Book Tour in Korean International Schools
In January-February 2018, I spent a month back in Korea on an author tour of nine international schools, seven in Seoul and two on Jeju Island — including Seoul Foreign School, which I attended for part of 2nd grade, all of 3rd, and all four years of high school. There I got to see myself on the cafeteria wall with other winners of the Seoul Foreign School Award.
The trip offered wonderful opportunities for explorations of the content, themes, and process of creating In the Shadow of the Sun, with students from fourth grade through high school.
At Branksome Hall Asia, a girls’ K-12 English-language immersion school on Jeju, I explored creating fictional characters with high school students who were also writers.
In high school English classes at St. Johnsbury Academy on Jeju, we talked about identity — how racial and cultural identity develops, the difference between minority- and majority-group identity, the experience of being bicultural and “third culture” — and did free-writing.
After the sessions, the librarian invited students to reflect on the experience if they chose, asking about their favorite comment, their favorite idea, what inspired them, and about personal connections they made. She was deluged with wonderful responses. Here are a few:
- The talk was very captivating. I plan to read your book about North Korea. I was also inspired by your idea of writing a notebook with random ideas. I think it is similar to a diary, with a lot more freedom. I didn’t have an opportunity to actually meet a writer before, so the entire experience was very exciting for me. Personally, I can’t imagine writing as a job…..^^; DHK
- 1. Ideas come the best when doing a free writing. 2. My favourite idea we’ve discussed was about the technique and benefit of free writing before doing actual writing. 3. When she said that a perfect writing always come after constant revisions, I was hugely inspired by it. 4. My grandfather was a North Korean defector before the war broke out. He told me about the suffering and adversity he have been through in North Korea. When you were talking about the book that you have written, I could somehow relate it to my grandfather’s experience. It was great to hear from you. Thank you. DKG
- I really liked the concept of your book, ‘In the Shadow of the Sun’ and wanted to read the book. It was not a usual opportunity to see a foreigner who can speak both Korean and English came to make a speech or lecture, and it was fascinating. Especially, the metaphor you used to explain writing habit, Composting, was mind-blowing. I still keep the note that I wrote about my identity, and will use them whenever I have to write something or when I have to organize my thoughts. GWK
- My class discussed about when we feel that we are Korean. In this process, the Guest Author commented ‘Keep writing, do not stop writing.’ which was my favorite comment. This comment inspired me. When she asked us to write about when do we feel that we are Korean for 5 minutes, when I ran out of ideas, I tried to just think about what to write and not stop writing. YSO
- I liked to discuss about bi-cultural behavior. Also, I liked to share what kind of culture did you experienced and what did you learn about it. EG
- Listening to her story made me recognize the cultural diversity in the world. This helped me to learn the fact that it is important to respect everybody who has each unique culture. HJC
- She talked about multi-cultural perspective which is topic that we usually can sympathize. It is because we are in the international school. After the presentation, I could think about myself. Thank you for giving wonderful speech to us. Maybe I will try your book soon. JHK
- When I first met her in the history class, I could heard about the third culture, which I had never hear before. Her presentation inspired me to think about my identity. Think about my background, surroundings, and the variables in my life. Also, I could learn that our own culture could be constantly changed by the various experiences. NEJ
- The favorite comment was about 3rd culture kid which is a mixture of two or more culture. This came to my mind because I have also experienced multi culture and believed myself that I am a 3rd culture kid. Favorite idea discussed was ‘free writing’ which actually helped me a lot in reshaping my thoughts. I have spent nearly three years in New York and the concept of Mrs. Ann’s speech which was basically about cultural mix. I truly agreed when she said that the 3rd culture kids feel like home in many places but at the same time “never home.” JHK
FAQ: Have you ever been to North Korea?
No… and yes.
I’ve never officially visited the DPRK, but I have been in a speedboat cruising along the border with China — in North Korean waters!
I didn’t intend to do this.
In 2015, I was invited to speak at a school in Mongolia and a teachers conference in Malaysia. In between, I took myself to two Chinese cities, Beijing and Dandong. I wanted to see the Great Wall — the regular one, and the piece of it that’s in my novel: Hu Shan, or Tiger Mountain Great Wall.
When I got to my hotel in Dandong and stepped to the window of my room, I discovered that I had a view straight across the river to North Korea, just half a mile away.
Two days later, I set off on my journey to see Hu Shan Great Wall, a 20-minute drive east from Dandong. Through a series of unexpected developments, I ended up in this speedboat with a pilot and two Chinese tourists, cruising west on the Amnok/Yalu River. To the right (north) in this photo is China. To the left (south) is North Korea.
When we got near the North Korean coast, our boat pilot told us to stop taking photos. This is the closest one I got.
To the north, Hu Shan, or Tiger Mountain, from the river. You can barely make out the Wall, climbing the slope.
We got close to this island, to the north of us. I don’t speak Chinese, but I’d picked up the names of the two countries: “China?” I asked, pointing to the island. The pilot shook his head. “North Korea,” he said. So if it was North Korea to our right, and to our left… then we were technically in North Korea!
I waved to the woman on the shore tending goats, and called a greeting to her in Korean. She beamed and waved back.
On the way back to the boat dock, we pulled up to this sandbar where a couple of North Koreans had a boat with products for sale — cigarettes, preserved eggs. When the Chinese men didn’t buy anything, the entrepreneurs muttered curses about them in Korean.
A few hours later, I was sitting on Tiger Mountain Great Wall, looking out over the North Korean countryside (the straight line cutting diagonally through the middle of the photo is the border; beyond is the North Korean island, then the river where we cruised, and finally the North Korean mainland).
