From Both Sides of the Closet Door

At the Gay Pride Parade on May 31, hundreds of homosexual Koreans and expats converged at the Cheonggye Stream in downtown Seoul.

They came together for communion, community and camaraderie - to celebrate their sexuality healthily, out in the open, in the daytime.

For gay and lesbian expats living in Seoul, theirs is a life of relative openness. Many are far from family and friends who might otherwise disapprove - which makes them a little more fortunate than their Korean brothers and sisters.

As a country deeply rooted in Confucian tradition, in Korea there is a heavy focus on carrying on the familial genetic line. When it comes to homosexuality, this is not yet a tolerant society and far from accepting.

Cho Jeong-kwon, a 27-year-old university student, has been active in the gay community for five years but has not told his family he is gay.

"It is very hard to say," he said. "I can't imagine that they accept my sexuality.

"Several times I tried, but it was impossible. I don't like to lose my family because I love them."

Cho finds comfort in the gay community.

"We share a big same secret," he said. "So I think we can understand each other. I feel there is some kind of wall with straight people."

Then there is Hong Seung-chan, a 25-year-old university student, who has been openly gay for four and half years.

Hong said he knew he was gay when he was 13.

"Of course my parents, teachers, friends - nobody had any idea," he said.

He became more independent after high school and began using the internet to find other people like him. Once his mother discovered his on-line activity, their problems began.

Though she objected, he told her he would continue to try and meet other guys.

"She did literally anything to stop me," he said.

"I felt that my life was unreal. I didn't even have a single vague image of what I was going to be. I had to meet someone like who I was, talk about the issue, or have some dates and live a real life."

When Hong got out of the Army he went looking for a gay community. He found Chingusai - the human rights group for gay men. Though he was nervous, he went to their monthly meeting last November.

He felt better when he got home, but made the mistake of leaving fliers from the meeting in his room. His mother found the fliers, and, after he went to another meeting, she realized that he had become a member of the group. She told his father, and his parents threw him out of the house.

He found a place to stay with another Chingusai member and is still enrolled in school.

"There aren't too many things changed," he said. "First, I am in the gay community now, and second, I think I know better where I'm going in my life."

Cho's life is different. His parents are confused about his lack of a heterosexual relationship.

"Always they ask me, 'Why don't you have a girlfriend?' Then I say 'I don't know. I think I am not popular to girls."

Even his friends who know about his sexuality still misunderstand him, he said.

"They don't know what I'm suffering, but I have no choice because the gay community is just my secret life," Cho said, adding that there is a fear that his gay friends will "out" him.

"When I run into my gay friends on the street, if I am with my straight friends I don't say 'hi' to my gay friends."

In the past, gay and lesbian Koreans who have come out to their families have been disowned and forced into "medical treatment" or unwanted marriages.

In 2000, a famous television actor announced he was gay, becoming the first public figure to come out in Korea. The announcement cost him his job and subsequently made it difficult for him to find work. When he told his mother he was gay she suggested they drink poison together.

Eight years later, Hong Seung-chan thinks the older generation still views homosexuality as weird but the younger generation considers it fashionable.

"I still don't think people consider it a real issue," he said.

To him, the biggest problem for a gay man in Korea is staying in the closet.

"I think it's a matter of people living a healthier life," he said. "I want people to believe in themselves and not sacrifice their entire life for others. I know it's very hard to be 'out' in Korean society but if people are willing to push through, all the way out, I think it's absolutely worth it."

Cho disagrees.

"I think if I say I am gay, I fight the whole Korean society."

A Great Movie, A Better Book

"No Country For Old Men"

By Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy's books are good for Hollywood. The movies win awards and make actors famous. They also make some people a lot of money. McCarthy himself hasn't always had that much money, but that hasn't mattered much to him. He has written books for a long enough time that he has started to make money doing it.

In "No Country For Old Men" Llewelyn Moss learns a lesson about money. He learns that when there's a lot of it lying in the middle of the Texas prairie, it's hard to pass up. It doesn't matter that he stumbles across it after checking out a battlefield littered with dead Mexican drug runners. When you live in a trailer and your wife works at Wal-Mart you don't walk away from a satchel full of cash. No matter how much blood it might have cost. He also learns that big money leads to big trouble.

On the Texas-Mexico border that McCarthy writes about no one hides from the sun and the dust blows hard. There are people working deals in the middle of the night at a level of criminal activity that, as Sheriff Bell says, is "hard to even take its measure." Bell has been working the job in his county for decades and he's seen the intensity of crime climb. He narrates a passage at the beginning of each chapter full of learned experience, trying to explain how he has been able to crawl into his cruiser day after day.

If there is one thing that McCarthy knows, it's voice. Anyone who has spent time in the American West can apply the proper accent and inflection to his sparse character dialogue. The Coen Brothers received a lot of praise and money for their film. They found some good landscapes to shoot - old motels at sunset and the Texas prairie, and the scene where Chigurh kills Carson Wells is already on the syllabus for this semester at film school. But their artistic interpretation didn't require much alchemy. The meat of the story was already there. In fact, it's difficult to understand how they reconciled cutting what they did from an already tight, lean novel.

