On Saturday afternoon last week, Wallis and I took the subway to Gyeongbukgang. We were there to meet up with the Seoul Volunteer Group, a brand-new organisation that enables non-Koreans to volunteer in and around the city. Not quite sure what to expect from our first time, we walked up tree-lined streets to the top of a hill overlooking the palaces of Seoul, to a community centre packed with children swimming and doing fitness skipping classes (no, really). Tucked into one corner was the Gwanghwamun Art Hall, and outside was a group of about 20 foreigners and English-speaking Koreans. Sadly, because of the rain, the disabled children we were there to accompany to the performance were unable to come, and the 5 adults attending would have their own nurses. Surplus to requirements, we were told just to enjoy the performance. So we did just that.
As the lights went down, a single drumbeat rang out from the back of the auditorium, then it was joined by another, and a third, until the rhythm was a complicated heartbeat of sound, and the performers came dancing down the aisles carrying traditional Korean drums. Samul-noli is a traditional artform in Korea, and we were lucky enough to be watching the master, Kim Duk Soo, who brought it back to the limelight in the 1970s. The first part was Harmony of Drums. 
Three men stood in the semi-darkness, their backs to us, holding sticks at their sides, facing three massive drums suspended from the ceiling. The middle one began with a single, solid beat that reverberated through my heart, so deep was it. Then the other two joined in, and built up to a frenzy of thumping beat, the drummers literally throwing themselves at the drums, and leaping to reach the high edges. Just as I was getting lost in the sound they stopped and the light moved to the five performers sitting at the front of the stage, holding the janggu drum between their feet. A higher flatter sound started, built up to a crescendo with a think stick held in the right hand, and a thicker drumstick in the left which is twirled almost too fast to see, to draw sound from both sides. Finally four women twirled in to the drums - more gong-like - hanging at the sides of the stage, where their performance can't be called mere drumming, but was a mix of dance, song, music and drums, bringing the janggu and buk drums back into the rhythm and ending too fast to tap a hand to! It was amazing - I'm definitely going to try to see a Korean drum performance again!
Another section I loved was the Pansori - storytelling. The storyteller is accompanied by a drummer who encourages her with mmm's and aah's, while she uses a fan to emphasise her story, which is told with song, movement, and poetry-type speech. The story we were told was about a blind man who sells his daughter into prostitution on a ship because a priest tells him if he donates 300 bags of rice to the temple he'll see again - the dutiful daughter tries to raise the money for him, but he still can't see. After throwing herself into the ocean from the ship, she's rescued by the sea king who makes her a queen, and she invites all the blind men in the country to a banquet. The distraught, bereaved father, on realising the queen is his daughter and she's forgiven him, opens his eyes and can see. Then all over the country, while "they were talking, eating, singing, they were farming, working, doing a dump" (hallelujah), blind men opened their eyes to see... A fascinating tale of Korean attitudes to dutiful children in a nutshell.
Afterwards, Wallis and I posed with some of the masked dancers and the other volunteers for a group photo.
We were taken for dinner afterwards to get to know our fellow volunteers and organisers, and I was seated next to a Polish woman who has been in Korea for 5 years, working for a charity that tries to help North Korean refugees assimilate into South Korean society. I'd already read about the problems the refugees face here so it was fascinating talking to her. Far from sympathising with the problems they've faced in escaping such a tyrannical government, South Koreans see Northerners as being the lowest of the low - even placing them below foreigners on the scale of "people we want to know". It's very sad. On another note, the woman told me that children arriving now, compared to those who escaped 5 years ago, know much more about South Korea and the West from secret radio broadcasts (from Japan and S. Korea) and are better placed to adapt to the sudden change to a capitalist free-for-all - which is kind of a shame, because they aren't even given a chance - they all get dumped in schools especially for them, and never get to meet S. Koreans their own age! Strange when you think that both North and South are part of a racial and linguistic group in a class of its own, and were essentially one nation until just 50 years ago. My students now see N. Korea as a completely different country. So much for the standard line which any questioning draws out from any S. Korean - "All Koreans want reunification"...
I leave you with a pic of the nearby Gyeongbuk Palace at dusk, Mt Bukhan rising in the background. Can't wait to climb it!
Three men stood in the semi-darkness, their backs to us, holding sticks at their sides, facing three massive drums suspended from the ceiling. The middle one began with a single, solid beat that reverberated through my heart, so deep was it. Then the other two joined in, and built up to a frenzy of thumping beat, the drummers literally throwing themselves at the drums, and leaping to reach the high edges. Just as I was getting lost in the sound they stopped and the light moved to the five performers sitting at the front of the stage, holding the janggu drum between their feet. A higher flatter sound started, built up to a crescendo with a think stick held in the right hand, and a thicker drumstick in the left which is twirled almost too fast to see, to draw sound from both sides. Finally four women twirled in to the drums - more gong-like - hanging at the sides of the stage, where their performance can't be called mere drumming, but was a mix of dance, song, music and drums, bringing the janggu and buk drums back into the rhythm and ending too fast to tap a hand to! It was amazing - I'm definitely going to try to see a Korean drum performance again!Another section I loved was the Pansori - storytelling. The storyteller is accompanied by a drummer who encourages her with mmm's and aah's, while she uses a fan to emphasise her story, which is told with song, movement, and poetry-type speech. The story we were told was about a blind man who sells his daughter into prostitution on a ship because a priest tells him if he donates 300 bags of rice to the temple he'll see again - the dutiful daughter tries to raise the money for him, but he still can't see. After throwing herself into the ocean from the ship, she's rescued by the sea king who makes her a queen, and she invites all the blind men in the country to a banquet. The distraught, bereaved father, on realising the queen is his daughter and she's forgiven him, opens his eyes and can see. Then all over the country, while "they were talking, eating, singing, they were farming, working, doing a dump" (hallelujah), blind men opened their eyes to see... A fascinating tale of Korean attitudes to dutiful children in a nutshell.
Afterwards, Wallis and I posed with some of the masked dancers and the other volunteers for a group photo.
We were taken for dinner afterwards to get to know our fellow volunteers and organisers, and I was seated next to a Polish woman who has been in Korea for 5 years, working for a charity that tries to help North Korean refugees assimilate into South Korean society. I'd already read about the problems the refugees face here so it was fascinating talking to her. Far from sympathising with the problems they've faced in escaping such a tyrannical government, South Koreans see Northerners as being the lowest of the low - even placing them below foreigners on the scale of "people we want to know". It's very sad. On another note, the woman told me that children arriving now, compared to those who escaped 5 years ago, know much more about South Korea and the West from secret radio broadcasts (from Japan and S. Korea) and are better placed to adapt to the sudden change to a capitalist free-for-all - which is kind of a shame, because they aren't even given a chance - they all get dumped in schools especially for them, and never get to meet S. Koreans their own age! Strange when you think that both North and South are part of a racial and linguistic group in a class of its own, and were essentially one nation until just 50 years ago. My students now see N. Korea as a completely different country. So much for the standard line which any questioning draws out from any S. Korean - "All Koreans want reunification"...
I leave you with a pic of the nearby Gyeongbuk Palace at dusk, Mt Bukhan rising in the background. Can't wait to climb it!
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