Seoulscapade

Each year around mid August Korea celebrates Chosuk, a harvest season celebration during which Korean families come together to thank ancestors for life’s bounty. It’s celebrated in much the same way as the first day of the Lunar New Year: festivities take place over a three day period, relatives are visited and thanks and offerings are presented to the dead.

Both the Lunar New Year and Chosuk festivities traditional span three days, and where they fall will depend on how long your weekend will be.

Ceremonies are performed in the home and then at hometown gravesides. This means that on these weekends, most of the country’s population is on the move. Not all follow the tradition of visiting their hometowns and graves of ancestors, though, some take the opportunity for a quick jaunt overseas. Either way, it still means most people are on the move. Traffic on the highways is invariably a nightmare.

The whole event, to me, is madness. You watch the helicopter shots of traffic on TV and think, it’s just some kind of mass delirium. It’s not really, it’s just tradition, and no other choice exists for its followers. It happens every year, everyone knows what they are in for, so everyone just gets on with it.

Women have an added burden in all of this because they ahve to all the cooking for everyone over several days. They cook, the men get drunk. It’s a traditional arrangement which should not die out, in my opinion. Altogether, for most people, it’s a lost weekend where your time is not your own.

This year my Lunar New Year ritual began at 4.30 in the morning. My wife and I got up to catch the first bus to Cheonun, where her brother’s family and her mother live. I preferred to get up early rather than to leave the day before and have to sleep the night there. That would have taken up too much time and meant the loss of half a day. I wanted to get to Cheonun, visit the cemetery picture below, get back to Cheonun, and then back to Seoul in one day. After all, this is about a dead person I’ve never met.

The maximum amount of time a year I’m willing to devote to dead people, especially those I’ve never met, is one day. Although, the less selfish of us would say that the day really is for the living, in same way that all ceremonies for the dead serve the living. It’s living people I’ll be spending the day with and it’s for them that I go. Of course, this doesn’t change much for me because the maximum amount of time I’m willing to devote to living people on any weekend is one day.

We caught a full bus with a lot of other people heading out into the country for the Lunar New Year. It took us exactly one hour to get to Cheonan, which is south of Seoul and notable for the many distinctive sculptures it features along its main street and surrounds, including one I quite like of what appears to be Don Quixote.

It wasn’t long after arriving at the brother’s apartment that we performed the first ceremony. They were setting everything up as we got there around 7am. You can see in the picture from a previous outing, a low Korea-style table is set up with the departed’s picture, candles and food. As you see, all kinds of food are laid out, from fish to fruit. And Soju, or rice wine, is also on offer to cap off a healthy breakfast.

That picture is of my wife’s father, who died when she was 24. He’s the dead guy at the centre of the day’s proceedings. Other families might go further back in terms of who they pay respects to but I’m not quite sure. I suppose everyone has a dead ancestor of some kind to rely on for the day.

The story behind that picture is that the suit and tie are actually painted on, as there was no existing portrait of the father in a suit. It’s not uncommon for photographers to perform this service in Korea because the older generation was pretty poor back in the day.

I was required to wave chopsticks over the food and tap them point down on the table three times. Then I laid them on top of some food I thought the ancestor would like. I put the chopsticks on what looked tasty to me (I hadn’t had breakfast). The brother did the same thing. Then everyone took turns bowing. Later, after a full Korean breakfast, we would take turns bowing to each other, that is, the juniors bowing to the seniors.

Sunah and I bowed to her mother and for her part she said a few words for the New Year. The brother’s kids bowed to us, and I said a few words like “Do well at school; be good to your mother,” much as I said last year.

The part where we loose out in all of this is when money is given out, which is another part of the traditional ceremony after the bowing. We’re kind of in-between, handing money up to the older and down to the younger. We gave Sunah’s mother around $200 and we gave the kids $20 each, except for the youngest one, who got $10. But we are not in a position to receive anything.

When Sunah asked if we should bow to her brother, he waved us off saying that I was at the same level as him, and therefore, bowing to him was unnecessary. I expressed my disappointment at this, as a joke, saying that I had been looking forward to bowing to him so that I too could get some money. Laughs all round at that one.

It was time now to depart for the grave site in the hills outside of Gumi, a town further south and not far from Daegu. We were running a bit late, it being 9am. I’d thought we were going to head of at 8, and so I was worried about the traffic. As it turn out, it was a clear run all the way there. It only took us a couple of hours and we were at the graveside by around 11.30

At the grave, another less elaborate food offering, together with rice wine, is prepared, using disposable plates and cups this time, and ground sheets are laid out. This is more in the vein of a picnic. Further bowing takes place at the graveside. When it came my turn, other visitors farther up the hill were taking a keen interest in my antics. It’s rare to see foreigners at these things. When the ceremonial part is over with, everyone just basically sits around and has some of the food. As you see, it’s not a sad affair at all.

In years past, when I was a smoker, I would light up and place a cigarette near the tombstone because the father used to be a smoker. I felt good about doing this for some strange reason, perhaps because it was a unique contribution. It appeared that his spirit would really suck my cigs down—or was that the wind? I could understand being a smoker myself; you always feel like a cigarette after a few rice wines. My cig is resting across the top of a cup, the one with the candle in it, below.

The picture is a lesson for us all—as we are like petals in the wind, or whatever. Each year, after visiting the graveside, we head off to the outskirts of the Gumi township to a small settlement of small and old houses, built at the base of an embankment that a road runs along, and surrounded by fields. No one would live here unless they were poor, and that’s where an aunt and her family live. They have usually been preparing food just like most women all over Korea and it’s ready to serve when we get there. The visit usually isn’t for long.

However, this year I was dreading it. That was because in past years, when walking down the road from the embankment, we would always pass this large white dog, chained to a small dog house on a short leash. Upon every visit twice a year, that dog was there like that, looking dejected, bored, and weary. I wondered if it ever went for a walk or if it languished there in all weather. Was that the extent of its life, chained like every day? Every single time, it depressed me to see it and for a long time after, while on the journey home. I could be wrong about the life it led, but many Koreans do still have old-fashioned views about animals.

This year, the white dog was gone, along with the dog house and any indication that it had been there. I was relieved but realized that the dog had probably died. So I paid quiet respects.

After visiting the aunt’s house, we embarked on the trip back to Cheonun. Fortunately, the traffic was as clear as it was on the way down. And, because my wife’s brother drives an 8 seat people mover, he is allowed to drive in the bus lane. This provision is often strictly enforced on occasions like this, with cops counting heads in vans in the bus lanes to make sure there are 8 or more in each.

It was a little later than I had anticipated, but according to my reckoning, there was time to relax a bit before heading to the Cheonun bus terminal by 4. On other occasions, we might have stayed and had dinner, and then slept over. But I envisaged myself sitting back at my PC in Seoul by around 6 or 7 at the latest. How silly of me. A couple of points I didn’t factor in: first, my wife’s desire to spend more time with her family despite my strong insistence well in advance, and on several occasions, that we would be leaving early on this day; and second, the traffic jam the bus would inevitably be caught in. I’d been on bus trips before, so I should have remembered that on days like this in Korea, you have to double or triple your journey time.

From memory, I guess I was settled in my study and at my PC by 10. That’s not too bad, I guess. I’ve heard stories of people spending over 10 hours in the cars, either driving back to Seoul or getting down to an ancestor’s hometown. At least it was over with for another year, and at least this time I wasn’t plagued by the lonely pathetic figure of that white dog.