Remembrance and Return

KAUPA Letters Volume 10, Issue Number 3 February 2023 KAUPA Letters Journal of the Korean American University Professors Association 북미한인대학교수협회 KAUPA.ORG Editor's Note: Letters opinion columnist Yeomin Yoon shares his missive of December 31, 2022, addressed (e-mailed) to all his nephews and nieces, with CCs to other relatives living and working in South Korea. Remembrance and Return Yeomin Yoon KAUPA Letters Opinion Columnist Professor Emeritus, Seton Hall University Abstract: I remember and return to my days of sojourn in America that started more than a half-century ago. On the first day of my arrival in U.S. territory, i.e., in San Francisco, a total stranger Caucasian male (who was dressed like a Texas cowboy) asked me an out-of-context question: "Are you Chinese?" My answer: "No!" His second question: "Are you Japanese?" My second response: "Hell, No!" His third remark: "Oh, you must be Korean." My last reaction: "Now, you are damn right – finally." This kind of "incident" was repeated after that wherever I went in the US. I also visited Japan frequently to help a large American firm organize and run overseas ventures as the firm began to make foreign direct investments. The first thing I noticed during my numerous trips to Tokyo, Osaka, and other major cities in Japan was the institutionalization of Japanese racism toward Koreans. I was shocked at how rampant and intense the Japanese racism toward Koreans was – much stronger and more vicious than the racism I witnessed in America. I often wonder how substantively the Japanese have changed since the 1980s. Consider the reality that they keep electing illiberal Liberal Democratic Party elites like Shinzo Abe and his followers as prime ministers and are still nurturing such extreme right-wing groups as Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference), a hotbed of Japanese chauvinism and racism toward other Asians. Given such a sad reality, can global citizens expect Japan to evolve, i.e., change for the better? Even if the answer were affirmative, at what speed would the Japanese nation evolve? It was a great fortune for me, as a university educator, to have had two outstanding Chinese students some years ago. When they graduated, they gave me a pair of scrolls of calligraphic artwork as a gift. I am still hanging the two scrolls on my office wall. If translated into English, the pair of scrolls states: "Books link the four seas. Friendship unites the five continents." Whenever I visited China, I found time to have square meals with them and their families. I call them "my adopted families in China." 61 KAUPA Letters Volume 10, Issue Number 3 February 2023 Dear All, On a day rapidly approaching the end of the Gregorian calendar year 2022, I am writing this letter --- wondering if we will greet tomorrow a "New Year" or the same old year that pretends to be a "New" one. But, then, I recall what my older sister, your aunt (Juho's mom), whom I call 만아당 누님, wrote in her letter that I received on December 31 a decade ago: "When life jumps one day by itself up to the future, people shout, holding its tail, 'Happy New Year!' – newly repeating the same old feast and gestures… But, in this eternal present, isn't life one year after another? Isn't it the same year again and again?" As some of you know, my older sister taught me ethics, history, and the Korean and English languages when I was an elementary school, middle & high school, and university student in Seoul. She was a strict teacher. For example, when I kept mispronouncing an English word, she practically "forced" me to repeat after her over and over again – sometimes more than a dozen times. Occasionally, she even corrected with her fingers the shape of my lips and the position of my tongue to make me pronounce it correctly. But, more than anything else, she inculcated this wayward soul with a Korean backbone, self-respect, ethics, and the history of where we all came from. Without context, a man (or woman) is nothing Without origin, a man (or woman) is without context During the 1980s, I worked at AT&T as a senior economist. This "regulated monopoly" firm, then the largest corporation in the U.S. (in terms of assets, profits, and the number of employees), had wholly owned subsidiaries or branches in all American cities. So, I had opportunities to visit almost all major cities in the U.S. on business trips. I also visited Japan frequently to help the firm organize and run overseas ventures as the firm began to make foreign direct investments. The first thing I noticed during my numerous trips to Tokyo, Osaka, and other major cities in Japan was the institutionalization of Japanese racism toward Koreans. Of course, the U.S. had (and still has) the problem of racism originating from slavery. But