인간의 굴레 - Philip and Sally

My sister, who is six years older than me, started buying monthly women's magazine beginning of her college year. Every month, the magazine came with a thick paperback noble as a complement, of which from a list of top 20 world classic literature. She had kept the nobles on her desk, collecting dust, and it started piling up as months turned a year.  I often went into her room to read the magazines out of curiosity, but reading those thick nobles printed in fine characters made me feeling a bit queasy prompting me just to flip through randomly to see any pictorials might be seen and then close the cover to read authors' name written on the front cover page.  One of the books was written by Somerset Maugham: On Human Bondage.  I read the book recently four decades later, not in Korean, but rather an abridged version published in America with Maugham's introduction on the front section of the noble.  Whenever I see this noble, it not only reminds me of the image of my sister's old wooden desk upon which it had been placed so long, but also the time in which I had lived through in Korea early in 70's - Sally's father Trophe Athelny talking on marriage was reflective of the time.  Like what Trophe told to Philip, my uncle once talked about his view on marriage to me in 70's.  It seems to me that Thrope's thinking on marriage manifested upton his daughter, Sally. My uncle told me, "You should marry someone who has full of amicability and beautiful. That's all you should ask for in the woman."  Sally would have been an ideal type of a woman to be married in early 70's in Korea. As a person who grew up in Korea, I dreamt of meeting someone mature like Sally.  The abridged noble describes Sally as a person who has high level of maturity despite her youth and her caring mind.  Philip was astounded with her fine qualities.  In fact, I met someone similar to Sally back in 70's although she was four years older than I, which was inconceivable even to think about getting married with someone older back then. In fact, when I was dating her, she even said a phrase exactly matches what Sally said, as my eyes were fixed to a couple kissing each other on a corner of street once, "They are busy." As I was reading the book and reading every word that Sally said, this phrase she uttered at the moment popped into my mind reminding of the her.  Nowadays in Korea, the societal norm is such that marrying a woman 10 years older is acceptable; how societal norm changes has changed so quickly making me feel somewhat betrayed.

Marriage in Korea has had twists and turns in Korea over generations. It was O.K. young girl as young as eleven years old to get married. My parents met during the war did not have much monetary help being given to them to start their married life, and yet they managed to spend so many years together.  Since their time, marriage has been accruing expenses;  by the time when I get married, people spent millions of Won without complaints as though they are expected of.  However, rising cost of getting married seems to have hit the ceiling; skyrocketing cost involved in getting married to someone made many people to abandon their marriage which has long been considered important part of living.  Marriage has survived for long in human history because it gives joy of raising family and pleasures of various of sort despite it surely entails difficulties and hardship.  Nowadays, people avoid getting married because they feel too much burdened by all the cost involved. The rise of cost in getting married and maintaining marriage skewed the seesaw up and up making people married life unaffordable; the once important element is losing its air to make marriage to happen: pure love.

I think It is important nowadays for all "would like to be married" Koreans make the seesaw tipped over, making "pure love" become the sole factor to make the marriage happen, ridding all the societal norms and constraints that would make the marriage become tainted and make less materialized. As the way Philip falls in love with Sally, our parents married because of their love and attractions for each other, and so be it he way without age constraints, racial barriers and materialism.  Falling in love and getting married is the purest humanistic endeavor; how much human are you, that's the question.