Category Archives: Seoul

Photographs and memories

Adventures, Ideas, Mozambique, Seoul, ,

There is something about photographs. Since I returned, I have thought very little about the experiences in Korea. As in any journey from one culture to another, there has been a sweet honeymoon period and I have given myself over to that heightened appreciation for the beauty and amazingness of the Eastern Cape. Today I plugged in my camera for the first time and discovered I hadn’t even downloaded my pictures from Hongdae and the DMZ.

I duly downloaded them. Looking through the pictures was the strangest (strongest?) experience. I had downloaded a picture in the wrong place. I’d put it in the Hongdae folder but it wasn’t – it was a picture taken in Itaewon. I took it from the window of the restaurant where I had lunch after I went to the DMZ. The window was open and the flags strung across the street were flapping in the breeze. It was a quiet afternoon. It was a Tuesday and not many people were wandering around this tourist/shopping/restaurant area. I suppose it would still be busy by many people’s standards, but it was quiet for Seoul. I find myself, in my mind, pronouncing Seoul in the Korean manner. The photo takes me back. I can taste the Korean beer – not very good, especially after the North Korean beer we’d tried earlier in the day. I had fish and chips. It was the first Western-style fish-and-chips meal I’d had in Korea. The restaurant was called Little Guinness, I remember now. I can feel the breeze through the window and hear the sounds. I sat on the side with the hatch from the kitchen. In the background, beneath the music, I can hear people speaking Korean as they prepare the food. It took a while to arrive – I was hungry – but the day was beautifully hot and clear and it was peaceful there.

There are other pictures, later. I went to a park by a river. By THE river, the Han River (Hangang). There was a man by a tree, in a field of flowers, practicing the saxophone. I’d forgotten about it. I watched him for a while. It was so unusual.

And the craziness of cosmopolitan Hongdae. The Self-Esteem boutique. SPAM restaurant. B-hind coffee shop. The crisp taste of the white wine at the bar where I sat on that last night. A beautiful Italian place. There were dogs in the courtyard outside the window next to my table. Children came and talked to them and fed them. Groups settled down to eat pizza and drink wine. Families sat on the balcony across the courtyard (all the same restaurant) and ate fancy dinners. I can taste the wine as the last sunlight fades and the night settles softly on the city.

I am struck by the tangible sensations evoked by the photographs – the smells, the tastes, the feeling of the wind. I go further back, to the pictures from the Mozambique trip, a good year and a half ago now. They’re just as vivid. The rain on the first morning in Maputo and later, when we stopped and ordered Sangria, and in the wild gardens. How soaked we were when we finally got back and my hat that would never be the same. And Rich and Jonathan going off to find prawns for dinner. Breakfast at that surf-themed place with the bookshop in Tofo after waking up because it was no longer possible to sleep in the heat of the yellow tent. Looking the pictures, I feel the heat, even on this cold winter morning. I had fish and chips in Tofo. The others had gone off exploring but I stayed behind. It was the best fish and chips I’ve ever eaten. I don’t have a picture of that. I wonder why.

There is a picture of Inhambane that New Years Day. The sun is just going down and people are starting to gather on the wall by the water, across the road from where we were staying. My picture is blurred and not very good but still I can hear the music starting and taste the cold Mozambiquan beer as we sat down to watch the people and soak up the atmosphere. It was such a perfect evening.

Days later, in the lush green of Vilankulos, the squid pasta evening. We drank Savannahs there. I’d forgotten that. And that amazing sunset. And the dog. And the rolls. Suddenly I remember those tiny, sweet rolls we bought that morning in Inhambane and ate with those Senor something-or-other chips. That was the day we took the ferry and found that bakery/ice-cream shop. The memories tumble over each other like a dam bursting. The tastes and sounds, the heat and the rain. Being soaking wet on the ferry. Everything comes back in a rush. I feel the need to go even further back, to a long-ago cruise in the Caribbean. The pictures are almost like travelling – they allow you to go back, in your mind, to revisit and experience again. I am primed for travel.

Next to my computer sits a bus ticket. It’s not a long trip, just an overnighter, in fact, but it a little taste, a little glimpse of travel. A little picture, even. I pack my camera back in its little bag, check that I have extra batteries and put it in my daypack. I have a longer journey planned for next week, to one of my favourite cities in the world, but for now this will do nicely – a little journey to a little place that more than any other makes me feel home.