I was shocked at how rampant and intense the Japanese racism toward Koreans was – much stronger and more vicious than the racism I witnessed in America. Allow me to cite a few salient (the 1980s) examples below: ▪ The Japanese Ministry of Education forbade persons of Korean descent from teaching at public schools, even though Korean students often outnumbered Japanese students in certain areas. A case in point: A young woman of Korean descent in Nagano Prefecture passed the prefecture education board examination after five years of hard work and qualified as a public-school teacher. At that point, the Ministry of Education in Tokyo intervened to block her appointment. Asked to explain this discrimination, a high-ranking ministry official declared: "How can a nonJapanese teacher impart to the children a sensitive appreciation of the beauty of the cherry blossoms or the poignancy of the change of seasons?" (Asahi Shimbun, April 4, 1985). The 62 KAUPA Letters Volume 10, Issue Number 3 February 2023 "folly" of the education ministry official's "discriminatory remark" was as incredible as that of then Prime Minister Nakasone's remark that "the intelligence level of Americans is lower than that of Japanese because of the existence in the U.S. of minorities such as blacks, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans." ▪ A certain rental hall in Kyoto canceled a reservation a Korean couple had made for their wedding when it learned that the bride planned to wear the traditional Korean costume at the ceremony (The Japan Times, December 5, 1983). I was sure that the propriety of Western dress would never have been questioned. [You may wonder (as I do) how today's Japanese react to the K-fashion – 한복 fashion designs admired by many global citizens around the world.] I often wonder how substantively the Japanese have changed since the 1980s. Consider the reality that they keep electing illiberal Liberal Democratic Party elites like Shinzo Abe and his followers as prime ministers and are still nurturing such extreme right-wing groups as Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference), a hotbed of Japanese chauvinism and racism toward other Asians. Given such a sad reality, can global citizens expect Japan to evolve, i.e., change for the better? Even if the answer were affirmative, at what speed would the Japanese nation evolve? I wonder. Fast forward to my post-AT&T days. I joined Seton Hall University as a faculty member in its school of business and a senior fellow of its Asia Center in January 1989. Later, when I organized a symposium on Confucius, some students thought I was a "Confucian Chinese." My able assistant tried to correct their error, telling my students that "he is a Mencian (Mencius) Korean." That created another problem. My students did not know, "Who the hell is Mencius?" I told my students that Mencius is China's Second Sage and that, more than two thousand years ago, he called for minben zhengzhi (민본정치, "people-based politics," or democracy in today's terms). The Chinese Communist Party uses the First Sage (Confucius) as a mask for its propaganda but downplays the Second Sage (Mencius) because the latter insisted that people, especially educated people, should rise, and kick out totalitarian rulers. Mencius even condoned regicide if a tyrant refused to resign and ordered his police or soldiers to massacre the revolting people (recall what happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989). It is no wonder the CCP and the sycophant government officials shun (and are even afraid of) China's Second Sage. I have visited China practically every year from May/June 1989 through January 2020 to teach and dialogue with as many Chinese people as possible. I did not meet a single Chinese who thought that I was an "American," although my interlocutors knew (or I told them) that I was an "American citizen." I wrote more than a dozen articles for the English-language daily newspaper with the largest circulation in China. When I coauthored with a Korean philosopher an op/ed piece titled "Abe's 'apology' lacks sincerity," a deputy editor of the newspaper (its headquarters was near the university where I was teaching) visited my office. He asked me to write the coauthors' full names in "your native language" because the newspaper wanted to translate the article into Chinese and put the Chinese language version on its website. When I wrote "김진태, 윤여민," he seemed puzzled and asked me to write them in "Chinese characters." I recall that my reply to him was: "Since I was a middle school student, I thought that the 'Chinese language' was too difficult to learn and became virtually a 'dead language' to people other than the Chinese; for Koreans, the ability to read/speak/write in 한글 and English, the two 