overseas Korean architect.

On March 5, 2010, master carpenter Shin Eung-soo introduced the building team on KBS's Achim Madang (Morning Forum) and told of his own experience taking part in the Sungnyemun work in 1962 as a novice carpenter, assisting deputy master carpenter Lee Kwang-kyu. He had also helped draftsman Choi Yong-wan, who worked with master carpenter Cho Won-jae; when he felt it was essential for a carpenter to be able to read drawings, draftsman Choi Yong-wan took him to Namdaemun Market, bought him a nine-piece drafting set and drafting instruments, and let him practice on the drafting boards in the drafting room. He said he still could not forget his gratitude for the kindness of his senior, Choi, and rejoiced in the bond that had brought them to work together at Sungnyemun once again. Through the Achim Madang broadcast I emphasized that recognizing our own culture and making it known to the world is a grave task facing us.

At Korea's Cultural Heritage Administration, Administrator Yu Hong-jun resigned, taking responsibility for the fire, and Administrator Lee Kun-moo served for about three years. After that, President Lee Myung-bak appointed Administrator Choi Kwang-shik, who six months later was promoted to Minister of Culture, and Administrator Kim Chan succeeded him. Only when the work on the unburned lower part of Sungnyemun was nearly complete and the work was about to move on to the upper part, destroyed and lost in the fire, did Administrator Kim Chan ask me to hand over all the materials needed for the work to the Cultural Heritage Administration.

While I was with Sungnyemun, I wrote my feelings in the poem below.

<Poem>

Scorched Face

Yong Wan Choi

Wrapped in a screen to hide the burns,
lying on a sickbed,
it holds me when I come and sobs

The pain of thirty-six years, body seized and heart trampled—
liberated, it gathered up its torn collar

For half a century,
while it watched people busy with politics and economics,
the stolen history,
the lost culture,
the scattered spirits of our ancestors—
lonely Sungnyemun, who guarded and tended them

The gatekeeper of the six-hundred-year capital burned its own body,
and in the blazing flames—
O the grief of not seeing our ancestors' blood-boiling love

Groping over your fire-scorched face,
to find again the spirit of the family,
the tears of Gyeongbokgung, prostrate before you, wailing

2011.08.08

On the day after I arrived in Korea, the Chosun Ilbo ran a headline article, "Sungnyemun: Can a Perfect Restoration Be Possible with Drawings That Measure Only the Outer Structure?", asking, "Why is the Cultural Heritage Administration only now requesting architect Choi Yong-wan's measured drawings?" The Administration explained, "The materials Mr. Choi donated are clearly very meaningful and precious, but restoring the interior, which burned and is gone, is the master carpenter's job." I felt that Korea's heritage management, which relies on a single master carpenter for a world cultural heritage, was lamentable beyond words.

Only on November 4, 2011, did Park Wang-hee, representing the Cultural Heritage Administrator, sign an agreement with me. I received only travel expenses for two trips to Korea and donated copies of all the materials free of charge. When the work on the lower part of Sungnyemun was finished and materials were needed for the upper part that had burned and been lost, I marshaled all the materials I had kept and fulfilled my role as a member of the historical-research and technical subcommittees needed for the restoration.

The process by which Sungnyemun is restored to its original form, and its records, will become a standard by which experts from the world's advanced nations, not only Japan and China, evaluate Korea's heritage management. But seeing that Korea's heritage repair work had not advanced one bit from the level of the 1960s, I felt frustrated and disappointed. It is impossible to revive lost traditional techniques in a single attempt. The Cultural Heritage Administration seemed to hesitate even to have me attend the completion ceremony, trying to hide the shame that a national treasure had been repaired with materials privately held abroad.

At last, on May 4, 2013, the completion ceremony was held with President Park Geun-hye in attendance; 27.7 billion won had been invested in Sungnyemun over five years and three months. But before long, cracks opened in the wooden columns, the dancheong peeled, and problems appeared in the manufacture of the roof tiles; as poor construction management came to light, Cultural Heritage Administrator Byun Young-sup was replaced just eight months after her appointment. Such backwardness, including the problem of entrusting the supply, manufacture and supervision of materials to a single person, seems to be one of the growing pains Korean society is going through. Feeling deep concern for the future of traditional architecture, estranged from modern architecture, I have finished my own work, but I plan to donate the originals of all the materials I now hold when a memorial hall for the restoration work is established. I hope they will help the continuing research of those who come after me.

