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| Tags: blow, korean, soul |
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03-11-2008, 12:25 AM
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A blow to the Korean soul
A blow to the Korean soul
By Sung-Yoon Lee South Korea's 610-year-old Namdaemun (Great South Gate) proudly stood erect in a sea of modern skyscrapers in the heart of Seoul. To South Koreans the landmark was more than just a visible relic of Korea's centuries-old monarchical past. Namdaemun was the heart of Seoul - the city's historical entrance, its symbol of tradition embedded in South Korea's modernity, its welcoming face to the world today. Hence, the shock and pain that descended on the nation on February 10, when in the course of watching in real time over some five hours - on TV, as well as for many Koreans, with their bare eyes in the cold - the venerable edifice burned down to mere rubble were hard to describe. The roots of the Korean trauma may lie in the psychology of what the Korean nation has been, how it views itself today, and how it aspires to seen by the outside world. Korea is an old civilization with epochs of great cultural achievement. But like its neighbor, Japan - another old civilization with great cultural feats by world standards - Korea has long harbored a collective inferiority complex vis-a-vis America and Europe. The Korean propensity to nestle in the collective myth of cultural uniqueness, racial purity and ultimate antiquity is  matched only by the preponderance of such impulses on the part of the Japanese.Hence, the Korean trauma of helplessly bearing witness to an historic national monument burn down to ashes cuts deeper than, say, Parisians witnessing the Eiffel Tower collapse, or Bostonians watching Faneuil Hall burn to the ground. Beneath the pain and fury that the Koreans feel flows a visceral psychological hurt, shaped in part by pride in their old history and in part by an abiding discomfort in having played in recent memory, and in having to go on playing still today, the catch-up game with America and Europe. That some 350 firefighters over the course of nearly five hours could not extinguish a fire inside a wooden structure is considered by many South Koreans as national humiliation of the first order. Korean - and, as an extension - East Asian attachment to antiquity stands in vast contrast to the future-oriented mentality of Americans. Americans are unencumbered by their youth as a republic or even civilization. One rather obvious reason is that the United States is just barely over 230 years old, while the Chinese civilization is - if not in point of antiquity then certainly in point of continuity - the oldest civilization in the world. Perhaps world hegemony is a most effective cure for collective neurosis, but the forward-looking mentality of Americans was apparent even in the 19th century when the young American republic was at best only a second-rate power. China may not harbor such acute self-doubt as Korea or Japan when it comes to historical seniority and superiority, because China is indeed the oldest and for much of human history was the world's leader in wealth and technology. On the other hand, or perhaps precisely because of China's once glorious past, the Chinese, too, are particularly sensitive when it comes to protecting their cultural relics and works of art. For instance, loaned items from Taiwan's National Palace Museum will be exhibited in Vienna starting next week. It will be only the fourth big foreign loan since the museum's opening in 1965, the three previous foreign exhibitions of imperial Chinese treasures from the celebrated collection having taken place in the United States, France, and Germany. All four destination states have passed legislation granting foreign exhibits immunity from judicial seizure, something that Taiwanese authorities insist on. However, the political issue of preventing the People's Republic of China from staking a legal claim to Taiwanese-held art and artifacts aside, the Taiwanese public in the past has voiced grave concern for the sheer safety of their beloved treasures in traveling such long distances abroad. For instance, when the exhibition first left its nest to go to the Untied States in 1996, many Americans found it curious and distasteful that so many Taiwanese were so vocally against a seemingly routine foreign tour. But what the American critics failed to understand was that the Chinese view their centuries-old art as a veritable symbol of China's greatness - of its proud past and perhaps China's restoration to its proper glorious pedestal in the future. "National treasure" in China, Japan, or Korea, carries a deeper emotional nuance than "national monument" in the US or Europe. For national treasures in East Asian nations represent not only aesthetic beauty, but also national identity. The US government and the American people would never support an exhibition abroad of say, the Declaration Independence. Nonetheless, they were still unable to understand the emotional attachment to centuries-old art on the part of the Taiwanese. The signed copy of the Declaration of Independence preserved in the National Archive in Washington, DC, was sealed in 1951 in a bullet-proof glass encasement with humidified helium to block out oxygen and a filter to screen out light. In recent years, new and improved encasement designs made from pure titanium filled with inert argon have replaced the older ones. Americans, too, care for their national treasure, except that Americans simply do not have centuries-old art or monument to make a fetish of. In many ways, art and cultural relics in China, Japan, and Korea embody the spirit of independence and national pride contained in the American Declaration of Independence. Namdaemun for many South Koreans was just that - the spirit of the Korean people and the Korean republic. It was certainly something to dote on - a beloved icon that came close to a national fetish. The celebrated English lexicographer, Henry Watson Fowler, tells us, "Analogy is perhaps the basis of most human conclusions, its liability to error being compensated for by the frequency with which it is the only form of reasoning available." Perhaps the analogy presented above is grossly misplaced. After all, the structure of Namdaemun is not nearly as architecturally complex as the Eiffel Tower. After all, the Great South Gate is not nearly as majestic or old as Westminster Abbey. After all, the loss of Namdaemun is not nearly as traumatic to the Korean nation as the fall of the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, was for Americans, for there were no lives lost or injured in the arson in Seoul. After all, significant sections of Namdaemun had been rebuilt several times since its birth in 1398, notably as recently as 1961, soon after when it was designated National Treasure Number One. In reality, the Namdaemun that Koreans watched go up in flames on February 10 was not the same gate that earlier generations had known. Thanks to modern technology, Koreans had come to believe it the same as the one that had been built more than 600 years ago. Walter Benjamin posited in his celebrated treatise "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" that "mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art". Indeed, the "aura" of the original edifice had long been replaced by the familiarity of the new. And perhaps with its reconstruction, estimated to cost $21 million over some three years, Namdaemun will rise again from the ashes, better and stronger than ever. It will be "emancipated" or "resurrected" from its shameful demise in 2008. Indeed, perhaps 600 years from now, future generations of Namdaemun lovers may come to admire the 21st century technology of their predecessors. Or they may accept their Namdaemun as genuinely 1,200 years old. Perhaps in the course of that time more renovations would have taken place irrespective of the fire of 2008. Or perhaps even an entirely different Namdaemun will have been built once again due to another disaster, manmade or natural, or both. But today, in the here and now, in the face of the ever-changing face of Seoul and modernity-obsessed South Korea, the loss of a quintessential Korean cultural relic represents a compromise of the Korean soul. The death of Namdaemun - Korea's proud dual symbol of antiquity and modernity, indeed, the South Korean nation's collective aura - can but be a bitter national tragedy. Sung-Yoon Lee is adjunct assistant professor of international politics at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.     
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