Korea Dispatch

I humiliated a little kid recently, mistook his innocent curiosity for veiled racism and threw it back at him in spades.

It was a warm fall afternoon, the mountainside resplendent in autumn reds and yellows. My family and I had just come down from the peak when the boy pointed in my direction and said something to his mom that began with the word “foreigner.” I pointed back, aping his goofy grin as I blurted out, “look, a Korean.” His smile vanished, replaced by a pained look of confusion.

We had spent the afternoon climbing Mt. Dobong in eastern Seoul. The trail was one of several that branched off at the entrance to the park, each one winding up to the craggy peaks that dominate the skies above. It was a Sunday, when Korea’s mountains are swarmed by armies bedecked in the latest outdoor fashions; a riot of color and sound, the clug-clug of milky rice liquor as it gurgles out of plastic green bottles to quench parched throats and soothe tired muscles.

As the trail gained in elevation it grew more precarious. Large boulders appeared, their rough-hewn faces daring us to continue upwards. My four-year-old decided to meet the challenge, an instant rock climbing expert who was gonna throw a tantrum if and when his overprotective dad tried to help out… which I did, often.

He screamed and yelled as I reached out to guide him while peering over the edges to the valley below that seemed to fall away with each carefree step my son took. My face a knot of fear and frustration, I yelled out in English that it was too dangerous, that we had to go back down, which brought wild howls of protest from my son.

And as we climbed I could see the faces of other hikers, heard their hushed whispers of disapproval. “How could this awful foreigner of a father be driving his kid up the side of a mountain when the boy was so obviously terrified?”

It was in fact the total opposite… my son was driving his terrified father up the proverbial wall.

And so it went until we reached the peak, at which point my son asked to be carried down. He was “too tired,” he said. We chose an easier trail and two-and-a-half hours later, a dull throb in my shoulders where my son sat perched triumphantly, we arrived at the park entrance. And that’s when I snapped at the boy nearby. My wife shot me a vicious glare. “Why do you always have to be so political?”