The country between Incheon airport and Seoul has wide, stony riverbeds and cold fields of cut crops. It was -6 when I arrived. Seoul's latitude is about the same as Tokyo and San Francisco, but, in the winter, cold air drifts down from Siberia and tends to hang about. After six weeks in the tropics, it felt like home; and there's something to be said for not starting every day by greasing yourself with SPF50 sunscreen. But I brought exactly one piece of warm clothing. Luckily, the quilted plaid shirt is an elegant garment that's at home anywhere in the world. That, two shirts, a windbreaker, and two or three pairs of socks will just about let you get about in Seoul in early March, though searching Siberian breezes will tend to blow you into warm shopping malls quite a bit.
Seoul's metro is extremely serious about moving people: Long trains of large, spare-looking cars -- no cartoon characters, not many ads -- circulate through hundreds of stations on 18 lines, with no delays and no fuss. It's so quiet you can hear the hum of the fluorescent lights. People stare at phones. I counted once: Of 11 other people on my bench and the bench opposite, one was staring off into space, nine were looking at phones, and one was asleep with a phone in his hand.
Riding the metro shows you how vast Seoul is. The train pops up above ground every now and then, and whenever it does, you're still in the centre of Seoul. There are emergency-preparedness cabinets in the stations, each with around 30 gas masks and a few bottles of water -- the North Korean border is very close. There are a few homeless men sleeping in the stations at night. When I got in, there was one in wraparound sunglasses lying by a pillar who turned to watch me walk around and look at the signs for each exit. There are a handful of street vendors with push-carts, but many of them have iPads propped up in front of them, and otherwise Seoul's as modern a metropolis as any. More modern than most, really, because Korea's prosperity is so recent: London was building subways over a century ago, but most of Seoul's lines are from the last twenty years.
South Korea has a young, vigorous, shouty democracy. When there's something you feel strongly about, you get a megaphone and a banner and head out into the street. Most people who do this seem to be trying to make political points; some are just uncontainably excited about Jesus. One tiny woman of about 50 danced over to me on the sidewalk outside a shopping mall and let me have a deep, booming "Jeeeeesus!" in American televangelist style. There's also a group in Myeongdong, by the hotel, who wear signs and drive scooters and set up booths covered in handwritten warnings about the end of the world. The area around city hall and the U.S. embassy is full of semi-permanent protestors' tents. The embassy itself is a fortress, and when I walk by the neighbourhood is completely congested with police and police buses. Someone attacked the ambassador with a razor recently. It's not obvious what dozens or hundreds of police officers are going to do about that, but it must have seemed like the right amount of fuss to make.
Just up the street is Gyeongbokgung, the main palace of the Joseon dynasty, which sprawls over acres of downtown Seoul. Like Shuri Castle, it's mostly a modern reconstruction; much of it was deliberately destroyed during the Japanese occupation. It's hard to give any sense of its scale or all-around impressiveness. There's a beautiful complex dedicated to the storage of "jars containing fermented pastes and sauces". If you think of a palace grand enough to house its fermented pastes in a miniature palace of their own, you will have a pretty sound idea of Gyeongbokgung.
Myeongdong, the hotel's neighbourhood, is another maze of shopping streets, a mix of Korean restaurants and western chains: Several 7-11, two Starbucks, and a TGI Fridays with bento box specials, but also stands selling fish cakes and Korean department stores with posh food courts in the basement. All this is useful, because pescetarianism is as hard in Korea as in the rest of East Asia. If it is possible for something in Korea to contain pork or beef, it will -- probably both. Around the corner, very luckily, was a Hotto Notto, a Japanese fast food restaurant that has one thing that has fish but no other meat. I went there so often it got uncomfortable. The second time, the woman at the counter was pleased that I liked the food. The fourth time, she started to think it might be time to take me aside and gently expain that she did love me, but only as a customer. (Proper vegetarians would struggle badly. For vegans, parenteral feeding is probably the way to go, though any bags of nutrients bought locally would certainly have chunks of pork floating in them.)
On my last day in Seoul, I went to the demilitarized zone.
Seoul's metro is extremely serious about moving people: Long trains of large, spare-looking cars -- no cartoon characters, not many ads -- circulate through hundreds of stations on 18 lines, with no delays and no fuss. It's so quiet you can hear the hum of the fluorescent lights. People stare at phones. I counted once: Of 11 other people on my bench and the bench opposite, one was staring off into space, nine were looking at phones, and one was asleep with a phone in his hand.
Riding the metro shows you how vast Seoul is. The train pops up above ground every now and then, and whenever it does, you're still in the centre of Seoul. There are emergency-preparedness cabinets in the stations, each with around 30 gas masks and a few bottles of water -- the North Korean border is very close. There are a few homeless men sleeping in the stations at night. When I got in, there was one in wraparound sunglasses lying by a pillar who turned to watch me walk around and look at the signs for each exit. There are a handful of street vendors with push-carts, but many of them have iPads propped up in front of them, and otherwise Seoul's as modern a metropolis as any. More modern than most, really, because Korea's prosperity is so recent: London was building subways over a century ago, but most of Seoul's lines are from the last twenty years.
South Korea has a young, vigorous, shouty democracy. When there's something you feel strongly about, you get a megaphone and a banner and head out into the street. Most people who do this seem to be trying to make political points; some are just uncontainably excited about Jesus. One tiny woman of about 50 danced over to me on the sidewalk outside a shopping mall and let me have a deep, booming "Jeeeeesus!" in American televangelist style. There's also a group in Myeongdong, by the hotel, who wear signs and drive scooters and set up booths covered in handwritten warnings about the end of the world. The area around city hall and the U.S. embassy is full of semi-permanent protestors' tents. The embassy itself is a fortress, and when I walk by the neighbourhood is completely congested with police and police buses. Someone attacked the ambassador with a razor recently. It's not obvious what dozens or hundreds of police officers are going to do about that, but it must have seemed like the right amount of fuss to make.
Just up the street is Gyeongbokgung, the main palace of the Joseon dynasty, which sprawls over acres of downtown Seoul. Like Shuri Castle, it's mostly a modern reconstruction; much of it was deliberately destroyed during the Japanese occupation. It's hard to give any sense of its scale or all-around impressiveness. There's a beautiful complex dedicated to the storage of "jars containing fermented pastes and sauces". If you think of a palace grand enough to house its fermented pastes in a miniature palace of their own, you will have a pretty sound idea of Gyeongbokgung.
Myeongdong, the hotel's neighbourhood, is another maze of shopping streets, a mix of Korean restaurants and western chains: Several 7-11, two Starbucks, and a TGI Fridays with bento box specials, but also stands selling fish cakes and Korean department stores with posh food courts in the basement. All this is useful, because pescetarianism is as hard in Korea as in the rest of East Asia. If it is possible for something in Korea to contain pork or beef, it will -- probably both. Around the corner, very luckily, was a Hotto Notto, a Japanese fast food restaurant that has one thing that has fish but no other meat. I went there so often it got uncomfortable. The second time, the woman at the counter was pleased that I liked the food. The fourth time, she started to think it might be time to take me aside and gently expain that she did love me, but only as a customer. (Proper vegetarians would struggle badly. For vegans, parenteral feeding is probably the way to go, though any bags of nutrients bought locally would certainly have chunks of pork floating in them.)
On my last day in Seoul, I went to the demilitarized zone.
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| This is Gangnam, in case you were wondering. And yes, I did have that song stuck in my head the whole time. |
