Soul/Seoul (Korea diaries #3)

7.29.2022


I am a mixed-race Asian-American, the daughter of a white American soldier and a Korean immigrant. This summer, I am working in Korea for two months, realizing a dream that I have held for over two years. The Korea Diaries is a blog series that documents my experiences here. For more background, you can view my introductory post.


“사랑과 미움이 같은 말이면 I love you, Seoul”
If love and hate are the same words, I love you, Seoul.

One of the things that I love most about music is its ability to distill individual experiences into the universal human emotions that underlie them. As a child, I lacked the words to describe this idea, but I think that even back then, music’s capacity to communicate intense and varied sentiments across differences is part of what made me want to learn how to create it. Though I was fairly average, I was a happy piano student in childhood and always eager to sing in school choirs. (During my senior year of high school, I even took a course online after school just to fit chorus into my schedule.) I loved the feeling of lending my body and voice to a sound and letting it carry me into joy, fear, sadness, anger, and hope. Sometimes, I performed pieces that were foreign in concept to me: spirituals of religions I did not subscribe to, tunes in Latin or other unfamiliar tongues, and some songs without any words at all. But music was the ultimate tool of translation, and regardless of the differences between myself and the creator or subject of the piece, songs spoke to me fluently in a language of emotions. If I close my eyes, I can almost recall the feeling of giving my voice to a dissonant chord, how in the chorus I became a channel for yearning and discomfort and tension that built and built and built until resolving in harmony.



As a foreigner in Korea, music has become important to me as a device to share, learn, and remember. I usually don’t understand all of the words of the songs that I hear here, but I value what they communicate to me. I can, for instance, recognize the K-pop tunes that my roommate played during our first nights together in a new space, the clear Yiruma melodies that passersby would sometimes play on the piano in the lobby of my work building, and the distinctive mix of sad Korean ballads and upbeat American Top 40 hits that my uncle runs to.
 

Inspired by my college roommate of the past semester, I’ve started making spontaneous Spotify playlists to preserve my feelings at particular moments in time through music. I date and label them with photos captured in those moments. The titles of the playlists are uncreative and candid. I have one, for instance, called “It’s dark and pouring rain on a hard day; you should prob go home but it’s kind of nice to stand here” from a night in 시흥 (Siheung) that I spent lingering outside my building in a monsoon season downpour. My music taste is relatively limited, so many of the same few artists litter most of the playlists, and sometimes the tones of the tunes I select don’t necessarily match the mood of the events that I experienced. Still, each combination of songs holds a unique significance to me and allows me to reflect on places and times past.




RM’s “seoul (prod. HONNE)” sits on only one of my playlists. My mom introduced me to the song maybe two or three years ago, but I relate to it differently now that I am living in the metropolitan city that RM raps about. In the song, he muses about how Seoul, the capital of South Korea, has a harmony that feels familiar to him although he resents aspects of living there. In the chorus of the song, RM sings:
 

사랑과 미움이 같은 말이면 I love you, Seoul”
If love and hate are the same words, I love you, Seoul.
“사랑과 미움이 같은 말이면 I hate you, Seoul”
If love and hate are the same words, I hate you, Seoul.


My first two weeks in Seoul have contained multitudes. RM’s song guides my reflection on them. Like the singer, I have a bittersweet relationship with Korea’s megacity. 


— ♡ —

I shed my first tears in Seoul. I faced my fair share of joys and tribulations while living in Siheung but never cried there; the romantic side of me thinks there must be something evocative about this city that summons my emotions. 


The first time I cried in Seoul was childish and borne from frustration. On that night in the city, I felt overwhelmed. Three nights before, two of my supervisors had kindly helped me move into my new home. Still, I felt small and scared in a big and unfamiliar place. During my first three days in the city, I slept little. Without Internet access, I got lost in the dark and in the rain. I missed buses for my hour-long commute to work and almost got hit by cars while running into oncoming traffic trying to catch those buses. Accidental miscommunications with my new Korean roommate resulted in, as I wrote in a journal entry, “a very sweaty and confusing time where I didn’t know where I was and I was worried about my phone dying and running out of money on my transportation card.” I somehow managed to flood a washing machine, which kept my roommate and me up past midnight trying to clean the room and dry my clothes before work the next morning. So on my fourth night in the city, feeling inadequate in my inability to live and communicate in Korean and in my identity as a Korean-American, I lay on the floor and cried. Seoul holds these memories for me.

— ♡ —

The second time I cried in Seoul, I also felt overwhelmed. This time, though, my tears were borne of gratitude. I was in a window seat in the back of a taxi, sitting next to my aunt and cousin, watching the road that was busy although it was late in the evening and dark. My uncle, seated in front of us, was red-faced from drinks shared with family over fried chicken on a picnic blanket in front of the 한강 (Han River). It was an ordinary moment – we were just going home – but it felt surreal. I almost could not believe my reality.


That weekend, I had the opportunity to meet some of my Korean family. They flew from Jeju-do, an island off the coast of mainland Korea where my mom’s side all lives, to Seoul to visit me. Some of them I hadn’t seen in years; some of them I'd never met before in my life. It was a magical weekend.

I felt excitement and happiness and, to my surprise, comfort. My family welcomed me as one of their own despite the language barrier and the time we have spent apart. We ate together and lived together. We played games and took pictures and laughed in the light of streetlamps and under trees along the river. I’d known my aunt’s sister, a bubbly woman with a clean-cut bob and a dazzling smile, for less than a day when she looped her arm through mine while we were exploring the city as if it were the most natural thing in the world.


