A sample of the things I saw, did and wrote about in
Travels of an American-Korean, 2014–2020
The boyhood homes of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul (Uiryeong), and former presidents Park Chung-hee (Gumi) and Lee Myung-bak (Deoksil-ri); getting seasick on the way back from Baengnyeongdo; the railroad explosion that devastated central Iksan in 1977; exploring gugoks (“nine-bend valleys”); the fine educational institution known as KAIST; part of a poem by Park Du-jin (pen name: “Hyesan”); migrants brought in to do “3D” (difficult, dirty and dangerous) jobs; a museum in Beolgyo dedicated to Taebaek Sanmaek, a 10-volume novel by Jo Jung-rae; Sohwa Bridge, site of many extralegal killings during and after the Korean War; more of the same at Goyang Geumjeong Cave; green tea plantations in Boseong; Dongducheon’s 3,500-acre Camp Casey; giving signed copies of A Seoul Miscellany and Notes from a Febrile Keyboard to people I met; off-season trips to Phoenix Park and Vivaldi Park ski resorts; “Owl’s Rock,” the mountain from which former president Roh Moo-hyun jumped to his death in 2009; soaking in the mineral-enriched waters of a sauna near Mageumsan; a taxi-ride search for persimmons with three cute high school girls in Gimje; our attempt to send balloons with propaganda messages over the DMZ; a Catholic cult in Naju whose statue of the Virgin Mary allegedly weeps; eating budae jjigae in Uijeongbu to honor the stout people who rebuilt their country after the Korean War; dozens and dozens of bus stations; cities whose architecture still bears traces of the Japanese colonial era; Changnyeong Seokbinggo, an 18th century ice-storage house; Korean prehistory museums and festivals in Danyang, Daejeon and Jeongok; Princess Bath, where a mythical young woman skinny-dipped, causing a snake to experience nirvana and turn into the man she had loved (who had been murdered by her father); an exhibition of break dancing by B-boys in Yongin; the administration of corporal punishment in the olden days; Daemado/Tsushima—the rightful property of Japan?; an anti-nuclear street protest in Samcheok; meeting a couple of guys from East Timor; Modeoksa, dedicated to Choi Ik-hyeon, a neo-Confucian scholar, philosopher and leader of a Righteous Army that opposed the invading Japanese; reading a book about Joan of Arc in a Hwaseong coffee shop; college students in Jeongju commemorating the Sewol disaster of 2014; the Yangju Snow Festival; getting rides in the back seats of police cars; a visit to Ingaksa, where Iryeon—primary author of Samguk Yusa—lived in exile in the late 13th century; Indo Gallery in Hwagae; bearing witness to rural poverty in the southern provinces; hotels, minbaks and yeogwans of varying quality; bemoaning historical plaques that fail to put people and events in their proper context; visits to former coal towns like Sindong and Gaeun to see how they adjusted after the mines closed; Chilbaekuichong, burial place for 700 citizen-soldiers who fought the Japanese early in the Imjin War; reflections about the “bone-rank” system of the Silla dynasty; a statue of a bare-bosomed mermaid at a park in Jumunjin; Hongju Fortress, where more than 200 Christians were martyred between 1791 and 1869; a surprisingly good meal at an Uzbekistan restaurant in Waegwan; meeting Jang Wan-gi and his daughter Alice, and visiting Chunjang Beach with them; fast train rides on the KTX and slow ones on the Mugunghwa Line; Korean War monuments by the score; a miniature version of the Blue House in Hapcheon, built presumably to flatter ex-president Chun Doo-hwan (a Hapcheon native); peering across the DMZ at North Korea; a tourist resort known as Nami Island that is especially popular with Mohammedan women; Imsil’s cheese industry, created in the early 1960s by a Belgian priest named Didier t’Serstevens; Metasequoia Road in Damyang; Nogeun-ri, where, in July 1950, American forces killed as many as 400 South Korean civilians; Gukjojeon, headquarters of the Sunbulgyo religion/philosophy; paying homage to Ureuk, master of the gayageum; a discussion about the purported metaphysical qualities of Korea’s Baekdu- daegan mountain range with Joo Hwa-seop; “male” and “female” peaks at Maisan; Samcheonpo, where Admiral Yi Sun-shin’s men sank 12 Japanese ships on July 8, 1592; kudos to nurses and miners