Ajuma Dance Party

Okhee, explaining Easter: "It is when Jesus died on the cross and was re...?"
Yangmok 2nd Grade Student: "Recycled?"

In Korea, there are three types of people. There are men. There are women. And there are ajumas. Technically, an ajuma is any married woman. To me, though, an ajuma is the short, permed hair, gigantic visor-wearing, 4 foot tall powerhouse of a woman.

Aside from farming or street vending, most of these older ajumas are retired or housewives, so during the day they can be found scattered about the sidewalks - hanging out with grandchildren, doing some serious shopping, or sitting cross-legged on a table drinking 'makoli', rice wine, and playing Go-stop, a traditional card game involving gambling and vigorously throwing cards down on the table. When they walk, they don't walk with the weathered hunch of Western elders. Instead, they walk bow-legged with their backs thrust forward and their faces jutting upwards to look at the world that is now theirs to do with as they please.

With a combination of societal preference for age and a lingering sexism, young women are often reduced to a submissive role in society. A wife is still referred to as an 안애 ('anae'), or 'inside person' because she is traditionally restricted to staying in the home. Then one day, she cuts off her long hair and buys some MC Hammeresque pants and she is free. In society, elders can do whatever they want, and no one will stop them. In fact, it is so rude to condemn the actions of an elder that it is said that a few decades ago Korean airplanes had a higher rate of crashing because it was more honorable for a co-pilot to allow the plane to go down than to point out the higher ranking, elder captain's error. Ajumas tend to take this new found power and run with it. Some use it for good, others for evil.

A kind ajuma is like a mother to all of society. I have had ajumas passing on the sidewalk pause to call me beautiful and stroke my arm, laughing. They have fixed my skirt when my underwear was peeping over the top, and in the winter bundled me up, zipping my coat and securing my hood. The not-so-kind are like society's mothers-in-law. The stereotype of the evil mother-in-law is the same in Korea as in the U.S., except magnified by about ten times. After slaving away to please their own mothers-in-law, ajumas get their payback, asking their daughters-in-law to prepare feasts or make long visits at short notice, and most importantly, asking them to bend over backwards for their precious sons. But to a much smaller extent this abuse of power can carry over into the public. This type of ajuma sharply elbows through a crowded sidewalk, shamelessly cuts to the front of a long line, and throws her purse down on the subway seat you were heading towards. One particular ajuma sold fruit on a sidewalk corner that I passed nearly every day, and never failed to angrily yell at me to buy her watermelons as I walked by. Recently, a perhaps senile ajuma, although senility is scarcely recognized in Korea's elderly, forcefully grabbed me by the wrist and dragged behind me down the sidewalk rambling in Korean that I needed to buy food from her as I tried to wrangle my arm free.

Older men, called ajoshis, are also above social norms, although they don't wield their privilege quite so unabashedly as their female counterparts. For example, a busfull of Koreans, who like their transportation quiet, would turn around and glare at a couple of chatty youngsters sitting in the back. In the same bus, a loud and drunken ajoshi would be politely ignored. These men may pass the day hiking in the mountains or playing Mah Jong, and they seem to evade the 'creepy old man' stigma that gets tacked onto Western men for hitting on young ladies. The change from a young man to an ajoshi is not nearly so drastic as the metamorphosis to ajuma, and usually men pick up their ajoshi mannerisms, like ritualistically hawking wads of phlegm onto the sidewalk, at a young age. The main difference may be that an ajoshi has finally learned that women, despite the vernacular of oppression and sexism, effectively rule the household... and perhaps the world.

On a more serious note, what differentiates the social positions of the aged in Korea from Western society is not really power, but respect. In the West, when grandma starts putting the eggs in the dishwasher, we stick her in an assisted living home, or when grandpa makes some off the wall, politically incorrect comment about society these days, he is just a senile old man. Koreans find this appalling and even barbaric. When Korean grandparents can no longer care for themselves, they are rewarded their own bedroom in their son's home, and their opinions trump everyone else's. In fact, they are honored long after they are dead with consistent memorial services and religious ceremonies. Perhaps a dose of this reverence for age could take the edge off of Westerners' fear of growing old and dying.

Last fall, I was at a Lantern Festival in the city of Jinju. Cloth lanterns as big as grizzly bears bobbed in the river, a lantern dragon breathed actual fire on the riverbank, and an actual-size lantern temple glowed bright red and turquoise. What I will remember most about that night, though, is when we stumbled upon a stage of performing ajumas. They were wearing brilliantly gaudy silver-sequined dresses, waving their arms and shaking their hips to a catchy old Korean trot. In Korea, old age is not over the hill. Old age is the time to shine.