DMZ

Adventures, Seoul, travelling in Korea,

On Tuesday, I was up and ready to leave by 8am. Outrageous, I realise, especially for a non-working day, but worth it for what was to come. I was going on a tour to the DMZ. There are two kinds of DMZ tours. The longer, more expensive option takes you right up to the Joint Security Area, where you can actually enter the room where talks are held, through the middle of which runs the border between North and South Korea. The border never used to be enforced in this UN-controlled area until the axe murder incident between some US soldiers and the North Korean army, after which it was enthusiastically insisted upon (mostly by the North, if reports are to be believed).

I opted for the shorter tour, which takes you to the edge of the DMZ. I was picked up at the backpackers at around 8:15am, just as I took the first sip of a destined-to-be-abandoned cup of coffee. I joined the rest of the group in the small bus and we headed off. There were 6 of us on the tour that day, two New Zealanders, an entertaining American (as opposed to the annoying type) and two possibly-Canadians who didn’t say all that much. I was the only woman, apart from the tour-guide, which bothered me not at all, although the guide seemed a little concerned about it.

Our first stop was Imjingak. This is the site of the second-last station on the North-South line and the closest any civilian can get to the North without being part of a specially arranged, guided tour, complete with military checkpoints and permissions. All the way to Imjin, the road followed the line of the Han River (or Hangang – for some reason generally translated as Hangang River). For most of the way, the pretty area of forest beside the road was separated from the river by a line of barbed wire fencing, dotted with guard posts with  armed guards. This line, the guide explained, is the civilian control line. The demilitarized zone stretched for roughly 2km in either direction north and south. On the Southern side of this (and presumably mirrored on the North) is an extremely heavily militarized zone stretching between 5km and 20km (depending on where you are in the country) to the civilian control line in the South.

Imjingak is along the civilian control line. It also has huge symbolic and historical importance. It is here, for example, that ‘freedom bridge‘ stood (stands?). During the Korean War, the bridges that had existed over this river at what, several times, was the front, were destroyed. Once the truce had been signed, the ‘Bridge of Freedom’ was built, theoretically to connect the two Koreas but really for the express purpose of facilitating the exchange of POWs. On that bridge, thousands of Koreans were asked to choose, very finally – they would never get the chance again, whether they wanted to belong to the North or South.

Also at Imjingak are various artefacts from the war, including a locomotive that was shot to pieces as it tried to deliver supplies, as well as a bell dedicated to unification (Peace Bell), a wall dedicated to unification and various other testaments to (some of) the South Korean people’s hope for the reunification of the peninsula. The most poignant, at least for me, was the shrine. The idea and role of ancestors in Korea differs from that in South Africa and is intrinsically tied up with place. So, each Cheosak and New Year, families travel to their ancestral homes to perform the rites that show their respect for or veneration of those who have gone before them. During the Korean war, the front-line between the armies moved back and forth several times and civilian populations scattered before it, trying to avoid the fighting. At the end of the active war, therefore, many were far from their homes. Prior to this conflict, Koreans could move across the peninsula but once the truce was signed, the 38th parallel became a fixed barrier and many Koreans found themselves cut off from their homes and ancestors. This point at Imjingak is the closest they can get and over the years many families began coming here to bow towards their homes and make their sacrifices here. Eventually, the South Korean government built them a shrine – a tiny gesture that is really all the still-technically-at-war nation can do to ease their loss. Just near the shrine is a monument recognising all those nations who fought as part of the UN force on the Southern side. I had a moment of ambivalence about my own country’s involvement.

After half an hour or so, we were all hustled into a larger tour-bus. Because the rest of the places we’d see on the tour are in an area under heavy military control, all small tours are bundled together (with their tour-guides) onto larger buses driven by specially accredited drivers. We were on our way to see the 3rd Infiltration tunnel, also known, according to Wikipedia, as the Third Tunnel of Aggression. Once there, we watched a video that was surprisingly un-anti-DPRK but concertedly, explicitly and emphatically pro-unification. This was followed by a walk through the exhibition hall with our guide – a great chance to ask questions and get a clearer sense of the history.