who went to Germany in the 1960s to earn (and send home) much-needed money; Gujiga, an epic song about Gayan mythology; derisory comments about K-pop; Dasan Chodang, where early 19th century scholar Jeong Yakyong (author of some 500 books on topics ranging from history to agriculture to astronomy to theories of righteous government) lived; helping a pyeji jumneun saram on Christmas morning in Yeongam; the curious experience of the combined North and South Korean women’s hockey team at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics; han—a feeling of sadness or sorrow, caused by injustice, persecution or helplessness that is supposedly unique to Koreans; memories of my days as a hagwon teacher in Chilgok and Daegu; protests against THAAD in Seongju; Korea’s ticking demographic time-bomb; recalling how the British navy brazenly took control of Geomundo for 22 months in the 1880s; dinosaur tracks in Goseong; me, totally out of place at a casino in Sabuk; advocating the return of Jikji at Hayang Girls High School; Buryeong Valley—nice, but not quite the Grand Canyon; Café Viko in Mokpo; Cheonghakdong Samseonggung, where Korea’s three mytho-historical founders (Dangun, Hwanin and Hwanung) are venerated; learning about modern-day slavery on Sinan County salt farms; the strangely empty Chungbuk Innovation City; Nongdari, a “clapper” bridge more than 1,000 years old; entering desacralized churches (Jinan, Ocheon and elsewhere); Saenamteo, where Kim Tae-gon was tortured and beheaded in 1846 for refusing to abjure his Christian faith; how the village of Munui was submerged under water in 1980 for the purpose of eminent domain; seeking but not finding the tomb of Ha Wi-ji (1387–1456), one of the “six martyred ministers”; an urn containing the ashes of Kim Tae-seon (grandfather of my student Paek Bomin) at Seoul National Cemetery; Incheon’s Chinatown; the practice of soonjang, in which 20, 30 or even 40 of a deceased king’s loyal retainers would be buried alive along with him; the ceramic industry that thrived in Gyeonggi Gwangju for centuries—until the Japanese came in the late 1800s; declining a nun’s offer of “temple stay” at Magoksa; a bronze statue of one of Korea’s haenyeos (women who dive for seafood) at Gijang; meeting a man on the Busan subway who had been among the 14,000 refugees aboard the Meredith Victory in December 1950; Sorokdo, where leprosy patients have been held and treated for more than a century; a pojangmacha near the top of Cheontae Mountain; Hong Gil-dong (Korea’s Robin Hood); exploring Daeryong Market, a prettied-up place founded by North Korean refugees during the war; the awful story of a policeman named Woo Beom-kon who went berserk in 1982 and killed 56 people—and then himself; enjoying pumba, the music of the lowliest vagabonds; and a conflict with the proprietor of my minbak near Songgwangsa.
Richard Pennington, a native of Dallas, Texas, graduated from the University of Texas (B.A.) in 1976, majoring in history and journalism. He spent 6 1/2 years as the director of an NGO called the Committee to Bring Jikji Back to Korea. Pennington works as an English-language editor at an intellectual property law firm in Seoul and writes a tri-weekly column for the Korea Times. His website is www.richardpennington.com.
Travels of an American-Korean, 2014−2020 is his 23rd book.
중세로부터 근·현대에 이르기까지 많은 외국인들이 대한민국을 다녀갔습니다. 그리고 그들의 타자적 시선과 이문물에 대한 다양한 기록들이 남아 있습니다.
조선시대 헨드릭 하멜의 《하멜 표류기》로부터, 근대에는 나쓰메 소세키의 《만주와 한국 여행기》, 이사벨라 버드비숍의 《한국과 그 이웃 나라들》, 가린 미하일롭스키의 《러시아인이 바라본 1898년의 한국, 만주, 랴오둥반도》, 그리고 가장 최근에는 로랑 바르브통의 《코레 콜로헤》에 이르기까지….
이제 그에 이어 리처드 페닝턴(Richard Pennington)의 《Travels of an American-Korean, 2014-2020》가 나오게 되었습니다.
리처드 페닝턴.
언뜻 낯설기도 한 외국인의 이름이겠지만, 사실 그의 이국적 외모 속에는 한국과 한국인에 대한 따스한 애정이 깊숙이 녹아든, 고맙기만 한 이웃입니다.
《직지심체요절》, 일명 직지심경을 아시나요?
구한말 주한 프랑스공사이자 고서적 수집광이기도 했던 콜랭 드 플랑시(Collin de Plancy)가 길거리에서 구입해 프랑스로 보내 프랑스국립도서관에서 보관하고 있던, 고려가 만든 세계 최고(最古)의 금속활자본입니다. 그리고 현재는 줄기차게 한국 내 반환을 요청하는 운동이 국내외 인사들에 의해 이루어지고 있습니다.
리처드 패닝턴도 그중 하나입니다. 그는 한국인 지인 몇 명과 직지환수추진위원회를 구성하고 대표를 맡았으며, 주한 프랑스 대사관, 국회, 문화재청, 청와대 등에 수차례에 걸쳐 직지 반환의 필요성을 담은 서한을 보내기도 했습니다. 수년간 이어지는 한국문화에 대한 사랑과 노력은 조만간 결실을 보리라 기대합니다.
이 책 《Travels of an American-Korean, 2014-2020》은 그의 한국 사랑에 대한 단면을 살펴볼 수 있는 발자취입니다. 한국 내 86곳의 여행지를 다니며 그 정취와 풍경을 담아낸 기록을 통해, 2021년, 외국인이 바라보는 한국에 대한 시선을 기록한 아카이브에 또 한 권의 목록을 더하게 됨에 의의를 느낍니다.
