Carter finds you can go home again

LAKEVILLE — John Carter, pastor at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury, spent four years (1967-71) in South Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer — and was excited and a little apprehensive when he returned with his wife, Deborah, for a visit last month. “I hadn’t been back for 40 years, nor had I maintained any contacts,” Carter said in an interview after his return.“Part of my self was dormant for 40 years,” he mused. “I was excited and a little nervous.They needn’t have worried, as it turned out. The trip, with other Peace Corps veterans, was well organized and the welcome very warm.“It was daunting,” said Deborah Carter, describing the couple’s mood prior to arrival in Seoul, the capital. “Where would we go, when, how? And with whom?“So this was amazing.”The Korea Foundation sponsored the trip, one of several, with former Peace Corps volunteers revisiting the country. The Peace Corps ended operations in South Korea in 1981.When John Carter was in South Korea, serving as a health worker in a rural village in Cholla Nam-Do (Southern Cholla Province), he learned the language by singing.“In Korea, singing is a national sport,” he said with a grin.Carter and other young Americans even teamed up with local musicians and made a long-playing record of traditional Korean songs. Carter played a couple of cuts. One was in a bluegrassy arrangement; another was a plaintive ballad, very accessible to Western ears, in a minor key and recognizable time signature.Carter had to sing for his supper during the trip, literally — “I was asked to sing at a dinner,” he said.He still has notebooks from 40 years ago, with the lyrics to songs he heard in his travels — which impressed his hosts.The country has changed considerably since 1971, Carter said. The three-hour train ride (in a comfortable, modern train) from Seoul to the provincial capital was indicative of the change.The old dirt roads are paved now, and utilities have been laid in.In his first stay, Carter said he lived with a family in a small home, with five children, assorted livestock and an outdoor arrangement for personal sanitation. “You could talk to the pig while you were in there,” Carter remembered.The county health center where Carter worked is now gone, replaced by a modern facility. When the Carters (plus translator) arrived, there was a banner out front reading, “Welcome John Franklin Carter.”Carter has a brief video clip of the welcome at the health center, with the couple receiving gifts, drinking tea and chatting with his hosts — including one man whom Carter remembered.The man clearly wasn’t in good health, Carter said, but made the trip anyway. “He gave me an envelope with 100,000 yuan — about $100 — and the words ‘Enjoy Your Travels.’”Another Korean man said he had inherited Carter’s bicycle.Any nervousness evaporated when the group started singing.In the village — one of 26 within the township — the mayor also remembered Carter bicycling around.And one woman told him that the local elementary school had gone from 300 students in the late 1960s to just 40 — the result of the increasing urbanization of South Korea.Carter said during his Peace Corps days the population of Seoul grew rapidly, from 1.5 million to 4 million. Today the city has more than 10 million residents.Other changes in the village included not just the obvious modernization but also changes in agricultural practice, with greenhouses for specialized cash crops where rice paddies once were.Carter said that the area is still rural, and still not affluent.Other changes: a once-common remark, the Korean equivalent of “Oh, my aching back,” has been renedered obsolete by the mechanization of agriculture.Carter said the diversification of crops is probably a net benefit.But families are much smaller — one child, as opposed to five — and Carter wonders if that’s an improvement. “What happens to sibling relationships?”On the other hand, opportunities for women are far more numerous than 40 years ago.And these women are waiting longer to get married. Deborah Carter said one woman told her, “We’re pickier now.”All in all, Carter said the people’s affectionate character hadn’t changed. “What I had embraced was still there.”Carter also tracked down a man named Lee Jong-Ho, who was his “uncle” — an honorific for the head of the household and his host during his stay.“He’s 83 now,” Carter said. The group adjourned across the street to have a drink and, of course, sing. (Carter has a video clip of this as well.)Deborah Carter described the trip as “kind of a love feast.”“People were appreciative of the efforts of the Peace Corps.”“We did accomplish something, “said John Carter. “But South Korea is still trying to recover and grow.”