Minnesota is only one of many places I consider home. But it's one that has played one of the most significant roles in my life.
Nothing long to write about. Tired. Airport to airport to airport to airport. Teleportation in loud slow motion. Dinner with great friends Mark & Amy and their sons Charlie and Martin. Tomorrow, I need to begin sorting things out. I will probably be spending some quality time at my storage unit, which is close by to here, and getting my truck running.
The wait for the next flight is longer than expected. So here I sit. I should take this time to work on one of my videos, maybe.
I already feel exhausted, and I've only done the shortest, easiest leg of this 2 stopover airplane journey. I guess I had some busy days the last few days, with a VERY late night having dinner and beer with my friend Curt and two former LinguaForum coworkers, Ryan and Keith, and my friend Peter who was so generous as to let me crash on his extra bed in his apartment in Ilsan the last few days. Yes, I actually drank a few glasses of beer, which is almost unheard of for me. I think I did it as a Korean-style "show of good faith" to my friend Curt — he's one of the few Koreans to whom I've admitted that the fact that I don't drink alcohol isn't really because I have a problem with alcohol per se, but rather because I have a problem with Korean-style drinking culture (i.e. get puking drunk with your coworkers as a way of bonding with irrational management). Anyway, we were talking and and eating 안주 until after 3 am. This is so typical of Korea — and that's on what was a worknight, for all of them.
Yesterday, I made a weird sort of disconsolate "pilgrimage" to the Seoul Museum of Contemporary Art. What do I mean by that? Well… in around April of 1991, I made a trip to this museum, and it was my absolute very first time "on my own" in Korea. I arrived in Korea with the US Army in December of 1990, but because the Gulf War was going on, we were almost constantly on "lockdown" status, and getting leave to go off base was difficult. As a consequence, the first time for me to be able to take a day and go exploring the country as a civilian didn't come until 4 months in. I got a "day pass" from my commander, and rather than use it to go to another post (like Camp Casey or Yongsan), I decided to go exploring on my own.
I'd been studying Hangeul, so I was confident I could decipher any location signs on e.g. trains or buses (Korea in 1991 still didn't have a universal policy of putting Roman-alphabet transliterations on all public signage, the way that they do now — at least not out and about the provinces — so being able to competently navigate public transportation required at least a basic mastery of the sounding out the writing system).
It was a Saturday or Sunday, I don't remember. Around 9 am, I took a taxi from the Camp Edwards gate to Munsan train station, and took a train into Seoul Station. Nowadays, there's a subway line that goes right in front of where Camp Edwards used to be, but back then it was a slightly decrepit suburban commuter line. At Seoul station, I got into the Subway (I think it only had 5 or 6 lines then — now it has 15 or something like that). I had decided based on some guidebook I'd found at the base library, that I was going to try to go to the museum. I was feeling starved for culture.
I enjoyed navigating the subway, and I got out to Seoul Grand Park (대공원역) on the blue line by around noon. I walked up the pathways, past the smallish theme park called Seoulland (well, small back then — it seems much larger now when I saw it yesterday), and found the museum. When I went back yesterday, I was running too late to be able to go in, as it was closing. Back then, I went in and spent a few hours there. I remember I bought a tshirt that didn't fit me very well, but that I was proud of because it had Korean writing on it, which was unheard of for a GI like me to be wearing.
이년동안 한국 이산에서 많이 배웠고 재미있었어요! 오늘 미국에 여행하고 있어요.
Here are some other uncategorized still photos I have uploaded from my computer.
First, here is a picture of an octopus sculpture I saw in the Busan subway.
Next, there is the Busan skyline as seen from the top of Jangsan (which is situated north of Haeundae beach in the northeast part of the city). I’m looking south by southwest, here (roughly toward Taiwan, off across the sea by a thousand kilometers or something like that). You can click on these pictures to see bigger versions.
This is a picture of “Busan Tower” that I ascended while in Busan one evening. The view of the city, all lit up, was pretty spectacular, but I didn’t get any photos. Sorry.
Here is a picture I took of the screen in the express elevator that runs to the top of this tower. When your express elevator is running Microsoft Windows, and Windows crashes (as is its wont to do), does the elevator then crash, too? We were all somewhat alarmed to see the error message suddenly pop up on the screen, two thirds of the way to the top of the tower.
Here is a picture of greenery on Ulleundo that I like.
Here is a picture of red peppers drying in the morning sun on a Dodong, Ulleungdo, side street. A very common sight everywhere in Korea, this time of year. Such a delicious country!
Last: I met a guy and his wife and mother-in-law who were on tour visiting Ulleungdo. They shared some food with me and we chatted in a rewarding mix of his terrible English and my terrible Korean and his mother-in-law’s monologue. I took some pictures of the three of them, using their camera, with the view of Dodong harbor behind them (I hadn’t brought my own camera on that particular hike).
Then he took my picture in the same spot as they’d been standing. I wrote my email down for him, because he said he would email the pictures to me. I thought nothing of it – but the other day, I got several pictures of myself via email. So… here I am, standing on the rock path at the southwest corner of the Dodong harbor entrance (the camera is pointed roughly north).
Yesterday felt a bit unproductive. I wasted two hours trying to figure out if I could reactivate my cellphone. The company ended the service as soon as their records indicated that my work visa had expired. Last time that happened, I had a one month grace period which I'd been counting on to be able to exploit this time so I could have a functioning cellphone for the rest of the time in Korea. I suspect I didn't get the grace period this time because I disappeared off the grid to Japan for 10 days.
Anyway, it started seeming very expensive and complicated to get them to reactivate the phone, so I gave up and just rented a cellphone for this last week, so I'll be able to call people or whatever. It's hard to function in Korean society anymore without a cellphone — adoption is basically 100% as far as I can tell.
I then had to find a different hotel, as the funky place I stayed my first night was fully reserved. I had chosen that place almost solely on the basis of the fact that they offered in-room free wifi according to their website, which is hard to find in anything but top-end hotels. It was OK, kind of a youth-hostel vibe that reminded me a bit of my years at Casa de los Amigos in Mexico City.
I may try to stay with an acquaintance, Peter (not the same Peter I worked with, but an American I met through my friend Basil some months back), in Ilsan — he's made an offer to crash on the extra bed at his apartment. It would be convenient to be based in Ilsan, and the choices of hotels out there are surprisingly limited, especially for Korea: either high-end business hotels or those pseudo-posh "love motels" (a la the Japanese model) where you can easily get a room overnight, but they look at you funny at the front desk when you ask to stay for such a long time, and your neighbors might get noisy. I have seen very few of the traditional Korean yeogwan that can be found almost anywhere in most Korean towns.
I felt very tired yesterday. Perhaps all the traveling, catching up with me. Returning to my comment of some days back: I'm really not that good of a traveler… I just like being in lots of different places.
Staying in various hotels and places, I've been enjoying (?) the glories of having access to Korean cable television, which is something I never had access to in my apartment. 60 odd channels. Here are some random observations.
Why did the minbak at Dodong, Ulleungdo, have a channel with Chinese-language music videos?
There are at least two Christian networks (one may be Catholic?), but there's also a Buddhist TV network, which is fascinating, as it follows the Americn "Christian media" model closely, but of course, the content is strikingly different. At one point, I was fascinated to watch a long lecture (sermon) by a traditionally bald-headed senior monk at some temple, and to note that he was, in fact, an American (ethnically European), speaking fluent Korean, badgering his audience and telling them jokes in a style not unlike a Christian pastor. Of course, I laughed for a long time when this was immediately followed by an extended informercial for a weed-wacker.
