REVIEW: Korean Quarterly

"Love of Convenience"
Seasons in the Kingdom

In 1973, the year of Seasons in the Kingdom, U.S. forces had mostly left Ascom City to the Korean military. The lone U.S. units were the 249th Military Detachment in the Ascom City jail. There were the remnants of the once-prospering Koreans who fulfilled the GIs curiosity, boredom, and loneliness with liquor, food, and girls. The few nightclubs and the back alley sex trade should have died but the remaining U.S. military kept the villages and the sex-based commerce alive with money and black-market goods.
     Korea was fully entrenched under Chung Hee Park’s iron-fisted rule and his vision to modernize South Korea into a post-industrial nation. At the same time, the U.S. military presence was receding with trained Korean troop replacements on guard at the DMZ and at other strategic posts. Outside Seoul was Ascom City, once a military site for the Japanese occupying forces, now serving as a U.S. military stockade. To this place the main character of the story, correctional specialist Mike Stewart, is sent.
     In the first weeks, Mike keeps to himself, doing his job. The boredom and the easy comradeship with fellow guards, Lucas and Collins led him to local spots for cheap booze and easy women.
     During the time off duty, Mike takes his bag and sketch pad and wanders farther than Cherry Hill and Sin-Chon. He finds there is much more to Koreans than he has experienced from knowing them as the local purveyors of sex and drink. To the Koreans in and around Ascom City, Mike is a new western face among many they see tramping through their quiet villages. They bow politely and show him the respect they have offered thousands of others before him.

     The author describes the stifling nature of his duties ---- the stockade dull and gray, the routine always the same. No wonder when a prisoner went out of control, it gave Mike and the other guards on duty the chance vent the boredom and frustration with heavy blows to the prisoner’s head and body. But even the bouts of violence were not enough to relieve the grinding shifts and the feelings of pointlessness for both the guards and the prisoners. The antidote was a lot of drinking and women in Cherry Hill and Sin-Chon. Some of them, like Mike, took to one girl. First it was Miss Chong, then Songhi. Casual sex gave way to genuine need and affection. It gave Mike a sense of stability, and it gave Songhi hope for a long-term relationship, maybe marriage and America.

     In the military milieu, there was still an undercurrent of tension. A lot of GIs took a reductive and simplistic view of the natives. A lot of Koreans did not like the U.S. military presence in their country. GIs called the Koreans gooks. Koreans took offense and threw insults to GIs and to their Korean girlfriends. “Ttong galbo ---- dirty whore.” For Koreans, social outcasts were less than nothing. Racism and prejudice were abundant in the GI barracks and in the stockade. After an incident with a black prisoner, Collins quips, “Ever notice how black guys are all named after presidents? What's that about?”
     In one of the clubs, Mike sees a half-black, half-Korean dancer, one of the throwaway children. Korean girls with nothing had nowhere else to go. In this insular environment of Ascom City jail and the Sin-Chon nightclubs, there are just symbiotic exchanges, out of need. The locals and GIs make a local economy, based on sex and booze. Songhi is there to make money and help her family. She had several years of college. Knowing more than the other girls, she had hopes that her camp town lifestyle was temporary.
     In the military milieu, if there is war, it is within the hearts of these brave souls in this strange place. How each survives is neither heroic or cowardly; it is simple pragmatic. The alchemy of necessity. Songhi knows this better than Mike.

     The passages with Songhi or Mike mulling, thinking, remembering, planning, or just drifting carry the story’s weight. It’s not just what they do, it is what drives them and what they feel. In their developing relationship, Songhi and Mike are sometimes stifled by emotional straight-jackets to honestly express how they feel. Norris gets into Mike and Songhi’s psyche. He explores their needs and desires, their pride and desperation, anger, the hunger for love and acceptance, the need for something better. Songhi’s pain is real. Mike’s dull, grinding boredom leads him to the easy times of drink, casual sex, and spurts of violence. They are both trying to survive, counting the time in their lives, waiting for something.
    Tim Norris has written a moving novel that weaves real life events and places with a memorably touching love story between a U.S. GI and a local Korean girl. It’s surprising how in-depth Norris gets into the Korean locales, the native traditions and daily routines, the GI lingo, and the Korean pidgin ---- considering he spent years just two years in the same capacity as his lead character. He apparently mines all his personal experiences, describing the Korean life in vivid detail, the seasonal rhythms, the little Korean routines of bathing and cooking, as if he had lived there much longer. He has an eye for detail, and an ear for the speaking pattern of the natives and soldiers. The dialog of the natives and soldiers is colorful, cynical, and caustic. Seasons in the Kingdom is a touching novel. It stays with you long after the read is completed.

Bill Drucker for the Korean Quarterly Fall Edition, 2007
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