Lamentable Heritage Management, and the Work Before Us

Our task is to protect the cultural heritage our ancestors left us and to establish our lives anew—and it seems that now is the time to establish clearly and carry out, within our history, who we are, what our ancestors handed down to us, how we will pass our traditions on to our descendants, and what role our nation has within the history of globalization.

Recent Changes in China

I look at the changes in China, which breathes together with the Korean Peninsula. In April 2012 I went to China. Following a travel agency's guide, I toured Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Huangshan, Zhangjiajie and Yuanjiajie. I lived in Manchuria for a few years as a child, and I had visited four times since Mao Zedong's revolution. Two astonishing experiences on this trip were the recently changed face of China and China's natural scenery. Fifteen years earlier, Pudong, the eastern part of Shanghai, was an empty field with a single observation tower built by the government standing tall. When I visited Pudong again this time, a New York Manhattan had sprung up, showing China's miracle like Seoul's Gangnam. With the policy of moving Hong Kong's financial district onto mainland soil, Shanghai has now transformed itself into the largest city in the world. A city of bicycles has become a city of cars, and an ancient city has been transformed into a modern one. Residential areas in the suburbs have developed from poor villages into modern housing developments, and expressways are rapidly stretching out.

On the roof of every newly built house, a small space has been built to enshrine the ancestors' memorial tablets, in which one can see East Asia's long Confucian way of life. Everywhere we went was crowded with tourists, and their characteristically loud voices, each time we passed by, made me feel again how good a quiet atmosphere is. Here and there I could see the poverty of Korea fifty years ago. Our guide warned us during the trip to keep bags with valuables in front of our eyes. He warned that if you carry it on your back it belongs to the person behind you, and if you set it beside you it belongs to the person next to you. China's policy of guaranteeing that its fifty-six ethnic minorities, among its 1.5 billion people, can preserve their own languages and customs contrasts greatly with the policies of the new nations founded by Europeans, and here one can see China's manmandi ("slowly, slowly") philosophy.

Hangzhou and Suzhou

Hangzhou and Suzhou, near Shanghai, are the places where Qin Shi Huang stayed in 200 BC, seeking places of good weather and scenery, and a canal was opened at that time. When rice was carried from the south to the north, coal was brought back from the north. An eleven-hour boat excursion still remains. Just as Italy has Venice, China has Suzhou, a city on the water. Emperor Yang of Sui, who was defeated by General Eulji Mundeok when he tried to invade Goguryeo, opened a canal connecting the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, and Genghis Khan of the Yuan is said to have extended the canal to Beijing so that rice and silk from the south could be shipped there. The world's largest artificial waterway, the Beijing–Hangzhou Grand Canal, is a waterway that begins in Beijing (北京) and runs south to Hangzhou (杭州). It borders six provinces (省) including Beijing and Tianjin and connects five great rivers including the Yellow River (黃河), the Huai River (淮河) and the Chang Jiang (長江, the Yangtze), and with a total length of 1,794 km it is the longest shipping route in the world, showing 2,500 years of history.

The climate and scenery of West Lake in Hangzhou are depicted in detail in the "Painting of the Cityscape of the Southern Song," National Treasure No. 1 of Chinese cultural heritage, and it is a place well known throughout history, appearing even in the records of Marco Polo in the Yuan period. Huangshan, together with Wutaishan, Putuoshan and Emeishan, belongs to China's four great Buddhist mountains. It was developed in the time of Deng Xiaoping, who first began the open-door policy under the Communist government, and became known as a tourist area. It is a place comparable to Yosemite in California, an American national park. It has the nickname, "All the famous beautiful scenery under heaven is gathered in Huangshan."

Zhangjiajie and Yuanjiajie

At Tianmenshan in Zhangjiajie, you ride the world's longest gondola for forty-five minutes, passing over the roofs of the city and climbing the steep slopes of the mountains, admiring the spectacle. At the point where the gondola ends, you take a bus run by the government tourism bureau up a winding road of ninety-nine hairpin turns for about thirty minutes, and finally reach the foot of the Heavenly Stairs. Climbing 999 stone steps, you find a huge cave bored through the mountain peak. At an altitude of 1,300 m, this gate opening to the sky, 131 m high and 57 m wide, is a gate through which wind and clouds pass between heaven and earth. This too was developed recently, in the time of the Communist leader Jiang Zemin.

