Friday March 10, Japanese students from Fukuoka visited our school for the first half of the day. Their school is our sister school, so I guess every two years or so the students visit each other alternating countries. Anyway, there were about 100 seventeen year old Japanese students at our school for the first half of the day. It reminded me in some ways about the Austrians coming to Cannon Falls, about Kaori, and about me when I first arrived at school in Seoul.

Many of you may not know, but usually Korea and Japan do not like each other very much. Koreans especially have harsh feelings towards Japan because of the Japanese Rule over them for most of the first half of the 20th century. (Read the next blog for the history) After the Sino-Japanese War, World War II and the Korean Civil War ended, the Korean people stopped teaching in Japanese at their schools and the language, although still taught began to be percieved as a far lower priority in what students should know. And in Japan, the Korean language isn't taught rigorously either. The important language for both groups of students to learn is English. Usually the two groups of students probably wouldn't have wanted to try to get along very well, but they were the hosts and guests invited on a special occasion.

A group of about ten Japanese students joined each of the ten second year classrooms. When the students entered my classroom, they gasped to see me, an American sitting in their midst. (I was used to it. There are new first years at school now and they are the same way) I just said, "Hi, welcome, my name is Kimberly" and invited two of the boys to sit down at the group of desks where a few friends and I were sitting. The conversation started with "Hi", "What is your name?" "How old are you?" and "Do you have a girlfriend?" then it stopped. I had just gone back in time six months and these two boys were Torie and me. There were being asked the same questions. They had the same amount of understanding for the language. And if they were confused, they basically only had each other to talk to in their native language to try to understand. There was one korean girl who understood and could speak japanese decently and she resembled my host sister for these boys, so she could help if they were really lost.

Conversation picked up after awhile. A pulled out my electronic dictionary which has korean to japanese and japanese to korean along with my japanese textbook and paper and pencil. I understood the situation pretty well and the materials helped. I know that for me sometimes it is better to write things than try to pronounce, because pronounciation can be confusing and sentences can get pretty long. So some of the things we wrote. I worked best as a translator, sometimes from english to english, because the accents might be a little confusing and a native speaker would be best to understand. That means I also had the chance to speak with the Japanese boys the most and talk about things like sports and actors.

When a group of highschoolers that can't speak to each other in deep conversation due to language difficulties are placed in the same room and told to "get to know one each other" all nationalities I've met so far are so similar. We're all just highschoolers. We played games like Rock Paper Scissors and other hand games. Boys challenged each other in arm wrestling matches. We used our hands and pictures to talk and sometimes we just observed.

For lunch we ate japanese/korean curry. That really reminded me of Kaori, because the first time I ever ate it is when she made it ate my house in Minnesota. It's my favorite school lunch and it's also both Korean and japanese food. One of the side dishes for the meal was this fruit salad that is actually apples, banana, manderin oranges, tomato, and a few other things in something like sweet mayo. I don't know if it's actually good at all or if I'm just used to it. But the boys asked me what it was. I said fruit salad? just try it. That reminded me either of Kaori or myself when I first got here, because you don't know what you're eating, but just try it.

After lunch they left. They didn't have email. Japanese isn't as wired as Korea or the US. (Korea is actually the most wired country in the world) But I did get their air mail addresses, so hopefully soon I'll write some letters. I want to try to do some of it in Japanese, even if it's just simple hiragana.

Source: US library of congress http://countrystudies.us/south-korea/7.htm

Korea Under Japanese Rule

South Korea Table of Contents

Korea underwent drastic changes under Japanese rule. Even before the country was formally annexed by Japan in 1910, the Japanese caused the last ruling monarch, King Kojong, to abdicate the throne in 1907 in favor of his feeble son, who was soon married off to a Japanese woman and given a Japanese peerage. Japan then governed Korea under a residency general and subsequently under a governor general directly subordinate to Japanese prime ministers. All of the governor generals were high-ranking Japanese military officers.

In theory the Koreans, as subjects of the Japanese emperor, enjoyed the same status as the Japanese; but in fact the Japanese government treated the Koreans as a conquered people. Until 1921 they were not allowed to publish their own newspapers or to organize political or intellectual groups.

Nationalist sentiments gave rise to a Korean student demonstration in Japan, and on March 1, 1919, to a Proclamation of Independence by a small group of leaders in Seoul. With the consolidation of what became known as the March First Movement, street demonstrations led by Christian and Ch'ondogyo (a movement that evolved from Tonghak) groups erupted throughout the country to protest Japanese rule.

