A Place Beyond Language by Diana Seo Hyung Lee

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My first memory of the Korean musical form of pansori comes from the time I watched a film called Seopyeonje (1993), directed by celebrated South Korean director Im Kwon-Taek, which depicts the lives of a broken, nomadic musician family in postwar Korea. Im’s film was instrumental in re-contextualizing the art of pansori to a contemporary audience, for it was considered dated, even tacky, having little to no mainstream appeal. The pansori artists in Seopyeonje struggling to keep their art form relevant in a time of heavy Western and Japanese influence—feeling like outsiders in their own country—resonated with me as our family’s financial struggles strained family relationships, as well as our status in our community. 1993 is an important year for me since it was the year before my family left Korea due to my father’s business collapse. I do not remember too many details of my life there—for instance, the names of my friends, the name of my town, what I spent my days doing: none of these things really took root in my memory. However, I can clearly recall the films and soap operas I watched in the final years before I left. Certain scenes from movies are burned into my memory as if they happened to me—overly dramatic, simplified narratives which overrode the comparatively mundane and inexplicable experiences of my day-to-day life.

Growing up in Seoul as the youngest daughter of a well-to-do businessman, I was treasured in the community. With a small build, big eyes and straight black hair, in a country where people understood me, or just liked me, there was nothing to keep me away from this reality. This was my shelter, this was where I belonged and where I was loved. I expected praise walking into any room. It was not something I understood or chose—it wasn’t even narcissism. But it was something I grew accustomed to and felt was natural. And if any inkling of doubt or self- consciousness ever arose, with a strong attachment to my then-reality, I would have deﬂected all philosophical considerations in preference for a more stable and constant world, which was a path that I felt destined to have.

a scene from “seopyeonje” (1993), directed by im kwon-taek.

In South Korea, rote memory trumps critical thinking, obeying elders and respecting hierarchy is required, and beauty is not varied but standardized. When one meets these expectations, the reward is great and flattery is endless. Straight and narrow is the path to success, but superstition and mysticism still have a strong foothold in the culture. Some are born with taboos no amount of effort could undo, while some are born with fortune that will afford excuse for any misdemeanor. Such is the case with physical appearance in South Korea. Many sociologists attribute the phenomenon in South Korea of widespread plastic surgery to a desire to look Western, whereas others conclude that South Korean women suffer from inherent vanity. Perhaps both arguments have some validity, but they fail to recognize the mysticism behind such devotion, or belief in the way things look, especially the beauty of a woman. Girls were given to marriage at a young age not even a hundred years ago in Korea. The beauty of a woman was then determined in youth. She was adored and given away like a prize: a beautiful girl was the pride of her father, he would speak of her merits highly and would arrange a marriage for her to a suitable family. She would be the matriarch to later bear children and continue the family lineage, a sacred and essential being.

However, just as I began second grade, I witnessed a business going bankrupt, a family breaking apart, a strong father becoming weak. I lost my place as the youngest to a younger sister, was then forced to leave my home with nothing but one book bag and sent to divide my time between the homes of diﬀerent relatives. Then ﬁnally, there was the loss of my country, my language, and everything I knew as reality.

Unable to express myself adequately to anyone except my family for several years, I could not help but begin thinking for myself. I no longer had much physical evidence of my existence— photographs, a house, an audience to see me, or listen to me—so where else would I have dwelled but in ideas and memories? Also, when an object lost its name and I did not know it as I did before, all that remained was the image of this object and an unﬁltered experience without a linguistic label. Crossing a ‘street’ in America was not the same as walking across a gil (길) in Korea. Though I knew that a street in America and a gil in Korea served the same function, it was not a directly translatable experience. My longing for Korea was a linguistic one—a longing for a place where a gil was indeed a gil, rather than a longing for the way streets ‘look’ there. It was also a longing for the time when there was no separation between the word and my encounter with it—when the word was equivalent to the thing itself.

a scene from “seopyeonje” (1993), directed by im kwon-taek

Fast forward twenty years, I can still speak, read and write in Korean, but I no longer think in Korean as I did in my childhood, and the language I speak in my dreams is English. Therefore, past ideas contained within language and the memories that could only be properly remembered in Korean are things that I relate to with distance. About five years ago, when I went to visit Korea for the first time in over fifteen years, it occurred to me how cousins who are my age remember events from our childhood much better than I do, since the conversations we had back then were in Korean, a language I no longer speak with total confidence. They could recall verbatim things that I had told them, while I could not construct sentences as fluidly in Korean as my seven-year-old self. I wonder what would have happened if my mind was not split between two languages. I am grateful to be bilingual (though I wince using that word since it always sounded to me like euphemism for a linguistic disability), but I find that I am still trying to work backwards to a time when I was uni-lingual.

