Category Archives: trains and train stations

Return to Seoul: traditional village

Adventures, trains and train stations, travelling in Korea, ,

After an evening in Itaewon, we woke up slowly on Sunday morning; slow but insensibly cheered by the appearance of the sun. I used to find it strange that people from places like the UK talked so very much about the weather. These days I do it myself. I still think it I a bit odd, but the weather, and particularly the lack of sun, is such a big part of life here in Korea (especially in Daegu). It also mean that a little sunshine is enough to make any day better, even if it’s still fairly chilly.

We set off to do some more exploring. We caught the bus to the city centre area, getting off at the Sejeong Performing Arts Centre. This central area of Seoul is more open than most of the built-up areas because there are open, ‘square’-style areas. There are also magnificent (and sometimes bizarre) statues to the leading figures of the country, alongside luxury hotels and financial centre buildings. It really does feel like a modern city centre capable of competing with any other city centre in the world. From here, we caught a cab to Namsangol Traditional Korean Village.

The concept of a traditional or folk village bothers some people because they feel like it’s all fake and just created to get money out of tourists. Apart from the fact that most of the folk villages in Korea are free and set up to educate Koreans as well as foreigners, I quite like the attempt to represent the everyday lives of people who lived in a very different time. I suppose the attempt to represent social history accurately appeals to me. It’s probably also particularly important in a country that has modernised so quickly it would be very easy for the old ways to be lost forever within a generation or two.

Namsangol Traditional Village is not in fact a recreation of a village that existed or a ‘typical’, hypothetical village that could have existed. Instead, five residences (including houses and outhouses and sometimes servants quarters) were all relocated and restored here so that different social strata are represented and also that the homes represented are those of real historical figures. It is a different approach. I haven’t seen enough of the other approach to be able to compare. For now, it was just great to be able to get a closer look at life during the Joseon period through the lens of these five households.

The first house was that of Sunjeong Hyo Empress Yun’s parents. This is the home where the future Empress lived until she was 13, when she was designated the wife of the crown prince. It’s always a jolt to be reminded of how young marriages happened in the past, and even in the not so distant past : this was in 1906. The house was beautiful. Each room was set up with beautiful old furniture, brightly coloured bedding and polished metal. I particularly loved the wood – the doors, the cupboards, the tables. I’ve always loved old wood but wood is particularly important in Korean homes because it is reasonably plentiful on the peninsula.

The second house was a residence built for the 27th king of Joseon by his father in law so that he could use it when he came to pay respects to his ancestors (as is part of the Korean tradition). The father in law built it when his daughter was designated a second wife of this king. Around the back of the house, as well as what looked like an outdoor oven, what looked like a Teepee made of straw. When we looked closer, there were three of the traditional brown, shiny storage pots (what I tend to refer to as kimchi pots) buried up to their necks inside the hut. Of course, there were no information boards to explain why. We’ll have to keep wondering.

The other three houses were those of the husband of a princess, a military commander and a regents chief carpenter. In each, we saw bedrooms with beautiful wooden dressers with bedrolls stacked on top of them, clothing hanging on bars from the walls and stunning old lamps. The floors of Korean houses are raised so that there is space for the heating fires under the floors. These kitchens, however were deeper, to provide access to the fires of what looked a lot like aga-style stoves (except less fancy). Large black pots and kettles in unfamiliar shapes sat on stove plates. Garlic and dried plants hung on the walls. Piles of wood waited to add to the heat. Unexpectedly (at least for me), what looked like half-calabashes hung on the walls. In a bedroom, we saw rolled up straw mats next to a high table with ‘ancestor chair’ and the small tables used by those sitting on the floor on cushions all hung on the wall for storage. Definitely an original way to store tables you don’t know what to do with.