There's the "Go" channel (as in the complex board game of "Go"), but there also seems to be a channel with a lot of Chinese-style chess. And there are 3 or 4 sports channels, too, but I'm puzzled by the fact that they always seem to be covering the same sport at any given time, but different angles and specific matches or events. At one time, you'll seem 3 or 4 channels covering golf. Then later, they're all covering soccer matches. Mostly, they're covering baseball (this is late summer in Korea, after all). But… are they all working together, or as a cartel, such they always have the same sports? Is there some convention or rule that says they have to stay in sync? Or is all really the same company? I can't quite puzzle it out.
Korean TV seems to have a lot of shows dedicated to following "average people" around in their lives. So you can sit and watch someone shopping, or meeting their friends for lunch, or having dinner with their family, with a running narrative commentary. I'm sure there are special reasons why these individuals and families merit following around with a camera crew, but my Korean is not good enough for me very often to figure out what those reasons are. But as a cultural observer like I am, I find myself drawn to these programs just from the way that they offer windows into daily Korean life. One show that I caught last night was following a group of Korean expatriates living in Los Angeles, which I found particularly fascinating.
Here are some still pictures. I didn’t actually take that many, because I was too busy playing with my video camera. Not sure how to balance that out, yet.
The first is from Cheonbu harbor (center of the north coast) looking west toward the Chusan outcropping. Straight west past that is South Korea. Northwest, to the rightish, is North Korea. Exactly north, to the right, is Vladivostok. And behind is Japan. All off across the sea, of course.
The next is from the southeast coast, between Dodong and Jeodong on the walk to the Dodongdeungdae.
These are some boats in Dodong harbor.
This is the view of Dodong from the ferry terminal. Cute town.
This is the “no road existing” sign that made sure I didn’t get lost.
This is the island of Jukdo, off the northeast coast. According to a guidebook, it is inhabited by 3 families and their cows (which have to journey to and from the island using slings into and out of boats to get up and down the cliffs all around it). I want to visit this island.
This next is from somewhere along the northeast stretch of highwayless coast. I liked the tree very much.
And here are a few from my cellphone camera (much lower resolution).
Here’s a buddha next to a modernist cartoony statue of various sea-denizens that are part of Ulleungdo’s identity.
Here’s a temple wall that has a very striking picture of a sea-dragon amid the waves. It was a gorgeous painting but didn’t come out so well on the cellphone camera due to the lighting and resolution.
Here’s the excursion ferry arriving at Dodong from Dokdo. I nearly went to Dokdo myself, but the mobs of nationalistic Koreans rather put me off.
You see, Dokdo is a tiny outcropping of rock (less than 1 square kilometer) that juts out of the water about 90 km southeast of Ulleungdo. It is claimed by both South Korea and Japan, though it’s currently controlled by South Korea, and as far as I can tell, they have the most valid claim: since medieval times Dokdo has always been grouped with Ulleungdo administratively, so whoever “owned” Ulleungdo also was considered owner of Dokdo, regardless of whether the “owners” were ultimately the Japanese emperor or the Korean king, depending on epoch.
Right now, there is a huge nationalist fervor in Korea, provoked by recent ambiguous but typically in-denial-of-history mumblings by some Japanese ministry or another. The government and the media powers-that-be are encouraging all Koreans to believe firmly that “Dokdo is ours!” You can even get “Dokdo” t-shirts at Dunkin Donuts. Nationalistic geo-fetishes always make me uncomfortable, as historically they often seem to lead to bad (read: violent) outcomes.
I'm in the Pohang bus station, and found a PCBang inside it. I have bought a ticket for DongDaegu, which is the Daegu city express train terminal, where I will buy a train ticket back to Seoul. I thought of buying a direct bus ticket (it's only 5 hours), but I decided to make the journey a little more interesting by going intermodal. Everyone knows how I am about the maximal enjoyment of all forms of public transportation.
I’ll make this a short entry… I have to catch my ferry back to Pohang. I went around to Chusan and Cheonbu again this morning, and also rode the cable car to the top of the hill here in Dodong. Mostly just wandering-around-sightseeing, as I tend to do.
Ulleungdo is famous for the things it makes with pumpkin, among other things, and although pumpkin is not normally one of my preferred tastes, they have these pumpkin jellied candies (섬더덕 제리) that are pretty good. [Correction!–dated 2009-09-17–섬더덕 is not pumpkin, but rather Codonopsis lanceolata (see wikipedia). I was confused because the woman selling to me was confused, but a friendly man on the ferry back from Pohang enlightened me. Anyway, I like the candies a lot, and probably the fact that it’s not pumpkin explains why.] I have bought some bags of them to take back to the LBridge kids, if I get a chance to pass them out on my last goodbye visit next Monday/Tuesday.
I’m pretty sure I’m headed back to Seoul tomorrow. Not that there aren’t tons of other places in Korea that I haven’t seen and that I would love to see, but I have a week left, at this point, and although I lived in Seoul (well, suburbs) for two years, there are a lot of toursity things I never got the chance to do. This will be my chance to explore and get to know a bit better the city that’s been my home.
I went around the island of Ulleungdo twice today.
First, to make up for the viewless and deckless ferry ride across, I decided to get one of the "round the island" ferry excursion tours that are offered. Well, first thing in the morning, I walked out to the 도동등대 (dodongdeungdae, a downright stunning mouthful of frustrating Korean vowels, which means Dodong Lighthouse… actually, I think "Dodong" just means "island town"). That took about an hour. Then I got on the excursion boat at 9 and rode it around the island, which took about 2 hours. The boat was crowded with tour-group people, mostly large tribes of middle-aged and older Koreans, shoving and pushing and chatting and yelling and picnicking and taking each other's pictures. I tried to stay out of everyone's way. I noticed they had a second boat full of teenagers (middle schoolers or highschoolers on "school trip" most likely), so I probably should consider myself lucky. Then again, teenagers are more likely to be sociable with "foreigners" like me, as they are too young to care what the foreigner might think or say. But, the scenery was fabulous. So, that was "clockwise" around the island.
Then when I got off the boat, I got on a bus to 저동 (Jeodeong), which only took about 10 minutes. And I began walking. The island had no roads until 1976, only trails and round-the-island ferries. The government has been developing the island, and they've managed to complete about 80% of their island-circling highway. The northeast quadrant, between Jeodong and Seokpo, roughly, is not yet built. So, to go around the island by land, one has to walk at least this stretch of it. There are some stretches of highway of the "road to nowhere" variety because they don't connect to any town properly, and there's not bus service for that reason. So I had to walk about 5 km of highway and about 4 km of rough mountainous trail. There was a lot of up and down. But unlike in Busan, I'd remembered to get a big plastic water bottle, and I didn't feel lost — I followed the right signs, including one which memorably read "길없음" (gil-eops-eum = "no road existing" and pointing to the left, which therefore convinced me to take a right even though it was against my intuition of the moment. So, I didn't get lost. And by 3:30 pm, I was in Cheongbu, where I could catch a bus back around the north, west, and south sides of the island and back to Dodong, which is on the southeast corner. That was counterclockwise. It was a great day. I'm tired.
I took some video of both trips, and when the battery on my camera ran low, I took some pictures with my cell phone (which isn't allowing me to make calls, unfortunately, but which I still carry for it's handy pocket-watch and korean-english dictionary functionality). I'm not posting any pictures, from here, however, as I have to get things loaded across to my computer, and then, preferably, I should try to find a place where I can wifi directly online and not have to transfer to a USB stick to upload on a public computer.
So anyway, that was my day in Ulleungdo. I think it's the most beautiful place in Korea that I've seen, and it's in my top ten list of most beautiful places anywhere.
I should have known it wouldn't be easy to escape (or leave behind) civilization… especially in crowded Korea.
