Korean Wal Mart

The soul of this culture is here. It lurks in subtle gestures and back alleys but it is here.

When I first arrived in Korea everything carried the mark of the “Modern” (American) era. High rise apartments, cell phone stores, taxi cabs and grocery stores abound in this nation. At the clothing store the underwear models are white. The mannequins have Asian eyes with blue pupils. Brittney Spears and Jay-Z play in public squares. A few of my kids wear NASCAR shirts.

I can't assign blame to the leaders of this country for embracing the West. For the past sixty years it's been a small nation surrounded by hostile forces while waving the flag of someone else's democracy. Seeking shelter under the world's most powerful nation is only logical in a country still technically in a state of war.

What gets me is the fury, the unwavering force South Korea embraces Western culture. HomeEver, the Korean version of Wal Mart, was my most recent stop in my acclimation tour of 2009. In full force I witnessed the decadence which I comically scorned in my more Marxist moments. Children grabbing for Power Ranger's masks. Mothers on iphones (the sound of nagging is universal) and teenagers slacking by the McDonald's. I flew half way across the world to watch people degrade themselves for cheap crap and status symbols. 'Tis the season, I guess.

But there was an upside in all this. In my futile attempt to find a Starbucks (all the other coffee in town sucks) I found a narrow and unassuming alley. I would have passed it over except it didn't look like anything else around. I followed its cobblestone street and misshapen stone walls. I turned and there it was. What I've been looking for.

I stood in a different part of the city and a different part of history. Before Harry Truman. Before the DMZ. Before the thirty-eighth parallel. The houses were small but proud in this courtyard housed under the shadow of Westernization Incarnate. The slanted roofs and stucco walls of the pre-war generation.

Bonzi trees grew in ornamented pots. There was a small statue of the Buddha in the center. We did not touch this haven. This active museum of a life soon to be nothing but a tourist trap.

God, how I hate the twenty-first century.