In several of the houses, there was a real person dressed in traditional clothing working on some aspect of traditional art and willing, for a small fee, to show everyone else their traditional writing, traditional music and traditional clothing. We didn’t stop to try any of these out but we did enjoy the addition of live models to the quiet old houses. In the central area, we walked past families playing traditional games, several of which I’d seen at the Daegu museum and several of which also reminded me forcibly of some of the traditional games back home. There was even a game where children run along with a bent piece of wire (which is a specially made tool) and a metal ring, trying to keep the ring going. Watching them, I couldn’t help but picture African children in tatty clothes with a stick and an old tyre running along dusty roads. I suppose some things really are universal.

We wandered the park area for a while and also saw the Seoul time capsule. The time capsule, containing 600 items representing current life in Seoul, was buried in 1994 to mark the 600th anniversary of Seoul as the capital of Korea. It is rather ambitiously designed to be opened in 400 years time on the 1000th anniversary of the same. Unfortunately, it’s not particularly impressive to look at and the idea that Seoul will still be Seoul and still be capital in another 400 years seems a little optimistic to me, but perhaps that has to do with my South African view of how long things last. The rest of the part was prettier and we particularly enjoyed the combination of pine trees and water features. We also found a little gazebo-type place made of wood that reminded me so, so strongly of church pews in far-flung farm churches in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. I stopped to take some pictures and run my fingers along the smooth wood surface. Strange associations from two Eastern Cape girls 10 000 miles from home.

By this stage, we were a little cold and definitely hunger so we found a Chinese restaurant – my friend  has a very useful knack for finding Chinese restaurants. After a late lunch of shrimp-fried rice, fried meat dumplings and the most delicious pork and vegetable spring rolls, my second trip to Seoul was almost over and after we chatted for a bit more before I headed off to the station.

The final little bit of my trip took an unexpected turn. The economy tickets for the next KTX to Daegu were sold out. I debated waiting for a later train but I was fairly tired and not in the mood for sitting around so I took a chance and checked the price of a first class ticket. It was definitely more expensive but not completely unreasonable and I figured I could chalk it up to experiencing something new, so I bought one. The KTX train is a fairly luxurious train experience. It feels a lot – from the design of the stations to the seats – like a modern plane, except with more leg-room. There are even ‘cabin attendants’ who could very easily work on planes. Given this, I should probably not have been surprised that the first class is very much like a the first class on a plane. The seats are huge, with ridiculous amounts of space to stretch out and relax. There are only three seats in each row – one on the left and two on the right. Next to me was a huge window with blinds and curtains to block out whatever I didn’t wish to see. Of course, it was evening so there wasn’t much to see anyway, especially with the lights within the train reflecting on the windows. The amount of space was excessive and I wouldn’t have paid the extra if it hadn’t been for getting home earlier, but it was nice to enjoy a little luxury for a bit.

Return to Seoul: a palace, a museum, sushi and cupcakes

Adventures, Seoul, trains and train stations, travelling in Korea, ,

I have made the most fantastic discovery. On my way to Seoul this weekend, I had a 20 minute wait at the Dong-Daegu Train Station (because the train I’d been aiming for was sold out), so I went in search of something to wake me up and found not only decent coffee but also a cupcake shop. The cupcake craze which has taken a lot of Western cities by storm over the past few years didn’t ever really make it to South Africa, but I have always found cupcakes irresistible. This is the first time I have seen a single cupcake in my almost 9 months in Korea, so there was absolutely no way I was going to walk away. I bought four cupcakes (two black forest and two dark chocolate) and was given an extra one as ‘service’ – something free that the shop-owner gives you because you bought a lot. So breakfast before I got on the high-speed train was strong, dark coffee and a decadent chocolate cupcake. Sometimes living in Korea is not very Korean.

Just over an hour and a half later, I arrived in Seoul. Arriving in Seoul is always a reminder that wherever I have come from is a tiny village compared to this huge urban sprawl. When combined with Incheon – they’re so close they share a subway system – Korea’s capital has a population of over 20 million and is the second largest metropolitan area in the world. It’s a little intimidating to stare out of the train window as you enter the dense mass of skyscrapers and traffic and roads but it’s also a little exhilarating to leave the small city I live in and visit the bright lights for a couple of days.

