How to define Korea?
Maybe the lingering winters which are hanging on the plethora of mountains, so that the bus rides from increasingly abandoned rural areas will
treat you to long moments in between such great forces.
Perhaps then, the elderly define this country, reminiscing in the mountains as they do; even if only for their contrast. They still keep to those mountains, the
singular pillars which resist the constricting wrap of westernization. They swarm here with infamous if
consumeristicly colored spandex for hiking, where they, like only the smallest
of animals, yet evade extinction. It is
here they make their pledge to remain unfazed, at the tops of mountains,
drinking rice liquor and wine in their collectivist circles...
And they still clear their throats emphatically, as if the rest of the
world hadn't forgotten the use of beliefs sometimes incoherent for the luster
of knowledge which is always cold and time-riddled in its' correctness. "Yes, fools!" -We who know things
would say, to climb a mountain and guzzle shared liqour at a peak, but then
most of my culture past a certain age, would remain unseen on weekends, in accordance with an indivualistic culture
which forgets it's past in the midst of the favors of youth and change.
Experience then separates two worlds; east by west, not by some
geographical platitude, but as a pervasive virtual consumption where
technology has integrated what the west could not pass on in purer forms. Here, Starcraft tournaments and Japanese hyper-definitions lend technology its' own eastern cultural sense.
-Yes, the youth do their best, balancing along the edges of change, embracing western culture for its' order saving logic while pushing through its' global glop of hyper-competitive economics. Yet they still look to their elders, who are resistant to things all-encompassing, and communicate Confucian residues; respect, and emotion-so livid in diligence.
-Yes, the youth do their best, balancing along the edges of change, embracing western culture for its' order saving logic while pushing through its' global glop of hyper-competitive economics. Yet they still look to their elders, who are resistant to things all-encompassing, and communicate Confucian residues; respect, and emotion-so livid in diligence.
This is a definition of Korea.
A culture self-evident in its' paradoxical culture, of different yet
remaining times, in a global world which in consumed with change. I then applaud Korea, who still holds its'
simple truths so dearly.
