On a class trip we went to Nami Island, an artificial piece of land thrown into the middle of the Han River in Gangwon, a small rural province northeast of Seoul. It was for our culture field trip. The advanced Korean language group went to a temple and the intermediate level went to a ceramics museum. We went to Nami. The university’s cameraman, an expert voyeur and crafty propagandist, came along with our group.
A few years ago a popular Korean melodrama, Winter Sonata, took East Asia by storm. Most of the plot took place in the Chuncheon area, where we would visit, and many of the strikingly romantic love scenes evolved and churned among the springing sequoia redwood trees on Nami. The trees were shipped from Canada and planted in neat lines on the sides of dirt pathways. They rose to the sky and framed the grey clouds in cascading rhythms. Down below, ostriches fluttered among the lush greenery.
It rained when we arrived at the port, where we waited at a spectacular fake immigration center, to travel a full kilometer over sea to the so-called Nami Republic. It was a spectacular scene, tourists running amok darting eyes at each other, the ajoumas speaking to each other excitedly with their pink linen pants and long-beaked sun visors. And off we went! A destination of exotic potency, the sort fit for that demonic Gaughin spirit pumping his eager and toxic fuel into all us modernists.
Our teachers seemed overwhelmed; they spun in circles around each other discussing logistics and schedules. I grew tired in the thick heat, as the boat pushed along, and fell into memories of the tram ride at Universal Studios in Los Angeles; the Jaws great white shark jumped from the waters and snapped at my face with its metallic eyes, barking mechanically. I snapped out of it as we pulled ashore at Nami.
We waited once more and I joked with the girls in my class from Tokyo. I laughed with my hand over my mouth, coquettish and shy, and they laughed, so I did it more. I then laughed loudly to the sky with my mouth wide open, in great puffs of my chest, making fun of the American way, and yelled meguk meguk to drive the point home. This garnered more laughs from pockets of students milling about. I felt good.
We were off and admired the environs. We belted out the Korean words we knew when we could, pointing at trees and lakes and frogs, and everyone felt lighthearted and smiled easily. We ate great bowls of bibimbab and nengmyun, and had ice cream for desert, and then played with the ostriches for nearly half an hour. One of my classmates nearly got pummeled by a huge excretion that came pouring out of an ostrich ass. It kicked its dinosaurs legs and walked away, cocking its head menacingly. That was enough for us.
We looked at fertility statues with their large breasts and hips, the clay men anxious and hungry, and we laughed because what else could you do. We arrived at the Winter Sonata location, where the redwood soared — where a tragic and impossible love was kindled on the silver camera — and a little wooden bench invited tourists to sit underneath a huge poster of the melodrama’s two main lovers. The men sat in front of the man, and friends took pictures; the girls sat in front of the girl, and friends took pictures.
But it wasn’t winter; there was no snow falling onto the treetops and coating the floor in its white fluff. It was summer, hot and sticky; the grey clouds grew heavy and occasional drops of rain the size of roaches landed on our heads and soaked our clothes in great torrents. The trees looked huge and alive. Our teacher told us that the male star from Winter Sonata, a quite handsome Park-Yong Ha, committed suicide a week earlier.
We walked around some more and practiced speaking our little bits of Korean. The sun peaked out for a moment and dried up the rain. But we had to leave and so we waited for the boat again, and got on, and I dozed off but this time didn’t much recall anything and my mind emptied itself into the muddy heat.
The cameraman motioned us to get on the bus; he took pictures of us while we looked away or spoke to each other. I asked him for money for my services; he laughed, but I was only half joking and kind of bitter, he might have noticed because then he moved away and took pictures of other white students. Everyone seemed lackluster and tired. I put on some Shin Jung Hyun in the bus and dozed off to the lull of the heavy traffic and smell of recycled air.
The bus drove into a valley of a highway, smothered between two large hillsides. I looked around and wanted to get off, but we weren’t stopping, and no one else seemed to care, or rather panic like me. Their sleeping faced showed peacefulness, and I wanted it from them, but how could you steal that from anybody? The bus didn’t stop, and I wasn’t sure if it would every stop anywhere. It would just continue like this, on a great line forward, between two hillsides, between two bus walls, and within that god awful manufactured air. I looked through the windows and waited.
