The Perseverance of the Plum Blossom (매화)
Some mornings in early spring in Korea, you notice something small that changes the whole season. A plum tree in bloom. Winter isn’t really finished yet. The air still carries a bite. The branches are mostly bare, and the hills are still wearing the dull brown of winter. Most of the landscape looks as if it hasn’t quite decided to wake up. And then the plum blossoms appear. Quietly. Pale flowers opening along bare branches. They arrive weeks before the cherry blossoms, before the crowds and the festivals. The plum tree doesn’t wait for perfect weather or a proper beginning to spring. It simply blooms while winter is still lingering in the air. In Korea, the plum blossom has long been a symbol of perseverance. Scholars admired it for centuries because it blooms in the cold, before spring has properly arrived. The Joseon scholar Yi Hwang once wrote of plum blossoms opening while snow still lingered on the ground. There is something quietly hopeful about that. We spend a ...
