KOREA FOUNDATION

I was waiting for the No. 800 bus at the stop in front of my office to go to Seoul for a business trip when I heard a couple of tourists from Seoul say something along the lines of “As this is the countryside, buses don’t seem to come often.” As a resident of Seogwipo, I felt that this was an odd statement and blurted out: “This is not the countryside but a garden city. In Seoul, people are trees; in Seogwipo, trees are people.” Later, I wondered why those words had come to me. While taking care of business in Seoul, I kept summoning the words that I had spoken to the tourists to my mind. Each time, I closely looked around wherever I was and found that there were many trees in Seoul, too.

I lived in Seoul for about 30 years before moving to Seogwipo, but I never realized that it’d had that many trees. This realization came only after I moved to Seogwipo. In Seogwipo, I could find only a few trees I had seen on the mainland. For example, along the streets of Seoul I saw such trees as ginkgo, sycamore, and cherry trees, plus the redwood trees that line the road in Yangjae-dong. Here in Seogwipo, I see Kurogane holly, woodland elaeocarpus, D. macropodum, palm trees, and cherry trees. Except for the cherry trees, the trees in Seoul and Seogwipo differ vastly.

We seem to fail to notice the uniqueness of a place if we live there for a long time, only recognizing it after moving to somewhere new. Likewise, I may have been oblivious to the importance of my family and colleagues. Settling down in unfamiliar surroundings seemed to offer an opportunity to, rather than revel in novelty, look back upon how indifferent I was to those around me. Our ancestors who lived on this island in forced exile or for various other reasons may have had similar thoughts. As I realize that others’ ways of living and thinking may not be very different from the way I live and think, my loneliness disappears. Watching the trees, I look at myself anew.

Written by Lee Sang-hoon, Head of ICT Management Department

JejuSeogwipoTreestourists