South Korea's 610-year-old
Namdaemun (Great South Gate) proudly stood erect
in a sea of modern skyscrapers in the heart of
Seoul. To South Koreans the landmark was more than
just a visible relic of Korea's centuries-old
monarchical past. Namdaemun was the heart of Seoul
- the city's historical entrance, its symbol of
tradition embedded in South Korea's modernity, its
welcoming face to the world today.
Hence,
the shock and pain that descended on the nation on
February 10, when in the course of watching in
real time over some five hours - on TV, as well as
for many Koreans, with their bare eyes in the cold
- the venerable edifice burned down to mere rubble
were hard to describe. The roots of the Korean
trauma may lie in the psychology of what the
Korean nation has been, how it
views itself today, and how it
aspires to seen by the outside world.
Korea is an old civilization
with epochs of great cultural achievement. But
like its neighbor, Japan - another old
civilization with great cultural feats by world
standards - Korea has long harbored a collective
inferiority complex vis-a-vis America and Europe.
The Korean propensity to nestle in the collective
myth of cultural uniqueness, racial purity and
ultimate antiquity is matched only by the
preponderance of such impulses on the part of the
Japanese. Hence, the Korean trauma of helplessly
bearing witness to an historic national monument
burn down to ashes cuts deeper than, say,
Parisians witnessing the Eiffel Tower collapse, or
Bostonians watching Faneuil Hall burn to the
ground. Beneath the pain and fury that the Koreans
feel flows a visceral psychological hurt, shaped
in part by pride in their old history and in part
by an abiding discomfort in having played in
recent memory, and in having to go on playing
still today, the catch-up game with America and
Europe. That some 350 firefighters over the course
of nearly five hours could not extinguish a fire
inside a wooden structure is considered by many
South Koreans as national humiliation of the first
order.
Korean - and, as an extension -
East Asian attachment to antiquity stands in vast
contrast to the future-oriented mentality of
Americans. Americans are unencumbered by their
youth as a republic or even civilization. One
rather obvious reason is that the United States is
just barely over 230 years old, while the Chinese
civilization is - if not in point of antiquity
then certainly in point of continuity - the oldest
civilization in the world. Perhaps world hegemony
is a most effective cure for collective neurosis,
but the forward-looking mentality of Americans was
apparent even in the 19th century when the young
American republic was at best only a second-rate
power.
China may not harbor such acute
self-doubt as Korea or Japan when it comes to
historical seniority and superiority, because
China is indeed the oldest and for much of human
history was the world's leader in wealth and
technology. On the other hand, or perhaps
precisely because of China's once glorious past,
the Chinese, too, are particularly sensitive when
it comes to protecting their cultural relics and
works of art.
For instance, loaned items
from Taiwan's National Palace Museum will be
exhibited in Vienna starting next week. It will be
only the fourth big foreign loan since the
museum's opening in 1965, the three previous
foreign exhibitions of imperial Chinese treasures
from the celebrated collection having taken place
in the United States, France, and Germany.
All four destination states have passed
legislation granting foreign exhibits immunity
from judicial seizure, something that Taiwanese
authorities insist on. However, the political
issue of preventing the People's Republic of China
from staking a legal claim to Taiwanese-held art
and artifacts aside, the Taiwanese public in the
past has voiced grave concern for the sheer safety
of their beloved treasures in traveling such long
distances abroad.
For instance, when the
exhibition first left its nest to go to the Untied
States in 1996, many Americans found it curious
and distasteful that so many Taiwanese were so
vocally against a seemingly routine foreign tour.
But what the American critics failed to understand
was that the Chinese view their centuries-old art
as a veritable symbol of China's greatness - of
its proud past and perhaps China's restoration to
its proper glorious pedestal in the future.
"National treasure" in China, Japan, or Korea,
carries a deeper emotional nuance than "national
monument" in the US or Europe. For national
treasures in East Asian nations represent not only
aesthetic beauty, but also national identity.
The US government and the American people
would never support an exhibition abroad of say,
the Declaration Independence. Nonetheless, they
were still unable to understand the emotional
attachment to centuries-old art on the part of the
Taiwanese. The signed copy of the Declaration of
Independence preserved in the National Archive in
Washington, DC, was sealed in 1951 in a
bullet-proof glass encasement with humidified
helium to block out oxygen and a filter to screen
out light. In recent years, new and improved
encasement designs made from pure titanium filled
with inert argon have replaced the older ones.
Americans, too, care for their national treasure,
except that Americans simply do not have
centuries-old art or monument to make a fetish of.
In many ways, art and cultural relics in
China, Japan, and Korea embody the spirit of
independence and national pride contained in the
American Declaration of Independence. Namdaemun
for many South Koreans was just that - the spirit
of the Korean people and the Korean republic. It
was certainly something to dote on - a beloved
icon that came close to a national fetish.
The celebrated English lexicographer,
Henry Watson Fowler, tells us, "Analogy is perhaps
the basis of most human conclusions, its liability
to error being compensated for by the frequency
with which it is the only form of reasoning
available."
Perhaps the analogy presented
above is grossly misplaced. After all, the
structure of Namdaemun is not nearly as
architecturally complex as the Eiffel Tower. After
all, the Great South Gate is not nearly as
majestic or old as Westminster Abbey. After all,
the loss of Namdaemun is not nearly as traumatic
to the Korean nation as the fall of the Twin
Towers of New York's World Trade Center on
September 11, 2001, was for Americans, for there
were no lives lost or injured in the arson in
Seoul. After all, significant sections of
Namdaemun had been rebuilt several times since its
birth in 1398, notably as recently as 1961, soon
after when it was designated National Treasure
Number One.
In reality, the Namdaemun that
Koreans watched go up in flames on February 10 was
not the same gate that earlier generations had
known. Thanks to modern technology, Koreans had
come to believe it the same as the one that had
been built more than 600 years ago. Walter
Benjamin posited in his celebrated treatise "The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
that "mechanical reproduction emancipates the work
of art".
Indeed, the "aura" of the
original edifice had long been replaced by the
familiarity of the new. And perhaps with its
reconstruction, estimated to cost $21 million over
some three years, Namdaemun will rise again from
the ashes, better and stronger than ever. It will
be "emancipated" or "resurrected" from its
shameful demise in 2008.
Indeed, perhaps
600 years from now, future generations of
Namdaemun lovers may come to admire the 21st
century technology of their predecessors. Or they
may accept their Namdaemun as genuinely 1,200
years old. Perhaps in the course of that time more
renovations would have taken place irrespective of
the fire of 2008. Or perhaps even an entirely
different Namdaemun will have been built once
again due to another disaster, manmade or natural,
or both.
But today, in the here and now,
in the face of the ever-changing face of Seoul and
modernity-obsessed South Korea, the loss of a
quintessential Korean cultural relic represents a
compromise of the Korean soul. The death of
Namdaemun - Korea's proud dual symbol of antiquity
and modernity, indeed, the South Korean nation's
collective aura - can but be a bitter national
tragedy.
Sung-Yoon Lee is
adjunct assistant professor of international
politics at The Fletcher School, Tufts
University.
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matched only by the
preponderance of such impulses on the part of the
Japanese.