One of the most common complaints from people who watched the film came from the directors' use of ambiguity. People said they wanted to see how Llewelyn's story played out, or know exactly what Chigurh did with Carla Jean. It gave them a lot to talk about but they didn't want to have to guess. Viewers left the movie with questions that couldn't be answered. The solution to that is simple: Read the book and you won't have to. It's all in there plus some bonuses.

People who loved the movie will find the book by a large degree more enjoyable. There is more narration, more is explained, the characters are more developed - there is just more. We all should have read the novel before we watched the movie, but it doesn't always happen that way. It's not too late, though. There is still a lot of pleasure to be gained from reading. The scene where Llewelyn picks up the girl hitchhiker is worth it alone.

The good that comes from the film industry recognizing McCarthy's talent manifests itself in the form of exposure. Along with Phillip Roth, Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon, he has long been considered one of America's great living writers. Of the four, McCarthy is the most deserving of the Nobel Prize. Maybe if they keep making his books into Oscar-winning films, he'll get what he deserves.

Korean Dream Pop

At a club in Gangnam, pop singer Yozoh sauntered on stage wearing black pants, a white button-down shirt, a skinny black tie and a black fedora. Followed out by a violin player, she addressed a responsive crowd warmly and with a fair amount of stage presence. She let the audience sample her voice. She sounded sweet, cute, in line with much of the Korean pop music I have heard.

Initially singing with Sogyumo Acacia Band, Yozoh has released an introductory solo album titled, naturally, "My Name is Yozoh." It is nine songs of soft pop, with Yozoh front and center. The verses are in Korean, the choruses in English. There are a lot of giggles and cutesy vocal tricks thrown in to keep it light. The young, playful spirit of the songs pairs well with Korean kidults. I imagine a young adult couple wearing matching pink sweaters, sharing the ear buds on a Mickey Mouse-shaped mp3 player, walking hand in hand through a Hyundai Department store, listening to Yozoh.

Then comes the blindside. On the song "Banana Party," Yozoh sings, in her breathy, sweet voice, "Give me your banana, let me taste your banana" in a repeated refrain. The double entendre shatters whatever sense of innocence you feel when you first meet her songs. Apparently, the song is on a television advertisement for a digital camera, but it might not get past American censors.

On April 27, as part of a Pastel Records showcase billed as "Mellow Songs About You," Yozoh's label-mates Lucite Tokki joined Han Hui Jeong and Dannawhale at Club SSAM in Hongdae.

The press release for Lucite Tokki begins with "Waiting for music that makes you feel like an innocent child and a mature grown-up at the same time?" Though not as successful as Yozoh (aside from "Banana Party") in that realm, that marketing strategy does fit the generic aesthetic of Lucite Tokki.

Cho Ye-jin sings and Kim Seon-yeong plays guitar - what they don't play, they make up for with electronics. Cho sang with Humming Urban Stereo on two albums and her soft voice blends well with Kim's ethereal guitar parts. The use of electronics to expand the atmosphere of their songs gives Lucite Tokki a dream pop quality.

As far as it goes, there is a lack of singular identity in each of these albums. Both are well-produced and the singers have talent, but I am missing the distinct element that these musicians are advancing their tradition. It is as though they are trying to appeal to too many groups - kids, the young adults, and adults all in one. This might be a smart approach to land on radio and MTV.

However, I would like to see these gifted musicians taking their art form to a higher plane. If they narrow their scope, both Yozoh and Lucite Tokki should be able to carve out a niche and be an asset to the Seoul indie scene. Surely, Seoul has many talented, undiscovered independent bands. I am still looking.

The Sudanese Elephant in the Room

"What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng"

By Dave Eggers

When he was a young boy, armed Arab horsemen raided Valentino Achak Deng's village in southern Sudan. They burned homes and slaughtered the villagers. He ran for his life and got away from the murahaleen. But escaping did not ensure his safety. Many dangers waited for him out in the African wilderness.

Without any knowledge of his family's safety, he ran until he found others. Hundreds of walking boys banded together, shuffling across the barren plains of southern Sudan. They had little water and less food. These walking boys would later be called the Lost Boys of Sudan. If the sun and heat and lack of water didn't kill the Lost Boys, then there were the lions that stalked them in the grass at night.

Allow a necessary comment on the title: "What is the What" comes from an old Sudanese proverb that said when God made Sudan, he gave the people a choice - they could have the cow, or they could have the What. They were smart enough to choose the cow, but they still wonder about the What.

There is a timeliness to "What is the What." In the book's introduction, Deng states that between May 16, 1983 and Jan. 9, 2005, over 2.5 million people died of war and war-related causes in Sudan. More than 4 million people were internally displaced in southern Sudan and nearly 2 million southern Sudanese took refuge in foreign countries - atrocities that have occurred while we have been alive. This is the story of a boy who suffered these atrocities, as told to Dave Eggers, who then formed it into a novel.

