Yangdong

On one of our last days with the Lamsons (spelling? - they were the older couple who tagged along with us the first two week of the trip), we went to the village of Yangdong (양동). It was a miserably rainy day so we didn't get out of the van and look around much. But we did make two stops while in the village.

The first was to the home of the village chongson (총손) or the leader of Confucian ceremonies. He's the grandson of the choson Dr. Peterson met on his first ever visit to the village. The grandfather loved being the choson and took great pride in his role in the community. His son inherited the title from him but found the mantle of choson to be more of a burden than anything. The village is in agreement that the stress of being choson killed him. Now his son, the grandson, is in his forties and is planning on expanding the role of the choson. Like his grandfather, he takes pride in what he does, but he's currently building on the traditional responsibilities by teaching the Confucian classics to locals who want to learn. When we arrived to his home he was just finishing up a lesson. We sat and talked for him a little while - his wife made us some meshyu (매슈), a kind of plum juice, which was served hot and like a tea. It had a strange taste to it - it smelled kind of like sweet and sour sauce but with the emphasis on the sour. Our stay was brief because the choson had to go teach a class at the local university.

Our second stop was to an elderly couple who lived on the other side of the village. The harabeoji (할아버지 = grandfather) was the one who allowed Dr. Peterson's 1999 study abroad to stay in an abandoned house in the village. The study abroad after that planned to use the same house to live in, but a recent trend of moving out of cities to stay in the countryside meant that there were no more empty homes in the village. So the harabeoji invited the group to stay in his home, with his wife making breakfasts and dinners (when they were home). Since we were in Korea of course we had to visit the old man. We all squished into his little bedroom/living room, each of us sitting in a cramped cross-legged position for about an hour. He talked about a lot of things with Dr. Peterson acting as translator when he could get a word in edgewise. The thing about the visit that impressed me the most was when he explained the thank you letter he was writing on behalf of his grand-nephew. As yangban (Korean aristocracy), they still practiced the traditional Confucian wedding protocol. The grandfather had already composed a letter of proposal for his grand-nephew which was given to a suitable young woman's family. The family then agreed to the match and sent a letter back conveying as much - so now the grandfather is composing a thank you letter for the bride's family. He pulled out the paper he was working on - it was a big sheet of old-fashioned paper folded accordion style so as to create columns in which to write in hanja top-down and right-left. Because the younger generation is losing interest in learning hanja, the grandfather was the only one in the family who could compose the necessary wedding documents. The old man STILL has his own proposal letter that he wrote himself to his now wife. It was super cute to see how far his proposal had taken him: on the walls were photos of him and his wife when they were younger and a photo of their only grandson when he was a baby, and in the corner was his wrinkled little ol' wife sitting in the corner listening faithfully to her husband. I found this little tidbit of Korean wedding tradition to be so interesting that I decided to read more about it in my book on Confucianism. This reading has blossomed into the topic for my paper/project which is Confucianism's influence on gender (specifically women) roles in early Korea.

Speaking of yangban, here's a fun fact I learned this morning during a phone call home: my bon-gwan (본관) or the "tribal origin" of my particular branch of the Lee family is in Jeonju. Jeonju is located in SW Korea in the area of the former Baekjae (백채) kingdom. According to wikipedia, Jeonju is one of the two biggest bon-gwans for Lee's. Basically... I AM A YANGBAN! WOOT! It feels good to know that if someone asks me what my bon-gwan is, I can say "제 본관은 전주 이씨입니다!" (I am a Jeonju Lee!).

The first photo is from the covered outdoor room where we ate lunch in the village.