Is There Really No Way to Reunify Korea?

A fascinating land of 75 million people – 50 and 24,9 million, living on both sides of barbed wires and not being able to patch up. This is Korea.

Photo credit:

But why does Korea have to be separated by so much hatred, weapons and other nonsense? Isn't it basically the same people on both sides?

When I was staying with Ryuji and Wiwe, his wife in Seoul, Korea, I had two great visitors. One of them was a familiar figure, a favourite from medieval Japan,

Photo source:

Hideyoshi Toyotami (1536-1598), the great unifier of Japan and the other one was Sejong the Great (1397-1450),

Photo credit:

who had done similar things for Korea. Separated by a century, they could never have met but here they were side by side in my dream. The Japanese Daimyō spoke in a kind manner. Now, this being a dream, I found myself interrupting the great warlord with a question “Aren’t you great lords supposed to be in different time periods and actually enemies?” Patiently, the great warriors smiled and said: “Oh, things are very different when you free yourself from limited perspectives.”

Without wasting further words, the great Daimyōs asked me “Korea has been nice to you. What do you wish for the Korean people in return, one wish?” Then they nodded, royally signalling that not answering would be unacceptable.

What a question! Hideoshi Toyotami had banned slavery and had used his army to confiscate all weapons from the peasantry in then Japan, had them publicly melted into a Buddha statue, thus preventing any violent armed uprising and through this immensely symbolic act unified Japan. Sejong the Great created the Hangul alphabet to give Koreans a distinct identity and repelled invaders by capturing Tsushima.

Photo credit:

Korean Reunification – Is it possible?

Here I am, given this immense task, staring at these figures, regal in presence yet not intimidating, demanding yet understanding and strangely I did not feel small in their august company. Only true greatness of spirit can lift another human being out of the innate smallness the human condition entails.

After the failure of the Sunshine Policies the closest the two Koreas have come to reunification is this selfie at the 2016 Rio Olympics:

Photo credit:

On the Southern side, they are the fourth richest economy in the world, get a huge catch of gold medals in sports, and have the highest percentage of PhDs per capita in the world, though walking on the streets it seems that no one is actually thinking ahead because they are all busy staring into the screens of handheld devices.

On the northern side, they have the fourth largest army in the world. Survival entails being seen glorifying their rulers who all have funny haircuts. The Northern system can’t take over the far more advanced and infinitely richer south. You can’t wish that the ruling gang of the North would vanish into thin air and the southern system takes over the country. That would create a horrendous identity crisis that would last two generations of people battling feelings of “I am better than you because I am from the south”. As it happened in Germany, twenty years after the Wiedervereinigung, 14% of the older Easterners with nostalgia thought that life behind the wall was better than life now (Stockemer and Elder, 2015). 

Photo credit:

Having a joint Korean system with sharing of power – that doesn’t seem possible even in a dream. East Germany was physically far from its main supporter, the Soviet Union, which also collapsed. But, North Korea shares borders with Russia and especially China, which is flourishing and powerful enough to prevent North Korea being gobbled by the South. The possibilities for a German style Wiedervereinigung is rather non-existent.

A Model for Korean Reunification

The answer came. Following the great Daimyo Hideyoshi’s example, all the weapons on both sides would be gathered in one place, melted for the metal and the metal would be used to create a gigantic statue of the Buddha occupying the demilitarized zone. There would be, following Korean ancient tradition, statues of four heavenly kings guarding the gates and they would be given funny haircuts as a symbolic gesture.

The Japanese rational idea in 1910 was to achieve efficiency of specialisation by concentrating industry in the north and agriculture in the south. Following this rational principle, the northern people would be responsible for the technological implementation of construction and technical maintenance of the 551 metre high statue facing east. To make themselves feel better, they could paint the Northern side of the statue in battleship grey, strictly no capitalist colours. The southern side could have traditional Korean colours. The main body of the statue will contain many walk-on-glass viewing platforms at over 200-meters. There will be a square on the northern side where people feeling nostalgic about the North can volunteer to stage hourly parades goose-stepping in bleak uniforms. The leaders with the funny haircuts would be given the great honour of integrating the northern perspective in museums all over the country. The Korean War Museum in Seoul has no mention of the northern casualties, as if the mothers in the north or children did not feel any pain when they lost their children or parents in the war.