I'm on Ulleungdo, and I just couldn't resist popping into the PCBang (Korean style internet cafe) just up the street from my pension. Yes, they have PCBang in Ulleungdo. Sigh.
Pohang is a depressing, charmless city for the most part. But I walked the length of it, from the bus station to the ferry terminal, and saw more fish for sale (mostly still wiggling) than I ever thought possible, at the market. The city is famous as Korea's "steel town" (a kind of Pittsburgh by the sea, I guess) but that's all a recent development of its history — 50 years ago it was just a generic east coast fishing village.
The ferry crossing was… stunningly boring. Once again, even though this wasn't a hydrofoil, passengers were not allowed on deck. And my seating section didn't even have windows. It was like spending 3 hours in a shaking, rocking, rolling room full of 300 hungover and picnicking Koreans. Hmm. Next time, remind me not to be stingy, and to instead go ahead and blow the extra 7 bucks for an upgrade to First class, where, apparently, at least they have windows.
But landing at Ulleungdo Dodong harbor and stepping out was like stepping into a movie set. This verdant, tiny island fishing village, with hawkers and sellers and the entire day's worth of departures and arrivals for the island's only transport connection to the world bustling around the dock. I had read in a guidebook that people will accost all obvious tourists (which I am no doubt one, given my complexion and physiognomy if nothing else) with offers of lodging at the various pensions and hotels to be found in the town (of about 5000, I think).
I took up the first ajumma (older Korean woman archetype) to make me an offer — entirely on the criterion that she obviously knew no English whatsoever. Finally, someone who will force me to speak Korean with them. She wasn't very chatty as we walked up the street to her pension (two rooms in the back of her storefront that she rents to travelers), and her price seemed steep, compared to the guidebooks, but still less than the generic hotel I'd stayed at last night in Pohang.
But she unleashed a monologue of discussion (what did I want to eat, I got that) when I'd gotten settled in my room and come back out to go off exploring. "뒤에" [later], I said, but I wasn't sure I was using the right word, until another ajumma came by on the street and yelled at my proprietess "뒤에! 뒤에!" and added something to the effect of "just listen to him, he said later."
I still probably wasn't using it quite correctly. But at least I wasn't completely off the mark.
OK, I'm off. In theory, given I showed I can do a 15 km hike in about 5 hours in Busan, on Saturday, I could walk around this island in a day (well, a long day). According to the guidebook, it's 73 square kilometers. That's a pretty small island. I don't think I'll try that. More later.
I'm taking the bus to Pohang today, and the ferry to Ulleungdo tomorrow. I'm not expecting to find convenient internet connections (although you never know, these days), so, I may not be posting for a while. I've posted at least once for every single calendar day this year. I'm really amazed at this record. I'll try to keep it up, by back-posting for the days I'm off the grid. I'll be back on mainland Korea next thursday at the latest, or maybe sooner if Ulleungdo proves disappointing or frustrating or unbearably boring. And who knows, these days, and in the land of broadband internet connectivity, I might just find easy internet there, too. My guide book is a few years out of date, and these things change fast.
I took the subway to Haeundae and walked around. Haeundae is Busan's famous beach neighborhood, made more famous by the recent blockbuster Korean-made disaster movie of the same name, that's been the big summer blowout hit in Korea this summer. Anyway… I decided I wasn't that interested in the beach. I walked west, and noticed a sign for a trail up a mountain called Jangsan (장산). I thought, oh, what the heck. Busan is littered with mountains kind of similar to the way Seoul is (or Los Angeles, for that matter), and the city kind of sprawls around them. It's almost a Korean urban archetype, that's dictated by the peninsula's topography.
I walked up the trail, and realized I'd only brought one small bottle of water, which I finished quickly. I became thirsty. And it was longer than I expected, although not that much… about 2 kilometers from the trailhead, I would guess. But all uphill. Very tiring. I was hoping someone would be selling water at the top of the mountain. If it had been Japan, there would have been vending machines — Japan has more vending machines than people, I think. I did, actually, find a vending machine not far from the top of the mountain, but it was only for lousy instant coffee. I didn't buy any. I headed back down.
I misread a sign (and I wasn't carrying my guidebook or map, which is kind of a tendency of mine when I'm out being a random wandering tourist). And so I got a little bit lost. Not really lost. I knew where I was, when I came to the next sign. But it turned out I'd gone down the back of the mountain. That meant I could either go back over the top of the mountain (4 km), or go around the mountain on a trail I saw on the map on the sign. I opted for the latter, because it seemed less strenuous.
When I had walked back around the mountain in a bit of a circuitous way, I ended up well to the east of where I'd started, and so I had to walk through some neighborhoods to get to the subway station that was closest. Net result: I walked a lot — I would estimate about 15 km from subway station to subway station, total. I bought some gatorade at a convenience store. It was a good hike, and I took some pictures from the top of the mountain (and a small amount of video, but I'm running out of storage space for video). I'll try to post some later.
Tomorrow, I'm going to Pohang, not far northeast of here, from which I take the ferry to Ulleungdo. Ulleungdo is a small island in the middle of the East Sea (called the Sea of Japan on most western maps, but calling it that is against the rules while in Korea). It's quite isolated, and I've long wanted to visit it.
I was walking around Fukuoka two days ago. I saw the words “I carry a flower carefully” inscribed like a very short poem on the side of a big truck. I wanted to write an ode to the side of that truck. Or, maybe, I wanted to write an ode to postmodern commerce. Or, maybe, I wanted to think about writing an ode, and then stop, before the ode appeared, all wilted and unloved, like an uncarefully-carried flower.
Instead, I wrote the following in my little librito para pensamientos aleatorios.
I imagine that in the back of that truck, there is a single flower. It is a bit limp, in the dark strangling air and the stiffling heat of the back of that truck. It is a single flower, strapped down tightly and carefully so that won’t slide around in its tiny flower pot. It is alone in the otherwise empty cargo bay of that truck.
We all carry important things. Life has so many details.
Too many choices amid too much freedom can create its own class of suffering? I shake my head. The September sun is hot in Fukuoka. There are no clouds.
It seems like I have no goals. Isn’t life, and growing up, supposed to be about process? Sometimes the lack of goals can create feelings of anxiety, but I then try to remind myself that goals are hazardous. They are hazardous because… well, not precisely… but, they lead to disappointment.
I think sometimes that such a goallessness must seem odd, or even bewildering, to others who see it in me. I frequently make up goals and tell them to people, but these made-up goals are often shifting around like sand under the waves creeping up a beach. Sometimes I carry a goal that I have made up around with me, carefully, for a long time. But I never forget that I made it up to please someone, during some conversation. It’s an illusion.
People seem to find me difficult to understand.
Is it really suffering, having so much freedom? No. It’s maybe an irrational fear of emptiness. I carry a center of loneliness. I don’t comfort it. I simply carry it, carefully, and some day, in some metaphysical market, maybe I can trade it to someone who needs it more than I do. That person might give me some strong, desirable currency, or a kernel of enlightenment or understanding, in exchange.
The details in life matter, but they are so easy to neglect. Other people matter. I’m not always very good at connecting.
Last night felt like a disaster.
I was already feeling moody and gloomy after my ferry ride back to Korea. Riding the ferry wasn't like a boat ride (which I love). Because it was a high-speed hydrofoil (I've only ever ridden a ferry like that a few times before), you can't go out on the decks, you basically sit strapped in your seat for 3 hours. I should have signed up for the 10 hour regular ferry, maybe. Riding the ferry was like sitting in a taxying airplane for 3 hours. And while on the ferry, they showed a really depressing tear-jerker movie about some little boys with cancer. It was a Korean movie, with Japanese dubbing, but it was pretty easy to follow the plot. Lots of emotional, teary moments. I actually get pretty strongly affected by such things, I think.