My uncle, a dedicated long-distance runner, and I bonded over our mutual love of running. That weekend, we ran about 20 miles together in two days. On Friday morning, at 5:30 am, we ran 11.67 km (about 7.2 miles) together. Afterward, he asked me if I wanted to run 20 km (about 12.4 miles) with him to cross the Han River the next day. Saying yes to this run probably ranks somewhere in the top 10 list of most reckless things that I have ever done. I had recently gotten out of a boot for an ankle injury that rendered me unable to run for five months, and the longest run that I had completed since then was maybe four miles. But I couldn’t say no. When else in my life would I have the opportunity to run the Han River, with my uncle, in Korea? So the next day, at 5:00 am, we ran 13.26 miles together. The run actually landed me in another boot for two weeks– around mile 9.5, I had to stop because my right foot was hurting so badly– but we finished it. I will remember that run with my uncle for the rest of my life.

As we departed in the taxi, I felt appreciation mixed with sadness and bitterness directed at a target that I still can’t quite name. It might have been fate. The universe gave me a beautiful world that lives a world away from me. What irony that the family I cannot speak to is the family that has made me feel a greater sense of familial belonging than I have ever felt in the United States, where I can speak the dominant language fluently. My Korean family owed me nothing, but in their full embrace of me without qualms or expectations– in their unconditional love– they gave me everything. 


Seoul holds this for me, too. 

— ♡ —


Reflecting upon what attracts him to Seoul even when he hates aspects of living there, RM asks:

“넌 왜 soul과 발음이 비슷한 걸까? 무슨 영혼을 가졌길래?”
Why do you sound like “soul”? What kind of soul is it that you have?


I think I find myself similarly repelled by yet drawn to Seoul because I view us as twin souls.


Siheung, where I lived during my first three weeks in Korea, was a city of surprises. Unplanned walks led me to the sea; the city’s reputation as new and small concealed its grand offerings. Seoul, in contrast, feels more direct. What you see is what you get. It is cobwebs of telephone wires and soaring buildings and perpetually packed roads.

Sometimes, the busyness of the city makes it feel more individualistic and lonely; I experienced my first bouts of homesickness here. But other times, I think its honesty is what I find alluring about it. The city’s soul is in full and open view, and it is an ambitious and flawed and real one. I feel tethered to it because I see myself in it: I see my soul in Seoul. Just as I feel that in Korea the language barrier and my foreignness render me unable to rely on the external elements that I used to construct my identity in America, Seoul has no pleasantries to embellish its reality. The city can be harsh, but it is genuine and alive.

In Seoul, I am starting to find my soul: who I am without labels tied to school, work, or my command of language. When I, too, am not embellished, what is left of me? I’ve made some discoveries that have surprised me: I can be goofy. I can be as bold as I can be shy. I like to ask questions. This process of uncovering requires grappling with vulnerability. Sometimes, it is adventurous and fun and I love it. Sometimes, it is embarrassing and painful and I hate it. Above all, like the soul of the city that holds it, its beauty is in its truth.

— ♡ —


As I walk the streets of the city, searching for my bus stop and listening to music, I mouth along to the words that RM sings:

I’m leavin’ you
I’m livin’ you
I’m leavin’ you
I’m livin’ you
Seoul.

12 comments :

  1. I'm so glad you're having a wonderful time in Korea! Meeting up with your family and meeting more of them must have been amazing!

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  2. This is beautiful, Claire. I'm so happy you had a chance to meet your family and run the Han River with your uncle. I'm sorry that it's so hard with the language barrier. And, I'm so glad you're fighting to live your dream. You inspire me. <3

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  3. "In Seoul, I am starting to find my soul: who I am without labels tied to school, work, or my command of language."
    That's beautiful. And terrifying in its beauty.

    I'm glad you finally managed to met your far away family and to bond with them, despite the language barrier. And it sounds like there are many kind people in Korea, who go out of their way to help those who come with a genuine desire to know the place and its inhabitants and everything it can offer.

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  4. Amazing pictures as always, and yes, music is the soundtrack to our lives. There's a reason I love that saying. Wow! Twenty miles. I admire your stamina

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  5. Music really is a universal language. And I like the idea of creating a spontaneous playlist to capture a moment. How cool is that? For some reason I love watching the monsoon downpours as well. Some of the walking tours I watch are night walks in the rain, and they're awesome.

    "What irony that the family I cannot speak to is the family that has made me feel a greater sense of familial belonging than I have ever felt in the United States, where I can speak the dominant language fluently." Wow. Thank you for sharing. And about Seoul too- I think sometimes we see the good things but from someone who's actually there you hear the good and the bad.

    THank you, by the way, for the thoughtful comment you left on my music post! :)

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  6. What a great post. Discovering ourselves is its own journey; sometimes places and experiences clarify it for us. Good luck!

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  7. Just a quick comment as I need to prepare for a school Zoom meeting I have soon *slight shudder*. I love school related work, but the Zoom meetings remind me of trying to engage a screen of muted black boxes with names or avatars in them.

    Your choice to run because "When else in my life would I have the opportunity to run the Han River, with my uncle, in Korea?" embodies, to me, how I feel knowing that students I know get to have experiences and travel and learn more about our world in an authentic way. At the risk of sounding horribly cliché, there's an undercurrent of "carpe diem" in your writing that is just so inspiring.

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  8. This is beautiful, thanks for sharing about your adventures!

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  9. This is wonderful! Loved reading about your time in Seoul! :)

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  10. I love songs that really remind us of moments and memories. I love the random, rambling titles you give your playlists. It's all part of that memory. And how wonderful you were able to meet family and spend time with them - though sorry about getting stuck in a boot again for a bit!! I'm sorry about all the overwhelming, rough moments too - even if they create memories in the future. I'm sure it feels like a LOT sometimes.

    Lauren @ www.shootingstarsmag.net

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