Then there will be cafés and restaurants with karaoke, shops, libraries, an opera/theatre, movie theatres and maglev train connections with Seoul and Pyongyang. The main attraction will be a gigantic 24-hour Jjimjilbang (찜질방) (run by the southerners) in the middle of the statue. Seeing each other denuded of uniforms in a bubble-pool or sauna allows one to see the other as a human being, almost like us. It’s the black and white or binary perspective that is the real enemy.

 

Photo Credit:

In his days, the great Daimiyo had understood that Western “Christians” saw the world in binary terms, conquer or perish. So he had them crucified in order to save Japan from becoming their colony. 1854 and Commodore Perry in Japan would probably have happened much earlier if not for him. Emulating Hideyoshi Toyotami’s insightful action, all intervention by outside bankers, weapons dealers and military-industrial complexes (supplying both sides) and ideology peddlers in the Korean peninsula would be banned from interfering in Korean affairs and messing with the Korean people: The Korean brothers and sisters on both sides would be left in peace to work out things in a Jjimjilbang, not a takeover or political “unification” á la Germania but a common construction project. In the Jjimjilbangs (찜질방) and 105-floor sky-café’s they would get a loftier perspective and then discover that together they are better off enjoying life together than fighting each other with borrowed weapons that just make arms manufacturers far-away richer.

Then the kings told me to go to Jongmyo shrine and tell my answer there and disappeared. There cannot be a military solution. Talking hasn’t helped. Is it that only a gigantic symbolic action would bring closure to the hatred and heal the wounds of six decades? Without closure, there is no forward motion, no realisation of Mono no aware (物の哀れ). The next day, I literally stumbled into Jongmyo. It was a terribly hot day and I was sweating and sat down in exhaustion. Suddenly, there was a cool breeze from somewhere, which did not move the leaves of the trees around but soothed me and left me energized. Sejong the Great and Hideyoshi Toyotami had accepted my answer.

In the largest Jjimjilbang in the world and the 105-floor sky-café, Saturday April the 23^rd, 2022 is a busy and peaceful day, isn’t it?

References: Stockemer D, Elder G.(2015). Germans 25 years after reunification – How much do they know about the German Democratic Republic and what is their value judgment of the socialist regime? Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 48 (2-3): pp. 113-22.

Humour in The Ancient World

The urge to laugh is a primal urge, present from the dawn of human history. Even apes appreciate humour.

In the early 20th century, anthropologists Schulze and Chewings, got caught in a terrifying thunderstorm they thought would scare the Australian aboriginals, who had been genetically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world for at least 35,000 years. Rather than being afraid they burst out laughing at an unusually loud or peculiar clap of thunder.

Photo source:


One of the Oldest Jokes in the World

Comes from Sumer in Modern Iraq. 

"Something, which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

Ancient Egyptian Humour



Physician jokes can be found already in ancient Egypt.
The ancient Egyptians were very new media savvy with catchy symbols and their jokes are often cartoons. Political satire, scatological humor, sex jokes, slapstick, and animal-based parodies; we should say – laugh like an Egyptian!


Erotic Turin Papyrus from the Ramesside period (1292-1075 B.C.E.)


In The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor the sailor tells his story: Then he (i.e. the snake god of the island) laughed at me for the things I had said, which seemed foolish to him.

Ankhsheshonq in the 4th century BCE quotes a much older saying “Before the god the strong and the weak are a joke.” (Lichtheim 2006)

Ancient Greek Humour

The "Philogelos" or "Laughter-Lover" (manuscript dating to the 10th century but with older jokes probably from 250 CE) is an anthology of 265 jokes.

• "Wishing to teach his donkey not to eat, a pedant did not offer him any food. When the donkey died of hunger, he said "I've had a great loss. Just when he had learned not to eat, he died." 
• “An intellectual who had had an operation on his uvula (vital for speech) was ordered by his doctor not to talk for a while. Then he said to each caller, ‘Please don’t be offended that my slave greeted you instead of me; I’m under doctor’s orders not to talk’”. 

• “An intellectual was on a sea voyage when a big storm blew up, causing his slaves to weep in terror. ‘Don’t cry,’ he consoled them, ‘I have freed you all in my will’” .