I met up at the station with the friend I was visiting and, after coffee and a bit of catching up, we headed off to visit Gyeongbokgung (Gyeongbok Palace), the largest of the five grand palaces in Seoul. The construction of Gyeongbokgung was ordered in 1394 and it was the royal headquarters, delightfully called the “Palace of Shining Happiness”, for over 200 years, according to my guide book. It’s subsequent fate tells the story of Korea’s history over the rest of the millennium. The palace grounds once held nearly 400 buildings but most were burnt down when the Japanese invaded in the 1590s. It was finally rebuilt after the coronation of child-king Gojong in 1863. Soon afterwards, the Japanese invaded again. In 1895, one of the wives of this king who was considered an obstacle to the Japanese, was assassinated in the palace grounds, a precursor to the full-scale Japanese invasion of 1910. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, this palace, formerly a symbol of Korean pride and national identity, was used by the Japanese for police interrogation and torture and they moved things around, like palace gates and built additional structures with, seemingly, the express purpose of destroying the symbolic form of the palace. The Japanese Governor-General’s residence was also within the palace complex. After the Japanese finally left with the end of the Second World War, parts of the palace were further destroyed during the Korean War. These days the palace complex has largely been rebuilt, with work still going on to recreate the rest, and is a monument to life in the Joseon dynasty, including various representations of traditional life and a great museum.

The last time I was in Seoul we visited Changdeokgung, which is the only palace to have been granted UNESCO World Heritage status. It was fascinating but the thing about World Heritage sites is that the efforts to preserve sometimes limit the experiences of visitors. At Changdeokgung we were only allowed to walk around with a tour-group and it was all a little sterile. From the moment we arrived, Gyeongbokgung was anything but. We stopped to take a look at a particularly beautiful ancient stone stupa (1085)  within the grounds but outside the actual palace complex. As we came around the corner and walked towards the main gate, a group of palace guards in bright red uniforms with black hats and weapons marched past us to the beat of their military drummers. There is something a little surreal about military guards in uniforms belonging to another millennium marching past you as you look up at the gate of a grand palace. The entrance was also guarded by guards in various uniforms, some with flags and others with shields and long sticks. Their colours, from bright red to purple and sky-blue, and the varied flags fluttering in the chilly wind, complemented the colours of the palace gate and the huge painted drum outside, as we got our tickets (3000 won) and wound our way between them and into the actual complex.

Once inside the palace complex, we found ourselves looking up at a large central hall – the throne room or Geungjeongjeon. You can’t walk into the throne room but looking through the open doors on the sides and in the front, you can see the elaborate, detailed (and shiny) throne with the royal screen behind it. The throne is on a raised dais under an awesome ceiling in amazing colours and designs. Around the dais, in the spacious room, are lamps and jars and wooden pillars. The room is set up as it would have been at the time. In front of the throne are two narrow tables with cushions around them, where the scribes would have sat. These scribes, according to a guide we overheard explaining to another group of foreigners, would have sat there throughout the days, recording everything the king did or said to create the record of the kings life that was sealed until after his death: a memoir captured moment by moment as the days of his reign went by.

Beyond the main hall, we wandered through the many buildings of the complex, each restored and carefully maintained, some, including the residence of the queen, with furnishings set up to show how things would have looked. Unlike the previous palace, here we were able to wander everywhere we wanted on our own. One of the joys of Korean palaces is just being able to spend time wandering around and taking in the incredible detail in the roofs and roof tiles, as well as the symmetry and elegance of the way buildings are spaced out. These palaces are not like Western buildings where everything is clustered under rooves. Here, the courtyards form an important part of the design with passages around the edges and buildings set apart in the centre of courtyards. The courtyards are like white space on a printed page, adding to the drama of each hall or building because they create an open space around them. Sometimes water is used to do the same thing. We looked across a lake at the pavilion where festivities and events would presumably have been held (Gyeonghoeru or Royal Banquet Pavilion). The people who lived banqueted here are long since gone but the water still laps at the small island where the pavilion stands and fish still swim through the water. Behind us, I noticed some of the chimneys that would have carried away the smoke from the fires used to heat the rooms. According to my guidebook, the water in the lake was used not only to add beauty to the banquet hall, but also to put out the fires that inevitably accompanied the use of underfloor wood or charcoal fires (particularly in buildings constructed using rather a lot of wood).

