(The following are remarks given by Richard Christenson on October 29 at a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade reception for former Peace Corps Volunteers.)
During our return this week Korea has showered us with much warmth and hospitality. I would now like to turn the spotlight away from us, and onto Korea and the Korean people.
At my home in Virginia I keep on a shelf a kerosene lantern I bought in Kwangju in 1968. The lantern was made from beer cans and glass jars thrown away by a U.S. military base. It is well made, nicely crafted and well soldered, and it gives good light. After all these years, I still look at it with fresh admiration. Simple Korean artisans had taken scrap and created something of value – had, in a sense, created light from nothing.
This lantern has long been for me a metaphor for the true engine of Korean success: the strong will of the Korean people to take every opportunity, no matter how small, and turn it into something of value.
Not long after the Korean War the IMF conducted a study of Asian economies that concluded with a forecast of future performance for each Asian country. At the time it was not surprising that the Philippines was given best prospects for strong future economic performance: the Philippines, after all, had been under strongly committed U.S. tutelage since 1935, and possessed a basic foundation for economic growth. The country given worst prospects was Korea, which also was not surprising, given that Korea at the time was still strewn with the wreckage and trauma of war. The IMF did not yet know, and the world had not yet seen, Korea’s powerful will to rise again.
A few years ago I had lunch in Seoul with an American economist who was nearing the end of long and distinguished career. He said his visit to Seoul was in part a sentimental journey, because his first job after receiving his PhD from Harvard was with USAID in Korea. His job was to interview poor Koreans who had big ideas -- prospective businessmen who tried to sell their proposals for establishing new industries. The economist and his team had authority to grant funding to those whose business plans were sound. He told me this job proved to be one of the most exciting and fruitful he had ever had, because nearly all the projects he funded turned into great successes. “The Koreans made the most of every opportunity we gave them,” he said. “I have never seen a people as energetic and determined.”
I often think about Mokpo, where I lived from 1967 to 1969. Mokpo then was a very poor town, poorer than the rest of Korea, but it was also very picturesque, with old sailing boats and ttong-ttong peh coming and going in a crowded harbor sheltered beautifully in the shadows of Sam Hak Do. I taught English at Mokpo Cheil Middle School. The truth is, I wasn’t a very good teacher. I was only 22 and had no teaching experience – every day in the classroom was an experiment.
One day I decided to practice dialogues by dividing the class in two, with one side asking the question, and the other side answering. There were 74 boys in each class, 37 on each side, and I led the two sides back and forth through a series of dialogues –“What is this?”/“This is a book.” With each round the boys raised their voices louder and louder, till soon the sound was like thunder, and the boys were thoroughly enjoying this energetic exercise. After class other teachers huddled around me in the kyomoshil and asked whether I might be able to perhaps find some quieter teaching method.
Still, my students and I got along well. After school we walked along the harbor eating 10 won-chali bundegi (boiled silkworms). On Saturdays after classes we might take a boat to some of the islands off Mokpo. On one island my students proudly presented me with some wild strawberries they’d found, and we feasted like kings.
On the day Apollo 13 landed on the moon, my students and I gathered in the street with a crowd to watch the landing on a TV in the window of store – one of only a few TVs in Mokpo. One student jocularly asked me “When Americans all go to the moon, can we Koreans have America?” Interesting proposition, I thought to myself – what indeed would they do with THAT opportunity?
And, every now and then, my classes went well. One day a student came up to me after class and said, “Sir, you are a good teacher!” That sentence made me very happy, and I was freshly energized and motivated for weeks. That simple sentence also taught me something very important about the Korean people: that they appreciate sincerity and generously reward it-- even if the sincere act may have little actual value.
All foreigners who have tried even casually to learn the very difficult Korean language know exactly what I mean. From the time I arrived in Mokpo, every time I tried to communicate in my very rudimentary Korean I was greeted with bright smiles and
enthusiastic praise: “Uri mal chal hashine!” -- even when I could barely utter a single sentence. Korean is a famously difficult language, but Koreans are more famous for easing the way for us, cheering our every modest effort. Many of us, Koreans included, can recall traveling in other countries where perhaps we spoke the language with some competence, only to find people sometimes more inclined to note our grammar lapses than to appreciate our effort.
We former Peace Corps Volunteers have talked among ourselves this week and discovered that we all agree on one point: that the Korean people gave us much more than we gave them. The Korean people helped us understand the world and our shared humanity. They taught us the truth of Buddha’s teaching that to seek enlightenment, one must travel to far away places. They shared with us their homes, their way of living, their way of thinking. They taught us to appreciate, to understand -- to talk less, and listen more.
So we count ourselves lucky that we were assigned to serve in Korea, a country that made the most of whatever small things we were able to contribute, and whose people appreciated our sincerity, even when sincerity was all we could offer -- when the work we did was not of much help.
Our gathering here now is proof that Korea is indeed a country that generously appreciates those who come sincerely. Of the 139 countries the Peace Corps has served in, none but Korea has invited all its volunteers back to say thank you.
But it is we, more than Koreans, who owe gratitude. To the Korean people, tonight we say simply this: thank you for all you have given us.
We are lucky to have known you -- and to know you now, anew.
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