Eggers deserves the reverence he is held in by literate youth. The memoir "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is the kind of book that people rarely speak badly of, and in the rare instances they do, they are sharply rebuffed by its defenders. His collection of short stories, "How We Are Hungry," is the kind of book people send across oceans to surprise their friends with as a gift. "What is the What" is the kind of book that made a friend of mine start thinking about becoming an aid worker in Africa.

Together, Eggers and Deng traveled to Sudan and spent many days talking about Deng's life. The novel is written from Deng's point of view, but the narrative is crafted with Eggers' attention to detail and instinct for drama. The resulting novel speaks of a refugee's life in Sudan in clear, imaginable language. It is not merely a boy talking about his life; it is a man telling the story of a horrific childhood to an accomplished, gifted writer.

You can hear the lions roar in the night, feel the ache of thirst in the boys' throats, and sense the fear of crossing a river full of crocodiles while being shot at and unable to swim. If Deng had written the story himself, it would have been good material. If Eggers had constructed a similar story from his imagination, it would have been written well. But bringing together a great writer and a story so rich in substance makes it superior.

If you have a conscience, you will read Deng's story with guilt and sadness. But it is not the intention of the author or the subject to invoke pity. The story is not a heartbreaking work of tragedy. The story is not a heartbreaking work of staggering beauty. The story is not a heartbreaking work of the forces of good winning out over the forces of evil. There is no great moral or resolution. It is simply the story of a life that was not simple at all.

The Dark Side of the Road

"The Road"

By Cormac McCarthy

In Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece "The Road," the earth has undergone an unnamed disaster that has left the ground scorched and covered in ash. The rivers and oceans are ruined with contamination. When it snows, the trees, weakened by fire, splinter and fall to the ground.

There are survivors and they live in desperate terror. A father and his son are of the few left alive.

McCarthy never explains the cause of the condition of the world. In fact, there is little back-story given at all.

In a rare flashback sequence, the reader learns the wife and mother of the men survived the devastation but could not bear the aftermath. The fear of living in a world of civilization reverted to barbarian savagery proved too much. She took her own life rather than face what was left.

So then it is just the man and his son left on the road and they are headed to the coast.

McCarthy is one of the best American writers we have. His body of work owes much to William Faulkner. But where Faulkner wrote of the South, much of McCarthy's work is set in the American West.

Some have speculated that "The Road" happens in the southeastern United States, that the pair traverses the Great Smoky Mountains to reach the ocean. This is possible. The Smokies are aptly named -- cloudy hills covered in trees that rise just west of the Atlantic Ocean, which matches the setting of the novel.

Regardless, McCarthy has become masterful in his writing. The narrative is a fragmented mosaic of well-wrought scenes. McCarthy said he wrote the book for his son, and that is where the essential value of the story lies.

Often the two have no food or shelter as they push a shopping cart full of their meager belongings across the wasteland. They encounter gruesome scenes of cannibalism that shake the boy's faith. He sometimes goes silent, but the father coaxes him back, reminding him that they are the good guys, that they "carry the fire."

As in Alfonso Cuaron's film "Children of Men," the story is of a dystopian future. Like those in the film chasing the last fertile woman on earth, gangs of men and women have banded together to prey on the remaining survivors.

To avoid becoming food the father and son sleep in the forest, under bridges, and in abandoned houses. They carry a pistol with two bullets left in the chamber, one for each of them lest they are caught.

Despite the bleak undertones they hold out hope that when they get to the coast there will be good people there. On their way they must be vigilant and always watch behind them.

Huddled and black-cloaked men and women shuffle down the road. They are surrounded on all sides by white and gray trees. Gray-white hills roll under the path and trees. It is dark, stark and cold.

If it seems as though this review is heavy on the coloring of McCarthy's landscape, that is because the sense of place is remarkably well-crafted and artfully performed. He weaves the feeling of this ravaged world into the characters without long, descriptive exposition.

Rather, he writes in clean, stripped-down prose, knowing that the most effective writing is simple writing. What matters most is how fully-realized the novel is and "The Road" is rich in detail and character.

From the onset of the novel the world smolders and smokes. You can smell the oil and wood burning. You see it through the eyes of the son and hear it in the warnings from the father.

The love the father has for his son peers dimly out into all this darkness. The boy, who might be around 8 years old, starves sometimes, growing so thin his skin becomes translucent.

Even in the grip of their desperation the father continues to instruct him, as well as protect him from the horrors they see on the road.

In the beginning of the book he reminds him that you forget the things you want to remember and cannot forget the things you wish you could. They encounter a lot they wish they could forget.

But somehow, and this is the great feat of the novel, McCarthy leaves the reader hopeful. There is not a clean resolution -- a story like this would be cheapened by one -- but in the end there is a little good in the vast sea of evil.