Further on, we looked up the steps to multi-story temple-style building, longing to be able to climb the steps – something that is not allowed in order to preserve the old construction. It is particularly beautiful and strikingly Asian. Alongside this, a few buildings have been set up as models of life in the early 20th century, with the house of a scribe and shop of a traditional healer, a comic book shop, a restaurant and (of course) a beauty salon, among others. There is little explanation but the setting is obvious from things like radios and movie posters (James Dean, among others) scattered around the place. We were intrigued by the information outside a model of a little shop selling shoes and the tradition wide-brimmed, black hats, to read that the hats are called ‘gat’ (which only those who speak Afrikaans will understand).

From there we went into the museum underneath the multi-story temple-y type building. I have mentioned before, I love museums, but am often frustrated by the sterile approach to history some museums employ, presenting artefacts as individual finds rather than part of the narratives of the history of the time. This museum, the National Folk Museum of Korea, took a different approach and instead of simply presenting historical things, tried to recreate and explain the context. The exhibitions range from the ‘Life Cycles of Koreans’ gallery, which attempts to present traditional life experiences from the bridal bed and birth, first birthdays and childhood to weddings, sports, war, the way different classes lived and old age – complete with traditional games – and death. Another area presents different aspects of traditional life. At one point, there is a truly magnificent funeral bier, ornately decorated with figures of birds and animals and people and painted in bright greens and reds, blues and yellows and oranges. The information board said that it was carried by between 12 and 24 pallbearers. It certainly looked large enough and heavy enough to require that many men. There was also a bridal palanquin – a little like a covered sedan chair meant to be carried by four men and used to transport the bride to the home of her husband after the wedding ceremony. There were also displays of traditional farming, fishing and other ordinary living activities, including what looked for all the world like a scarecrow and turned out to be a raincoat made of bundles of straw. It is impossible to detail all the things we saw but it was a great museum, far more modern, of course, than the Gyeongju museum (because this one focuses mainly on the much later Joseon period, rather than the Silla dynasty) but also focussing on social history, rather than royalty or archaeological finds.

This is the second time I have visited a palace on a misty, wintry day but it adds to, rather than detracts from the experience. Before we left, we went to another small lake where a much smaller, but even more beautiful, pavilion stands on a tiny island, connected to the outside world by a narrow wooden bridge. In the background, the mountain peaks were shrouded in mist and the grey day gave an eerie timelessness to the bare trees set around the gardens within the complex walls. At one point, as we walked back towards the main gate, we came through a doorway into a courtyard and we were the only people there. I had a sudden moment, in the dusky light of the misty, overcast day, picturing what it must have been like waking through these same grounds on the same kind of late-winter day hundreds of years ago at the height of the Joseon dynasty.

After leaving the Gyeongbok complex, we found – after a little trial and error – a great little Japanese restaurant. I’ve been craving sushi for ages so it was a great find. Our fairly inexpensive meal included, as is so often the case here, several different courses. We started with sweet pumpkin soup and then a cabbage salad with a yummy sauce, a variety of sushi and sashimi, including prawn (wow) and salmon (yay), miso soup and prawn and sweet potato tempura with a sweetish sauce with a hint of ginger, all accompanied by tea and the usual side dishes (including kimchi because it’s not a meal in Korea unless there is kimchi). We were seated at a table in a private room, with sliding doors pulled shut around us by the woman serving us, opening only as she brought us yet more food. We sat and chatted as we savoured the gorgeous meal and sipped warm tea. It was almost difficult to leave the warm, cosy restaurant and go back out into the chilly afternoon.

