Korea (South): If this is freedom, do we want it? Will I choose K-Pop over Juche thought? Gangnam or Kim-Jong Un style?
As we all know, no matter who you vote for, the government always gets in, but you can find proof that governance matters by checking out the difference between North and South Korea. Same language, same food, same history (until 1948 — but humans have lived there for 40,000 years), and yet two diametrically opposed countries. The straight-jacketed, liberty-free North Koreans have no access to travel, media, free speech, or elections, while the capitalist South has, on paper, the sort of freedoms that Americans get all excited about.
But are they happy?
If this week’s book(s) and film(s) are anything to go by, the answer is a resounding “no”. Take, for example, The Vegetarian, perhaps the most depressing book I have ever read. It tells that tale of a woman beaten so badly by her father and treated appallingly by her husband and society in general that she retreats from reality, in the hope of becoming a tree. Not that we ever actually find out what she thinks, as the book comes first from the perspective of her husband, then her abusive brother-in-law, and finally her sister, who is so traumatised by helping her kin that she too begins to dream of becoming vegetal. Having loved the North Korean book, the Friend, I couldn’t help but think that swapping totalitarianism for freedom also risked swapping (blind) joy for (open-eyed) terror. I found the book so overwhelming that I decided to cleanse my pallet with “Ten Korean Short Stories” set before and after the war in both the North and the South. Almost every one of them features a drunk, a man broken by the war and a woman being beaten… so far, so depressing!
The theme, sadly continued with the first of this week’s films, Parasite, a damning indictment of capitalism, which Jessica Kiang called “a tick fat with the bitter blood of class rage”. It’s about a dispossessed poor family infiltrating a wealthy household and living hidden in their basement, and while it is clearly a classic and a comedy, it reveals a society based on class disparity, greed, and desperation. This theme continued into the lauded Netflix series Squid Game (about desperate cash-strapped Koreans competing in deadly versions of childhood games for a massive cash prize), which projects South Korea as dystopian and depressing. The same motif ran throughout Burning (the story of the rich vamperising youth), and Decision to Leave a sleep-inducing, multilayered, neo-noir, romantic mystery in which a detective falls in love with a murderer who ends up committing suicide.
The overload of Korea-culture got me wondering whether I’d rather live in a country that projects itself as utopia than in one so seemingly proud of being a dystopia. Would I take the freedom to believe the communist lie over the freedom to understand the capitalist truth? I guess it’s just like religion, believers get a hell of a lot of joy out of it! So whose the winner, them the happy God-fearer, or me the miserable atheist? I turned off Squid Game and decided to mull over such thoughts while treating myself to a meal in one of Birmingham’s many Korean restaurants. I plumped for Topokki as it promised my favourite, a stone bowl (dolsot) Bibimbap, bibim means mixed and bap means rice! If you have never tried one of these, you must, as it is, according to CNN, the 40th most delicious food in the world! While there I also tried the veggie japchae (sweet potato noodles), and an incredible kimchi pancake (it is illegal to talk about Korea without mentioning kimchi). I washed it down with this week’s drink, Woongjin, “Sunshine in the morning” a sweet rice drink that is kind to your stomach and gives you energy. As you may be able to tell, I LOVE Korean food and so started the next day by making a breakfast kimchi egg fried sandwich (it was the first thing I ate when I went to Korea 24 years ago) and a spicy kimchi bulgogi kimbap — a kind of hot sushi that makes a perfect lunch.
A huge amount of food then and quite the contrast to the famine-cursed North… so perhaps the Southerners are happier after all? Certainly, the most popular Korean song of recent years Gangnam Style, is a comic ode to joy of being nouveau riche. I have not added it to this week’s playlist as that would have no doubt led me down a rather peculiar K-pop alley that I promised myself I would stay out of! Instead I focussed on female Korean folk. Try it, you just might love it!
And so, having spent a week battling with the complexities of freedom, I’ve decided that truth and human rights beats all and so I’ll stick with flawed capitalism over false communism… and say good-bye to the Koreas and hello to Kosovo.
