Sometimes I stumble on a pithy little phrase that I feel encapsulates some aspect of what life in Korea is like. 

Korea, as a country and culture, is a bunch of layers.  At the core, there is a group of mountain-dwelling hunter-gatherers, in a rugged, difficult climate.  That was thousands of years ago.  Add a layer of Confucian Chinese paternalism.  Add a layer of Buddhist soul-saving.  Add another layer of reactionary confucianism.  Add a layer of Japanese fascism.  And finally, a veneer of western modernity.  But all the layers are from the "outside" – the core is still this rather disparate, hardscabble tribe of hunter-gatherers.  This is evident any time you sit down to a Korean meal – everything and anything is edible, and, with some soy sauce and red pepper flakes, delicious. 

So some time back, I had coined a phrase to describe Korea:  "A medieval city state with an internet connection."  But my current revision of this idea is to take it farther back – to the paleolithic.  That's what I put in the title, above.  I really feel this, at times.  Korea is deeply primitive, yet in a weirdly post-modern way.  I like that, about this country.

Wow. My secret plan to come to Ilsan in record time worked perfectly – I made it in under 5 hours. The one time, before, when I tried to do a trip direct from Yeonggwang to Ilsan, it took more like 6 and half, because going into Seoul and then changing to the subway seems to end up taking up a lot of time.

So this time, I bought a ticket on the 9:30 AM airport express bus, direct from Yeonggwang bus terminal to Incheon Airport. This bypasses the worst of Seoul traffic and congestion. Then I took a “local” airport bus from the airport to Ilsan. Ilsan is, in fact, much closer to Incheon airport than either of them are to downtown Seoul.

I took along a novel to read, The Life of Pi. I’ve been procrastinating on reading this novel for something close to a decade, I think. Maybe not that long. Anyway, it was always out there on the “to read” list. In my bus ride, I managed to plow through the first half of the book.

As Pi confronts the hyena on the lifeboat, I look out the bus window to watch the golden rice fields tranform into the endless tracts of highrise apartments, south of Incheon.  Next thing, I’m looking out the bus window from the top of the bridge over to the island where the airport is. The sky and water is blue, the Incheon skyline is littered with cranes. There are boats sitting on the mudflats, while the world’s commerce passes by in shipping channels. And then I see the giant stainless steel penis-looking-statue-thing that sits at the gateway to Incheon international airport – anyone who’s come in and out of Incheon a few times knows what I’m talking about. I imagine it’s actually supposed to represent some kind of abstraction of “flight,” but frankly, it’s pretty darn blatant, in my opinion. It’s Korea’s “hello” to the world, I guess.

I jump off the bus at the airport, run down the escalator, and in 5 minutes flat I’m sitting on a #3300 bus bound for Ilsan. Another few chapters race by, and I barely ring the buzzer in time for the driver to stop at Baekseok.  I’ve decided to stick with the familiar, and therefore I’ve opted to stay at a hotel I already know about: it’s basically outside the Baekseok subway entrance. It’s not the cheapest – but the cheapest in Ilsan are seedy love motels. This is maybe a few grades above that – no lodging is cheap in this part of metro Seoul. It’s cool – it’ll be a luxury weekend. I know this hotel, and know it’s reliable, right? Internet and giant TV in the room, and a lovely view of the Baekseok Costco. Haha.

I have come to Ilsan to attend the first birthday party of my friend’s son.  This is a big deal in Korea – it’s celebrated with a rental of a reception hall, and has the feel of a wedding. I attended one, once before. I still need to find something to give as a gift – I’m not sure I have it in me to get something conventional (i.e. the expected baby clothes or shoes). Maybe something slightly unconventional, instead? Not sure how much to stretch the social boundaries.

The morning dawned utterly cloudless, but definitely fall-like, cooler and with lower humidity.  

I decided to reprise my old commute from Suwon to Gangnam, and it was interesting.  The bus was only half-full – as empty as I've ever seen it on a morning hour.  It is, technically, a holiday.   I was listening to my MP3, on shuffle, and watching the familiar scenery go by.  I love giant cities, and that feeling of anticipation that one gets, coming into one through never-ending suburbs.  Coming into Seoul from the south feels just like approaching Philly from the west, or New York from the north – you pass through alternations of high-density suburbs and green, rural-looking hills covered with trees and striking rock formations.  

I especially like coming through the 우면산 [u-myeon-san] tunnel that the #3000 express bus from Suwon goes through.  You're in green countryside, with only the barest hint that you're on the outskirts of a vast metropolis.  The hills are steep and forested.  And then you go through a toll-gate, plunge into the 3 kilometer tunnel and pop out amid the high-rises of Seocho-gu.  

As the bus burrowed into the tunnel, my MP3 player began to play "Wait So Long" by Trampled by Turtles.  I'm not sure how I feel about this music, but it felt appropriate as I waited for the long tunnel to end.  Trampled by Turtles, by the way, is the most awesome band name, ever.  They're a vaguely "punk" bluegrass outfit from Duluth.  I think I listen to them partly just because of their being from Duluth – I have a ambivalent relationship with bluegrass music.  It's not really my favorite genre, nor even anywhere near the top.  But it was a part of my childhood, and my father is a passing-fair bluegrass and folk musician who plays in amateur gatherings frequently.  I think the Duluth angle, combined with their genre-busting punk leanings, is what makes Trampled by Turtles enjoyable for me.

Teheran-no (the main east-west drag in the high-rent Gangnam district of Seoul) was utterly devoid of traffic.  Seoul does, indeed, become a ghost town on the Chuseok holiday.  I got off at my accustomed stop at the Gangnam subway station, and promptly parked myself in the vast Starbucks half-a-block from the northeast station entrance.

I'm not one of those anti-Starbucks people.  I refuse to get defensive about it – except, by virtue of saying that, and writing in this way about it, I am, in fact, getting defensive about it.  Oh well.

The facts, such as they are:  a) Starbucks is a giant corporation, yes, but I think that, over all, it's more ethical in its policies and behavior than companies such as Google and Facebook, both of which are widely used by many of the same people who proclaim Starbucks to be evil;  b) I own stock in the company, and it's not done well (absolute worst overall performance in my portfolio for the last half-decade, but that's my own fault, for having bought near the peak) – so I feel this weird, irrational, emotional need to "support" them, although that's ridiculous from the standpoint that I'm sure I've spent more money at their stores than I've lost in capital losses on their stock.  To reiterate:  Oh well.  Just remember, each 4 dollar latte that you buy will contribute 1 bazillionth of a cent to my net-worth, so, over a lifetime of latte purchases, I'll have increased my net worth sufficiently to be able to add one more sip.

The vast Starbucks that used to be one of my study haunts when I was trying to be a full-time Korean Language student is utterly deserted.  It's as if there was a North Korean invasion, everyone ran away, and the staff wasn't told.  Hmm.  I'll get back to everyone, on that.

OK.  More later.