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This
Thing Called Cheong What is this thing called "cheong"? How do we overseas Koreans - born and bred in the Land of Morning Calm - ever hope to express it in an English word? In quest of an equivalent in Shakespeare’s language, I am tongue-tied and at a loss as if adrift in the sea even after nearly a half century of pilgrimage in American journalism. In my book, cheong defies translation or Webster’s Dictionary. And chances are that this tribal ethos may soon vanish from the indigenous psyche within our lifetime under the unrelenting onslaught of the cyberspace-driven globalization. Already, I have run into some unsettling signs in encounters with our own American-born children. For the second generation, it appears, cheong is gone with the wind. Progress marches on. No matter. For some metaphorical insight into cheong, I turn to Korean American author K. Connie Kang, who I suspect, must have written a thousand columns for The Korea Times with her uncanny way of evoking the essence of things Korean in English. Speaking of cheong, the California-based writer wrote in the now-defunct Koreatown Weekly some years ago: "For those of us who were born in Korea, trying to live with Cheong is like eating three meals a day without rice." There are no conditions attached to it, she said. No cheong at the first sight. "It’s something that grows on you, bit by bit, so it takes time to build cheong and give it." Her cheong is all inclusive and at the root of Koreanness - like being a member of a big family. "You rejoice, fight, and sometimes stop talking to each other for a while, but the sheer effort of keeping the family together gives you this thing called cheong – ‘love’ Korean-style," the author elaborates. She says it’s a complex emotion encompassing love, closeness, affection, affinity, trust and loyalty. "Love, Korean-style, is like embers in a smoldering fire; only betrayal can end it." I dare say that it has taken thousands of years for Koreans to cultivate and forge this ethnic core emotion under the oppressive forces of both foreign and domestic rulers. It’s baffling, often outrageously so, to outsiders. Even for some natives, it’s a paradoxical riddle. To me, it’s a fragile and exquisite yet enduring legacy from our ancestors through our journey of tears and sorrows. This thread of Koreanness somehow seems to have survived through generations among overseas Koreans outside that rabbit-shaped peninsula. It transcends language and ideology, it seems. It’s not given on a silver tray upon birth. It’s nurtured through a sustained period of rooting and bonding. Without bonding or sharing of our common fate we cannot ever hope to have a claim on this things called Cheong. For a more comprehensive and analytical outlook, we are blessed with the research work on the subject by Dr. Luke Kim, whom many regard as the godfather of Korean American psychiatry. In his overview, Koreans regards cheong (he spells jeong) as "one of the most important ingredients that would make our lives enriching and meaningful." He agrees there is not an equivalent English word that translates the meaning exactly. "However," he says, "Jeong itself embraces all the meanings to such words as feeling, empathy, sympathy, compassion, emotional attachment, trust, pathos, tenderness, affinity, sentiment and even love. "If I were to choose one English word among these, I would choose the word empathy." Kim observes that Chinese, Japanese and Koreans all share the general concept of jeong with a somewhat different emphasis in its concept. "For example," he observes, "Koreans tend to stress the aspect of emotional attachment and bond, while Chinese emphasize the aspect of loyalty and reciprocity. "The Japanese equivalent word - Jyo -tends to emphasize sentimentality." Jyo-ni-moroi means one is weak and vulnerable with sentimentality. Jeong among Koreans denotes a special interpersonal affective bond: a trust and closeness between two individuals. That’s why, Kim believes, Koreans attach great importance to the presence or absence of jeong in their relationships with a person such as mother-child (mo-jeong), two lovers (ae-jeong), or two friends (woo-jeong). "It’s akin to a mutual bond of camaraderie or brotherhood developed between two soldiers who shared life and death experiences in the front line fox hole during war. The jeong tie between the two friends is deep and close, but non-sexual. The only exception is ae-jeong, which is erotic jeong between two lovers or husband and wife." Dr. Kim suspects there is a Buddhistic implication in jeong in that "two people are bonded to each other effectively forever by fate. "Jeong-eul-joon-da" means "I open up my heart to you." "It’s a non-sexual love, a concept of which is difficult to understand for Westerners who tend to view interpersonal relationships in terms of a heterosexual, homosexual or homophobic frame." Jeong, Dr. Kim continues, transcends biological relationships and sex. Kim unveils contrasting images between erotic love and Jeong: "hot, fiery, dynamic, intense, mercurial, pleasurable, unpredictable and powerful vs. quite, gentle, nurturing, giving, connected, attached, steady, loyal, dependable, considerate, devoted and sacrificial (we-hae-joo-da)." Jeong also bridges the gap of emotional isolation and separateness from each other, establishing emotional connectedness which Dr. Kim views as "antithesis of the American notion of privacy: "This is my space. You leave me alone, and I will leave you alone." Jeong, like love, demands loyalty and complete emotional trust, Kim says. "Therefore, when this bond is betrayed, it can be as hateful and destructive as when love is betrayed." Some Americans consider jeong as encroaching upon one’s privacy, Kim observes. "But Koreans feel that connectedness in life is more important and meaningful than the preservation of privacy." Side effects show up in politics in Korea, Kim reports, pointing out that political decisions are often influences by personal loyalty of jeong rather than by individual decisions or issues. Bye and bye, cheong will soon devolve into a museum piece of Korean American history, beckoning only those who wish to remember. ©1996 K.W. Lee (copied from The Korea Times, Friday, June 21, 1996) Click here to go to K.W.'s un-official public webpage.
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