So I was moody. And I was returning to Korea, which was a bit like coming "home" but not really. Partly because I'm always going to be an alien in Korea, no matter how long I spend here. But also because I'm only going to be traveling around a bit, and then really leaving to return to the US. So I was feeling melancholic because it was a bit like it was going to be a goodbye tour.
The hotel I found and checked into seemed alright, at first. But it was really unpleasant. I should have run the other way when I found a complimentary can of RAID in the closet. And there was a neon sign outside the window. And the air conditioner didn't work. Etc., etc. I'm too stubborn (or stingy?) to just write off the money spent on lodging and find something better, and I'm too shy, especially with my disappointing language skills, to argue about things or complain about things to the management. Being a loud, complaining customer is really hard for me.
I got fixated on having some bibimbap for dinner (since I'd come back to Korea). So I found a place that sold bibimbap and ordered some for take out (포장해 주세요…). They clearly understood what I wanted, but apparently weren't the sort of place accostomed to giving take-out. They tried to insist that I stay and eat, but… I was feeling melancholy, as I said, and was really fixated on just taking it back to my room and eating in my private gloom. I was remembering many meals of take-out that I would get from the place near my apartment and take back to eat alone. I really don't like eating in restaurants alone (except maybe fast food joints), I always feel uncomfortable. That's why when traveling alone like I am, I tend to eat a lot of take-out and carry-out type things (although still trying to avoid too much fast food — at least American-style fast food).
So anyway, the woman at the restaurant was actually having a conversation with me. And at one level, I was surprised, because she was attempting to do it in Korean, and I was attempting to answer in Korean, and it was going back and forth, although with some (a lot of) confusion. Why was this surprising? Because this almost never happens. It's one reason learning Korean is so difficult: Koreans don't like to try to talk Korean with foreigners. They must think it's impolite, or frustrating, or … who knows what. It had already happened to me more than 5 times just in the short time between disembarking from my ferry and getting to this restaurant: I attempt to start some kind of exchange in Korean, and I get this bewildered, puzzled look in response, as the look up and realize I'm a foreigner, and they either couldn't understand what I'd said, or that they could but it wasn't the expected English (which they often can't understand either, but at least they understand why they can't understand).
It's so different from Japan. The Japanese always talk to you in Japanese. Even after they see that you're a foreigner. They only ever switch to English if you explicitly ask them to, or persist with several answers in a row in English. Because of this, while in Japan I had more "conversations" (such as they were) in Japanese over 10 days than I could've had in Korea over several months. That was another depressing thing about Korea, coming back from Japan. How can I ever learn Korean when Koreans refuse to speak Korean with me? Perhaps the contrasting Japanese behavior displays a sort of underlying cultural arrogance (it's a bit like the French are reputed to be, right?), but from a language-learner perspective, it makes things so much easier.
Here I was, then, having this "real" conversation in Korean with a Korean restaurant lady, and she's badgering me to eat in her restaurant, and I'm being stubborn because I have this fixed idea that I wanted to eat my bibimbap alone in my crummy hotel room. So she starts chatting about other things as the kitchen staff prepares my take-out. I'm American, yes. I was in Japan, and came back. And wow, most of it is in Korean. I'm feeling mildly please. Then she says, hey, you've got a bit of a paunch. Pointing at my gut.
Now… this is typically Korean, too. This business of openly and flatly commenting on the physical characteristics of strangers. Not always positively, either. "Gee, teacher, you have a lot of gray hair," is something I've heard more times than I can count. And not just students… strangers on the subway, or whatever. I know and understand that for Koreans, it's a way to make conversation – once you get past the awkward first steps (the must-knows: age, place of origin), all topics are open game. It's not meant to be offensive, although I suppose even Koreans would agree it's kind of "low-brow" to make random, negative observations about the physical characteristics of just-met strangers.
So I grinned and agreed. Too much bibimbap, I tried to say. I don't think I said that right. She seemed annoyed I'd returned to the topic of the food (which was a lost battle, for her). And then my food was ready, and I said thank you very much and took it back to my hotel room. They had their revenge, however — there was neither spoon nor chopsticks in the take-out bag (although it was quite delicious and was exactly what I'd been craving). Nevertheless, I ate it guiltily. Because of the paunch.
I've always felt like I could stand to lose a bit more weight, and that just hammered it home. I watch my quantity of food intake pretty carefully, normally, and I walk everwhere. Living in Ilsan, I even fell into and out of and into and out of the habit of going jogging. At my best, I'd go 3-4 times a week, other times, I'd miss a few weeks.
But I've maintained my weight pretty well since losing all that weight back in 2006-7. Still, I could stand to lose more, right? And, I've got a bit of a paunch. Probably, traveling around, despite the huge amount of walking everywhere, I've gained a bit, because I don't have the same kind of discipline for intake: I see something delicious in my touristic meanderings, and I buy it and eat it.
So that made me depressed, as I lurked in my stuffy, mildew-smelling hotel room and tried to go to sleep. I was feeling all kinds of remorse: for deciding to leave Korea (although that's reversible); for failing to learn Korean (this is my hugest bugaboo, probably, given it was always one of the main "reasons" for coming here in the first place); for failing to watch my weight; for not just giving in to the restaurant lady and eating in her restaurant, like she wanted; for trying, yet again, to travel alone, even knowing that rarely works out well for me.
And why is it, anyway, that I travel alone? Well, because that's who there is to travel with. Michelle and I had many things we used to fight about. But we were amazingly compatible, when traveling together. Those were the wonderful times. We never fought about things related to traveling: if we fought while traveling, it was about other things (like that unforgettable knock-down-drag-out argument about Aristotle vs Plato on the drive back from Winnipeg to Minneapolis, one time). We had the same way of traveling: no plan, just go out and look and explore. I miss traveling with Michelle very much. And now, like most of my life, I travel alone. Because traveling is too important to me, and too much fun for me, not to do it; but traveling alone sometimes really depresses me, too.
I’m back in Korea, in Busan. Still no wifi in my hotel room… I came wihtout a plan, kind of blase about where I would stay. This place is a bit of a dump… then again, it’s cheaper than even the cheapest place I stayed in Japan. So all values are relative, in travel-expense terms.
I’ll be in Busan for a few days. I’ve scoped out some better possibilities for tomorrow night. Meanwhile, I’ll save the long, detailed posts for later. Byez.
Well, that's an easy date to remember. I was going to go to the Fukuoka Asian art museum today but it was closed. So I wandered around in the afternoon. I saw the ACROS building (I'll post video of it when I can get a cheaper internet connection), it's actually a bit famous, architecturally. ACROS is perhaps famous, but I actually recognized it from a cartoon — haha. One of my favorite Japanese anime series is the absurdist Excel Saga, which is based in a slightly fictionalized (or a lot fictionalized) version of Fukuoka. It's very strange to be recognizing a cityscape from a cartoon. I also saw the Fukuoka Yahoo! Dome — yes, that Yahoo!, which is big in Japan. And Fukuoka is a bit of a software city, maybe a sort of Japanese, subtropical Seattle? And a big shopping mall. And many Starbucks. OK… more later.
This will be very short, because I'm on a public computer. I'm in Fukuoka. Tomorrow, I'm returning to South Korea by ferry. Here, there are a lot of signs in Korean, actually… which makes sense, since it's basically Japan's border city with Korea… it's where the car ferries cross to Busan.
