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My recent visit to Sacheon village in Uiseong County of North Gyeongsang Province left me thinking about the traditional Korean village today. I wrote last time about Sacheon throwing all its efforts into becoming internationally known as a "storyteller's" village as a way to both promote storytelling as an art form and revive a dying village in the process.
This visit to a traditional village, and a night in an ondol room, sleeping on mats on the floor, brought back to me many pleasant memories. I've spent many years on an ondol floor. And after living in Korea in traditional, and semi-traditional homes (meaning "hanok" and more modern homes still with heated floors), I have moved to America, but returned from time to time (six times in all) to live in traditional villages, what today are often referred to as hanok villages. I've also spent more than 20 nights, one at a time, in Buddhist temples, so-called "templestay," with student groups and teacher groups. The six trips with students were spring term "study abroad" experiences where we stayed in a hanok village and slept on ondol floors.
"Hanok" has become a term. We used to just say traditional house, or Korean house, or old-fashioned house, or use the Korean term "giwa-jip" ― literally, a tiled-roof house. But these days in English and Korean we use the Korean word hanok, literally "Korean house." Now, in Korea it's become fashionable to spend a night or two at a traditional Korean house; they call it the "hanok chehom" ― the hanok experience.
The six student groups I led stayed twice in Yangdong, a yangban village on the outskirts of Gyeongju, in 1999 and in 2001. There, it was so unusual for a group to stay in a hanok village that KBS made a documentary about it ― it's now on YouTube with the tile, "Mark Peterson's Summer School." Subsequently, I led student groups to stay at the hanok village inside Yeongnam University in 2004, and at Gimhae Hanok Village (associated with Inje University) in 2007, 2009 and 2011. I've been doing the hanok chehom before they started calling it, hanok chehom.
Traditional Korean villages are getting "on board" with the idea of promoting the beauty and tradition of the hanok.
Sacheon is going to try storytelling as its logo, its pony to ride, its hope for salvation. If they tried to apply for UNESCO recognition, they might get their dream to come true; but their dream might become a nightmare.
Hahoe Village has been irredeemably transformed by tourism; it can be argued that it is not the same place it once was. To some it's a dream that has become a nightmare. In Yangdong, the year they were applying for UNESCO status, I happened to be in the village and was invited to a meeting with the village elders where they discussed whether they were going to go ahead with the application or not. The experts from outside the village that were there to help them write the application ― a huge pile of documentation, more than 500 pages ― asked them at one point if they really wanted to do this. And warned them that the village would be changed forever if UNESCO accepted their application. The village elders seemed somewhat hesitant, but felt they owed it to their ancestors to seek glory ― the glory would go to the ancestors, the founders of the village, in the view of the village elders.
Well, Yangdong's dream came true, in some senses, but some think it is a nightmare. The place is overrun with tourists. It was saved from oblivion, but now it's a completely different village, unlike anything it could have foreseen.
Sacheon's dream is to become the center for storytelling in Korea. That might be better than going the UNESCO route? It will give it new life; people might move in, the school might be revived, and it might survive as a village.
Sacheon could apply for UNESCO status. It would give them the salvation they are looking for, but it will change the village into something unrecognizable. The storytelling center might be a better alternative, a more modest attempt at bringing the village into the present. Their plans are big: they want festivals, a training center and a school for children to learn storytelling as an art, as a skill. They anticipate achieving international recognition. And it's entirely reasonable. There are similar storytelling centers in other countries ― why shouldn't there be one here?
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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