And then the tunnel. This is one of the bits of the tour I was looking forward to most, perhaps because the infiltration tunnels are less well-known and so less propagandised, perhaps because there is something so classic-war-novel about tunnels underground. Perhaps because allowing people to visit these tunnels is a recognition that hostilities still exist, something that doesn’t seem to happen often in the RoK, particularly in the expat community, where most people dismiss the North as a joke. This tunnel, and the others like it, are clear evidence that the DPRK didn’t just lie down and give up in 1953. It appears that the North Koreans decided in the 1970s that the best way to get around the DMZ was to tunnel under it, all the way to Seoul, so that ground troops could move through the tunnels to back up an air assault (it is assumed). The first tunnel was found in 1974 and the most recent (4th) in 1990. There are probably at least 3 to 5 tunnels as yet undiscovered.

This third tunnel was found in 1978 after a tip-off from a defector. It is estimated that it took roughly 6 years to construct, using dynamite and then (probably) human labour to clear away the rock. It is just over 1600m long, 400m of which are on the South Korean side. In order to get to the tunnel, tourists must don hard-hats and walk down the steep access shaft. The North Koreans are apparently pretty good at tunnels – our guide informed us that they have a subway system up to 100m deep. They must have perfected their skills here – it was a long way down.

Once in the tunnel itself, I found myself wishing – for the first time ever – that I was average Korean height. Scores of Koreans wandered effortlessly past as the Westerners bent and ducked to avoid knocking ourselves out on the solid rock above us. The rock dripped and glistened as we walked. Dynamite holes were ringed in white paint to mark them. On the walls and the roof, if you touch them accidentally, is the black ‘coal’ they were dusted with by the retreating North Korean soldiers, the basis of the North’s later claims that the tunnels were in fact part of a coal-mining operation.

The end of the third tunnel is blocked by three solid concrete walls. Tourists are able to go as far as the Southern side of the first. The space between the first and the second is monitored by CCTV and beyond that second barrier, land-mines protect from any invading force that might successfully overcome the final wall. The area around the first wall is now also monitored by CCTV, too, replacing in the early 2000s, the previous human-plus-dog-plus-canary early warning system.

The tunnel is fascinating, particularly to someone with an interest in history, if only to get a real idea of just how determined the North Koreans were (and possibly still are). It should, however, come with a warning – coming back up to the surface required a hike of nearly half a km up an 11 degree incline.

Our next stop was Dora Observatory – an opportunity to look across the DMZ into North Korean territory, or at least at the Kaesong Industrial complex and the DMZ ‘peace’ villages. You are not allowed to take pictures beyond the ‘photo line’ at the observatory, apparently because they’re scared you will capture on camera images of a South Korean military base in the DMZ, but that makes no sense to perhaps there is another reason. This means that it is impossible (at least without a fairly substantial zoom lens) to capture images of the villages and the border.

The view is awesome, though. We were lucky to be there on a perfectly clear day and so were able to see far across the DMZ, even without the binoculars (500 won per view). The DMZ is, these days, a precious nature preserve in a peninsula where not all that many creatures survive. This provides an even more stark contrast that would exist anyway with the massively deforested hills of the North’s side. On the Southern side, forests blanket the hills with lush green (happily concealing their carpet of deadly landmines). To the North, the hills are bare and huge patches of erosion glaringly scar the landscape. Of course, this area is near the border and it is possible that some of the clearing has been intentional, but there is an awful lot of ground cleared, suggesting that the North’s insatiable and unfulfilled need for energy is a more likely explanation. What little is known of the North suggests that they are anything but a thriving country, struggling to produce sufficient food, power and other goods. A far cry from the North Korea that existed not so long ago, when the North’s standard of living in fact remained higher than that of the South right up until the 1970s and the South’s economic miracle.

From this look-out point, we could also see the two flags, the North’s bigger after they finally won (at least for the moment) the bizarre my-flagpole-is-bigger-than-yours stand-off, building one of the world’s highest. Also visible was the North’s ‘model’ village, often referred to as a ‘fake village’. I was a little sceptical of the story that the North maintains this village that no-one lives in, but looking closely through the binoculars, it does appear that the windows are empty and the buildings are just shells. The South’s own ‘peace village’ has a population of 500, with a maximum of 200 allowed to live in Kaesong-dong, from what I could gather.

