Tonight I stayed up really late with my friend brilliant friend Heesung talking about the differences between the English and Korean languages, the way that culture shapes language, and the difficulty of translating from one language to another. During the conversation Heesung taught me a couple of phrases in Korean that had no direct translation into English. Two of them, “Een-yun”(인 연) and “Han” (한), I want to tell my blogosphere about, because I was so excited to learn them. Basically, while Heesung talked to me, I frantically scribbled messy notes in green marker all over a blank piece of paper I had brought from my room. I wanted to learn everything well enough to be able to retell it accurately. Unfortunately, as much as I tried, my notes are not as complete as I wish, so my explanation may sound a little vague. However, I will do my best to tell you about what I learned, and I hope that you share some of the enthusiasm that I caught staying up late tonight and having my understanding of the world enriched through new words.
(인 연)“Een yun” is a word of Chinese etymology, where the two syllables “een” and “yun” mean a direct force or power that leads to a certain result, and an indirect force or power the leads to a certain result. Een-yun is a concept word that is based off this principle that some people have invisible strings tying them together. If you have this invisible string (인 연 een yun) tying you to another person, it means that you will meet them again. The term could be translated into English as “fate” or “destiny,” but the meaning in Korea is more nuanced than those terms. To help me understand the phrase, Heesung gave me some examples of ways that it could be used in Korean speech.
“We've tied een yun”-- A person would say this when leaving a person that they believed they were meant to meet again.
“We've cut een yun”—A person would say this to someone they believe they will never see again.
“Our een yun was tied before our lives began”--this one gave me a thrill of romance to learn, because it's the idea that two people were destined before time to meet one another.
Heesung also told me about a Korean novel Man Nam (만남, means The Meeting), about two people who keep meeting under crazy, bizarre circumstances. The protagonists of the novel keep meeting even when it seems impossible that they should ever meet again. Anyway, the novelist described them as having “five hundred years of een yun,” an een-yun powerful enough to keep drawing them together even when it seems impossible under normal circumstances. When Heesung tied the meaning of the word to this epic story, I was so moved and excited I shook in my seat. I laughed happily. I said out loud, “five hundred years of een yun,” and repeated it softly, “five hundred years of een yun.”
The other word that Heesung taught me about was “han” (한). Han is such a complicated word to understand that Heesung told me about it first by telling us the story of a move called Sopyonje (서 편제), and a style of singing called pansori (판 소 리). Pansori singing is a kind of singing where a female singer sings a story out loud. Pansori songs usually last several hours and take a lot of training to be able to sing. They are very long, and the singer has to memorize the whole thing. She also has to sing with the highest part of her voice. Heesung said Pansori singers described the say they sing as, “choking the vocal chords,” or even, “bleeding inside your throat.” The painful imagery of what it takes to be a Pansori singer is perhaps indicative of the intuitive grasp on sorrow that a pansori singer needs to have-- to sing pansori, you must have han.
The movie Sopyonje tells the story of an orphan girl who is raised by a pansori master. The master's one desire for her is that she can become a great pansori singer, but she can't learn because when she sings her voice lacks han. The pansori master takes the girl to a remote village and feeds her poisoned food that causes her to become blind, and then abandons her. The girl spends years and years wandering from village to village trying to find the master who is like a father to her, and the only way she can know to find him is to sing pansori. One day, when she is a grown woman, she is taken before a town magistrate and asked to sing for him, because she sings the most beautiful pansori ever heard. The magistrate is actually the very same master who poisoned her years before, but after she sings, he does not reveal his identity because to do so would take away the girl's han and she would not be able to sing pansori anymore. Heesung said if you closed your eyes and imagined what life was like for that girl, the emotions of abandonment and betrayal, sorrow and ultimate longing, then you would understand what han is.
If the idea of han you get from the story of Sopyonje is confusing, the dictionary definition is more so. Han is such a nuanced idea that the dictionary that Heesung used to tell it to me had at least four different ways of describing han. “Han is a grudge, han is sadness, han is the feeling an innocent person has when blamed for something they didn't do, han is the feeling of something hard located in your heart, han is wanting something badly and never getting it.”
I mentioned earlier that pansori singers described singing with han as “bleeding in your throat.” Koreans use many visceral descriptions of han that link the metaphysical concept of han into the physical reaction of the body. “Han is deeply absorbed into our bones,” and “Han is like an embrace to the heart,” are two such descriptions. Other descriptions are even more metaphorical, “Like a room that gets so hot and humid that water droplets appear on the walls, so han forms in the walls of the heart;” “Like frost that grows on a window pane, so han forms in your heart.”
The wonderful thing about han though, is that it's impermament. If one achievess the thing they long for, one's han is resolved. Heesung told me a Korean might say, “I've fulfilled my wish, so even if I die today, I have no han.”
Ever since I've had this talk with Heesung, the words and their meanings have been rolling through my head. I think.... I think that Korea and I have een yun. That when I say good-bye it won't be forever. I think that because even at the thought of leaving, I feel a pang in my heart, a slow sadness that grows heavier each moment. In short, once I go back to America, I think I'll have a han in my heart that will grow and grow until the day when I can come back. So maybe, when I leave I won't say good-bye. I'll say the last thing that Heesung said to me when he left, “See you again.”
Renee - I enjoyed this, as I, too, am a fan of words. I have actually heard the term "Han" before, oddly enough, in a West Wing episode by the same title.
ReplyDeleteIn it, a famous pianist from North Korea is allowed to visit the states to perform for the president. Unexpectedly, when he has a chance, he passes the president a note that he wishes to defect. Meanwhile, the US is in the middle of important negotiations with North Korea and they don't want to affect the outcome by letting the poor pianist defect. Instead of telling him he can't, though, the president explains the situation to him and says "freedom is the ability to have a choice", meaning, that he can choose to defect knowing the consequences, or he can choose not to for the greater good. After that the pianist says "do you know the Korean concept of Han? It is this." And he plays an overwhelmingly beautiful and sorrowful melody on the piano. After his big concert, he knows that if he publicly states that he wants to defect, the US will have no choice but to accept him, but that that will ruin the ongoing peace negotiations. He chooses to continue to experience han, and does not express his wish to defect. In a heart-breaking twist, at the very end, after he has already gone back home, you find out that the negotiations fall apart anyway.