40 steps and Jagalchi Fish Market (Busan Part 1)

Adventures, Food, trains and train stations, travelling in Korea, , , ,

Daegu is not a coastal city. But some days the wind blows in a certain way and the glare is a particular way and the air has that feeling of moisture that makes me think of the sea. I think that is the reason I’ve thought a lot about coastal towns since I arrived here and have, several times, made vague plans to go and find the nearest beach I know of in Busan (also called Pusan). Plans have fallen through or been shelved several times. I came close to going with friends to the Pusan International Film Festival last month and then decided against it at the last minute. This weekend, in spite of predictions of rain, I finally went to Busan.

I woke up early, thanks to a mosquito launching a concerted attack at 7am so I got my things together and headed off. The 814 bus got me to the station at 10am. A taxi would have been quicker, but I wanted to try the bus. I bought at ticket for the 10:28 KTX (11500 won) and went to find breakfast. After rejecting a ‘garlic glazed’ doughnut, I retreated from all food-related-adventurousness and picked up a sandwich at the 7eleven.

The KTX from Dongdaegu to Busan takes roughly one hour. I sat back and enjoyed the trip through rural-ish areas, watching with joy as we passed autumn vineyards. One of my favourite sites is grape vines in autumn. These could, of course, just have be table grapes but they were still pretty and familiar. Closer to Busan, the train wove it’s way through mountains and alongside and across wide rivers, or perhaps just one river – as far as I can gather, Busan is at the end of the Nakdong river but I’m not sure of that.

Outside Busan station, I wandered around feeling lost . I’m not very good at strange places with lots of people. I was going to take buses because they’re a better way to see a city but at that point I saw the subway and had had no luck finding the right bus, so I retreated to the familiar and easier option. This subway station was very different to those I know in Daegu. If you’ve ever travelled from the Eastern Cape to Joburg by bus, you may have stopped at that slightly dodgy, glaringly out-of-date place where all the buses stop in Bloem. This felt like that. Everywhere was red-brick, too many columns, primary colours and floor-tiles that screamed ‘institution’. And particularly odd murals and décor on the walls. It really all felt very 80s. The Daegu subway stations feels new and modern and efficient. This felt like a relic from a bygone era. The Busan subway system didn’t feel at all efficient and modern and first world. I eventually managed to find the ticket-machine and buy a one-day pass (3500 won). Once I’d figured out how to use the pass, I caught the train (which also seemed far from new) to Jungang-dong station.

When I visit a new place, I tend to start by searching for information. Because I’ve planned to visit Busan several times, I’ve done quite a lot of this information gathering. One of the places I wanted to see, in spite of the reports on several travel websites that it wasn’t worth the effort, was the 40 Gyedan Cultural Tourist Theme Street. The reason the guide books and sites say that it’s not worth a visit is that there isn’t really all that much there except for a few statues on the street and an information board or two. But I have a fairly powerful imagination and an equally strong interest in social history. This little area – which is really just two short streets – has been important at various points in history but the bit that caught my interest was the role it played during the Korean War. During the war, there was a time when pretty much the whole of the peninsula was under the control of the North except for a small area around Busan called the Pusan Perimeter (correct romanisation at the time). This, of course, meant thousands of refugees flooded into the city. Most of them settled, temporarily, on the hills above the port area in Dongwang-dong. These two streets are just below there and would have been an important economic and social area for refugees and residents alike. At the end of one of these streets is a set of 40 steps leading from the lower street to the higher-up residential areas. These are the 40 steps and it is here that refugees would pass to try and find work and food to survive and here they ended up gathering to try to find any information about missing family members. This set of steps became the main place for separated families to seek their loved ones, for some to be reunited and for others to wait in vain and go home sad.

The Koreans are not all that good at memorialising places like this but they have placed statues in bronze around the area representing ordinary people at the time –  like father sleeping on a traditional A-frame pack at the end of work and children carrying water. One the flight of steps, about half way up, is a statue of a man playing an accordion. The story goes that he is playing a song written about the 40 steps, commemorating that time. When I was there, he was silent but the poignancy of this figure on a deserted set of steps, in a neighbourhood that was almost eerily quiet on a chilly, overcast Sunday morning was not lost. I’m not sure I agree with the way in which the area and it’s history have been commemorated. I certainly wasn’t particularly impressed with the information boards and the wooden lampposts – complete with fake pigeon that would have been right at home at Monte Casino. But that doesn’t change the history of the area and I’m glad that my internet meanderings turned up the info about the history of this place and that I was able to visit it myself so that I could visualise something of what that time must have been like.

