Seoul Searching

Spoiler Alert. These are my thoughts and reaction to the Hull City of Culture event "One day, maybe" which is being performed in King William House, Lowgate Hull until 1st October 2017.


What , before yesterday evening, did I know about South Korea? 

Not a lot beyond its economic and commercial status through its home grown corporations and companies including Samsung, Hyundai, Korean Air, LG, Kia, Hankook and Korea Electric to name just 8 off the top of my head. 

The war on the Korean Peninsula in the 1950's was before my time and was not considered important enough to be covered in my State Education syllabus. 

Of course the current very fluid political situation involving an aggressive northern neighbour is never far away from the everyday news and is a matter of concern.

My perception of the country and its people was therefore pretty superficial, based on my own consumerism and where I had taken notice of marketing and advertising. 

Then yesterday, the act of standing in the lower level of a city centre multi storey car park, my head bowed away from the penetrating stare of a South Korean Policeman and wondering what would befall me in the following minutes gave me a crash course into the psyche and motivation of the population of that country. 

I had been marched out into the dimly lit space with about twenty others, of whom six had travelled with me from our comfortable homes and lifestyles. 

Within a couple of minutes we had been segregated with hand gestures and shouting into pairs and marched into the derelict building. 

The evening had started off quite light and informal with a Kasang Corporation branded tablet handed out by polite door staff onto which we were asked, very nicely, to provide personal details and take a mug shot type photograph. 

An empty seat in the comfortable lounge type surroundings was taken up by an elderly Korean lady in hat and scarf and pulling a shopping cart. She did not appear to speak any English but we exchanged greetings by reading out our respective names from the tablet screen. 

The room quietened with the arrival of half a dozen representatives of Kasang dressed in unisex corporate outfits who spoke very quickly in their mother tongue before switching effortlessly to English in an accent suggesting American and French residency at some time. 

We were phonetically taught to say "Hello" and "Thank You" in Korean which we were told would be useful in the next couple of hours. 

We were then led, in a long crocodile line out into a room to see a new technology of a hologram of a group of what appeared to be young people, possibly students. They were, it was explained a representation of those who had been killed in the 1980 Gwangju Uprising which was a mass protest against the then military government. 

It was a populist revolt involving around a quarter of a million people. This was brutally oppressed by the authorities with it is thought around 2000 students and civilians killed by riot police and paratroopers. 

Whilst we were taking in this information the hologram group moved and walked amongst us before melting away into the recesses of the building. 

Instantaneously the walls around us fell away and we were surrounded by loud music and the almost funfair scene of shop units trading household goods, clothing, appliances, cosmetics, a fitted kitchen and a virtual reality bicycle ride. 

The Kasang Sales staff encouraged us to move through the shops and make purchases as the products and prices popped up by wi-fi on our personal tablets. It was a consumer wonderland and our on-line baskets bulged with everything on offer. After the solemnity of the Gwangju commemoration I felt disrespectful and a bit uneasy with it all. 

After the frenzy it was time to take on a new video game, Hostage 4 developed by the Corporation. 

Our tablet glowed green to show our individual positions as we made our way through a blacked out labyrinth towards an exit on the other side. There was strict guidance on our walking speed and to avoid security guards whose prowling beats, in Pac-Man style, were depicted as red dots. I narrowly avoided one of them, in reality a stern, no-nonsense military type. 

I am not good at gaming and more by luck than skill or judgement made it through the maze in under two minutes. 

The next task was in an abandoned and semi derelict Police Station in a faded décor and with time sensitive information showing a date in 1980. 

Ten points of interest had to be found which would be uploaded to the tablet with the aim to collect all of them. The points included documents implying collusion between the military and police over crowd control, hints at techniques to elicit intelligence from those arrested and references to approval of such actions by the United States. 

I was close to collecting an eighth point when a female police officer ushered me back from a corridor and in a frightening tone her and around a dozen uniformed and plain clothes colleagues firmly and forcibly corralled our group out into the cold night air. This was the car park that I spoke of earlier.

In small sub groups of two everyone disappeared back into the building. Our original seven strong contingent was split up and I found myself with a complete stranger and one policeman in a cell with a chair, bucket and water. 

I recognised these as instruments of torture. 

It was a stand-off moment and after the sound of a number of slamming doors in the distance there was silence. I could hear my own heart beating in my chest. 

The officer made for the chair and then began a choreographed movement in deliberate sweeping and bowing movements that was melancholy and thoughtful. 

After what was a few minutes but felt like a lifetime we rejoined the group and were directed into the surroundings of a distinctive Korean house. 

It belonged to the old lady who had befriended me and she hosted us all with food and rice wine as we sat on cushions at low tables. In a tea pouring ceremony she was paying tribute to a departed family member. Those who had formed the hologram began to almost float into the room and it was clear that someone close to her had been killed in the repression of the 1980 uprising. 

It was a poignant and moving moment particularly as the lady had been chatty and joyful towards me just a few moments earlier. There were tearful eyes in our group. I was moved and a bit choked with emotion. 

The antidote was of course more consumerism and wearing VR headsets in the next part of the building we could work in a virtual kitchen. Our aptitude for shopping was then displayed on a huge floor to ceiling display of video screens where our photos and data records could be read. 

I had performed well and my data had apparently been sold on to a specific Corporation which was a bit creepy. 

In almost shock therapy this brash high tech environment was replaced by a single large TV screen and a film of the old lady tending a single headstone in an overgrown garden. It was peaceful and a welcome lull in the frenetic events so far.

As the camera moved to a wide angle view the single grave could be seen as just one on a whole hillside of graves. The 1980’s atrocity was now more real than ever in our minds. 

I thought that would be enough of a message of protest and martyrdom but I was wrong. 

The largest room in the building was entered and there were row upon row of plastic chairs, each with a lit candle. There were around 500 of these in memory of those whose lives had been lost in the pursuit of the birth of the modern South Korea. 

As though being ejected from a time machine we found ourselves out in the street of our own home town, by comparison, a safe and complacent place. 

The immersion into South Korean history had been intense and would be a lasting memory to me.