This is the other video I made where I started with the song and added the video bits I'd recently taken. The lyrics to the song ("Hammering in my Head" from Garbage's 1998 Version 2.0 album) include the phrase "the bullet train from Tokyo" and I'd always imagined, someday, I would be on a bullet train from Tokyo, and lo, last Saturday, I was. So I made this little video, and, fortunately, this time, youtube allowed my "third party copyrighted content" — so you all can see it.
It's funny, because youtube communicates with me in Korean (not always very successfully, I might add, but I can get the gist). I can't figure out how to change the setting that makes it do this. Here's what it told me about this posting:
caveatdumptruck님,
회원님의 동영상 "The Bullet Train from Tokyo"에 UMG님이 소유하거나 라이센스 권한을 갖고 있는 콘텐츠가 있을 수 있습니다.
별도의 조치를 취할 필요는 없습니다. 그러나 회원님의 동영상에 미치는 영향에 대해 알고 싶으면 계정의 콘텐츠 ID 일치 섹션을 참조하시기 바랍니다.
Sincerely,
– YouTube 고객지원팀
I like the "caveatdumptruck님" [honored caveatdumptruck]. And the "Sincerely" in English — what's with that? I wonder if it's going through some kind of automatic translation software.
I'm still puzzling about what to do about my other, disabled video. I'm searching for a different song that I like that I can match to it, that youtube might allow… but, since I deleted the raw source footage that I used to make the video (to make room on my hard drive), my options are limited. Ah well. It was no big deal, really.
I was walking back to my inn and had about a block to go, and came across some highly organized mayhem in a little park. I think everyone was practicing for an upcoming parade or cultural exhibition. There were kids, moms dispensing drinks and pointing kids to restrooms, men drinking water from large plastic buckets and giving each other commands, and lots of mayhemical musical instruments. I'll let you make what you want of it, yourself – I was entertained. When it ended, I walked back to my ryokan. And here I am.
For day, I was a pretty conventional tourist. I took a day trip out to Miyajima (also called Itsukushima) and Mt Misen. I rode the streetcar out to Miyajima-guchi and then the 10 minute ferry across to the island, and walked around the famous main shrine complex. I ascended to the top of the mountain for the fabulous view. I saw deer and monkeys and many, many humans (including women climbing steep, several-kilometers-long mountain paths in 3 inch spike heels — ah, Japan!). It was very hot. I drank a lot of water along with randomly selected beverages from the ubiquitous vending machines, and ate a shrimp-cake yakitori (or something like that, anyway) on the way down at the end.
I don't really have a lot of patience with being a conventional tourist, but I tried. It was worth seeing, I think — it was a sort of "just like the postcard" experience. I made more video… I now have so much that I will have to delete some or I won't have room to store it on my computer. I'm going to try to make one of shinkansen ride and one of my visit here to Hiroshima. Maybe I'll work on it tonight.
I actually kind of like not having internet access in my room. It keeps me from lurking in there rather than getting out and exploring. I've had that epiphany before, actually. Having internet access where one sleeps is a mixed blessing, for someone like me who has issues with self-discipline.
I am in Hiroshima. About 3 blocks from ground zero. Weird.
But… Very cool city. You know how it is, with some places, you just know they will be cool? I have always felt that way about Hiroshima. And… yep. I suppose that is why I decided I needed to include this place on my brief Japan tour.
My little ryokan (japanese style inn) that I reserved and arrived at has no wifi, so I had to go visit a PC bang (er… that would be the Korean name, not sure exactly what the correct slang term is here), for the first time since coming to Japan. I will go scavenging for free wifi somewhere, tomorrow. More later.
I'm not really happy with this video, but I didn't spend much time on it. I had trouble syncing the music track to it, but I really wanted to use that song. Anyway, here's some random shots of Tokyo over the last few days.
Tomorrow, I leave on the shinkansen for Hiroshima. I'll post from there, I guess. I hit a few art museums, today. Definitely worth it… I love art museums. The visits got my mind working. I'll see if I can write some thoughts or observations… but no promises.
Now I'm resting in my little hotel room and watching bad Japanese TV and trying to rememorize my kana. It's weird, because over the past year I've been working on learning Korean hanja, which are the equivalent of the Japanese Kanji, and every time I try to read a sign, I pronounce the kanji in my mind in Korean, which doesn't work well with Japanese endings. Not that I've really got that huge a vocabulary… I probably only have a hanja/kanji recognition of around 50 characters at the moment.
[Song with the video is Japanese Punk group Last Alliance's "Shissou"]
I had a productive day. I found an ATM where I could withdraw directly on my Korean bank account (thus avoiding paying double foreign exchange premiums by having to use my American-based credit cards: won-to-dollar then dollar-to-yen). I finally found a hotel more to my liking (both cheaper and more akin to my sensibilities – still not a ryokan as I'd originally planned, but no longer a faceless business hotel either). And I bought tickets for my train travel around Japan, thus making commitments to where I will visit and for how long. I'm mostly going to focus on the southwest (Hiroshima and Kyushu) since my intention is to return to Korea by ferry. Maybe on my next visit to Japan I can do Kansai and northern Honshu, and even Hokkaido someday!
Then I went exploring, some more. I saw the Imperial Palace and walked around Akihabara, the capital of the otaku ascendancy (otaku is a Japanese word meaning something like "geek" or "nerd," although not exactly).
I think I've finally figured out why I've been having periodic headaches since coming to Tokyo — it's nothing so alarming or banal as air pollution or allergies — it's caffeine withdrawal, of all things! I shoulda guessed. I had a pretty reliable 3-4 cups a day (always before late afternoon so as to not interfere with sleep habits) while living / working in Ilsan. And since coming to Japan I wasn't following that routine. But today I had two cans of canned cold coffee around lunch time, and behold, no lingering headache. Hmm.. I remember when Michelle used to have caffeine withdrawal headaches, too. I guess it's a relatively harmless habit, as bad habits go.
Yesterday I went to the Meiji Shrine, among other places. It's kind of a big almost wilderness-y park just a few km south of Shinjuku. Quite stunning and beautiful inside. I took some video… maybe I'll try to process and post it, later.
Anyway, when I first got there (after walking the wrong way around to the "back" entrance, as per my obtuse, instinctive, anti-touristic custom), I found myself having a short exchange with the guard at the entrance, since there didn't appear to be any signs with English making clear I was at the right place. Nothing fancy, mind you: Is this the Meiji Shrine? Yes. Thank you.
But I realized that I was managing the exchange in not-too-bad low-level Japanese. The guard definitely seemed impressed. That's a tribute to my 20-years-ago Japanese teachers at the University of Minnesota, I suppose. Still, I immediately felt very frustrated and almost angry: the "trying-to-learn-Korean-for-over-2-years Jared" suddenly was very jealous and resentful and pissed off at the "haven't-even-looked-at-Japanese-in-20-years Jared," because that was an exchange that would have still given me anxiety in Korean (although I think I might have managed it).
I can meditate on various reasons and excuses why I find Korean so difficult. There's the mind-bogglingly weird sound system (I mean, not in absolute terms, but to us English speakers). There's all those Chinese-origin homonyms (what happens when you borrow 4 words that are identical in pronunciation, except for tone markings, into a non-tone language?). But the reason that's probably most likely, but that's hardest for me to accept, is that apparently there's a big difference between my 20-something brain and my 40-something brain. I've commented on this before. Oh well. Maybe I should just study Japanese, since it seems to come so much more easily to me?
But… I like Korean. Do I like it because it's so hard for me? Am I a linguistic masochist? Hmmm.
I often tell people that, more than anything else, I love to travel. But actually, I hate traveling. I love being in places, and then wandering around.
