My first trip to Korea, as an exchange professor from the national university, was strictly transactional: I had a number of student and personal loans to repay from nearly a decade of graduate studies in the US, and a state institution would be incapable of assisting me no matter how hard I worked. Engaging in corruption, petty or otherwise, was out of the question for me, regardless of how many instances I saw people openly practicing it, using the rationale that “we never get paid enough” as essentially government personnel.
11011My personal quirk as a traveler was that I abhor touring. I prefer to remain for as long as I could tolerate a place, so I could learn what makes it tick for its native population. As an academic, I could not avoid the usual swift passage for the purpose of participating in some scholarly event or other, but whenever I had a program to complete, I always attempted to maximize my stay without bothering with the usual tourist spots. I only visited the World Trade Center in the Financial District of Manhattan when some foreign visitors insisted on sipping coffee at the Windows of the World (I told friends then that for me, the towers diminished the impact of the Manhattan skyline).
11011This was how I reached the conclusion that the first item to check out in a new place is the people. I arrived in Korea a few years before one of the Presidents was honest enough to remark that the country had the worst appearance among the OECD members: rows of buildings that looked like yellow shoeboxes stood end-to-end, with red crucifixes atop many of them at night like distant hilltop cemeteries. The same President said that the country should aspire to attain the title of world design center, just as he later said that the country’s recovery during the last global financial crisis should take less than a year. The fact that these and other declarations of national purpose happened, sometimes ahead of schedule, clued me in to the culture’s ability to focus attention on whatever was the common-good goal of the moment.
11011This made my teaching and advising difficult in ways I did not anticipate, since the premise of Western-sourced instruction is always individual growth and excellence. I quickly realized that encouraging outstanding candidates to consider higher studies was always a matter of helping them negotiate with their entire social circle of family, classmates, and friends – and often, their decision was always hindered by their hesitation to leave everyone else behind. The usual counter-argument that worked elsewhere, that the person advising them might be wrong, was never sufficient, and sometimes even unacceptable when the advice came from familial authority figures. Yet when news of a serious global pandemic began spreading during the winter break of 2019, I knew that my best hope of survival was by advancing my return trip to Korea. Friends thought I was deliberately endangering myself, since the first area to be hit by the Covid-19 infection outside of China was Daegu, courtesy of a proselytizing superspreader.
11011I’d been in Korea long enough by then to know that the population’s unusual abiltiy to coalesce during crisis periods was going to be the key to its now-renowned response to the pandemic. The very same quality that I wished I didn’t have to contend with as an educator was what kept me safe through the seemingly interminable period when the virus dominated human affairs everywhere. The pandemic also preempted a painstakingly finalized move to another teaching post in China, near the origin of the breakout, as it turned out. I accepted the inevitable and waited out the last few years until I retired, which happened at the end of February 2024.
11011Aside from the several adjustments in teaching methods plus the arrival of so many foreign students that Koreans numbered less than half of my total students, I also had to contend with the many rituals and voluminous exit reports that were typical of major transitions in East Asian culture. My experience as a migrant worker from the Philippines may not be typical in the sense that I didn’t work in a factory or on a farm, but I still regard teaching as labor-intensive as any of the jobs I used to hold down. Providing classroom instruction requires intensive performances to convey knowledge effectively (in a less-than-familiar language) to a heterogeneous mix of listeners, while the research and publication projects I had to complete outside of teaching required tracking down sources and experts, presenting findings at conferences, and constant drafting and revision.
11011Was Korea worth expending the peak and culmination of an extensive academic career? I cannot provide a definitive answer, but in relative terms: it was a better site than any of the other countries I’d known, sadly including my own. Are there lessons for people who find themselves in a similar migratory situation? My conceit is that my journey has been so idiosyncratic that it probably will be impossible to replicate. But the real motive underlying that assertion is that I had proceeded from too many failed instances of risk-taking, which is why I tend to have definitive words of advice for people that I mentor. I still believe that errors bear useful lessons for intellectuals – more than triumphs would, in fact – but I’d prefer that people be fully aware of the price they’re paying before they fully commit themselves to an unconventional option.
11011The overriding context here is that contemporary life changes faster than any set of lessons can assure for success. What had worked for me (and, more important, what had failed) during the time and place I attempted an analysis of the world and my place in it will not always guarantee success for anyone who repeats anything I attempted then in the here and now. So any lesson I impart will necessarily have to be conceptual at best, and probably overfamiliar to many people: determine the area where you’ll be sure to excel, with alternate routes in case of setbacks, and devote your existence in pursuit of that ideal. The only reward I can promise is that the prospect of permanent rest that you’ll be able to perceive toward the end will not seem so weary.
[Published in Dáyo / 이민자: Stories of Migration, ed. Erlinda Mae T. Young, Seoul: Philippine Embassy in Seoul, Korea, 2024.]
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