Bongeunsa Temple in Seoul (South Korea)

From my diary (August 2014)

In mid-August, I set out for the Far East. I’ve decided to take another short holiday to go and see my friend and former colleague Jisun and have a peek of Seoul, the capital that, over a couple of dozen years, has gone from being a developing country to one of the strongest economies in Asia. And this despite an unfortunate history of Japanese invasions and colonialism and of a civil war with the classic intervention of the United States, a country that always seems to be ready to go to war in the name of defending ‘freedom’ (particularly economic freedom, the more so if it can personally benefit from it).

Curious about Korea for a long time, I both wanted to know more about it and yet, at the same time, did not feel quite drawn towards it, as I perceived it in rather a negative light on account of the impressions left on me by TV programmes, articles, and stories told by both Koreans and outside observers. A hyper-technological and consumerist society of lonely and frustrated people; a population that was rapidly abandoning many of the things that bound it to its past, among them its traditional religion, Buddhism, renounced by many a Korean to embrace the one arrived from the West (and more precisely from the United States), Christianity; a supposedly hedonistic people, a large percentage of whose young and not-so-young members submit to plastic surgery to become ‘more alluring’, i.e., to look more Western.

But the salutary side to travel, we know, is that on balance it helps one overcome one’s prejudices. Every country in the world has its strengths, often best grasped through direct experience. And so it is with South Korea: I do encounter the consumerist and Westernised country alright, but one humanised by its accommodating citizenry, a nation rich in history and traditions.

My airplane leaves at nine in the morning, and a little over six hours later I land at Incheon International Airport, where Jisun is waiting for me...

Bongeunsa Temple

Inside the main building

The main altar in Bongeunsa (from left to right: Medicine Buddha, Sakyamuni Buddha, Amitabha Buddha)

28 metre-high statue of Maitreya Buddha