'living languages,' would suffice for both daily life and moral/intellectual pursuits in the 20th century and beyond." Later, 63 KAUPA Letters Volume 10, Issue Number 3 February 2023 when I checked its web page, I found the newspaper Sinicized my coauthor's and my name as "freely" as it wanted. Much later, I found that a Korean-language magazine published in Beijing, an affiliate of the English-language newspaper, translated the op/ed piece into Korean and published it. The Korean translation was excellent. It was faithful to the original article and rendered into educated people's 한글. That proved my long-held conviction that 한글 is so easy for anyone to learn and can become a global language (Lingua Mundie) if Korea is recognized as a land of peace, freedom (combined with ethical respectability), and high culture, including safeguarding the environment. Furthermore, such global recognition and respect would naturally follow if Koreans renew and spread the noble ideal of Striving to Benefit Humanity (홍익인간 ) to the world, promoting the well-being of as many global citizens as possible in the 21st century and beyond. Perhaps, thanks (?) to my societal environment that frequently reminded me, "You are a Korean," the so-called "identity" problem that I have witnessed among many non-Caucasian immigrants (especially young ones) to America did not seem to affect me. My three children (your cousins) -- the oldest one came to America when he was four years old, and the two younger ones were born in New Jersey -- do not have such a problem, either. They know their origin – where their parents, grandparents, and ancestors came from -- and seem knowledgeable enough about Korean history, culture, and language to keep their Korean heritage alive. I am "happy" (without any hedonistic connotation) that the Whole Person, whom I call my "one and only" daughter, has been teaching my two grandchildren (나리, 수혜) since they were three years old, 한글 and where they and their parents and ancestors came from. Since my "retirement" from Seton Hall University in January 2022, I have been pondering the words of Admiral Yi Soon-shin (이순신). As we all know, he saved the Korean nation from the Japanese invasion during the brutal "seven-year war" (1592-1598). He surmounted the extreme hardship inflicted on him and all the hanky-panky committed by the then-ruling Korean king and his clueless neo-Confucian power elites. So sadly, the king was so jealous of the respect and admiration displayed by common people toward this indispensable military leader that he had the latter imprisoned and tortured under the fabricated pretext of "treason." Can I please translate some of Admiral Yi's words into English -- paraphrasing for myself? 우리의 삶에는 반드시 죽음이 따른다. 죽음과 삶에는 반드시 천명이 있나니, 사람으로 죽는것은, 진실로 아까운것이 없는것이다. One is to end one's life one day. One's death and life depend on Heaven's will. 64 KAUPA Letters Volume 10, Issue Number 3 February 2023 Am I striving to live my life in a way that I can leave this world without regret? You may ask, "What is Heaven's will?" To Admiral Yi and his devoted colleagues and followers, saving their countrymen and women from barbaric invaders was Heaven's will. To the Chinese exile (in Germany) I admire – a poet/historian/essayist known as "Chinese Solzhenitsyn," who has kept denouncing the Tiananmen Square massacre: "Heaven's will means preserving the truth for future generations."1 To your economist uncle, spreading the primordial Korean ideal, "Strive To Benefit Humanity," to the world is Heaven's will. All these interpretations by different persons who lived, or are living, in different ages or countries are compatible and mutually reinforcing. As you know, I am a lifetime member of the Korean American University Professors Association and serve as a columnist for its journal, the KAUPA Letters. As such, I hope that the KAUPA initiates a global organization, say, a Korean Professors International (KPI), utilizing its existing infrastructure and collaborating with as many people in the Korean diaspora worldwide as possible. Your cousin Gene (my younger son) proposed the name (which is short and easy to pronounce and remember). According to Gene, "KPI is a popular acronym in technology and business: 'Key Performance Indicator' – and a very positive association to draw upon." I agree. Please allow me to move to two stories – first about another cousin, Wahn (Gene's older brother), and second regarding my "adopted families" in China. Wahn moved from South Korea to Pennsylvania, where his father struggled as a graduate student. He also struggled a lot because he could not understand or speak a single word of English. I often saw him communicating with his neighbor kids with a "sign language" he created or by drawing pictures on a piece of paper. Fast