Category: Hiking & Travel

Redwoods in Ilsan?  Well, I’m pretty sure.  They’re not Sequoia sempervirens… I believe they’re Metasequoia glyptostroboides, Chinese “dawn redwoods.”   They’re quite common as ornamentals throughout the temperate climes, now, because they are hardy and grow fast.   Here in Korea, they’re not actually that far from home — I think their native area is within 500 km or so.
Unlike California’s sequoias, they’re deciduous — they get naked for the winter.  But they have very redwoody bark, and the needles are strikingly similar.   See the picture I took, at right.
I walked down to the lake park, and took this picture, below, of the arranged rocks in the frozen lake, with the bridge in the distance over the lake.  It seemed beautiful.

I went exploring today, and attempted some shopping. And I took some photos.
First, I walked eastward from my apartment all the way to Baekseok station (two subway stops eastward from my own “home” station of Jeongbalsan). I took some pictures along the way.
Some public art near the Jeongbal hill.

The Ilsandong district office (or “borough hall” – a government building).

Spring plants and advertising.

Near Madu station.

The entrance to Baekseok.

I went to the Yongsan electronics market, but I didn’t buy anything.  Just kind of browsed around.  I walked to Samgakji.  This is the entrance to that subway station, taken near dusk.  Note the faint view of the landmark Namsan tower (iconic of central Seoul) in the background.

Inside the Samgakji station I watched TV – yes they have large TVs on the walls of the subway stations, and these play banal advertisements and sometimes funny cartoon thingies, in continuous loops.

Then I went to Itaewon to that English-language bookstore there (at the top of a hill where you have to walk past a gamut Russian discotecs, African street vendors, south Asian food stores, and Korean women selling… stuff).
I browsed for a while, and bought some used novels to read.  After that I went on to Insadong to buy trinkets to give away as prizes to my students.  They like these little colorful handcrafted pens and pencils, with ends in the shape of animals and things like that.
On the way, I decided to record why it is that Line 1 (purplish) is so easy to get lost on.

Now I’m listening to Kings of Convenience (an alternative group I guess you might classify them); and Peter Murphy (old emo/goth stuff, always reliably narcotic for my soul). And that not-so-long-ago-released album by the group Spoon, called Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. I love that name. It’s very late (almost 2 AM). I should go to sleep.

I felt I really needed to get out of the apartment.
I took the subway two stops to Baekseok, to look around. I found where the new frequently advertised Costco store is being built. I walked around and enjoyed the late afternoon illumination on the clouds.
I then took the subway two more stops to Hwajeong. I found a few department stores. Walked around some more.
Then I got on the subway and went to Anguk, and strolled around Insadong. I found things to buy, maybe they would be good xmas presents for my nephews, if I can get it together to mail them. Soon.

It was the first day that the high temperature was below freezing, I think, since I’ve been here.  And a strong wind from the northwest.
So I thought, today I’ll take my camera and take a walk around my neighborhood.  I took almost 100 pictures, and here are some I particularly like.  All these pictures were taken within about a kilometer of my apartment, as I walked a roundabout route past the subway, up through the park with the little hill, around past near where the Tomorrow School is.  They’re shown in the order I saw them, roughly.
This is a street about 4 blocks east.

This is the entrance to the Jeongbalsan subway station.

This is a government office near the subway station.

This is the same office from the other side, and a flower on a trellis.

This is a path up the hill.

This is a view looking northeast from near the top of the hill.

This is a friendly dog I saw in someone’s yard.

This is a rather posh American-looking house.

This is a backhoe and a tree.

And finally, proof that my students have opportunities to apply their hard-earned English skills out in the real world, right in their neighborhood.

Perhaps I was inspired by my previous post.  Yesterday afternoon I took the subway to Daegok, and boarded one of the regional commuter rail trains, bound for 임진각역 (Imjingak station).  Imjingang is basically the end-of-the-line to the northwest of here, and lies just about 3 kilometers from the DMZ (North Korean border). 

I had in mind the idea of actually seeing Camp Edwards – but I couldn't find it.  My geographic memory clearly isn't perfect – I had a recollection of it sitting right on the railroad, near the main highway.  But two factors intervene:  I don't know which railroad it sat on, but I don't think it was the commuter line, as I remember having to take a taxi into central Munsan when I wanted to take the train into Seoul;  also, Camp Edwards may not actually exist, now – the US Army has been significantly rearranging its Korean deployment over the last decade, especially moving away from major towns (such as Munsan or Dongducheon).

So I didn't find Camp Edwards.  But I walked through territory that was more than a little bit familiar, and covered the distance from Imjingang to downtown Munsan on foot (about 8 kilometers, given my roundabout route).  I enjoyed the scenery.

