Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival in what is now Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, published in The Korea Times April 11, 2008. Korea Times Archive

My first spring in Korea began with a sky that looked wrong.

The daylight had turned a dull yellow, as if someone had drawn a thin veil across the sun. Seoul seemed muted, the distant buildings fading into haze.

“Yellow spring,” someone told me.

At first, I thought it had to do with all the yellow flowers — forsythia — which I saw blooming around my home in Jamsil, as well as Deoksu Palace. But soon enough, I learned it meant the seasonal dust storms that drifted across the peninsula from the deserts of northern China and Mongolia.

These days, everyone seems to know when "hwangsa" or "yellow dust" is coming. There are forecasts and smartphone alerts, advisories and people wearing masks.

Yellow dust, published in The Korea Times April 25, 2006. Korea Times Archive

But in the early 1990s, there were no warnings.

One morning, the sky simply looked different.

Standing there beneath that strange yellow sky, I suddenly thought of a line from T. S. Eliot’s "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:"

Source: Korea Times News