#9 Blanket Coverage

April 16, 2014

I slept with a Banksy. After it had been prized off the external wall and brought inside a Bristol boys’ club for safe keeping, youth worker Jordan Powell stayed the night with the stencilled image of a man and woman embracing while checking their phones; or, checking their phones while embracing – just as long as they both saw it the same way, shared the same priority, etc etc.

When clear night skies prompted temperatures to fall towards freezing, Mr Powell may have snuggled up to the couple to stay warm (assuming they hadn’t turned cold towards each other). Winched to safety in wire baskets (like pets on the way to the vet), survivors of the South Korean ferry disaster are wrapped in checkered blankets, pink and blue. Their faces are inscrutable. Yes, I said it; but this is not to continue the Occidental caricature of Orientals. The young woman stepping out of the basket and into the helicopter, is so busy taking the crucial step to safety she cannot also make the leap to her own emotions. Similarly, high school students in matching red life-jackets – looks like they all made the team, sitting on the upturned hull of the stricken ship, calmly await their turn for the winch. On the face of it, there’s more trauma at the average adventure playground. Nearly 300 passengers still unaccounted for. Back at Danwon High School in Ansan, near Seoul, more blankets are issued as parents and friends prepare for a long night.

A mother’s profile, head tilted back on her husband’s shoulder, eyes aligned upwards. She isn’t, they’re not; but no one would blame them for checking their phones.

Beyond Banksy, Henri Matisse could not have made her more beautiful; but if he’d wanted to make her feel better, he should have cut out her heart.

Korean Character

August 21, 2013

‘I am just a bit too tired to worry about it now.’ On BBC Radio 4 for the few seconds before the translation overrides the actualite, we hear a Korean voice that is clear and clipped. She doesn’t sound at all tired, this old woman who was separated from her ‘parents and siblings’ 60 years ago, when North and South Korea sealed their borders.

She is one of 70 000 South Koreans registered for the the Red Cross re-unification project – families, that is, not Korea itself; now re-starting after a three-year gap due to worsening relations between Seoul and Pyongyang. But before the cessation there were 18 rounds of family re-unions, and the old woman’s hopes never materialised:

‘A decade ago when I first heard about the reunions, it felt as if I could almost meet them tomorrow. But so many re-unions have passed and I have never been picked, so I wonder whether my chance will ever come.

‘I am just a bit too tired…,’ she concludes.

Sixty years of separation. Nearly twice the global average lifespan of a century ago. Threescore years, though not (yet) the extra 10 to make up the full Biblical complement. But already enough time to live a life and build a nation.

She’s too tired to worry about it now. She’s not going to let herself get excited at the prospect. Hasn’t the energy.

Is this proof of your resilience, evidence that you’ve got on with what you had to get on with, worn yourself out with real cares and concerns instead of pining for the life that wasn’t there?

Or should it make us even more sad for your loss, that you’ve lost even the sense of loss which used to burn right through you when first left alone?

Yes, you – the elderly Korean lady with the unexpectedly strong voice.

Korean workers across the centuries

August 21, 2012

On the inside, the factory is more like a laboratory. No impurities here, though not all-white; instead, peppy colours (yellow, blue, tan) that could have come from Ikea. With its flat planes, immaculate surfaces, and a shop floor so highly polished even the toughest sar’nt-major would have to acknowledge his reflection, the place is pristine as a brand. But this ‘brand’ is not merely decorative; it’s the Hyundai plant at Ulsan (250 miles from Seoul), where cars get made by the million. Conveyed along the spotless track, ministered to by men and machines, slowly the vehicles take shape. Or they would, if production had not been suspended. Hyundai autoworkers are on strike for more pay, better hours, and the integration of subcontracted employees into the regular labour force. Outside the engine plant where the night shift is massing, we are back in another century. Neon lamps give off a sepia light in which the strikers and their clothes are grey and grainy. They way they look tonight, these workers have taken on a rough, old texture, as crude as the long, long poles they carry to keep the police at bay. But this is only an appearance, a trick of the light that shows people lagging behind the world they themselves have made. Or is it?

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Tag Archives: South Korea

#9 Blanket Coverage

Korean Character

Korean workers across the centuries