forward to April 16, 2022, when I served as a guest speaker for an event held at the Korean Community Center in Tenafly, New Jersey. When I returned to my table after my speech, a Korean lady (sitting on my left) practically roared: "Your speech is excellent. You speak as well as your son did." At that moment, a memory flashed in my brain. She was the person who organized the New Jersey High School Teachers Conference to which Wahn, then a Harvard freshman, was invited as the main speaker. I shot back: "Thank you, but he was a much better narrator than I am." The Korean gentlewoman was one of the organizers of the April 16 event. Her Korean mother and handsome Caucasian husband were sitting across the round table. Her daughter (sitting on my right), who graduated from Harvard last year, was one of the Award Recipients in the Kyung-Uhn (경운) Scholarship Speech Contests on Korean History, Culture, and People for American high school students that were held eleven times from 2011 through 2021. This story may reveal a pleasant side of the life of Korean immigrants in the U.S. But you should also know the unpleasant side. After sending three children to expensive private universities they chose to attend, their parents became virtually flat-broke. It was a great fortune, blessing, or good karma for me, as a university educator, to have had two outstanding Chinese students some years ago. When they graduated, they gave me a pair of scrolls of calligraphic artwork as a gift. I am still hanging the two scrolls on my office wall. If translated into English, the pair of scrolls states: "Books link the four seas. Friendship unites the 65 KAUPA Letters Volume 10, Issue Number 3 February 2023 five continents." Whenever I visited Beijing, I found time to have square meals with them and their families. I call them "my adopted families in China." I do not know who adopted whom, and I don't care. But I am worried about the safety of these families when I read newspaper reports that Covid-19 infections are skyrocketing in China (as of this writing on December 31, 2022). Upon reading newspaper reports that the Chinese government will start allowing its citizens to travel abroad from January 8, 2023, a savvy neighbor college student made a seemingly sarcastic and concerned remark, "Professor, are they trying to globalize their virus infections?" But, she added, "I am glad the US government will impose a new rule." Starting January 5, all air passengers from mainland China would need proof of negative Covid-19 taken within two days of departure to board a plane to the US. This School of Diplomacy and International Relations student also wondered aloud if "the governments of China's neighbors like South Korea have the spine to do what the American government will do to protect the safety of its citizens."2 I want to end this unusually long letter with two wholehearted wishes. Your three cousins in America, Wahn (완 ), Gene (진), and Kay (기), used to be my three "cost centers." Now, they have fully grown up and established themselves as professionals in their respective fields. They join their dad in wishing all cousins and relatives in Korea "Healthy and Worthy 2023!" Furthermore, they and their "fast-aging 아빠" wish and urge you all to join the KAUPA as Associate Members. By doing so, all of us can work together to help the KAUPA and its Letters in "preserving the truth for future generations," and spreading the noble ideal, 홍익인간 ("Strive To Benefit Humanity"), to the world. [THE END] I love you all! Uncle Yeomin Brief Biographical Information Yeomin Yoon, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus at Seton Hall University, and an opinion columnist for the KAUPA Letters, Journal of the Korean American University Professors Association. After spending fourteen years as a senior economist and general manager of international joint ventures at one of the largest American corporations, he taught international finance and global business (multi-disciplinary course) for thirty-three years at Seton Hall’s Stillman School of Business until January 2022. Yoon also served as visiting professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing and Seoul National University in South Korea. In addition, he served for eight years as a senior special fellow and academic advisor of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) for a program designed to train diplomats and other government officials of the U.N. member states on global economy and finance. According to Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400): “Truthe is the hyeste thyng that men [/women] may keep.” Indeed, East and West coalesce. 2 South Korea has been implementing a rule similar to the U.S. version, notwithstanding the expected retaliation from China. 1 66