After the 40 steps, I heading off to one of Busan’s most well-known spots – the Jagalchi Fish Market. This huge market is really meant for locals but it’s significantly large and interesting enough to make it into all the guide books. I could probably have walked there but I didn’t have a map of the area and I was feeling a little lost already, so I took the subway to Nampo-dong station. I walked out of the station (Exit 2, as per sign indicating Jagalchi Fish Market) and along a road that seemed unrelated to fish, until the first side-road on the left, down which I could see the sea. My first sight of the fish market was rows of tiny covered stalls, each with a table and chairs serving as an outdoor restaurant. Opposite them were various slightly larger restaurants. It seemed as if everyone there was trying to get people to stop and buy their seafood dishes. Turning, I saw the huge multi-story building that houses the main markets. Before I reached it, however, there was an Ajumma on the pavement with a market-cart (stall on wheels) covered in fish. She laughed at me as I stopped to take a picture of her wares – rows and rows of dead fish hanging on spikes with other fish, some filleted, some whole, in baskets on the little concrete pavement stools not far away. In Mozambique, I came across people selling fish on the street but none as enthusiastically or in such  volume as this.

Inside the doors of the first floor of the main building, the world became a blur of lights and crowds, people in yellow aprons and black gumboots and rows and rows of tanks where every seafood imaginable splashed and swam and, in the case of the crabs, tried to escape. The huge hall is arranged a little like an expo – with some stalls along the walls and others back-to-back in two or three rows in the middle. Each stall had at least 10 to 15 tanks of different kinds of fish and other sea creatures. There were eels and crabs and lobsters and shell-fish of all sorts and actual fish of every shape and size, from small lightning-quick flashes of silver to big solid-looking 30-cm swimming-lunches. Some where flat with eyes on the top of their bodies, others were thin and slimy looking. I walked through the huge crowded space. People were examining the fish and bartering with stall-holders. Women standing behind stalls currently without customers were expertly cutting up and filleting. I was a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of seafood swimming around in tanks in that hall. I’m not squeamish about the fact that what I eat used to be alive at all but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much swimming seafood. The wriggling and splashing and looking at me became a little too much. I went outside and found an escalator to the second floor. Here there were people sitting at low tables eating some of the things from the floor below. The tables were clustered in groups around the room, crowded between stalls selling dried fish and fish-related products of every shape and size. I considered sitting down and having lunch but most of the tiny restaurant areas were full and they didn’t seem geared up for a solo traveller.

The other side of the main building faces the sea, with views across the water of bridges and ships and a working port. There were also what looked like Sotdae except that they were fish instead of birds. Perhaps fish spirits guard this coastal town. I watched the seagulls circling for a while and breathed in the scent of the sea.

Back on the street, I joined the throngs walking down the street. I kept stepping out of the way, just to look for one moment – hardly believing my eyes – at yet more seafood-still-swimming, some in tanks as inside the building, others in large plastic basins. At one place a woman was cleaning and preparing a crab taken from a tank of crabs each with a body quite literally the size of the woman’s head. On the other side of the road, a man was selling fishing rods and gear. Little women scuttled out of each little restaurant to try and convince the Korean couple walking ahead of me to stop and have lunch in their establishments. A women on the pavement sat cleaning something beside a plastic basin of large, wriggling octopuses. Further along, a pair of women worked on a table next to a row of basins teaming with splashing fish.

I turned up a side-street, between yet more fish restaurants, and headed towards a main road. The last I saw of the fish market was a basket of filleted fish sitting forlornly on a stool on the pavement, with their owner nowhere to be seen, as crowds of people flowed past without even seeming to notice.