Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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 Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 11:35 pm Post subject: Forgotten Korean prince gets royal treatment |
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/19/news/profile.php
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CHONJU, South Korea For a man who once ran a liquor store in Southern California and lived in a used car during a bout of homelessness three years ago, Yi Seok had a remarkably full day of official duties before him.
Lunch with the mayor. Afternoon art exhibition with politicians. Evening banquet. Opening ceremony of the annual Chonju film festival. Sleep. Breakfast with the minister of culture.
A fitting schedule, surely, for Yi, 65, a descendant of the Chosun Dynasty, which was born here and ruled the Korean Peninsula from 1392 to 1910, before the Japanese established colonial rule. Due recognition, indeed, for the last prince still living on Korean soil, the last pretender to an abolished throne.
Yet it had taken a bitterly long time, nearly a lifetime, for that respect to come. The peninsula's tumultuous past century had robbed Yi and other Korean royals of their titles, expelled them from their palaces and sent many abroad.
Among them, Yi has led perhaps the most checkered life, from his birth and fall as a royal prince; his rise as the Singing Prince on U.S. military bases; his comeback as an illegal alien in the United States; and his fall as a failed monk and homeless man.
The most recent act, one of redemption, began in October 2004 when the city of Chonju built him a house and made him its unofficial symbol.
"I feel as if I've come home to mother," said Yi. Yi saw a group of schoolgirls, basked in their squeals and posed for photos with them. A woman in a car bowed to him.
By the time Yi was born in 1941, the royal family had long been stripped of its authority under Japanese rule. Yi was the grandson of Emperor Gojong and the nephew of his successor, Emperor Sunjong, Korea's last monarch. He grew up in Sadong Palace in Seoul, where court ladies waited on him. "At school, I wasn't allowed to exercise, so the principal had to run for me," he said.
With the division of the peninsula in 1948, South Korea's first government abolished the royalty and stripped it of its assets. Many Koreans believe not only that the Chosun Dynasty's misrule led to Japanese colonialism, but that many royals collaborated with the occupiers.
After majoring in Spanish in college, Yi earned a living by singing. He became known as the Singing Prince, performing such songs as "Tonight" from "West Side Story" on U.S. military bases. He went to South Vietnam to entertain South Korean troops and suffered a shoulder injury, he said, when his convoy was attacked. Back home, his singing career reached its peak in 1967 with "Nest of Doves," a song about domestic bliss: "If you're as intimate as doves, then build the kind of home where you'll be entwined in love."
Known to this day by every South Korean, the song became a staple at weddings. Yi boasts that he has performed at 7,000 of them, though his success displeased his family. "A prince has become a clown," an aunt told Yi, who then gave up performing.
Though impoverished, the former royals had been allowed to stay in their palaces. But after Major General Chun Doo Hwan seized power in a military coup in 1979, they were expelled and scattered here and there, mostly in the United States.
In Los Angeles, Yi Seok lived the ups and downs of an immigrant with few marketable skills. He worked as a gardener. He cleaned pools in Beverly Hills. In a marriage of convenience, he paid $15,000, he said, to a Korean-American woman for a Las Vegas wedding and a green card.
Together, they ran Eddy's Liquor Store, where Yi greeted customers with, "Gimme five, man!"
An aunt's funeral brought him back to South Korea in 1989, and he decided to stay, becoming the last male heir of the Chosun Dynasty in Korea. (His son, from one of his three marriages, lives in the United States.)
In Seoul, after guards barred him from re-entering his old palace, he climbed over the wall and squatted inside for several days. "My suit got damp from the humidity and I thought I'd get sick, so eventually I left," Yi said.
Time passed. He flitted from place to place. A rich friend sometimes gave Yi $10,000 at a time, his cousin said. He lived in a temple for a couple of years with the intention of becoming a monk, but he would go out drinking late and return to find the temple door closed.
"I attempted suicide eight times," he recalled. "I was getting old. Nobody recognized me. They wouldn't give me a home in the palace."
He was going through a particularly bad stretch in 2003, living mostly in bathhouses and contemplating suicide again, when a reporter tracked him down. The reporter, Lee Beom Jin of The Weekly Chosun, wrote an article in May with the title: "Last Prince Yi Seok Sojourning in Chimchil-Bang," or bathhouse. Humiliated, Yi began sleeping instead in his battered car.
The article, though, led to his comeback. Chonju, which had been trying to build up its tourism industry and wanted to highlight its ties to the Chosun Dynasty, offered him a home in its historic section. The city and supporters in the newly formed Imperial Grandson Association went to work.
A local hotel put him up. A fashion designer gave him a makeover. Kang Kyeong Chang, a dentist, began the process of implanting 10 new teeth.
Yi now gives lectures on the royal family at various universities. The night before, after a lecture in Seoul, he had driven his car five hours to return here, at 5 a.m., to his three-room house.
With only a few hours' sleep, by the time the opening ceremony for the seventh annual Chonju film festival began at 7 p.m., Yi was tired. Perhaps because of fatigue, perhaps because he did not attract squeals from the young film fans on either side of the red carpet, he sat quietly in his chair.
After the ceremony, Yi got into the front passenger seat of a black sedan driven by one of his supporters, Jang Young Il.
As he began driving, Jang said he had been unable to park the car in the basement. A guard had told him basement parking was "only for stars."
"I told him: 'Yi Seok is a star. He sang "Nest of Doves,"'" Jang told Yi.
Yi Seok sat silently. "It's O.K.," he said finally, speaking softly into his mouth mask. "That was a long time ago." |
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