Above is the Imjingang bridge.  In typical South Korean fashion, they have placed a major amusement park ("recreation park") here up against the DMZ – sort of this weird institutional tendency to pretend it's not really a major, militarized international border.  So right behind me from taking this picture, on the north side of the river, there were zillions of families on Sunday outing, a little amusement-park train going around some veterans memorial statue, a ferris wheel….

The concrete pillars are the old railroad bridge, and I remember these pillars vividly.  But just beyond, there is now a new railroad bridge that wasn't there in 91, and there has been much talk in the press of the new workable (but not currently actually working) rail connection with Pyeongyang.   Not to mention the talk of eventually hooking South Korea's KTX (high speed rail) with Russia's!  That would be cool… you could take the train from Seoul to Moscow!

Looking down, there were lots of men lazily fishing in the Imjingang (i.e. Imjin River)

Walking south, I saw lot's of lovely trees, changing with the fall weather.

Above, these are some scarecrows I saw in a field. I had this weird feeling that I spent a cold April day in this field, or one nearby, fetching a Humvee that some insane G.I. driver had flipped like a turtle into the mushy muddy rice.   I worked in "vehicle recovery" here… which is to say, I had a large green tow truck (named – not by me, but appropriately – "Rocinante"), and one of my jobs was to go out and rescue stranded Army vehicles from various spots.  This flipped Humvee was one of the most memorable, as it was the only instance where I was personally involved where there had been a major injury – the G.I. who'd flipped his vehicle had a broken back or something.  Made me somewhat paranoid about cruising around at too-high speeds in the soft-top Humvees that were so popular then.  Not so common now, since they're mostly "hardened," based on experience in Iraq, etc.

These are some flowers I saw.

I saw a man on a tractor, and he waved to me.

Later, as I walked farther south, I saw the man again, working with some others unloading a rice-threshing gadget from a truck.  He hailed me, and I discovered he spoke extremely good English – he'd lived and worked 8 years in Dubai, and also in mainland China, more recently, and wanted to talk politics.  It was interesting.  He was worried about the "red menace" and was extolling the virtues of George Bush's hard line with North Korea.  Perhaps typical of his generation in South Korea, I think.

He observed that given how South Korea is a U.S. client, geopolitically, and how the Chinese still viewed North Korea as "theirs," the DMZ was, interestingly, the place where the U.S. and China had a common border.  This was fairly sophisticated thinking for a Korean farmer.  I wonder how typical it is?

I kept walking…. I passed the 운천역 (Uncheon rail station), and this sign.

As the sun set I got into the outskirts of 문산읍 (literallly Munsan village, though it's clearly outgrown what we would call a village), which appeared much grown from my recollection.  Here is a fairly typical sight everywhere in Korea:  cranes building high-rise buildings in the middle of nowhere.

Now I'm listening to a streaming Mexican radio station from Estado de México, and thinking about the commonality of rural lifestyles, all over the world.

I didn’t really do much yesterday.  I wandered around the Sinchon district, a university neighborhood that has that same feel of university neighborhoods anywhere – lots of young people, trendy stores, interesting hairdos in multiple colors, individuals toting musical instruments to gigs, people standing on streetcorners preaching damnation or salvation or other stopping places in between.
I finally got the gumption up to dive back into the subway and work my way over toward the area where I had heard a lot of electronics stores were (thinking in terms of shopping for a new mp3 player, among other things) – but I decided on a whim to a rather roundabout route, and by the time I got there, I was feeling listless and unmotivated.
So I came back home and have been tinkering with solving my photo-archive problem online.  My photo database that I’m hosting on my own server has run into size-maximum constraints, and I’m looking for alternatives.  I recently discovered that the typepad website that hosts this blog also hosts photos, and so I’m going to see if that provides a workable photo-hosting solution.
I did succeed in finding a conveniently placed bookstore where I can buy my magazine fixes – better placed than the one at Itaewon I’d found a few weeks ago.  I also bought some stickers and pencils for my nephews, and will try to post that today or tomorrow.
This picture shows the doorway to my humble apartment.  Looks like a prison, eh?  But it’s workable.  Has a snazzy electronic lock so I don’t have to use a key to get in, though I carry it around just in case there’s a power failure or something (not that I’ve seen one yet).

This picture shows what I see when I step out of my building to walk to the subway station at Jeongbalsan.  There’s a parking lot space right to the east, then some buildings.  In the distance between the buildings, down the street, is the large Lotte department store.  The main subway entrance is behind that building, but it’s possible to enter the subway station from the basement of the department store, where there is also a very upscale grocery store.

So soon I go off to work.  I’m having a little lunch of instant noodles and drinking nice cold boricha.  Outside is sunny but with the coolish bite of fall in the air.  The trees have finally begun to change.

A few blocks south of here there is a large park with a Lake in it.  Everyone seems to call it the Lake Park – I’m not sure if this an official name or not.  I walked down there this morning, and there’s a nice little pedestrian bridge that gives some good views of the area.  Below are 5 photos all taken from basically the same exact spot standing on this pedestrian bridge connecting the Ilsan neighborhood to this large park.
Looking east (well, kinda east-north-east, I think) there’s this weird looking bit of public art on the large plaza on the north side of the boulevard between Ilsan and the park.

