Travels in the Land of Hunger

AN NYOUNG HA SAE YO SOUTH KOREA

Monday, March 29, 2004

Flight to South Korea & Details of Seoul City

The two-hour flight from Tokyo, Japan to Seoul, Korea was pleasant and short as I had slept for most of it.

The Seoul-Incheon International Airport was modern, well designed, and complete with indoor gardens, a museum, a golf course, spa, and an ice-skating rink. But I had foolishly assumed that there would have been a metro line or train linking the airport to the city. A middle-aged Korean lady at the airport information desk explained to me in broken English that I had to take a bus. I walked to the bus terminal outside the airport, and with the aid of a young Korean gentleman who placed my bag in the storage compartment under the bus I was on my way to the South Korean capital.

The first aspect of South Korea that I noticed during the bus ride was that its topography was very different to that of Japan. It was a land of hills and distant mountains with a dry, chaparral-like terrain. To the left side of the bus I saw the low tide shore with fishing boats that had been beached on vast expanses of wet sand. I then saw a few–and then many–muddy rice fields. I believe that planting begins in the spring and so what I was looking at were rice fields that had been abandoned from the previous harvest in autumn. Some of the fields looked dreadful as they were full of scummy water and sludge. But I did see farmers burning a few fields to prepare them for planting. Of course, these are just observations and assumptions, I don't know too much about the process of planting, growing, and harvesting rice.

As the bus began to reach the outskirts of the city, I saw various vendors along the highway who had pulled their vans over to the shoulder of the road to set up shop and sell an assortment of goods. Some vendors were selling office chairs whereas others were cooking and selling food. And between the highway and the Hangang (han meaning south, and gang meaning river) there was a camping ground, but there was nothing of natural significance around it other than two or three empty Olympic size public pools that were a few kilometers away.

Once we entered the city I kept an eye on my subway map marking each stop that the bus had made that was near a subway station. I gathered that the bus was headed for Tapgol Park and decided to get off near Jongno 2-ga. The bus stopped, I stepped off, grabbed my bag, strapped it to my back, and went in search of a Yeogwan (cheap hotel). I tried to follow the map in my guidebook but could not find the Yeogwan I had made a reservation at so I booked myself into a motel for about US$24 a night.

After I took a shower in my run-down room and flicked through a few South Korean television channels I decided to explore the neighborhood. One of the first shops I came across was a small traditional Korean drum shop that was crammed with drums and cymbals of all sizes; I interpreted this as a good omen since I am a percussionist. I continued walking and realized that my motel was in a district of the city that was full of musical instrument shops. The street of shops selling wall-to-wall Korean drums, gongs, and china cymbals gave way to shops selling low-quality electric guitars.

I traversed narrow winding streets that were lined with grimy restaurants; a few of them displayed, at their front entrance, stacks of severed pig's heads that had been butchered open. I peeked into one restaurant from the street and saw that it was half full of people eating and drinking. I stepped back when a waitress began approaching me and then a short lady carrying a plate of pig snouts that had been piled up shouldered passed me to enter the restaurant. I quickly walked away.

Jongno (Bell Street) is a ten-lane street that runs east to west through the city. I was shocked to see such a wide street for I had never seen one in all my years in Tokyo. I was beginning to realize that I was interpreting South Korea through the cultural lens of Japan, which explained why I was also surprised to see so many people eating food and drinking soda in public (a Japanese taboo). But I was relieved to discover that it was socially acceptable to eat as you walked and talked. The sight of so many people enjoying a drink made my mouth water. I needed a vending machine (a convenience that is in abundance in Japan), but to my dismay I could not find a single one. Hungry, I passed the many food stalls on Jongno seeing stacks of pancakes, kimchi, and what looked like blood sausages filled with little balls of fat. It was getting dark and I desperately wanted to order something, but I was paralyzed by my inability to speak a single word of Korean. I then saw a vendor making and selling what looked like burritos. I built up the courage, entered the plastic tent that surrounded the vendor's food cart, and pointed my finger at a burrito. But I didn't know how much it cost. A teenaged girl eating next to me could see that I was searching for a price. She pointed to a hidden sign. I thanked her by bowing my head and paid the cook 2,000 won. The young lady then poured me a cup of Pepsi cola to show me that it was included in the price; there were three two-liter bottles of Pepsi on the food stall counter and a stack of paper cups.