Chuseok

Chuseok is here!

For me it means four days of no school. For most Koreans it is just about the only occasion when the family gets together.

For two of my main co-teachers this is one of their few opportunities to spend a couple of days with their daughters. It seems quite common in Korea for a husband to work in one city, for a wife to work in a second, and for their child / children to be raised by grand parents in a third city.

A few weeks ago my main co-teacher missed her child’s first birthday. Her child's birthday was on a Friday, and she had to teach on the Saturday which meant she remained in town on Friday evening. Now that I think about it, I should have offered to take her classes on the Saturday. If only I had thought to offer at the time.

For several weeks the shops have been gearing up for this weekend - they’ve been offering special gift packages while playing traditional Korean music to set the mood. In the last week many people, mostly women, who work in larger department stores began wearing traditional clothes.

Then yesterday the Korean national flag came out. On public holidays the municipality often prominently displays the Korean national flag, this was the first time however that I saw many private homes displaying the flag.

I passed several hundred yesterday. National flags are scary things. They remind me of facist movements of the past, and how easily reason can be lost to rhetoric about the state and passionate nationalism.

What’s the point in displaying national flags? What statement are you making when you unfurl the national flag on a national holiday? How many people even vaguely contemplate these questions?

At the heart of all this is the grand question - what makes a state? And why profess allegiance to any state? It’s scary to think that young children in countries like the United States pledge allegiance to the flag long before they can vaguely contemplate actions. Would it be too much to describe the pledge of allegiance as a form of indoctrination?

So many questions.

And finally, although slightly different, a favourite quote:

“A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

[Please don’t get the impression that I stumbled upon this quote while reading something profound. It’s one of the many quotes that I have learned while playing the totally awesome computer game Civilization4 -- lol]