The other parts of travel, it turns out, I'm stunningly bad at doing: planning ahead, organizing, economizing, packing, scheduling, etc. Mostly, when I travel, I just dispense with these things to the maximal extent possible. But, here in the world's most expensive city, that habit of mine has a pretty high price. Not that I'm complaining. I've fully accepted that my aversion to planning ahead when it comes to travel means I pay a little (or a lot) extra for things like accommodation. But actually finding a place proved more difficult that I expected. Is Tokyo full? Hmmm… sorry, that's a rhetorical question. Actually, I would say, Tokyo's pretty much full. Megalopolis of megalopolises. The metamegalopolis.
I spent a major portion of yesterday simply wandering around. As I do whenever I'm in a new city with a subway system, I deliberately went into the subway without studying the map, got what seemed like a useful ticket (a one-day pass) for 710 yen, and walked to the first platform and got on the first train. And after about 20 minutes, I saw fields. Fields? What kind of megalopolis is this, anyway?
Obviously, I'd gone off in a centrifugal direction. So I got off and found that my little ticket made the ticket gate complain beepingly. You see, I'd managed to get on a JR train that exited the "Tokyo Metro" system. Somehow, the regional rail and the subway here don't exist in their seperate, delimited universes, the way that such things do in other major cities I've been to. So you can ride a subway train that indetectably transmogrifies itself into a regional rail route once it crosses the outside edge of the metro system. Hmph.
I paid the friendly and utterly English-free station guard the make-up fee for the incorrect ticket, and walked around my randomly discovered neighborhood. Then I bought a SUICA pass (which appears to work like Seoul T-Money — my fingers are crossed that will continue to do so) and went back to Ikebukuro where I started. After I'd figured out that first lesson in Tokyo subway navigation, things went smoothly. And what better way to learn subway navigation than through trial and error? That's why I do things that way, I suppose… aside from the fact that for me, personally, it also happens to be fun.
I went and saw the Diet building and government area (there were tons of riot police about, which made it feel just like Seoul's government area — perhaps because of the recent elections?), then I spent a long time walking around Ueno and later Shinjuku. Just exploring, as is my wont.
Today will be museums day (at least, that's the plan… as I said, plans don't work well for me when I travel).
Tokyo seems more "western" in some ways, than Seoul. More multicultural, though still nothing like Western cities. But also… there's a tiredness about the people here. Where Seoulites seem frantic and hectic and even chaotic, Tokyoites seem more just "heads down" pushing ahead. Not moving slower, but there's a kind of ennervation in the air. The subway trains are eerily quiet (there's a cell-phone use ban, apparently, among other rules), unlike the raucous way that crowded subway cars in Seoul can sometimes seem. Then again, it's easy to forget that Japan has basically been in something close to economic recession for 20 years. 20 years! In that period of time, Seoul has probably doubled its GDP. That kind of contrast is bound to affect the psychology of the inhabitants.
When I walk around, I often rely on the sun to keep my orientation and find my way back to somewhere familiar. I think I must be odd, in this respect, at least among postmodern urbanophiles. And it can really mess me up, when the sun goes down or hides in overcast skies. Last night, I became very disoriented trying to find my hotel after taking the wrong exit out of the subway station (the station in question has almost 70 numbered and lettered exits!). I wandered into a nieghborhood of pachinko parlors and love hotels, and was accosted (politely) by hustlers, one Japanese and later a Nigerian (I think).
Finally, I found a Starbucks, and thinking it was one I'd walked past before, because it was next to a Mizuho bank, I headed confidently in what I thought was the right direction. Alas, it was not the right direction. I didn't get back to my hotel for another 20 minutes, because I had to double back, go back into the subway station at yet a different enterance, navigate underground for several blocks, and then go out by a more familiar entrance. Beware trying to use a Starbucks as a landmark. That's the stupidest thing I've ever had to re-learn the hard way…
Here I am in Tokyo: a fairly high-end hotel in the Ikebukuro area, because I like my first night in a completely new place to be utterly convenient. I'll get adventurous after I get my bearings.
The flight was without incident. There was an unpleasant man on the airport bus from Narita into the City. He complained I was hitting the back of his seat. He said, in a loud, rude, tone, "Don't touch my seat." Then, after a minute or two, he scrawled on the back of an envelope the words "You should follow the rule" and held it up so I could see. I hadn't even been touching his seat after that first complaint.
Hmm… welcome to Japan. And… which rule is that, anyway? And… I only had hit the back of his seat twice, on accident, as I was looking for my hotel reservation papers in my bag on my lap. Well, whatever. The contrast: on a Korean airport bus, chances are, everyone would have been bonking everyone's seat, as energetically as possible, and only getting offended if someone became annoyed at that. So. But I'm trying to be recovered from that.
There was a friendly woman who was returning from a first visit to Seoul to her home in Tokyo. I chatted with her for a while. I asked if she liked Seoul. She said, "oh, it's like a small Tokyo."
Indeed. From that tiny, provincial megalopolis of only around 15 million, I get to visit the real deal, with double the population. Cool. What's it with me and big cities?
OK, I'm tired. I will sleep, now.
Yesterday I went to Incheon with a friend, Peter. We took the subway, which is kind of an indirect way to go, since it’s straight south from Ilsan, but via subway one has to go into downtown Seoul (southeast 25 km) and back out again. But anyway. It took about 2 hours. We got off at the Incheon subway line station Dongchun, and walked west about 1.5 km to the Incheon landing war memorial. It was an impressive piece of monumental architecture. It was a very hot day.
We went into the Incheon city museum after that, as it was right next door, and saw some historical things related to Incheon, which was the first Korean port to be opened to western (and Chinese and Japanese) powers in the 1800’s, and therefore was the part of Korea to begin feeling the influence of the outside world after the 500 year-long “closure” that was the Joseon dynasty period.
Then we took a random bus (#8) that ended up dumping us at Incheon City Hall, but that’s not actually downtown, so then we took another bus (#41) to Juan Station on subway line #1 and then took the subway (which isn’t actually subway but is elevated) to the end-of-the-line at downtown (old part) Incheon. That’s where the touristy chinatown is (arguably the only “authentic” chinatown in Korea, as it was actually a Chinese settlement in the 1800’s, whereas all the other “chinatowns” in Korea are just gimicky tourist things constructed artificially in the most recent 30 years or so). We walked up the Jayu (freedom) hill to hear some atrocious children’s music at some outdoor concert and then we saw the old general himself (well, his statue) looking out over the old “red beach” that is now the highly landfilled and developed harbor at Incheon.
We walked around some more as the sun was setting, and the feel of the place was quite odd. I remarked to Peter that it was the first time I’d been in a Korean city in the evening where things were genuinely “dead” – the way that small American cities inevitably are after dark. “Man, this is like Long Beach,” I said, bemused.
Anyway, we walked some more and found an urban space more typically Korean, all neon lights and evening shoppers and half-drunk men stumbling about. Ah, the comforts of Korean civilization. We went into a Hweh house (a sashimi joint, roughly, but a dining institution in Korea). I ordered Hwehdapbap (bibimbap style mixed vegetables, but with fish roe and raw sliced seafood) and Peter ordered chobap (sushi). We shared, and finished it off. It was quite delicious.
Then we came home on the subway, all the way, 2 hours. It was a long day, with a lot of walking, but it was good.
I feel very proud of yesterday’s blog post… I composed it in my own Korean, with only some minor assistance from my Korean tutor. Really, the first true blog entry I’ve managed in Korean, I think. I mean, that is at all substantial. Yet, in fact, it’s quite child-like and dull and repetitive and unnatural Korean, I’m sure. But one has to start somewhere, right?