Photo source:

There is also great wisdom in ancient Greece about the therapeutic value of humour. Hippocrates (460-370 BC) advices physicians to bring laughter to the patient rather than dour faces. This is something many modern physicians seem to have forgotten.


Ancient Roman Humour

Romans were rather funny and definitely not serious and pompous statues as later history would have them. The ruins of places like Pompei are full of rather naughty graffiti and lewd jokes. Here're two sarcastic and macho ones from ancient Rome.

A misogynist is taking care of his departed wife's burial. Someone asks him "Who is it that rests in peace here?" The man answers: "Me, now that I'm rid of her!"

A man tell another man: "I had your wife, without paying a penny". The man replied: "It's my duty as a husband to couple with such a monstrosity. What made you do it?"

Photo source:


Humour in The Hebrew Bible

Hershey Friedman, Professor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York has written about how humour brings man closer to God in the Bible.

First, there is the idea that God has a sense of humour.

• In Psalms (2:4), "He who sits in heaven will laugh, the Lord will mock them."
• In Psalms (37:13): "My Lord laughs at him for He sees that his day is coming."
• In Psalms (59:9): "But as for You, God, You laugh at them; You mock all nations."

Then there is sarcasm: (Exodus 14:11): "Was there a lack of graves in Egypt, that you took us away to die in the wilderness?"

There is much humorous imagery:

• "As a gold ring in a swine’s snout, so is a beautiful woman from whom sense has departed" (Proverbs 11:22).
• "It is better to live in a desert than with a contentious and angry woman" (Proverbs 21:19).

The First Christian Joke Books

Photo source:

Monks continued the tradition of using humour and riddles as a teaching tool in the Ioca Monachorum, a text that dates to 700 A.D.

• Who was not born but died? (Adam).
• What man can kill another man without being punished? (A doctor).

Japanese Jokes

Heiyo Nagashima, Japan Society for Laughter and Humor Studies, writes how the Japanese kobanashi or joke books started having Chinese jokes in the 18th century and American jokes in the 19th century. He claims that the Japanese do not tell each other Japanese jokes but foreign jokes.

Photo source:

Chinese Jokes

Ancient China was full of delightful humour with life insights, which have not dated over the centuries. We have delightful jokes from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).

On his birthday, an official's subordinates chipped in to give him a life-sized solid gold rat, since he was born in the year of the rat (each year of a twelve year cycle has a different animal). The official thanked them and then asked, "Did you know that my wife's birthday is coming up? She was born in the year of the ox."

A heavily laden woodcutter stumbled into the local doctor on a narrow path. When the doctor drew back his fist to hit him, the woodcutter dropped to his knees and begged, “Please kick me instead.” 
A bystander asked, “Why would you rather him kick you?” 
The terrified woodcutter replied, “Treatment by his hands would be much deadlier than with his feet!”

Photo source:

Indian Humour

Ancient India abounds with wit and humour. Even the world’s greatest epic, The Mahabharata says of itself

“What is found herein may also be found in other sources, What is not found herein does not matter.”

Photo source:

Ancient India has an extensive tradition of moral tales.

A greengrocer and a potter jointly hired a camel and each filled one side of the pannier with his goods. The camel as he went along the road took a mouthful every now and then, as he had a chance, from the greengrocer's bag of vegetables. This provoked a laugh from the potter, who thought he had the best of the bargain. But the time came for the camel to sit, and he naturally sat on the heavier side, bearing down on the pots, and also to have his mouth free to eat from the bag of greens. The pots in the bag all broke, and then the greengrocer had the last laugh.

Historical figures like Birbal, the minister of Emperor Akbar and Tenali Rama, the jester in the court of Krishnadevaraya (1509 AD - 1530 AD), ruler of the medieval Vijaynagar empire in southern India are sources of great wit.

 

Once when Tenali Rama was sentenced to death for some trick or the other, he was given the right to choose the form of his execution. After giving due consideration to the matter, he says "Your Majesty! I would like to die of old age!" The emperor couldn’t bear being without his wit and promptly pardoned him.

Source:

• Miriam Lichtheim (1914-2004). Ancient Egyptian Literature. Volume II: The New Kingdom. The Regents of the University of California, 1976, 2006. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Greek Humour from Source: Philip Harland