id="ulink_08136ca7-067f-5707-8ad7-08b72c29faeb">
Two Ascetics Meet on Sosŭl Mountain
Kwan’gi lived in his grass hut on the southern peak of Sosŭl Mountain, Tosŏng lived in a cave on the northern side; they were close friends and often travelled the intervening ten li to visit each other. Their arrangements to meet were not according to our rigid norms of year, month, day and hour, but were based on a much more refined standard. When the fresh breeze blew from the north, not too strong and not too weak, and the leaves on the trees leaned to the south, Tosŏng in the north followed that breeze toward Kwan’gi on the southern peak, and Kwan’gi, refreshed by the breeze, would come out to meet him. And when the wind blew fair in the other direction, and the leaves on the trees leaned toward the north, Kwan’gi on the southern peak set out to visit Tosŏng on the northern peak, and Tosŏng, seeing how the breeze blew, would come out to meet his friend. Can’t you hear the Immortals laugh?
Sŏ Chŏngju (1915–2000)
Arriving in Korea is etched in my memory like a scene from a Somerset Maugham story. Ireland in the 1960s understood the Tosŏng-Kwan’gi notion of time; my group was a month late getting here. Frank McGann, complete with straw hat and cigar, met us at Kimpo airport and gave us our first introduction to the land of the morning calm. Frank was an old hand – he had been here since Japanese times; in fact he had been under house arrest in Hongch’ŏn during the Pacific War. Grannies’ eyes light up with delight to this day when they recall Frank handing out American candy to kids in Hongch’ŏn. We drove from Kimp’o to Columban Headquarters in Tonamdong by a long tortuous route, some of which was paved, more of it unpaved, all of it full of potholes, diversions and various minor discomforts. I remember soldiers and military hardware everywhere. Very little of Korea’s extraordinary five-thousand-year cultural tradition appeared to the eye: there were no laughing Immortals, no beautiful temples. We didn’t see South Gate that day, and Kwanghwamun Gate had not yet been rebuilt. The taste of a vague unease was like grit under our teeth. Seoul was ugly. There is no other word for it. Ramshackle and ugly: narrow streets, building sprawled on building, house jammed on house; one false rub of the jeep on low slung eaves and you could take most of the block with you. A jeep once swiped a hundred yards of houses in Songjŏngni in Chŏlla. And I was there the night a brand new Toyota land cruiser knocked a retaining wall in Soyangno in Ch’unch’ŏn sending chicken feathers flying two storeys down. The New Korea Hotel, a ten storey highrise, towered over the downtown area. The tram tracks on Chongno were painful to drive across. There were not too many vehicles around: the taxis were mostly the old shibal variety, rebuilt war surplus Russian jeeps. The first Datsun Bluebirds had just been introduced and were destined to dominate. Apart from these, there was a profusion of hapsŭng minibuses and the rather limited tram system.
No one said anything, but there was visible relief as we swung through the huge Chinese gates that guarded the Tonamdong compound of the Columban Fathers. I learned much later that the property had been a geisha house, hence the lovely Japanese garden. The North Koreans requisitioned the house during the Korean War, and they left behind an upright piano, which in subsequent years was the occasion of so much celebration that a parsimonious superior decided to sell it.
We were met on the steps.
‘Welcome to Korea, lads. School begins tomorrow at one o’clock.’
It wasn’t exactly what we had in mind, but Roma locuta est, and anyway it was nice to be here.
2
THE COLUMBANS
THE COLUMBANS ARE a society of missionaries, founded in Ireland in 1916, with home houses in Australia, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and the US. In recent years we have ordained quite a few Columbans from our mission territories and they are the hope of the future. Our founding vision was to work in evangelization among the Chinese, but we were forced by circumstances to branch out in East Asia and South America. In the 1920s and 1930s, we were a suspicious lot to the British authorities. Documents recently released by the British government show that British diplomats in the Far East viewed us with singular suspicion: they saw us as an organization of Sinn Feiners, bent on the destruction of British institutions. It makes amusing reading today. The last Columban priest in China was expelled in 1953. Anticipating what was coming, the society expanded into the Philippines, Burma, Japan and Korea. In the 1960s, prompted by a call from the Pope, the Columbans moved into South America.
In 1964 I came to Korea as a Columban.
Salute
At eighteen I joined the army.
At twenty-four I was commissioned.
I came to this foreign place,
which I learned to love as I love my life.
I gave it my best years
and I was rewarded with love and affection.
Eighty years have passed.
The bells of jubilee ring out.
My spirit rests under mounded grass.
For the remnant it’s time to go;
a bleak prospect, I suppose.
Weeds cover the yards of home;
pigeons nest among broken tiles.
But behind the cathedral in Ch’unch’ŏn,
on the hill in Hongch’ŏn,
in the dead fields of Seoul –
friends’ forever beds –
in Chŏlla and in Chejudo
something Christlike lives.
May it ever be so!
By any standards, the Columbans were an extraordinary group of men, especially those I call the men of old, who were mostly in their fifties or older when I got here in 1964. I look back now at these giant men, the lives they lived, the isolation and loneliness of their parishes, the Spartan conditions they endured, and I marvel at their strength. In my time in Kangwŏn Province, the most northerly part of South Korea, I never saw one of the old hands buy a new chair, or lay a new strip of carpet. Anything that was new came from younger men. In fact, the man who installed a flush toilet in his house – the first in a priest’s house in the province – was almost excommunicated by the bishop for his wilful extravagance!
There are plenty of Korean priests now and quite a few Korean Columbans. Our role in Korea has changed greatly.
The men of old are gone. I mourn their passing:
The Men of Old
Giant men, they lived giant lives
though on something less than giant scale.
Over a cocktail I’ve heard them marvel
at the old French missionaries,
the guts, the endurance, the faith.
The French lack substance to me,
but
