{"id":101,"date":"2013-06-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yule-tide.generalsemiotics.net\/index.php\/2013\/06\/23\/post-94-a-peace-corps-volunteer-in-korea-circa-1970\/"},"modified":"2013-06-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-23T00:00:00","slug":"post-94-a-peace-corps-volunteer-in-korea-circa-1970","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/23\/post-94-a-peace-corps-volunteer-in-korea-circa-1970\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-94: A Peace Corps Volunteer in Korea, Circa 1970"},"content":{"rendered":"
The great Korea-focused blogger “Gusts of Popular Feeling<\/strong><\/a>” (who is from Canada, and I think is a professor in Seoul) has just posted<\/a> a link to a number of digitized books about Korea from the 1970s and prior. <\/p>\n

<\/span>One of them is an informational booklet about the 17th group of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in Korea from around 1971. Here is a link to a PDF<\/a> of the booklet. It consists of a short introduction, a lot of pictures, and then a profile of each volunteer in this 17th group of Peace Corps volunteers to Korea.<\/p>\n

One of the pictures jumped out at me:<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Picture\"<\/a> <\/p>\n
Peace Corps Volunteer in Korea, circa 1970 (from page 8 here<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nHe is imitating the typical Korean (East-Asian) picture-taking pose.<\/em> (It is common for Koreans today to put up two fingers like that in photos, often near their eyes.) That was my first thought. Actually, he is almost certainly making a symbol that has long since become an anachronism in the USA, the “peace sign”. It took me a few moments to realize that. When I first saw it, I quickly speculated about whether Koreans already doing this in the early 1970s and whether he was imitating them. I was surprised, because I imagined the Koreans’ “showing two fingers for a photo” habit started much later (though I have nothing to base that on, actually). No, it’s just a run-of-the-mill peace sign.<\/p>\n

This man may be Cris Groenendaal, judging by page 70 of the booklet, which I will reproduce here:<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Picture\"<\/a> <\/p>\n
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nTranslation:<\/strong>
<\/span>Cris Groenendaal (from Erie, Pennsylvania) graduated from Allegheny College, majoring in English Literature, it says. It lists the countries he had visited before Korea: the UK, France (spelled \ubd88\ub780\uc11c here, which I had to look up — an awkward\/old spelling), Germany, Greece, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Austria, and Italy (spelled \uc774\ud0dc\ub9ac here, which copies the English pronunciation — today Koreans call it “Italia”, not “Italy”). It says he could speak German and French, he had studied at Exeter University, and he had worked in a bank. His hobbies are listed as tennis (written as “\uc815\uad6c”, an obsolete word I had to look up; Koreans today use the English word “tennis” [\ud14c\ub2c8\uc2a4, te-ni-suh<\/em>)]). ping pong, swimming, singing, and either “guitar” or “other” (\uae30\ud0c0 can mean both). <\/p>\n

<\/span>I hope this man, who’d be 65 as of this writing, pardons me for prying into a snapshot of his life 40-some years ago.\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nGusts of Popular Feeling<\/em> also links to a neat little essay<\/a> by Amy Lennard Goehner, a volunteer there in 1974-5.<\/p>\n

<\/span>The Peace Corps was discontinued in South Korea in 1981. Two years later, it stopped in Malaysia.<\/p>\n

Both my parents were Peace Corps volunteers in Malaysia around the time the booklet I link to above was made. The Peace Corps website<\/a> says that 4,067 American volunteers served in Malaysia from 1962-1983. I’ve known two of them since the day I was born. They both speak nothing but highly of their time in Malaysia. What I’ve done in Korea for three (non-consecutive) years is something similar, I like to imagine.\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The great Korea-focused blogger “Gusts of Popular Feeling” (who is from Canada, and I think is a professor in Seoul) has just posted a link to a number of digitized books about Korea from the 1970s and prior. One of them is an informational booklet about the 17th group of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}