By the way, my buddy Shawn Morrissey held his modern-korean-style wedding two weeks ago today, outdoors at the Namsan Freedom Center, and some of his many friends are known to be readers of this blog, so you may want to see the page i put up of photos of that event with script of my speech. The strange thing about this day was that they asked me to be Jurye for this — certainly my first time and probably a bit rare for a white dude, quite a surprise to be asked because i’m not all that old and remain a relatively unaccomplished slacker… But it was an honor to do this for them. And a challenge to do it right, it turned out. Has anyone else here performed in this role…?
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13 Comments
The speech was good and evidently drawn from a deep well.
Question for debate on the post:
Which is greater?
To love your wife OR to love being a husband?
(Ok I will be an equal opportunity employer)
To love your husband OR to love being a wife?
This question gets back to some of the points raised in the speech (which is why it was good).
To love being a husband/wife is to love yourself. To love your wife/husband is to love another. Most religions teach that loving others is greater than loving oneself, but I myself would not rank one above the other.
I had the pleasure (and pressure) of serving as a Jurye only once. Former student of mine (Korean) married a Japanese girl in Seoul. I spoke primarily in Korean, with some Japanese sprinkled in as well (first time I’d ever spoke Japanese).
I was the only whitey in attendance. Quite the multi-cultural affair.
I would not have traded the experience for anything, but I must admit, it was a little nerve-wracking. Looking out on a room half-filled with friends and family from Japan, and the other half solidly Korean, and I’m just up there pretending like I know what I’m doing.
Anyway, good work, Mr. K!
Thanks for posting that!
P.S. As a Korean architecture nerd, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the Namsan Freedom Center was designed by Kim Swoo Geun.
Yes, true — it’s one of the modernist architecture landmarks of Seoul — and coincidentally, a building that i actually worked in (as special assistant to the President, supposedly) for some 18 months.
> Anyway, good work, Mr. K!
It was i, Mr. M, who wrote that post…
On “Greater” Loves, re: iwshim & Sonagi:
Surely it’s well-established that loving yourself (in an honest way, not New-Age ’self-esteem’) is a necessary foundation for loving anyone else, including spouses, in an authentic, healthy and effective way. I have fully believed that ever since i was a teenager.
It’s certainly possible to love your spouse without loving *being* a spouse; i do believe i was in that very situation some two decades ago, and the results were not good. It’s probably equally possible to love being a spouse without loving the spouse that you have. Poor results seem to also be predictable there.
I think that many people start out deeply in love with the person that they marry, but later on the majority of their love is for “their family” — their children and the situation of being a parent and the spouse.
If you had to choose only one between loving your spouse on loving being a spouse… i don’t know that I could say which one is “better”. I am certain that loving both of them is an excellent place to be in, as i’ve been there for almost seven years now. And being married but not loving either of those would suck pretty bad, tho i’ve never really experienced that…
The Marmot’s Hole is rapidly developing into a place for psychologists and philosophers…
I happen to be quite interested in the topic, although I myself, in spite of my having been married for 7 years (with no children yet), would never have realised these subtle distinctions on my own. They are entirely logical though…
a place for psycho-cases and soju-philosophers is more like it…
I would never have dared to insinuate…:-)
Sanshinseon, you’ve got exactly the right solemn, stony-faced, seonbae—overlooking-his-juniors, look in most of the photos—the only thing you’re missing is the horsehair hat!
They look like a happy couple. I wish them well.
So far, they’re so good
sewing, altho Shawn was treating it all with good Canadian irreverence, encouraged me to make the whole speech a stndup-routine, i did try to maintain a bit of solemn ‘dignity’ — for the sake and ‘face’ of Yu-mi’s parents and relatives, who’re not such globalized folk, would probably feel insulted if i didn’t appear to ‘take my role seriously’… and i do think that marriage is highly meaningful, a huge step to take — hell, it ought to scare you some…
All true. The officiator at our (traditional-style) wedding masterfully didn’t crack a smile once, even though my wife and I inadvertently turned into a comedy routine through our lack of knowledge of practically anything that was going on—not that there had been a rehearsal or anything to prepare us ahead of time.