After a hair-raising culinary adventure in Mokpo, we high-tailed it onto a bus (sadly there was no ferry) and spent Friday night in Jindo. And on Jindo. Jindo-eup (town) is the main town on Korea’s third largest Island (also Jindo) and the largest city in Jindo-gun (county). It gets confusing.
Friday night, after a safely reassuring dinner of galbi, we found a lovely little jazz bar, complete with appropriate décor, jazz music and good cocktails. In Jindo. Jindo is tiny. Ok, it has a few apartment blocks and a large school or two but by Korean standards it’s a small town. Sometimes it’s amazing the hidden gems you find tucked away in the most unexpected places. Finds like these make me feel sorry for travellers who won’t ever venture off the beaten track, beyond their 5-star resorts and guided tours, for fear that they might be bored/in danger/unable to find somewhere appropriately trendy where they can ‘be seen’. If you ever make it to Jindo, try and find All That Jazz. The proprietor, who is friendly and professional, spend some time in Paris and has put together a delightful little spot to stop for a cocktail or two in a sophisticated yet comfortable bar.
The following morning, I was up early and off to explore, leaving my travel-mate to sleep in. Our plan was to move on fairly soon, so I wanted to get a look at the town before we left. I headed vaguely in the direction of the PB to get something for breakfast, but soon got distracted. By politics. A quick point here: I like politics. I find it fascinating and scintillating and other words a large portion of the population would never in a million years apply to the democratic process (or, most of them, be able to spell). I am most interested in South African politics, but also follow elections and other major political events in other countries, too. This is the first time I’ve been exposed to politics in Korea. It seems there is an election – local government, I think – coming up. Jindo was a great opportunity to watch, as a completely disconnected foreigner, democracy happen.
We had seen the previous day a few vehicles driving around playing bad K-pop-style music at high volume. It took some time and rather a lot of figuring out to realise these were part of the politics. Towards the evening, one of these covered trucks drove past with a man plonked on a stool on the back wearing a smart shirt with a yellow sash. The man waved enthusiastically as the noise assaulted our senses. The truck was yellow with some hangeul writing and a large number. It appears each candidate gets a number, I assume to make the process easier. Each also seems to pick a colour. In Jindo, the highest number I saw was 12. 12 candidates. That’s a lot in what is really a small place. I love that. I love that there are 12 candidates standing in a local election in a small place. And I love how enthusiastically they campaigned.
My travel companion coined the apt term: cute politics. Korea has cute politics. Everything seems to happen on a diminutive scale. Back home, political rallies involve the candidate standing on a big-rig talking and singing and dancing with a crowd of thousands. In Jindo, I found myself at what seemed to be the main intersection of the town’s two major roads (which wasn’t very big at all). Four corners to a busy intersection. On each corner stood one of the noisy little campaign trucks, each barring it’s own pop-ey exhortations for a particular candidate. In front of each truck was a row of women (ranging in age from early 20s to middle-aged), all in the identical, colour-appropriate outfits (with sashes), dancing to the music. When I say dancing here, you should be picturing a row of small Asian women all doing coordinated, very simple, pop-dancing moves. In fact, the dancing consisted mostly of coordinated hand-gestures. But they were determinedly enthusiastic about it and they were all in time. Duelling political campaigns, except that there were four of them. All out in full force, not only at that section but all along the main street where a Saturday-morning street market was taking place, in between the foot-traffic and car-traffic and the political vans and the dancing women. And all of this in the pouring rain.
I was fascinated, I just kept walking along the road and finding more and more of them. It was amazing. I was simultaneously amused (okay, very amused) and elated. There is a moment in the West Wing when CJ says that the small town that votes before everyone else is important because it teaches us about democracy. I felt a little like that, that Saturday morning in Jindo. Here we were, in the rain, in a small town, on an island, in the forgotten south-western corner of Korea but these people believed; they believed so strongly that there are 12 different candidates standing and each and every one has a little van of pop-music-noise and at least one row of well-rehearsed dancing followers. These people believed in democracy. And they were celebrating that belief. They were celebrating their right to vote and to dance for their candidates and to choose their leadership.
The south west (Jeollanam-do) was the birthplace of Korean democracy and the area that bore the brunt of the painful transition from dictatorial rule. Just days before, the country had commemorated the hundreds who fell during the Gwangju massacre on May 18th, 1980. And here, in this small town, were people standing up and honouring them in the truest way possible: by engaging fully in the democratic process. It was a little awe-inspiring, in a K-pop-ey, dancing-women kind of way.
(PS Can’t add photos to this post but this is hands down my favourite pic of the day)