Yuanjiajie is Wulingyuan, nicknamed "the labyrinth of great nature" and "a monument of the earth." It is 1.2 million rock peaks made up of mysterious crags and cliffs, where rain falls 260 days a year. Their height reaches a flat plateau, and the bottoms of the valleys are as deep as a thousand-fathom precipice, like the floor of the Grand Canyon in America. As a national park and nature preserve, its primeval forest, hundreds of millions of years old, is preserved in its original form. The superb scenery of clouds forming a sea and flowing past the branches of pines growing on the rock cliffs of the peaks is a world natural heritage. It is said that in the Three Kingdoms Zhang Liang hid and lived here to escape the turmoil of Liu Bang, and that the backgrounds for the film Avatar were shot here.

It is taken for granted that a Chinese person, in a lifetime, cannot eat all of the country's foods, cannot learn all of its characters, and cannot set foot on all of its land, but they say that if you have not seen the scenery of Yuanjiajie, do not say "I have lived to be a hundred." It is not hard to imagine that Southeast Asia, between China with its 1.5 billion people and India with its 1.2 billion, holds the roots of human culture and civilization. On this trip I saw that from those roots, the sprouts of a new age of human history are stirring and growing up.

An Increasingly Isolated North Korea

While China opens itself to the world economy and leaps forward, it is worrying to look at North Korea, which borders China and South Korea. While the world's attention is focused on North Korea's new leader and its nuclear weapons development, our compatriots in the North are ever more ignored and isolated. Recently I see a little of a new face of North Korea. Judging by various newspaper and broadcast reports, the Kim Jong-un regime is a little different from the North Korea of the past. The young leader's open attitude gives a feeling of drawing a little closer to us. Recently there was a gathering at which a group of eight Korean Americans, including our fellow alumnus Lee Won-young, an editorial writer for the alumni magazine and editor-in-chief of the LA JoongAng Daily, reported on their visit to North Korea. The relaxed, confident attitude of the North Korean minders, who let them report freely, surprised the visitors and intrigued readers of the travel articles.

It is said that after 9/11, having seen Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq vanish within a week of the American invasion, North Korea judged that developing nuclear weapons was its only means of survival. It keeps up its politics of threats and terror, saying it will fire missiles to the south. President Obama, having won reelection, advised North Korea to "follow the path of Myanmar," asking it to lay down its nuclear weapons and take the path of peace and progress. The UN policy of imposing economic sanctions on North Korea and weakening its national strength in hopes of the government's collapse has made our compatriots in the North extremely poor, and we see North Korea dependent on Chinese aid and its territory turning into a development zone for Chinese industry. Our compatriots in the North, religiously dependent on their leaders from birth, look at the two faces hanging on the wall and recite the slogan, "Even if we are poor, we are fine as we are," enduring poverty and obeying even to the point of starvation.

I hope that the people of South Korea and Koreans abroad will turn their eyes from North Korea's leaders and begin an active effort to embrace our compatriots in the North.

Anti-Government Activists in South Korea

For the past few days I went touring in the Canadian Rockies. Among the tourists from Korea was a certain person who had once worked in the Blue House as a national defense aide, and talking with him for a long time on the bus, I was able to hear recent domestic news. He gave the impression of a walking encyclopedia who knew every Korean politician through and through. He divided Korea's progressive figures into three groups. First, those whose families have blood ties to leftist activity since Liberation; second, those from the student movement who resisted the government during Chun Doo-hwan's crackdown on Honam students; third, the new generation who grew up receiving the anti-American education of teachers' unions formed by exploiting Kim Dae-jung's pro-North opening.

He said most of them instigate incidents that draw public attention and, out of interest, sympathize with the activities of a small number of pro-North leftists. He said they are indifferent to the North Korean government's vicious oppression of its people, advocate the benefits of socialism in principle, and sympathize with activities that stir up public sentiment in South Korea. Indeed, the Korean media only report Kim Jong-il's every move; there is no way to know about the life of the wealthy in Pyongyang or the extreme hardship of North Korean farmers, and we learn of the North Korean people's hardships only through news conveyed by the words of defectors. They show no interest in the miserable lives of defectors crossing back and forth over the border between North Korea and China, or in the cruel suppression of human rights. Our ancestors set up a provisional government in Shanghai to win freedom for our people and gave their lives to the liberation movement. The people of South Korea seem to make no effort at all to win freedom for the people of North Korea.