In the wake of the protest, Japan granted considerable latitude to Korea. As historians have noted, the ensuing intellectual and social ferment of the 1920s marked a seminal period in modern Korean history. Many developments of the period, including the organization of labor unions and other social and economic movements, had continuing influence into the postliberation period. In the 1930s, however, the ascendancy of the military in Japanese politics reversed the change. Particularly after 1937, when Japan launched the Second SinoJapanese War (1937-45) against China, the colonial government decided on a policy of mobilizing the entire country for the cause of the war. Not only was the economy reorganized onto a war footing, but the Koreans were to be totally assimilated as Japanese. The government also began to enlist Korean youths in the Japanese army as volunteers in 1938, and as conscripts in 1943. Worship at Shinto shrines became mandatory, and every attempt at preserving Korean identity was discouraged.

The Korean economy also underwent significant change. Japan's initial colonial policy was to increase agricultural production in Korea to meet Japan's growing need for rice. Japan had also begun to build large-scale industries in Korea in the 1930s as part of the empire-wide program of economic self-sufficiency and war preparation. Between 1939 and 1941, the manufacturing sector represented 29 percent of Korea's total economic production. The primary industries--agriculture, fishing, and forestry--occupied only 49.6 percent of total economic production during that period, in contrast to having provided 84.6 percent of total production between 1910 and 1912.

The economic development taking place under Japanese rule, however, brought little benefit to the Koreans. Virtually all industries were owned either by Japan-based corporations or by Japanese corporations in Korea. As of 1942, Korean capital constituted only 1.5 percent of the total capital invested in Korean industries. Korean entrepreneurs were charged interest rates 25 percent higher than their Japanese counterparts, so it was difficult for Korean enterprises to emerge. More and more farmland was taken over by the Japanese, and an increasing proportion of Korean farmers either became sharecroppers or migrated to Japan or Manchuria. As greater quantities of Korean rice were exported to Japan, per capita consumption of rice among the Koreans declined; between 1932 and 1936, per capita consumption of rice declined to half the level consumed between 1912 and 1916. Although the government imported coarse grains from Manchuria to augment the Korean food supply, per capita consumption of food grains in 1944 was 35 percent below that of 1912 to 1916.

Under Japanese rule, intellectual influences different from traditional Buddhist, Confucianist, and shamanistic beliefs flooded the country. Western-style painting was introduced, and literary trends, even among writers who emphasized themes of social protest and national independence, tended to follow Japanese and European models, particularly those developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The works of Russian, German, French, British, American, and Japanese authors were read by the more educated Koreans, and Korean writers increasingly adopted Western ideas and literary forms. Social and political themes were prominent. Tears of Blood, the first of the "new novels," published by Yi In-jik in serial form in a magazine in 1906, stressed the need for social reform and cultural enlightenment, following Western and Japanese models. Yi Kwang-su's The Heartless, published in 1917, stressed the need for mass education, Western science, and the repudiation of the old family and social system. Ch'ae Man-sik's Ready Made Life, published in 1934, protested the injustices of colonial society.

In the 1920s and 1930s, socialist ideas began to influence the development of literature. In 1925 left-wing artists, rejecting the romanticism of many contemporary writers, established the Korean Proletarian Artists' Federation, which continued until it was suppressed by Japanese authorities in 1935. One of the best representatives of this group was Yi Ki-yong, whose 1936 novel Home tells of the misery of villagers under Japanese rule and the efforts of the protagonist, a student, to organize them. Poets during the colonial period included Yi Sang-hwa, Kim So-wol, and Han Yong-un. But the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War marked a period of unprecedented repression in the cultural sphere by Japanese authorities, which continued until Korea's liberation in 1945.

From the late 1930s until 1945, the colonial government pursued a policy of assimilation whose primary goal was to force the Koreans to speak Japanese and to consider themselves Japanese subjects. In 1937 the Japanese governor general ordered that all instruction in Korean schools be in Japanese and that students not be allowed to speak Korean either inside or outside of school. In 1939 another decree "encouraged" Koreans to adopt Japanese names, and by the following year it was reported that 84 percent of all Korean families had done so. During the war years Korean-language newspapers and magazines were shut down. Belief in the divinity of the Japanese emperor was encouraged, and Shinto shrines were built throughout the country. Had Japanese rule not ended in 1945, the fate of indigenous Korean language, culture, and religious practices would have been extremely uncertain.