In Seopyeonje, a pansori artist named Yu-Bong takes in two orphans, Dong-Ho and Song-Hwa, and raises them as his own children. He trains them in the art of pansori from a young age while traveling around the country performing. Dong-Ho and Song-Hwa are equally trained in the vocal arts of pansori, but Dong-Ho’s lack of vocal talent in comparison to Song-Hwa’s beautiful voice has Yu-Bong training Dong-Ho to drum in support of Song-Hwa’s performance. The audience loves Song-Hwa for her beauty and her voice, but Yu-Bong is not satisﬁed and continues to impose upon her even more gruesome training while their poverty keeps them from ever having a consistent home or meals to fuel their practice. Yu-Bong believes that to become a master pansori artist, one must have experienced hardship and pain that takes root inside, so that through pansori one could simultaneously manifest that pain and overcome it. Sick of Yu-Bong’s maniacal behavior and obsession with pansori, Dong-Ho abandons the family, leaving Song-Hwa alone to train and perform with Yu-Bong.

Pan (판) means a place where many people gather and sori (소리) means sound. The word sori is used as a verb and a noun. One can do sori or hear sori. The one who performs pansori is called sorikkun (소리꾼), kkun (꾼) meaning “the one who does.” The idea that the popular vocal performances of ancient Korea were referred to as ‘sound’ is illustrative of the oral culture in place at that time. Pansori is not quite a song but not quite a poem. The sorikkun always performs with a drummer. The drummer’s beat guides the sori and it is a performance that is most appropriately responded with a phenomenon called heung (흥). In English, there is no adequate way to describe or deﬁne it, but heung is comparable to when Americans say something like “feeling the beat” or “feeling the music.” If “feeling the beat” is expressed physiologically by tapping one’s foot, or bobbing one’s head, in Korea, heung is physically manifested by the subtle up and down movement of the shoulders. Heung is discussed as being akin to a spiritual experience, as if it is an external spirit that takes a hold of someone and awakens a part of their soul that is not directly within one’s realm of control. As heung spreads over one’s body and completely dominates it, the up and down movement of the shoulders then causes one’s arms to move up and down while bending and stretching out. The legs then follow with gentle kicks, as the knees straighten and bend. While Yu-Bong stressed the importance of hardship within the sorikkun, ultimately, the goal of the sorikkun is to bring out heung in the viewer and listener through strong resonance and empathy. The ability to feel heung is described as an essence of being Korean. A foreigner can witness heung and recognize it but they cannot have heung, for that is intrinsic to the physical and spiritual makeup of Koreans. Therefore, to be a Korean means a capacity for complete absorption that manifests itself physically.

a scene from “seopyeonje” (1993), directed by im kwon-taek.

While it is diﬃcult for me to wholeheartedly accept heung and while it seems like a myth concocted to conjure up a sense of nationalism, the idea of it grips me because it speaks of the kind of absorption I desire, yet seldom experience. It also gives me hope for an absorption that could be achieved beyond language.

I strive to not think for myself so much—this is the goal of my life. I don’t want to create for myself a place from which I cannot exit, but wish to be able to dwell better on this earth while I’m here. To be able to dwell, and not to escape from this world and its people. Although I often ﬁnd myself disengaged, what I want is to be absorbed. Perhaps this is mere cowardice, the fear of being alone. Whether you feel this way, whether “everyone” feels this way, I honestly don’t know, but I have an enormous fear of having thoughts that no one will understand. I fear that people will understand them only partially, and I will be unable to communicate them completely. I have quite a tense and bitter relationship with the idea of “thinking for myself ” and also the idea of “independence” because, for me, what others perceived as creativity and independence was not a choice but a consequence of not knowing how to communicate and relate with people.

I want to speak the way another bursts out in laughter.