Even the UN, which condemns North Korea as the worst government in the world for cruelly trampling on its people's human rights, cannot lift a hand because North Korea is protected by China and the Soviet Union. Under South Korea's National Security Act, because there are so many left-leaning progressives, they cannot be put in political prison camps as in the North Korean government, nor made to undergo re-education training as under Park Chung-hee's military government. Even if someone says, "Yes, I'm pro-North. What are you going to do about it?", he cannot be punished as a principal enemy. This is the unease of the people created by Korea's progressives and conservatives.

It is said that the wealthy in Pyongyang use South Korean electronics, that the Korean Wave from the South enters North Korea through China, and that they have become interested in the affluent life of South Koreans. North Korean farmers, too, are gradually hearing the news. Threatening the people with public executions and deceiving them with deceptive education is reaching its limits. The tendency of South Korean progressives to sympathize with the North and of the North Korean people to become aware of South Koreans gives a feeling that South and North are drawing closer. This seems to be the omen of a period of transition. The force that will overcome the unease of the transition and manage it safely is neither the progressives nor the conservatives but the quiet citizens. They are the citizens who are not shaken by threats and intimidation, who are not swept up in social disorder, and who remain steadily faithful to their own duties in society. The national conscience flowing in the hearts of the people of South and North forms a great artery, and the Han River and the Taedong River flow on, mighty and unceasing.

The present trend in the world is that since the fall of Stalinist communist dictatorship, dictatorships have been rapidly disappearing. We have seen how communism weakened the initiative of the people, so that the economy collapsed and the Soviet Union disappeared, and North Korea too has struggled since then. How much longer can North Korea's dictatorship, carried on through three generations of the Kim family, survive in the political environment now unfolding on the earth? As the productive capacity of the people weakens, North Korea's national strength cannot help but weaken. As time goes on, the thinking of China, which is drawing closer to South Korea, is also changing.

Many European countries cannot afford the welfare of their citizens, and their governments stagger under mountains of debt. Even an auto industry as mighty as GM in Detroit could not bear the welfare spending for its retired employees and had no choice but to fall. The conservative socialist opposition parties of Europe play a contrasting role on the opposite side from free-democratic market competition and may take power briefly, but there is no way for them to surpass the driving force of democracy based on the market economy.

The pulse of Korea, which has shown astonishing development in the world economy that no other country has achieved, will surely keep beating without rest. It has produced world leaders one after another, such as Ban Ki-moon and Jim Yong Kim; Korean products have already become everyday goods of the world; and the Korean Wave has become a part of life that delights people around the world. Who could block our path as we surge forward unstoppably?

Elders of Seventy

It is said that when people reach the age of seventy, their index of happiness in life is at its highest. The children have matured and formed families, and one enjoys the pleasure of watching the grandchildren's charming antics. To live without depending on one's children, retirement assets and health care are important. It is said that with age the motor nerves weaken so one falls easily, and when one catches a cold, weakened immunity makes one prone to pneumonia. My wife devotes her attention to food and I to exercise, and we live striving for health, walking together every day. By day we are busy with community service, and in the evenings and on weekends we keep busy reading and writing.

When relatives or friends come to stay at our house, sharing stories of the world and laughing together, and then leave, I remember the days when we were children and our grandfathers and their friends, tapping their long pipes on the stone brazier, grumbled that "the world has come to its last days." Now we ourselves do the same and come to understand how our grandfathers felt then. Now and then, after we return from trips abroad that we were too busy to take when we were young, we think again about how much prejudice there was in the world history we were taught.

The years of the elder are also a humble period in which one comes face to face with life's death. Our parents bade farewell in their mid-eighties. We feel that our own clocks do not stop, that the second hand is moving toward that time. Every human being living on this earth has a time to be born and a time to depart. We think together about how our parents prepared for the time of our birth, but we must prepare for the time of our departure ourselves. Now and then I see friends who, fearing death, choose a religion before they depart. Because religion, like science or art, is a great blessing that only human beings possess, I always see around me that when it becomes a part of life from childhood, one lives with much help from it.

The Twilight of Life

The twilight of an elder's life is also a sad and beautiful period. Unfulfilled dreams are regrettable and beautiful even on the day of departure. After life departs, the good achievements and traces that contributed to human society while one lived are carried on to the next generation and remain in this world forever—I think that may be what eternal life is. Animals search for food every day to sustain their lives, find mates, and leave behind offspring to carry on their lives after they are gone. Have not human beings, as language formed, built society in the forms of religion, art and science, and become masters of this earth as the lords of all creation? I earnestly hope that I, having been born into life as a human being, have lived as a human being should, sharing love with people and living for people.