The intensive subwayification of the Seoul’s infinite exurbs continues apace – recession? what recession? The old, slightly decrepit-seeming Gyeongui Line (경의선) is being given some coats of new paint (along with massive infrastructure upgrades, etc.) and the first phase of its integration into the Seoul Metro System took effect on July 1st.
The Gyeongui Line is interesting for both historical and personal reasons. Historically, the current Gyeongui Line is the rump end of the old Seoul-to-Pyongyang line that was the first railroad to open in Korea, in around 1906. With the closed border since 1950 or so, it ends a few kilometers south of Panmunjeom and the DMZ at Imjingang. Since then, it has functioned as the northwest suburban commuter rail line, but it’s name still implies it makes it to the Chinese border (Gyeong is “capital,” as in Seoul, and ui is short for Sinuiju – by the wacky rules for Korean acronyms – hence Gyeongui means “Capital and Chinese Border City Railroad”). I wrote about taking it out to Imjingang in October, 2007.
It’s interesting to me for personal reasons, because when I was in the US Army and stationed at Camp Edwards, whenever I wanted to go into Seoul during a day-long liberty, I would take a taxi to Munsan station and take the Gyeongui line into the city. That’s why I can actually say that I had been in Ilsan way back in 1991, which always brings Ooo’s and Ahh’s of amazement when I report this to the kids. It’s definitely a changed place. In 1991, Ilsan was a village of maybe 5000 surrounded by hills and rice paddies, a whistle stop on the commuter railroad, still beyond the edge of the megalopolis. Now it’s been reengineered as a “New City,” and the districts that are refered to colloquially as “Ilsan” include more than 500,000 residents, almost half of the Goyang municipality.
Anyway, starting July 1st, the Gyeongui Line between “Digital Media City Station” (on Line 6 near the World Cup stadium) and Munsan has now been fully integrated to the Seoul subway. Rather than sporadic-seeming once-hourly service, the trains zip by 4-8 times an hour, and you can pay with the same “t-money” card that you use for the rest of the subway system, with barrier-free, clearly marked transfers to the other lines at Daegok and Digital Media City. For a subwayophile like myself, that’s cool, and it’s cool to see an old line “grandfathered in” that way.
To celebrate, today I took the orange line (line 3) that goes by my house a few stops down to Daegok, and changed to the Gyeongui line. I took it out to Geumchon. It was a hot, humid day, with occasional strong winds that smelled like the ripe standing water of all the rice paddies to the north and west, and had just the hint of 10000 pots of kimchi fermenting on rooftops or apartment balconies, as well. The “smell of Korea.”
Now, in the fall of 2007 I wrote about taking the Gyeongui line out to Imjingang and trying to find my old Army base. I thought maybe I’d located it. But I wasn’t certain… the pace of urbanization has been so fast in this region, and I knew it had been closed. Maybe it had been turned into a mini mall.
But I have subsequently spent some time studying the increasingly clear images of the area on Google Earth, and I had become conviced that my old base lay just north of the limit of old Geumchon (which doesn’t jive with my memories, because no one ever mentioned Geumchon to my recollection… we always went to Paju or Munsan… it’s possible Geumchon was basically a nothing-village at that point, though). Anyway, I took the train to Geumchon, got off, and started walking north.
Sure enough. There it was. My old base, Camp Edwards, all shuttered up, overgrown with weeds, with a lone watchman at the main gate. Here’s a picture of the main gate.
Inside the gate, you can see the remains of the Alpha Company barracks (cooks’ company). Note that the old Gyeongui line tracks ran right in front of the gate… basically, the railroad crossing gate and the gate manned by the Korean policemen at the base entrance were one and the same. In the picture, you don’t see the railroad tracks, because they’ve been elevated. They were right above me, where I stood. That was different.
But the “tank traps” on the MSR were the same.
It’s not called “the MSR” anymore – that stands for “Military Supply Route” and was US Army lingo for Highway 1, which was the fourlane boulevard that parallels the Gyeongui line all the way from Seoul to Imjingang (where the DMZ puts an end to civilian traffic). I don’t know what exactly the right term for those tank traps is, but the idea is that they’re filled with rubble and dynamite, and if the North Koreans come charging down the MSR, all the tank traps (strategically positioned every few kilometers over all highways) get blown, preventing easy access for all those North Korean tanks.
Looking the other way from the tank traps over the highway, you see the concrete obstacles planted like gravestones in the fields to the side of the highway.
The whole infrastructure is no longer well maintained as far as I can figure out … there are many places where there are modern bridges over these old tank barriers, etc. Then again, maybe all the modern bridges are embedded with dynamite, too, as the old urban myth alleges is the case for all the bridges across the Han River.
I walked past my old base, feeling a bit of nostalgia, but a sense of closure, too. Nice to see the crappy old place overgrown with weeds. I’ve outlasted it! Below, there’s a picture I took looking west from a pile of railroad ties under the now-elevated Gyeongui tracks.
You can just make out the brownish structure in the center, which was the old Bravo Company 296th Support Battalion motor pool, where I labored under the despotic and corrupt Sgt Wise for almost a year. And in the foreground, but behind the concertina fencing, you can see a bit of the “track.” That was where we did our two-mile runs… a little half mile loop on level ground, in circles around the warehouse (which appeared to be missing, now). I have vivid memories of that incredibly boring run. It was only on rare occasions that we got to do company runs off-post, up down and around the countryside.
I kept walking north along the MSR (er.. Highway 1). The first left turn off the highway, going north, used to have a little ramen joint on the corner right across the railroad tracks. I think that’s where I was first introduced to that Korean-military delicacy: spicy ramen with cheez-whiz. Now, as you can see, it appears that they’ve built an office park there.
Finally, I reached a place called Wollongyeok (Wollong Station). I’m confident that this station on the Gyeongui line didn’t exist, before. It’s an addition, part of the densification of the commuter line as part of integrating it to a subway system. But it was convenient to find it. I took this picture from the little hill walking down toward it, because I like that you can see the huge highway sign with an arrow pointing the way to Panmunjeom.
Panmunjeom is a tiny village. Technically speaking, since 1950, it has zero actual civilian residents – it’s where the North and South face each other, and they have little meetings if things are too tense to actually allow each other to cross. And since nothing in South Korean signage admits the existence of an actual border, the only way to know when you’re getting close is when you start seeing signs for Panmunjeom. So I like the sign because you see that here you are, at a nice modern-looking suburban railway station, within a few kilometers of North Korea.
And that brings me to…. So, life so close to North Korea, what’s that like? As a bird flies, my apartment in Manhattanny Ilsan lies about 10 km from the North Korean border. It’s more like 25 if you drive, because of the twists of the Imjin river and of the line itself. But it’s weird sometimes to think how close it is, and how much the people here seem to be either ignorant or in denial – or some weird symbiosis of those two mental states.
Actually, despite all the sabre rattling (and missle-launching and nuke-testing) to the north, no one in the circle of people I interact with seems in the least concerned. This is just the way it always has been, with the north. Weird, scary, unstable… but not, in the end, something that is likely ever to change. Those giant armies facing each other — the high-tech-and-armed-to-the-teeth South and the 2-million-cannon-fodder-plus-a-coupla-handy-WMD-(but-nevertheless-noticeably-incompetent) North – they’ve been glaring at each other for almost 60 years now. It feels very much like “status quo forever.”
And frankly, if it’s nukes you’re worried about, Ilsan is THE safest place outside of North Korea to be, if you think about it. Kim Jong-il may be a wack job, but he’s not gonna nuke the one spot in South Korea that’s practically within walking-distance of a major North Korean city (namely, Kaeseong). As a point of fact, I very much doubt there’s any tactical or strategic scenario in which the North would nuke the South. The nukes are for those “damned foreigners” – i.e. Japan and the US, largely. The South is not foreign, just misguided. It doesn’t need nuking… just reeducation. If things got really, really bad, and the North launched some kind of preemptive invasion of the South, Ilsan would definitely be overrun. But from a tactical standpoint, it seems to me that it is literally so close to the line that it would be behind the line before anyone knew what was happening (and despite those decrepit tank traps).
