Dispatches from the Peninsula: A Summer in Korea

by Abe Riesman
Photo by Kook-Young Benito Nishizawa Rodriguez '10

I heard a saying this summer about non-Koreans: They only show up in Korea if they have a Bible, a ring, or a gun in their hands. But when I stepped off the runway at Inch’ŏn International Airport on June 18, 2007, I didn’t come as a missionary, I wasn’t looking for a Korean bride, and I certainly had no plans to sign up for duty at a US military garrison. And, as you can probably guess from my name, I am not ethnically Korean—at least as far as I know. So why had I come to the proverbial Land of the Morning Calm?

An unusual path led me to Korea. When I was a freshman, I shared a room with a Korean-American who had a large chunk of his life in Seoul. During late-night chats, he would wax poetic about his aspirations to be a Korean pop singer, explain the nuances of Korean culture’s rise in East Asian public consciousness, and—most interestingly to me—tell me about how students in our class at Harvard were signing lucrative contracts to write about how they got into Harvard. I remember being flabbergasted. Who knew that Harvard was such a big brand name in South Korea, of all places? That tidbit stuck in my mind for years, and took roots in my junior year. I took a junior seminar on East Asian social anthropology, and had to do original research for my final paper. “Why not investigate that whole Harvard-obsession-in-Korea thing?” I thought to myself. What I stumbled upon astonished me.

While interviewing Harvard undergrads from Korea, I gathered unpublished data from the Harvard International Office about foreign student enrollment at Harvard. As it turned out, Korean nationals were a massive presence on campus—even if they didn’t know it. There were more undergraduates here from Korea than any other non-English-speaking country, and in the space of 6 years, their population had exploded from 4 to 29. My paper ended up dealing with student complaints about Korean educational norms, but a bigger question lingered in my mind: Why were all these Koreans coming to America? I asked professors and searched through existing scholarly literature, and no one had an answer.

I decided that I needed to find out for myself. I taught myself the han’gŭl alphabet, signed up for the Harvard Summer School in Seoul program, and got in contact with the Korea Institute. They helped me get a research grant, I convinced Yoon Se-Young Professor of Korean History Carter J. Eckert to advise my nascent thesis, and I bought my ticket to the Republic of Korea.

I had one particular goal in mind: Understanding a high school called Minjok Sagwan Kodŭng Hakkyo, known in English as the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy (KMLA). Although famous throughout Korea, it remains relatively unknown in America. Some of my interviewees had gone there, and through them, I learned about the school’s fascinating founder and his seemingly paradoxical dream: To build a school where all classes would be taught in English, all students would be held to international educational standards, and many students would be trained to study in America, but they would all also be taught a particularly strong brand of Korean nationalism. Just to top off the mysterious air of the school, it was tucked away in the verdant mountains of Kangwŏn Province. My mission? To talk to as many KMLA students, faculty, and administrators as possible and find out what makes the school’s balance of internationalism and nationalism tick.

But thank goodness I had the Summer School to keep me grounded during my first days as a stranger in a strange land. This was the program’s second year, and by all accounts, it was a rousing success. We 13 Harvardians were stationed at Ewha Womans University, alongside more than a dozen Korean students. I wasn’t the only one who stuck out like a sore thumb in the Seoul: Much to the credit of Korea’s rising profile in the world and the efforts of the Korea Institute to educate Harvard about Korean issues, we had Harvard students of Korean, Japanese, Dominican, Costa Rican, and, in my case, even Jewish ethnicity. Novices like me went through the ringer of learning intensive beginning Korean, but every day brought a new sentence I could speak. Prof. Eckert and a bevy of guest lecturers taught a course on modern Korea, which always shed new light on the complex history of the peninsula—and often leading to spirited after-school arguments about the nature of Korean society. Our wildly thought-provoking day trips took us to US military briefings, Seoul’s bustling Namdaemun market, the DMZ, and live shoots for some of Korea’s top TV shows, just to name a few locations. Our unofficial night trips took us to strange clubs, family-style kalbi restaurants, and, of course, voice-straining noraebang karaoke spots. It was intense, it was life-changing, and it was over as quickly as it began.

But while most of the Harvard kids flew back to the Americas, I still had a mission to fulfill. Throughout August, I interviewed dozens upon dozens of KMLA students, learning about their aspirations for Korea, as well as their deep anxieties about its educational system and its future. My interviews were not limited to Seoul—although I walked the streets of Seoul’s studying capital, Kangnam, I ventured throughout Kyŏnggi Province and made my way down to the sun-drenched beaches of Pusan for interviews. Then, at the end of the summer, I settled down for two weeks of full-time observation at KMLA, up in Kangwŏn. Even on a rainy day, the place was gorgeous. No one quite knew what to make of me or my research, but everyone was willing to talk or help in some way. Every day, I was bowled over by the kindness and generosity that the school offered to a miguk saram like myself.

By the time I got on a US-bound plane in mid-September, I felt a deep connection with this country, one that transcended any kind of historical or ethnic ties. I didn’t feel like I was ending something. I felt like I was beginning something. With any luck, those beginnings will get fleshed out in my thesis—I certainly have more than enough primary-source material. And I didn’t get back from Korea with a Bible, a ring, or a gun, but I did return with a taste for pibimpab, a mission to tell the world about the fascinating changes that are happening in Korean education, and a deeper sense of myself than I could ever have dreamed.