It seems that a body and mind well tempered through the World War and the Korean War immigrated to America and lived deepening the roots of a Korean. Our generation, which found its place and lived as part of the trend of globalization, is almost gone by. The next generation is changing into the digital information age, and the surface of the earth seems to be shrinking further and humankind drawing closer to becoming a single nation. As time goes on, the pollution of the air we breathe and the water we drink grows worse, so an age of fighting serious pollution is approaching. I imagine that a time may come when people are made in test tubes and space people are born.
Is not a time waiting far off when, at last, all of humankind will be elders?**
Recently, with the development of the social environment and of medicine, a time when we look toward a hundred years is approaching before us. How should we live?

From tens of thousands of years ago until a few hundred years ago, the ordinary human lifespan was up to forty years. Like other animals living with nature, eating, sleeping and bearing children were life's blessings. It is also a change experienced as a society leaps from underdeveloped to developed, but now it is said that the peak age of greatest success in life is from forty-five to fifty-five.

Wellbeing, Wellaging, Welldying

We have come to distinguish and diagnose a person's age as natural age, health age and spiritual age. Living beautifully is called wellbeing, aging beautifully is called wellaging, and dying beautifully is called welldying. A quarter of life is spent growing up, and the remaining three quarters in aging—living healthily, helping oneself and others, and ending one's life without burdening one's neighbors—and that is not easy.

A life in which one chooses an occupation suited to one's aptitudes, governs oneself and serves society is beautiful. There are difficulties that press upon one's personal life and professional field, but one who finds positive joy in enduring adversity is a successful person. Society accepts their contributions, and money follows as well. A life of finding work needed by one's family and society and enjoying it with passion is called wellbeing.

It is said that the source of health in middle and old age comes from the love between husband and wife. Becoming neighbors who open their hearts and communicate with each other, and after the children have left home, depending on each other and enjoying time together, seems to be the shortcut to a beautiful life. An old age in which one does not despair at illness, loneliness, financial difficulty, and the loss of the roles one has enjoyed until now, but adapts and in one's own way enjoys contributing to family and society, is called wellaging.

It is said that 64 percent of the greatest achievements in world history were accomplished by people over sixty. In the past, at sixty people held a hwangap feast to celebrate having lived long, but now is the time when people say life begins at sixty. As we age, if we restrain selfishness and the greed of old age (老慾) and love our neighbors with ease, forgiveness, generosity and gentleness, we come to do fine things for others and form good bonds and find happiness, it seems.

The life of a modern person who combines the capacities of reason, emotion and spirituality is all the more beautiful. Reason understands the logic of things and marshals one's own and one's neighbors' knowledge and philosophy for the reality at hand. By making scientific judgments and responding, one sets out on the path of success. Emotion is the time of enjoying the arts—songs, dances, paintings, sculpture, poems and novels—and becoming steeped in feeling together. Because these are life's beauty and its happy moments, the worries piled up in one's heart disappear. Spirituality is the capacity to rely on faith, accept the providence of nature, and pray with a grateful heart.

When they receive a critical diagnosis, patients who worry about the afterlife and fear death quickly worsen and lose their lives, but I often see people who, with a conviction that does not fear death, overcome adversity, are helped toward treatment and recovery, and regain their happiness. It is said that the brave soldier who goes to the battlefield saves his country, survives and returns singing songs of victory, but the soldier who fears death loses the war and his life as well.

Having prepared in advance for what will happen after our death, meeting death gallantly and without fear is called a beautiful death: welldying. There are five states in America that permit death with dignity, so that one may meet one's end calmly with family watching over. Oregon, which in 1994 enacted the first death-with-dignity law in America, began allowing terminally ill patients to die by taking, on their own, medication prescribed by a doctor. Within the limited space of life on this earth, looking back on the path one has walked and, with a happy heart, yielding one's place to the new life that comes—that is surely a truly beautiful life.

Whether it passes in a moment or lasts a hundred years, it is the only life we have. From the moment we appear on the road of life we form bonds, swallow failures and challenges with tears and laughter, dream along with the years, and then it is time to exit. Might we say that the value of a life is to be born in love and to seek to be of help to all life between heaven and earth? That is why, it seems, they say love in life is not receiving but giving to the very end. When the time comes, I only hope there may be a beautiful welldying, with a fearless resolve.