Japanese rule was harsh, particularly after the Japanese militarists began their expansionist drive in the 1930s. Internal Korean resistance, however, virtually ceased in the 1930s as the police and the military gendarmes imposed strict surveillance over all people suspected of subversive inclinations and meted out severe punishment against recalcitrants. Most Koreans opted to pay lip service to the colonial government. Others actively collaborated with the Japanese. The treatment of collaborators became a sensitive and sometimes violent issue during the years immediately following liberation.

And this, I know that you see them in the opposite order that I posted them, but oh well. This is Olympic Park. The flags are really cool. Torie and I walked around while we were waiting for a Rotary meeting to finish. They were inaugarating all of the new commitee leaders and governors and such. Torie and I went to tell them a little about our experience, because many of the new chairmen would be involved in youth activities for Rotary, like the international exchange program, Interact, Rotaract and this thing for middle schoolers called Littleact. We were told that after we spoke, we could leave until dinner. The event was held at the hotel seen on the left side of the picture, so we walked around the park for about two hours talking and just enjoying. The weather was gorgeous and it's amazing to think that the Olympics were held there 18 years ago. At the Rotary meeting we also met some pretty cool people. The conversation was mostly in Korea and at dinner time I was really tired, but I could speak a little and understand a little more. 

This double exposure of Korea and Minnesota is pretty fun. This is "MY ROOM" 

I call this one "HOME". It is a double exposure of my home in Minnesota on Valentine's Day 2005 overlapping the view out my 12th floor apartment window at sunset. 

This is a picture of my favorite quote, which was March 3rd's "10,000 Places to see before you die" calandar quote, a picture of an elephant stepping on me, and the nightscape out my apartment window!! 

Sorry it's been such a long time since I last wrote and I never updated you about Jeju. I'll start...

Forms of Transportation I took in or to Jeju...

Subway
Airplane
Car
Boat
Horse
Elephant

Things to remember...

*The look on the youngest boys face when he first met me and usually there after...a huge smile
*Trying to explain things using my electronic dictionary
*Eating Bulgogi burgers at Lotteria in the airport
*The boy's excitement as we lifted off the ground in the airplane, it was his first flight
*The sunsetting over islands while we were flying over (but I was on the east side of the plane)
*Buying groceries in Jeju city to cook for the rest of the trip (I was told I had to choose things to buy, but didn't know what to choose. I don't go shopping in Korea)
*Riding at least an hour with 4 kids and me in one row in the van, because everyone wanted to sit by me
*The cold weather I hadn't expected on what I was told would be a semi-tropical island (i had to borrow a coat)
*HAMEL- the boat of Hamel, the dutch captain who sailed with his crew to japan, but shipwrecked on Jejudo. The first western contact with Korea.
*Dragon head Rock (i think it's called) I don't like it because it maybe looks like a dragon, but because the volcanic rock it's made from.
*Walking backwards to keep my hood up with the help of the wind
*Jampong (spicy seafood and vegetable soup) and homemade kimbab (california-rollish, no fish) in the resturaunt covered in letters about Marado.
*Rock the boat. The winds rocked us back and forth, so instead of taking the chance at getting sea sick I fell asleep like a baby rocked in a cradle.
*Miniature buildings. I could be in Sydney, New York, Seoul, and Italy at the same time.
*Monkeys on stilts, especially the shy one who turned it's back when bowing.
*A seal playing the piano.
*Trivia. Good idea to keep the kids occupied and happy on the car ride. I took it with a good spirit, but they were so loud my head was splitting.
*Seeing a fish swimming in the tank, captured, cut apart until it was sushi and sashimi, and then ate it.
*Also ate some other sort of raw sea creature, like sea cucumbers or something.
*The view from the top of Sunrise Peak, even though it wasn't sunrise.
*The Nolaebang (singing room) with 4 elementary kids the last night.
*When they thought my retainer case was for soap and I couldn't explain that it wasn't.
*Clemintines 결's galore. I was given five at a time. I was also given 3 yogurts to eat in the car and used them as something to did the oranges in. (After about 20 they don't taste as good plain.)
*About 5 meals a day.
*Being stepped on by an elephant (don't worry, the elephant knew what it was doing)
*Riding horses in cowboy gettup
*Hallansan- I didn't get to climb it, but just seeing the snowtopped peak in the middle of the island
*Always holding a little kid's hand

There's the trip in brief. I'll try to find all the places I went and post them too.