Looking north you can see the Homever store I mentioned (a Walmarty sorta place), and the little Jeongbalsan hill.  My apartment building is a few blocks behind the Homever store, and the subway station is a few blocks toward the little hill.

Looking northwest, North Korea is only about 20 km thataway – after you go through Munsan on highway 1, which is where I was stationed in the US Army.

Looking southwest, toward the Han River and then Incheon (which is where the international airport is, about 25 km), and then the West Sea (also called Yellow Sea) and, much beyond, Qingdao and Shanghai.

Looking southeast, toward downtown Seoul (about 25 km) – it’s city all the way.

In other news, I am coming to the stunning realization that most Koreans don’t know the names of their streets, and don’t particularly care – they often don’t put signs, they don’t put the names on maps, etc..  This is difficult for someone like me, who has always loved being able to study a map and then navegate around on this basis, and it’s surprising to me that it’s taken me so long to realize this.  Regardless, it leads to an interesting, networked-node sort of view of the world, an interconnected web of buildings and landmarks on nodes, with unnamed spaces connecting them.  I’ll get the hang of it, but getting directions is, well… interesting.

Location:  경기도 일산구 (Ilsan-gu, Gyeonggi-do)

Soundtrack:  mostly sounds of crickets, cicadas, citysounds

I really meant to post more, sooner.  I am entering my 2nd day here in Korea.  I start my teaching job later this morning.  Right now it’s 3 am and I’m unable to sleep, due to the confusion induced by the time-zone change.  But I’ll adjust.

Last week was very hectic, in Minneapolis, getting packed up and all my stuff moved from my apartment to the storage unit I’ve rented in Eagan (near the airport).  I got checked out of my apartment on Thursday afternoon, and Friday morning I was on my way, Minneapolis to Chicago and direct from there to Incheon – a 14 hour flight and a 14 hour time difference meant 28 hours in a suspended state of intraplanetary teleportation.

I slept a little on the plane, but never do much.  I watched two movies – from the Korean movie channel on the plane, to get myself in the right frame of mind.  They were actually very good movies:  “Highway Star” (Bokmyeon dalho) and  “Miracle on 1st street” (1Beonga-ui gijeok).  Subtitles in English, so I wasn’t completely lost.  If you want to get a taste of contemporary Koreana these would be excellent choices, I think.

The flight arrived at Incheon almost 40 minutes earlier than scheduled, and by 5 pm local time on Saturday night I was through immigration and customs and boarding a bus for Ilsan.  I rented a temporary cellphone and was thus able to connect with my contact from my new job, who met me at a bus stop just west of Madu Station in Ilsan-gu and drove me from there several blocks to my apartment.

It’s just a little studio, hotel-room-sized, but with a kitchenette.  And even has a washing machine.  It’s in a highrise apartment building called Urim Bobo County.  I have no idea what they mean by this – bobo means, roughly, bourgeois, but without any negative connotations.  And “county” seems to imply a pleasant suburban living environment – it’s a transliteration of the English word, not the Korean word that means “county”.  Overall, I expect the intended effect is like the infinite number of apartment complexes in the U.S. with names like “Park View Terrace” or whatever.  Basically meaningless, but meant to evoke a kind of suburban arcadia.

But, unlike suburbs in the U.S., Korean suburbs (and postwar urbanization patterns in general) are overwhelmingly high-density – thus this suburban community (45 minutes by train northwest of Seoul) feels more like Manhattan than like any socio-economically equivalent American suburb, e.g. Thousand Oaks in L.A. or Burnsville in Twin Cities.

This picture (above) shows the main street a block north of my apartment, and the fire station that will be my landmark for finding the place.  The school is northwest, about a 20 minute walk – I wasn’t able to find it yesterday, walking around exploring, but I did find a nice park with a little hill in it, called Jeongbalsan (which is also the name of my rail station), and I had a strange moment when the pine forest smell and the humid, red, sandy soil evoked memories of marching through Korean woods on infantry exercises when I was stationed here in the U.S. Army all those years ago.  Smells are weird that way, so evocative.

Above is a picture of the big buildings peeking through the trees of the park.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to get a lot of sleep since I arrived, so as to at least be well rested if not quite on schedule when I go into work later today.
In computer news… I am trying to get my Linux installation to allow me to type Hangul (Korean writing system).  I’m having some frustrations, but I can kind of get it to work through a bit of kludge at the moment, by typing in the one application I can get it to work in (gedit, the opensource equivalent to something like Wordpad under Windows) and then cut-n-pasting into the destination (e.g. Firefox browser, where I write this blog), hence: 정발산 (=jeongbalsan).