Gwangju International Center

An old friend of GIC, Allen Gray

Interviewed by  Nahia Antoranz

-Can you introduce yourself?

My name is Allen Gray, I´m 70 years old and I came to Korea because I have always had trouble with a lot of the norms of western civilization and I have always been more in touch with the eastern holistic unity of things, which eastern civilization is better at, than western civilization, so that was my major motivation and I also like to travel in foreign cultures anywhere I can. When you come from New Zealand, a little island in the middle of nowhere, we don’t get much interaction between different cultures and that’s something I always wanted to do.

-When did you come to Korea for the first time? What brought you here in Gwangju at that time?

Korea, I’m rationalizing after the point here a little bit, but the reasons for Korea was, one, I have been practising Buddhism in my day again for reasons that are more part of the eastern civilization and eastern way of thinking.

In the western part of me, I like to categorize things, in the east everything is holistically integrated, so it was that, plus the flag has the downwest symbol in it.

And also Korea has a strong chamman background, probably from their ancestors day, but this chamman culture does see the whole everything as ben sacred including the rocks, and the soil, the trees, the mountains, and I think that we live in the very edge of it turning towards another ecological disaster because western civilization sees itself as more important than physical environments. And so I came here to be in a Buddhist culture, not so buddhist any longer, but still buddhism exist in the values of the people and to get away from the wisdom of scientific protestants way of thinking.

-How did you know GIC at first?

I had a job in a hagwon and a couple of the other teachers there introduced me, since they were taking korean language classes, and that's when I met Singsing, that she just had started herself,  and I got to know her very well a I was involved with the GIC deeply, I was here for 9 or 10 years in total, so i got to know the GIC very well. I used to join the GIC Tour for trips around the province, and i got to know quite good writers, so i got involved in the Gwangju News, and for a short time I was the editor of the magazine, but it was too stressful for me (laughs). They worked very professionally, when I came here the Gwangju News magazine was two sheets of paper, printed in a copy machine, folded over and stapled together. Now, I am very pleased to say that think I made a significant quantum leap for myself, but nowhere near the quality that exists now.

-I heard that you have been helping GIC as a proofreader even after you left Korea. That’s great that you still keep in touch with GIC even though the times goes by.

I am still involved with the GIC, I used to write articles and proofread, and occasionally i get something over the internet to proofread, not so much for the magazine but for some translations that has been done by the GIC. So that's how I keep in touch with the GIC directly, but Singsing and Minsu are old friends of mine, independently of the GIC and I keep in touch with them.

-Can you share good things of Gwangju? What attracts you to come to Korea again? Special memories you had in Gwangju? or GIC? or in Korea?

I like to visit Gwangju, because I like the culture of the people, the ambiance of the town and its beautiful forest. In New Zealand we don’t get to see deciduous the forests. We only have evergreen trees, we do have deciduous trees planted but there is no natural forest.

As for the GIC my most special memory is the phenomenal amount of work that they do on behalf of the foreign people, the sacrifices they make, because Dr. Shin makes huge sacrifices running the center and seeing it grow and this is my first time since GIC moved to this new building, and it has grown enormously, and has become very well known among the community. When I first arrived in Gwangju, everything was in Korean, there was no signs in English at all  and almost none of the population knew any english here, which is, sadly, the language of the world. If you want my opinion it should be Spanish, a lot more straightforward and easier to understand than English. But unfortunately, the bullyboys of the planet, being English speakers from the British Empire to the American Empire led English to where it is.

I would like to give you the best story of me being in Korea, it has to do with the forests on the hills. My background is environmentalist and landscape designer so I’m motivated towards this sort of thing. But in the 1960, all those hills where the forests are on, weren’t here they were burned, all the trees have been just chopped down for fire, and the japanese colonists took a lot of them and the korean war destroyed a lot of them… so what they did, starting early 1960’s, was grow millions and millions of trees native to the area and people of the villages was their job to take care of the trees and plant them all over the hills and I did that 10 or 15 years and thats why Im staying here now, I think that's one of the best things you can say about anybody, anywhere.

And compared to New Zealand, where we only have 4 million people but we chopped all our forests and hills and put sheep running all over them. And with the erosion, it has been washed away and now there is no beauty there.

Affinity with all the nature