A Man of Letters: Chae-pyong Song

Photos by Park Win-woo

The hermit kingdom now sits at the world’s table. Korea has opened up, and global thoughts, ideas, and people are flowing in.  A strong economy combined with a near obsessive desire to learn English make it a particularly viable option for Westerners, recent college grads and long-term “Koreahands” alike.  But what about the flow in the opposite direction– the push made by some Koreans to make a new life in the West?

The BBC ran an article last year about the “most successful immigrants”, and to no one’s surprise, the studies showed that “of all the groups…coming to the US each year, Koreans are said to be among the most successful.”

It was with much pleasure that Gwangju Newsrecently had the opportunity to interview one of these transplanted children of the Han, and one whose particular success story in his new home proved an inspiring case study of Eastern diligence blossoming in the open and individualistic climate of the West.

But let us not introduce him as some stranger, for he is Gwangju News’ own monthly contributor of translated poetry, none other than Dr. Chae-pyong Song himself.
Short and starkly handsome, “JP”, as he is sometimes called in more casual circles, greeted us at the GIC in downtown Gwangju, just an hour before he took the stage to give the weekly “Saturday talk”.  Although he returns to the region often (this being just one of his many trips back to the land of his birth), his manner and speech seem to have taken on, over the years, a distinctly American tone and directness.  His Korean satori, or accent, is almost completely gone, and we spoke with the easy familiarity of two countrymen meeting abroad.

Perhaps he may now be American, having assimilated into that great melting pot that is America years ago, but his past is a distinctly Korean one.  Born in Yeosu, Chae-pyong went to high school in Suncheon before attending our own Jeonnam University in the trouble-filled early 80s.  After a few years of working as a translator with the local US Air Force, JP left for America.

He would begin his American odyssey at the University of Virginia, studying linguistics on a Rotary scholarship. There he would struggle in ways which might sound all too familiar to us expats here inKorea.

“The hardest thing at first was the (southern) dialect; I had trouble even ordering food.  The clerk would ask me whatchawan? It took me some time to figure out he meant What do you want? It was pretty discouraging at first — here I am thinking I have a grasp on English, and I can’t even order a meal,” JP recalled, mimicking the deep mountain accent of West Virginia with the accuracy of a linguist.

He would overcome these and other adversities, attending the University of Texas (UT) in Austin and Texas A&M in College Station, switching majors in the process, and finally earning his Ph.D. in English literature.

“I lost interest in the mechanics of language, so I switched to post-colonial literature, that is, the literature of previously colonized countries, like Ireland or Korea,” Chae-pyong said, referencing a cross-cultural connection and sympathy that you may have heard invoked before.
Fast forward to the present; the struggles and trials of those early days are long behind him. Chae-pyong has a blessed life, born, of course, of nothing less than hard work and perseverance.  He is now a tenured professor at Marygrove College, close to Wayne State University where his wife is also a professor of educational psychology.

When asked about his wife, also Korean, he told us, “It was wonderful to watch a woman blossom in Western culture; my wife was able to reach a high place that might not have been available to her in Korea because of the gender roles.”

On top of his professorship, Chae-pyong has a particular passion for poetry, a love which thankfully has put him in the position to contribute to the Gwangju News.  He is a translator of the highest competency– the type of man who has earned the right to bridge this gap, to work between two languages, two different worlds, balancing two starkly contrasting states of being and perhaps helping bring the rest of us to some sort of understanding.

“Compared to Western poetry, which tends to be more suggestive, Korean poetry seems sometimes a little more direct.  The traditional Korean stoicism opens up a little bit when it comes to poetry.  And then, of course, there is our resistance poetry.”

Indeed, resistance seems to be a major motif in the poems published in our Gwangju News month by month, supplied by none other than the man himself.  Resistance to foreign invaders, such as the Japanese, or resistance to their own country’s tightfisted governments of the past—these ideas flit though their lines, time and time again, dutifully transformed into an alien tongue so that we too can appreciate their beauty.

His cross cultural capabilities straddle not only the languages — JP had plenty of wise words on what might be lost, “or gained”, as he put it, in translation.  After our brief interview, he would take the stage to give a GIC Talk, which was entitled “Mapping Diasporic Identities.”  It was clear that the years of lecturing had made him quite comfortable with public speaking, and he gave a very moving presentation.

He started by listing some of the differences between America and Korea, using literature, as well as a list of things he gained and lost when he made the transition.

“I left the land of we, and arrived in the land of I.  I left the land of romantic nationalism, and arrived in the land of neo-imperialism. I left a land where you have to guess at the subtle desires of other people, and arrived in the land where people tell you directly what they want.”

The list went on and on, each comparison well thought-out and vetted by Dr. Song’s years of experience on both sides of the Pacific.

He went on to tell us about some of the discrimination he faced in America, reminding us with his anecdotes that the specter of racism can still be found lingering in Western countries.  He has been told by Americans to “Go back to your country.”  He has had culturally disrespectful neighbors tell him to “Stop cooking your stinky food,” and so on.
While recently there have been spates of xenophobia and racism in Korea, it is important to remember that these things exist everywhere, and are by no means unique to the situation of expats here in Gwangju.  Dr. Song is in a great position to put things in perspective — mirroring our worst doubts and fears and showing us how they can be overcome.

It was a pleasure for us to finally get to put a face to the man who has helped our magazine so much, and to see the story of one who has succeeded so much in a place so different from his home.

Although he didn’t say it, you can tell Chae-pyong has a lot of hope for Korea in the coming days. He is happy in his new life, that much is obvious, but the part of him that is Korean will surely always miss his home.

You can check out Chae-pyong’s translation work at http://jaypsong.wordpress.com/.

Watch the video of Chae-pyong’s GIC Talk, “Mapping Diasporic Identities”: