On Going Abroad by Airplane > IDEAS & IDEALS

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Last summer I went to Kimpo Airport five times, three times to see one of my friends and two of my relatives off, and two times to greet a close relative of mine coming from the United States. Airport is a very interesting place to go. There are so many foreigners coming in and going out, and often I have the illusion that I am not in my own country and that I am a foreigner myself traveling a foreign country.

     Most of the people gathering at the airport look more important than those at the bus terminal or at the railroad station, and they know it. They are usually better dressed, refined in manners, and soft in their speaking. They look better off, better educated, and happy and satisfied with their family, friends, and work. It seems that those who come to the airport, travelers and others alike, are very successful in their career and life.

     Indeed, traveling abroad by airplane is a luxury, although it has become a commonplace nowadays. More people are going abroad by airplane everyday, but still much more can not afford to make it. First of all, buying an airplane ticket is not as simple and cheap as buying a bus token or a train ticket. Furthermore, you have to obtain a passport and a visa before you buy it. There are numerous papers to be filled in, to be prepared for, and to be submitted to the authority concerned. Visa interview is the third degree for those who want to go desperately to the United States with a dubious reason or purpose; dubious, at least, to the eagle eyes of the U.S. embassy officials in Seoul.

     You go through all these gates smoothly or with some hitches or jolts on the way, and finally you wind up with that enviable paper in your hand. Now you are allowed to go out of the country to the world of wonders, to the new world of different people, places, and ways of life. Now you prepare to leave. Along with a brush and paste for your teeth, there is one more thing to be done. You must let it be known, openly or covertly, to your friends and relatives, and even to the public, that you are going abroad. You can use daily newspapers and weekly magazines for this purpose, if you think you are very important person whose silent departure and arrival would surely disappoint so many people.

     These important persons never go abroad for visiting their sons or daughters, nor for doing some sight-seeing, nor for just having some fun. Their purpose of travel is always more glorious and nobler than that. To my great astonishment, they say that they don't have to pay a penny for the travel from their own purse. Without exception, they are invited by equally important persons or organizations abroad, and they are supposed to attend an international conference or an academic seminar, and make a keynote speech or present a paper in English or in French or in German. Wow!

     People going abroad ask you earnestly not to bother to come to the airport to see them off, even if you volunteer to do so. But you are not such a fool as to take their modest request  at its face value, and not to turn up at the airport. You are very quick in reading their inner mind, and arrive at the airport far ahead of the traveler of the day, shake hands with him, pat him on the shoulder, and say something nice for his trip. This is why, I think, the airport is always so crowded with so many people.

     Now there is the announcement from the loud speaker at the airport telling the travelers to board the plane. I realize now and then that I am not a traveler. I realize that I am just one of the so many well-wishers who have come to the airport to see one of their very successful friends off. He shakes hands once again with each of those nice people there including me, pick up each of his lovely children high up in the air with both of his hands, kisses them on both of their cheeks, embraces his elegant and graceful wife, slings his traveler's bag over his shoulder, and finally disappears behind the automatic doors, waving his hand back at us. Now the small drama is over, for the time being, until he comes back.

     I feel sad and sorry momentarily whenever I find myself left behind alone among the lonely crowd. I feel even miserable when I have much difficulty in finding means of transportation for coming back home. The stream-lined huge jumbo jetliner has just taken off the airfield with that formidable sound, and I know he is high up already in the air of Japan. He is now with those gentle and nice people, being served by the beautiful and kind stewardesses, while I am waiting for a bus or a taxi far down here on the ground. He has become a scorner of the ground.

     Dozing at the back-seat of a dirty and bad-smelling taxi run by a grumbling driver on my way back home from the airport, I fell into melancholy musings. How come? Why should my travel stop at the airport all the time? Why is there no invitation for me from abroad? Why can't they go out more quietly? Should there always be such a pomp and circumstance for the airplane travelers? How long should I be satisfied with being an 'airport-traveler' only?

     Like all the luxuries in the world, traveling abroad by airplane has much to do with human vanity. And like a rich lady going to a luxurious party wearing a big diamond necklace, the airplane travelers going abroad need admirers. As long as the price of the airplane ticket remains much more expensive than that of the bus or train, and so long as you can not get a passport as easily and quickly as you can get a picture from the Polaroid camera, and consequently much more people inevitably should get bound to the ground within a country they are born, I think, the noises caused by these travelers abroad by airplane will reverberate long and far, and the job of an airport-traveler will not be over.
          (October 15, 1984)