Nobody has time in Prague
The linguist, translator, author of various textbooks, organizer and head of the Department of Czech and Slovak Studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in South Korea Kim Incheon is part of the first generation of Korean students of the Czech language. From the mid 1990s he lived and worked in the Czech Republic for eight years. 
The field of South Korean Czech studies is relatively young. You were there at its inception at Hankuk University. How do you recollect those beginnings?
I enrolled in the very first year of Czech studies – that was in 1988 before Communism even ended in Czechoslovakia. They accepted around thirty students. Before that, there hadn’t been anything, our government hadn’t even established diplomatic relations with Czechoslovakia. We knew next to nothing about this Central European country. Our Korean professors – Kim Kju-džin, currently the vice-dean of the university, and Kundera’s translator Kwon Če-il both studied Czech in America during the 1980s.
The Bohemist Gustavsson arrived from Sweden…. We desperately wanted to find out something about this distant culture to no avail. We learned from the book Czech for Beginners, I remember Harkins’ Modern Czech Grammar published in the sixties where verbs were still written with the suffix “ti”. Our professors explained to us that this was an obsolete form but they might have not been aware about other things – and how could they. I remember how we slavishly translated the street Na Příkopech. Nobody had been to Prague before.
Wasn’t the original intention for establishing the Department of Czech and Slovak Studies also to train spies, intelligence experts on Eastern Europe?
I don’t think so. Ultimately, the government that was in power at that time was the last military government; democracy was imminent. Rather, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc was on the horizon – starting with Hungary, which kind of opened up the Iron Curtain.
The government realized that it was necessary to prepare for the prospective establishment of official relations with its hitherto enemy countries, even though it lacked experts. Another, perhaps even more important incentive for the opening of the Department of Czech Studies at Hankuk, were the Seoul Olympics in 1988. It was then that we met Czech people for the first time. They came to visit our department, accompanied by the interpreter and Koreanist Doc. Vladimír Pucek.
How is the contemporary Czech literature faring in South Korea?
There isn’t much stuff coming out. It’s certainly true that everybody knows Kundera, while in Japan Čapek is very popular. Svejk‘s been translated from German and some of Hrabal’s short stories are already in Korean. That’s pretty much it. As for contemporary writers, they are virtually unknown here. I only know a few names such as Topol or Urban. These days I tend to focus on linguistics.
On the other hand, I’ve read 19th century literature extensively with Zeyer being my favourite. I also still have the old edition of Maryša somewhere. The national revival in Korea has some similarities with the Czech one. In spite of all the differences in mentality and culture, we share a similar history. It’s only that Korean national stories usually have a tragic ending, while in Bohemia, writers tended to console the nation. Your culture seems to be lighter, not so dramatic with various influences coalescing to an extent that foreigners might wonder what is the true essence of the Czech national character.
What is the essence of the Czech character in your opinion or Svejkianism, for that matter? How do you understand it?
I could give long lectures about Svejk. Czech jokes are like onions – you peel off the first layer only to stumble upon another – another joke, allusion. There’s always something else behind it that‘s hard to explain. Czechs aren’t able to talk directly, they give guarded hints. I would often hear the expression “to be honest“ from my Prague friends. Nevertheless, when it concerned something that really mattered to them, it was never meant earnestly.
On the other hand, Czechs don’t lie. When they realize that they aren’t able to fulfil something, they don’t give empty promises. Svejk is somebody who tries to come across as dumber than he really is – to an extent that he finds comfort in doing it. At school, he remains seated in the back of the classroom, sneering at those who sit in the front and want to achieve and change something. From a historical perspective, it makes sense – you had to survive somehow and this was a way to defend yourselves.
In Korea, we couldn’t afford Svejkianism. We had to face our enemies armed with weapons, with pitchforks. In that sense, we are more akin to Poles; our history can be compared to the Irish one. People make friends easily in our country, they are very hospitable and get drunk straight away even though they could perhaps kill each other the very next day. We have a saying in Korea: “When the father-in-law buys a field, I could get stomach ache from the envy.“ Even close relatives and friends can begrudge each other.
What do you find interesting about today’s Czech society?
Czech culture was interesting – at least abroad – during the previous regime in how it creatively managed to respond to the powers that be. These days it might seem as if there was suddenly a gap between the past and the future. When I make comparisons with what I experienced fifteen years ago, I get the impression that nowadays nobody has time in Prague.
Everything seems a little more superficial. People are in a hurry barely noticing what you’re telling them. In their thoughts, they are already rushing to meet someone else. Even your oldest friends, with whom you used to go for drinks and chat incessantly, don’t have time to see you anymore. They’re always busy.
Michal Procházka
This interview was first published in czech on the Prague Writers’ Festival website