So that was it, my trip to North Korea.
Malaysia!
I presented a keynote, “Mirrors & Lenses: Exploring Racial and Cultural Identity,” sharing my story as a “3rd culture kid” (TCK) growing up in Korea, interspersed with some of the latest findings I’ve gleaned from neuroscience on the formation of racial identity and unconscious bias.
The conference schedule was packed, so I didn’t get a chance to discover the wonders of Sabah, from Mount Kinabalu to tropical rain forests to snorkeling off islands, but a group of us did get to downtown KK for dinner and souvenir shopping: painted masks, sarongs, batik, percussion instruments, and other beautiful crafts.
This area of downtown Kota Kinabalu, selling clothing, souvenirs and food, is called the “Filipino Market.”
Laima with pineapple fried rice, at a Thai restaurant on the harbor.
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China!
There’s a Chinese folk tale, variously called “Fortunately, Unfortunately,” or “That’s Good! That’s Bad!” A farmer loses his horse – bad fortune! But soon the horse returns, with a stallion – good fortune! The farmer’s son is thrown off the stallion and breaks his leg – bad fortune! But then military officers arrive in the village to conscript every able-bodied man and the farmer’s son isn’t taken because of his leg… And so on.
My five-day solo trip in China felt like a version of this tale. The first piece of seemingly bad fortune was the discovery upon arrival in Beijing that the reservation confirmation receipt for my Chinese hutong inn (a hutong is an alleyway or narrow side street) didn’t have enough information on it for the average Chinese person to be able to tell where it was located. The good fortune was finding one person after another, most of whom didn’t speak any English – and I speak no Chinese – to help piece together the next step of my journey, from airport to express train to subway to street. My final angel of mercy was Peng, who did speak some English and told me to call him Elton. He helped me with my heavy luggage, guiding me down the correct street to the front door of the inn, a welcome sight.
We exchanged enough information, with the help of my iPad photos, to discover that the city my grandfather grew up in in the early 1900s is Elton’s hometown! To have bumped into each other in one of the largest cities in the world seemed quite remarkable.
My grandfather, Horace Norman Sibley, center, with his parents and sisters, approx 1906.
The next day was a trip to the Great Wall, which I’ve wanted to see ever since I painted it for the book Talking Walls by Margy Burns Knight.
I’d chosen a tour to the Mutianyu section of the Wall, supposed to be one of the most scenic. I spent the day with an international group of tourists from Pakistan, Canada and the Philippines, our driver, and our guide, a young woman called Eva. Eva is married, with a 2-year-old son, and commutes two hours each way from her suburban apartment, because housing closer to the city center is unaffordable. The tour included some Ming tombs, a jade factory, lunch in a restaurant at the foot of the mountain (about an hour northeast of Beijing), and finally, the Wall!
No photos can do justice to the scale and sheer magnificence of the Great Wall. Seeing the height and steepness of these rocky mountains, it stuns the mind to think of the engineering feat that created this Wonder of the World – and of the millions of lives lost in its construction. The Wall is so high up that almost everyone opts for the cable car or chairlift up – with the option of a tobbagan ride down! It’s a real physical workout, just ascending and descending the stairs and walkways on top of the Wall itself.
Saturday I flew to Dandong, on the northern banks of the Yalu River, which forms the border between China and North Korea. In addition to growing up in South Korea, for the last eight years I’ve been working on a young adult novel set in North Korea. (The day I was leaving on this trip, I received some very exciting news about this novel – TBA in a future post!) I wanted to travel to this part of China to trace the steps of my fictional characters, who in the book’s climax end up on a section of the Great Wall, called Hu Shan (Tiger Mountain), not far from Dandong.
I was tremendously excited to discover upon arrival that my 6th floor hotel room looked out over the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge and the North Korean city of Sinuiju, barely visible in the smoggy mist:
A North Korean village on an island in the Yalu River. We are traveling between the island and mainland DPRK – clearly in North Korean waters. The woman herding goats waved and smiled when I called hello to her in Korean.
When I did finally get out of the taxi on the way back to Hu Shan, the entrance to the Wall was indeed closed; inside, a grounds crew was gathering and burning brush. Exploring around the edges on my own – including scrambling up one steep slope, hanging onto branches to keep from slipping in the sandy soil – I stumbled upon paths and views that I never would have found if I’d been on top of the Wall.
And on the south side, there is no gate!
I was able to climb part way up the Wall, just as I’d imagined, and sit to paint a panoramic view of the North Korean countryside.
All in all, an amazing adventure, full of good fortune!
Itinerary for an Adventure
Saturday night I landed in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the first (22-hr!) leg of a trip that will also take me to China and Malaysia.
The Philippines!
Catching up on my spring: back in March, my second Southeast Asia stop was the Philippines, where I visited the three campuses of Brent International School. It was fascinating to experience the differences between the schools, from Subic’s 200 students (80% Korean) in a building on a former U.S. military base, to Baguio’s hillside cluster of buildings with 300 students (60% Korean), to Manila’s student body of more-than-1000 diverse students from all over the world.
And I got to travel and experience wonders of the Philippines, from Subic Bay on the western coast… starting with breakfast by the bay, and fruit bats in one protected area.
and students were very excited by autographing.
Then back down the mountain and across the plain, driving through Manila and to the southern suburbs…
to the main campus of Brent Manila.
Throughout, I was accompanied by librarian extraordinaire Debbie Kienzle, and welcomed so warmly and graciously by her library staff, the schools’ personnel and students, and the Filipinos I met everywhere we traveled.
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