The observatory was good but soon it was time to move on to Dorasan station, the last station on the Southern side – or fist station to the North as the information boards and pro-unification propaganda proclaim. This sparkling, modern station complex, complete with customs, cargo storage area and ticket office, has never been used and stands as a symbol of Kim Dae Jung, President’s Sunshine Policy towards North Korea. The train to the North (to Kaesong, not any further) apparently runs past here but this station, situated as it is within the civilian control area, is not uses. At the deserted counter, tourists pick up info pamphlets and use the commemorative stamp to prove they were here or shop at the tiny café. Nothing else happens here and guards walk back and forth, dealing more with tourists than anyone else.

The final stop on the tour was unification village, where we visited a ‘market’ (read: souvenir store) selling products made in the DMZ and North Korea. They sell a variety of goods, from T-shirts and key-rings to roots and herbs grown in the DMZ. They also sell North Korean beer. Once the guide mentioned this, several of the group jumped at the chance to try it. It was very good, actually – rich and refreshing and beating hands-down the South Korea offerings.

And then it was time to return to Seoul. As we drove back, we chatted with the guide about the situation and the history, learning more about the two Koreas. Back in the city, we were dropped in Itaewon and went our separate ways. I had a last lunch in Korea’s foreigner-central and let myself process and think about all that I had seen and learnt in my 4 hour tour to the DMZ.

3:52 am, Seoul Station

Adventures, Seoul, trains and train stations, Travel,

Not too long ago, I took a day-trip up to Seoul. Seoul is nearly 300km from Daegu, so it’s a fairly long way to go just for the day. In Korea, in fact, it’s almost clear across the country. It was worth it to see a old friend I haven’t seen for ages and who was in the country for just a few days from Japan.

I took the bus up (3 and a half hours), managed to find my way through the rat-maze-chaos of Seoul Express Bus Terminal and navigated the Seoul subway system (which is huge and confusing) to reach Itaewon perfectly on time (amazingly). In order to manage it, I’d woken up at 7am, which will become important later in the story.

I had a great time with my friend. It is so nice to see someone with whom you have common history, to just talk and talk for hours and explore a new place together. It was particularly nice to be able to talk about where we are now and compare experiences. I read something recently (and cannot remember where I read it unfortunately) about how meeting up with old friends sometimes turns into a largely uninteresting litany of ‘remember when’ stories. This wasn’t that. We share a lot of common history but most of the afternoon was new memories and new experiences. It was lovely.

After dinner with two of his colleagues from Japan, I said my goodbyes and headed off to catch a late subway to Seoul station and take a train home. I had settled on taking the train back to Daegu because I wasn’t sure of the bus schedules and the train system is the mode of Korean transport with which I am most familiar and most comfortable. I managed the subway just fine and found my way to Seoul Station.

The first inkling that I may have miscalculated was when I walked into the airport-hanger-style station building and saw a departures board that seemed to indicate that the next train to Daegu wasn’t until 5:30am. I got a bit of a fright but was sure this must be a mistake. I had checked the schedule a few days earlier and was certain there were several late trains. The automated ticketing machine unhelpfully said there were no tickets, so I went to the counter and asked the rather harassed-looking ticket salesperson. He confirmed that the last train to Daegu had left 10 minutes earlier. Perhaps I looked at the train schedule for Daegu to Seoul, not Seoul to Daegu. Either way, I was clearly wrong.

I turned away from the ticket-counter and looked across the room. I will admit to a moment of panic before my new-found sense of adventure and humour in the face of crisis kicked in. I laughed it off: I’d simply wait for the next morning. It would be a little bit of an adventure. Plus, I had a brand new book to start reading and a pen and paper – more than enough to keep me busy for a few hours.

The thing they don’t tell you, and which I imagine very few people ever have occasion to learn, is that Seoul’s extremely busy train station does not, in fact, stay open all night. This was a surprise. The train station really is a major transport hub and I think it just didn’t occur to me that it would close. Also, they have a 24-hour McDonalds and a 24-hour Lotteria.