Walking with My Wife

When I was born, my mother first took my hand and my eyes opened, and when I took my first steps with my father, my heart must have opened. When I strolled with friends singing, a bright world came to find us. Growing up, among the countless people who passed by, I found my mate. To the wedding march we began to walk a life that was ours alone, and in the times I walk with my wife as we live, romance flows abundantly along the way.

Even in the bustling city center there are spaces made for contemplation, and when we go out to the suburbs, befriending trees and grasses, paths open up: flower scents, the smell of pine, the wind's road where the clouds pass, dirt roads that tread through the seasons. Mountain paths of trees and rocks, field paths full of nameless wildflowers, country roads through farmland where grain ripens, palace paths once walked by kings and courtiers of old, city streets where we peer into shop windows, railroad tracks where trains ran blowing their whistles, flight paths trailing white lines—following the roads that flow by every day, the world that goes along with us overflows with things to talk about.

In the monotony and pleasure of walking, my heart opens its window and recites poems, tells novels in the imagination, explains the philosophy that has come with the years—freedom released from all the desires that had bound me, time already gone by, unfamiliar spaces only now arriving, an empty journey with no destination, conversations without any fine titles. Our sharing of stories, our hearts holding hands, makes its way through the world that keeps coming toward us without end. It opens the door of life.

While we walk together, we match the pace of our thinking, our two hearts become one, we build the framework of love that raises children, and we think about the inevitable order of things amid the struggle for survival. We come to be thankful for the opportunities that only love could have brought about.

Now that our grown children have left home, the two of us walk together in a wordless conversation, relying on each other, and we welcome all—family, friends, relatives, people waiting for us, parents far away, ancestors who have passed on, the God who protects us—sharing soundless stories and humming along with the songs of the birds. We watch the horizon where the sun sets beyond the hill, and when the morning sun rises as we walk along the dawn sea, we experience the miracle of night turning into day.

Walking like this is the root of the simplest activity, yet they say it is a very mysterious and scientific movement. Walking is the body's stirring from the very beginning of our lives: when the right foot steps down, the left brain nerves, and when the left foot steps down, the right brain nerves, hold the body upright. The brain nerves must have switched left and right as they developed through movement. In the early stage of exercise carbohydrates are mobilized, but the longer one exercises, the more body fat is burned and obesity removed. The moment one takes a single step, more than 200 bones and over 600 muscles move in unison, so all the organs become active too. Power walking—swinging the arms vigorously and walking fast with a long stride—uses the whole body to maximize the effect of exercise, and with the whole sole of the foot touching the ground, the muscles and nerves of the lower body grow strong. Combined breathing strengthens heart and lung function and supplies needed oxygen without cease.

All higher organisms live resisting the earth's gravity, so the movement of the legs is the very form of life. When the legs give way, life is shaken, so the legs are called a second heart. Climbing a slope, one is short of breath and the heart pounds in one's chest. Because mind and body were made in clean wind, the blood supplies oxygen and the internal organs are put in order. Walking correctly balances the pelvis and uses the muscles and skeleton properly, correcting one's posture so that the spine stands straight. Walking is an essential exercise for escaping all kinds of adult diseases. The blood pressure of those with hypertension falls, and the weary body regains its energy, breathing new vitality into a withered heart. About thirty minutes of walking a day is recommended, but with a pleasant walk an hour passes quickly. While walking, all illness is cured; the hours of sleep and the hours of walking cleanse body and mind, and the hours of walking together bring back youth again. Person, family and society all grow healthy together.

When we walk pressing down on the ground, the earth trembles. When we breathe easily amid the mountains and streams, we see heaven and earth meeting and see the handprints of the Creator's beautiful creation. Even walking the same road every day, He always shows us a new world, and greeting a new day never experienced before, we see the endless joy of life. Because the footprints we leave as we walk this world are the beginning of a new morning road for those who come after us, we watch the setting twilight and return home.

While we walk, an era that was once heavy and repugnant withers and clamorous fashions disappear; the road we have walked is the end of history, and the road we will walk ahead is the beginning of a future in which a new age opens. Only this moment in which we walk now is the true moment of our life. My body walks the road, and my heart, with my wife, shares our eternal portion that overflows in this moment, and today too we weave our way through the day, stitching it together.