Has Korea lost its soul?

Straits Times columnist Andy Ho’s article “Seoul cool to copy?” caught my eye just as I was leaving to school yesterday. And I couldn’t help but give it a quick read before I zipped out of the house. Ho seems to argue that culture of a country can be created and is not entirely reliant on the donkey-years of tradition or history that a country has. It’s an intriguing read – one that I’m quite sure some of our interviewees won’t agree. Tradition still seems to be that element that roots them back to Singapore, or at least Asia.

I wonder what will be the test of Ho’s argument?

For now, it seems that it is tradition that roots overseas Singaporeans back home. Not culture. Quite frankly, I don’t even know what culture is there is for Singapore to talk about. Five-foot ways, childhood memories, Cathay building, Char Kuay Teow: those are words that Returning Singaporeans bring up. I think that’s tradition, not some newly constructed culture.

Even if culture were to be constructed, surely it needs a starting point. Where does Singapore start? From Tomorrow or from tradition? Even Korea’s drama serials consist of its tradition – think Yi San – King Jeong Jo, The King and I, Da Jang Geum. What it seems to me is that Korea has created a very marketable culture, but surely it has not lost its tradition. I can’t really recall when was it we had a drama about our tradition. Price of Peace? But it’s a serial I remember the very clearly though. I loved it.

I do think we need a culture badly. But what sort needs to be more closely examined. Do we want a culture of coolness like Seoul, as Ho asserts? Or do we want something that roots us home? It is an important factor to consider, I think, to draw Singaporeans back. It builds a sense of, maybe not so much patriotism, but at least one of belonging. I wonder if Korea has lost its soul in trying to propagate this new funky culture it has? With its hundreds of years of history, I think people still embrace tradition. Singapore but only has 40 over years of nation building history, we’ve not even hit mid-life crisis yet, or have we?

Ho’s article can be found here.

Nine-eleven

It’s a date that no one in this generation will forget. Sept. 11. It’s a date that changed the lives of many, including many of those we have been interviewing for this project. It’s hard to believe some Singaporeans were actually so close to the tragedy. It’s been facinating talking to them. Others have been affected by the ripples the attack caused.

If there’s one thing good that came out from that day is that it made many rethink about life, and perhaps just as important, rethink about home. It did drive two of our interviewees back to Singapore. Among them is Amy Hwang, who had been doing summer school in Boston that year. Recalling the incident over coffee today, she told us that she should have been on the flight – United Airlines Flight 175 – from Logan International Airport in Boston to Los Angeles International. She had been planning to visit a good friend in LA after finishing summer school.

For some reason, her seat on that flight scheduled for the 11th of September was cancelled. “My seat just magically got cancelled,” she exclaimed. “I just couldnt find that same flight again. Instead of leaving on the 11th I had to leave on the 10th.”

Scared “chicken shit” for the next couple of weeks, Amy found herself unable to sleep with the lights off.

“It changed my perspective. Everything could have just ended there and then,” she said. “Thats when I came back. After that happened I didn’t think I want to go back. i just wanted to go home.”

She recalls being frightened by the sligtest bit of turbulence on her flight back from LA to Singapore. “I had a really bad reaction when I was flying back… after that you just didn’t want to get on the plane,” she said. “My mum said come back, come back.”

Just to put things into perspective, Amy’s one of those who has tried to relocate back to Singapore three times now. Each time finding herself unable to truly adapt back to the Singapore way of life. She’s tells us that she’s back to pay her dues, to her parents.

Sept. 11, she said, triggered that.

Today – she did return to Australia in 2002 to 2005 to help out in the family business – she’s back in Singapore to complete the family. It’s been a long time since her mum had her four kids together in the same country.

“My dad is in his 60s and I want to be around them. You don’t know what will happen,” she said. Despite being unable to quite settle down, “it doesnt kill me,” she said.

“So I try to get out of Singapore every quarter. Everytime I get out and come back, I find I can stay abit longer.”