After four years living in South Korea, very little of the country’s identity really shocks me anymore. There are utterly maddening stories but nothing – unlike in my first two years – that hits you like a train of cultural importance.
Four years is not nearly enough to call oneself an expert in a completely alien country, and the feeling from those who have been here for decades is you’ll never be fully assimilated into Korean society. But it is a start, and having dug so deep into the national psyche, you get the sense that there isn’t a huge amount more than can truly astound you.
Walking down the international food street in the city of Ansan, I saw a large glass box with a small heater above to keep the meat inside warm. The meat was that of a dog, shaved of all hair but the skeleton was clearly recognisable. The proprietor was serving dog meat in a style similar to a doner kebab you’d get on Dame Street.
Then there is my friend who worked 44 hours overtime unpaid in a single week at the behest of her boss, and said there was no point complaining or she’d be sacked. And another friend who was ‘told’ to get eye surgery by her mother because she couldn’t possibly have any confidence in her appearance, could she?
After a while, things like this just don’t shock you anymore. So when my good friend asked me to be the English language MC at his traditional Korean wedding – which included chicken throwing, piggy-back rides and the bride arriving in a large wooden box – nothing seemed particularly odd or bizarre. You just shrug your shoulders with an ‘of course’ attitude to occasions like this. But reading the wedding script in the days leading up to the wedding, it was clear this was going to be a rather unusual event.
Post-ceremony, one guest pulled me aside to ask: “How did you keep a straight face during most of that?” She had flown over from Canada with her boyfriend and mother, from the groom’s family. Her mother had not been anywhere west of Toronto, yet found herself wearing a ‘hanbok’ – a traditional, colourful Korean dress – being circled by frenzied dancers and watched by a hundred Korean guests.
The peculiar nature of these ceremonies must have really struck these Canadian visitors. By the altar sat two live chicken, wings and legs tied together, heads peering from the velvet robe they found themselves in, and causing a ruckus that delayed the start of the ceremony. When the time came, the thin green rope was snipped and the newly married couple threw the chickens into the air, only to see them land on some unfortunate guest’s gown. Sadly, these were no celebrity guests present, the kind who travel from wedding to wedding dressed like poultry royalty. Much like the tossed bouquet in western societies, the person who claims the chicken first gets to take it home.
By this stage, the bride had already been carried down the aisle in a large box by four enormous men; the ‘goose father’ had read out a poem; and a photographer nearly killed a guest when he knocked over a speaker from the PA system.
When the main event was over, I crept up to the groom’s mother to ask for her assessment of a traditional Korean wedding. Smiling from ear to ear, she fixed her eyes on the classic Korean house in the distance. Her son was carrying his wife on his back for the second time, this time in front of a shrine in the hope of pleasing the spirits. In a wonderfully understated manner, she simply said: “It was very different.”
Andrew Farrell works as an English language teacher in Korea.