At around 12:45, the police and station security began rousing and clearing out the homeless people sleeping on the station floor. I frantically did mental calculations to try and figure out a way to afford a taxi and somewhere to stay and still get home. It was after midnight, so my bank card was of no help. There was no way I was going to be able to do it. Just then a kindly security guard came over and confirmed that they were indeed closing and throwing everyone out, but, perhaps taking pity on the bewildered foreigner, said earnestly that they’d be opening again at 2am.

Relieved that I’d only be stranded for an hour, I swung my pack onto my back and headed out into the night. Outside, it was dark and raining. Distinctly thankful for my less-than-trusting relationship with Korean weather, I pulled out my never-leave-home-without-it umbrella and pulled the built-in rain cover over my backpack. As the last people straggled out of the building, I watched the lights of Seoul Station go down.

The slightly less damp areas around the building had been firmly claimed by groups of homeless with cardboard for beds and their belongings firmly tucked up as pillows beneath their heads. I looked around. I’m a South African. Every muscle in my body was coiled in tense anticipation. I was alone on a dark, damp night on the side of the road in a city of 20 million people.

I saw a restaurant but I didn’t want to have to spend money on food I didn’t want. And anyway, it looked rather dodgy and like it might close any minute. The area in front of the station wasn’t pitch dark, thanks to streetlights and neon signs and a row of taxis waiting, forlornly, for passengers to appear out of the night. I spent some time idly trying to decipher the bus route information board. A Korean guy, sitting at the bus stop playing on his i-phone, asked in perfect English if I needed help. We chatted briefly before I moved on. I contemplated taking a walk but the streets seemed to disappear into darkness and all the assurances of low crime rates in Korea couldn’t persuade me that moving away from the lights was a good idea. I walked back and forth, back and forth in front of the station. I stood around. I watched the rain. I watched the night-people. I waited. Waiting, watching, staying near to the pleasant-enough taxi-drivers who tried, repeatedly, to convince me to take a taxi back to Daegu (at 5 times the price of a train and for which I most certainly didn’t have the money right then).

At 2am, as promised, the lights of the station came back on and the homeless station-sleepers and I, the one lone, lost foreigner, trickled back into the building. I found a bench free of people trying to sleep and returned to my book, willing the hours to pass quickly now.

At around 2:30 in the morning, the exhaustion was starting to kick in. I decided it was time for coffee. Because I didn’t have much money on me and I was now in the kind of head-space where I wouldn’t take any chances, I didn’t want to spend too much, but strong black coffee sounded heavenly, especially after an hour of walking in the rain. Plus, of course, I’d been awake since 7am. I went into the “24-hour” Lotteria (ha!), which had finally reopened.

The waiter disappeared as soon as he had served me. I sat down at a table with my coffee, glad to be comfortably sitting in a restaurant, away from the fights for bench-space and disputes with station security. I was a little chilly, so I got out my  jacket. The only other customer stared at me, open mouthed. “Is that a springbok jacket?” he asked. Of all the Lotterias in all the Train Stations in all the cities in all the world, what were the chances that the only other person in this one, at 2:30 in the morning, would be a Capetonian named Derek? We had the kind of conversation that happens when you randomly meet another South African in a strange country in the early hours of the morning: where in SA are you from? Where did you study? Do you know so-and-so? He went off, chuckling at the randomness. I think I might have believed I’d hallucinated it had I not caught a glimpse of him getting off the same train as me as we arrived back in Daegu. The last remnants of weirdness about spending the night at Seoul Station trickled away as I relaxed into the inexplicableness of life. If Derek ever reads this, he should he did a great job of brightening my morning.

I bought my ticket home, now that the machines were working again, and whiled away the next few hours reading and writing and occassionally wandering. At about 4:30am, the station began to fill up and slowly returned to its usual, busy, bustling self. At 5, I had another coffee to tide me over until departure time. I managed a couple of hours of broken sleep as the train swept across Korea before finally heading home.

I am absolutely no worse for the experience. It was totally worth it to see an old friend. I even relish a little being able to add to my repertoire of stories ‘The time I spent the night at Seoul Station’. I feel a little bad that I was unable to let my friend know I was okay – my cellphone couldn’t get internet and his wasn’t working in Korea, but other than that, no harm done. It was a little bit of an adventure: a day trip that ended with me sitting on a bench in Seoul Station, writing, at 3:52 in the morning.