How things would play from there, who knows? It could end up very grim… I imagine the ways in which seemingly well-developed and relatively westernized Yugoslavia decayed into chaos and civil war in the 1990’s. It’s not impossible, here. But… well, it’s not something worth worrying about. Terrible disasters are possible, whether human or natural, no matter where one chooses to live. In any event, consumer culture is so deeply rooted in the South Korean psyche, now, that I wouldn’t envy any effort on the part of the North to absorb or reeducate the South. It would end up a kind of pyrrhic victory, perhaps. Nor should we underestimate the strength of the South’s military and of its no doubt innumerable contingency plans.
The view looking downriver from the Donghodaegyo, yesterday afternoon.
On Saturday at 12 o’clock my friend Curt called me and asked if I wanted to accompany him to his home town, Jangsu, for a quick overnight trip. He had to go down for a “family meeting” and many relatives would be there. “It will be an adventure for you,” he commented.
I felt spontaneous, and said, “sure!” I met him at his hagwon at around 5:30, but at the last minute his daughter (who is 8) decided she wanted to come along, so we had to go collect her, and then he forgot to take a computer that he was going to give to his sister, so we had to drive back to the hagwon and get that. The result was that we didn’t get on the road until around 7:30.
The traffic wasn’t too bad driving down – most people who flee Seoul on the weekends do so earlier on Saturday, is my guess. We arrived at his home village at around 1 AM. The moon was full and the air was already summery, although fairly dry.
Koreans like to sleep in hot, stuffy homes, as far as I can determine, and Curt’s family homestead was no exception. But I was tired and slept soundly, and was awoken at 6AM sharp by the rapid, nonstop Korean of Curt’s mother’s voice. She is in her 70’s, but seems quite healthy and strong-spirited, like any good Korean matron. She kept a running commentary the entire day. Curt, at one point, observed with a wry deference that his mother “loves to talk.” I was enjoying the language input, without understanding more than a small amount. I perhaps would have tired of it, had I understood more, but as it was, it was just like being tuned to a Korean talk-radio station, but with all sorts of contextual clues to make it on the edge-of-comprehensible.
We did a small sightseeing drive at around 7 AM, to see the new dam that rose above his old village. Here is a picture I took looking down from the dam into the valley – the village proper is in the foreground, and the family compound is just out of sight among the alfalfa fields behind the trees in the lower left.
We walked around and I took some pictures of the family using both their camera and mine. Keep in mind, this is not the whole clan – just those who happened to come along on the sightseeing drive: Curt, his older sister, his daughter, his niece, and his mother.
After that, we drank some coffee back at the house, as more people showed up. Then at around nine, everyone went down to the restaurant that’s along the stream at the village turnoff at the main highway (highway 19). There were some 50 relatives there, quickly and systematically eating a typical Korean breakfast: rice, several kimchis (including a delicious and memorable cucumber kimchi I’d never tasted before), fish, other vegetable side-dishes, and a thin broth-type soup with some slices of what I thought was potato in it. After the breakfast there was to be the “family meeting.”
Curt snuck away to smoke a cigarette beforehand, and hinted that I might want to go do something else (which was a polite way of saying I wasn’t invited, I suppose – I wasn’t offended). Here is a picture of the spot behind the restaurant by the stream and the highway across the stream, where we talked.
So I walked back across the fields to the house. The house was swarming with children, who had no interest in practicing English with me (and who can blame them?), but they also seemed befuddled and frustrated by my poor Korean. I felt like I was embedded in a Kafka novel, for a while: lots of talking, but no communication whatsoever. One of the girls took my camera, and this is a picture I found in it later.
Eventually, feeling exhausted by the language-overload, I went on a walk. I went into the village and looked at the Buddhist temple complex there – apparently Curt’s father, who passed away in 2007, had been a major philanthropist in the restoration and expansion of the temple. Here is a view approaching the temple, and another showing the intricate woodwork and painting on one of the buildings.
Finally, the family meeting down at the restaurant was over, and Curt came and found me strolling around the village, along the river below the dam behind the temple complex. “Do you want to come while I pay my respects to my father?” “Sure,” I agreed, amenably. I didn’t want to intrude or be the uncomfortable foreigner in what was no doubt an intimate and personal thing, but I was dreading spending the next several hours waiting for him with nothing structured to do.
The drive to his father’s grave was quite long, unexpectedly. Almost an hour, as he is interred at a veterans cemetery southwest of Imsil, which is some ways west of Jangsu. We passed over a winding mountain road and into a much wider, more populated valley to get there. Curt placed a lighted cigarette on his father’s grave. “He loved to smoke,” he said. He poured a bit of Soju onto the grass, and his sister placed a plate with some fruit on the grave stone. Curt and his sister bowed deeply to the grave, and then his mother also bowed to her late husband.
After the ceremony, and after making sure it was OK, I took a picture of Curt standing by his father’s grave. He was teary and emotional. I felt awkward, and stayed mostly quiet, during the first part of the drive back to the house at Jangsu. We went back a different way, through Namwon and along a bit of the “88 Olympic Expressway” which reminded me in terms of feel and scenery of those odd, depression-era, two-lane tollways that snake around parts of Appalachia in Kentucky or West Virginia.
Returned to the house, we had a very quick but homemade lunch. I especially liked the fried dubu (tofu) and kimchi – much better than restaurant varieties. And then it was suddenly over. After some lounging around watching Korean music videos and listening to the grandmother lecture the granddaughters about who-knows-what, Curt, his daughter and I said our goodbyes and were back on the road at around 3 PM – although I embarrassed myself with some incorrect Korean in trying to say “nice to have met you.” I think I may have said something like, “That [romantic] date went well,” if it meant anything at all. But it wasn’t a date, was it?
Very spontaneously, my friend Curt called yesterday and invited me along on a drive with him down to his hometown in Jangsu (near Namwon, in Jeollabuk province). It’s a 4-6 hour drive, depending on traffic (we managed about 5 hours down, not counting time to go back to his hagwon for something he forgot).
So, I met his family, ate a lot, and saw a very different, rural part of Korea, all in a whirlwind that got me back home tonight at 10 pm. Just as it was starting to rain. I’ll write some more details later… I’m feeling exhausted, partly because after getting in very late last night we all rose at the crack of dawn this morning. It was a kind of annual family reunion (“family meeting” he termed it).
So, my thought for this evening, after a total of 12 hours in the car in just around 28 hours, is only this: tollway rest areas are roughly the same everywhere in the world. See picture.
내일은 어린이날이에요. 재가 일할 필요없어요. 어쩌면 다시 긴 산책할 거예요. 이번 저녁에 파스타를 먹고 있고 맛있어요. 그리고 음악을 들어요. 한국어를 연습하기 위하여 저는 이것을 쓰고 있어요.
A random picture from a bus ride: the National Assembly (legislature) building on 여의도 (Yeouido Island).
I went on a really long walk. North from Ilsan to the edge of the Goyang Municipality (Ilsan is just a borough, or district, within Goyang City). I took some pictures, and then rode the #90 bus back. The bus was very crowded, because today is Buddha’s Birthday – everyone is going somewhere else.
Here is a road disappearing into the newly tilled rice paddies:
Here is a view of Geumchon in the afternoon haze (or actually, a fog was maybe rolling in off the Yellow Sea – the breeze smelled vaguely of salt):
