Fu Shou’er’s Spring
In the winter of 1979, Park Chung-hee died. South Korea later called the brief period of political loosening that followed the “Seoul Spring.” The name is romantic, but history itself was not so romantic. That so-called spring was merely a brief vacuum created when the old order suddenly stopped functioning while the new order had not yet found its footing. It is easy for people to develop illusions in a vacuum, believing that since the door had opened once, it probably would not close again.
I borrow this name not to suggest that Fu Shou’er resembles anyone, much less to f