A milestone: last night I ordered my first meal using Korean words and not gestures. At the end of the meal however, I was sure to give the cook the thumbs up. I have learnt the various words for "good" but I have also forgotten them as well. These new pieces of information in my mind keep getting nudged sideways by the discovery of more important things, like ABC Radio livestreaming, or the travel agent in Itaewon who just sold me a ticket to Koh Samui.
That's right, I've applied for a week off in early August, and will travel with my new pal West (another Oregonian), staying in a bungalow on Big Buddha Beach for a week. English Camp finishes on the Friday afternoon (July 30), after which I'll shoot straight on over to Incheon airport for an evening flight to Thailand, then a connection to Koh. The plan, at this stage: lie on the beach for a week. We're gonna hire mopeds at one point. There may be the sampling of cocktails as well. Have a holiday basically. Get out of Korea.
I've divvied up my holidays into one 1-week period in summer and one 3-week period in winter. Now that I have my multiple re-entry visa, I'm free to travel to and from Korea as I see fit (and as I can afford) until April next year, when I must renew for another year or skedaddle. The plan, still, is to backpack through China and see some of its highlights during the 3-week winter holiday period, taking advantage of cheap trains to travel the vast distances of the middle kingdom. I am also toying with the idea of spending a weekend in Japan (flights are cheap, and quick), and there are certainly plenty of things in Korea that I still want to see, many of them in the south. The southern city of Gyeongju was once the capital during the Silla Dynasty (which stretches back to the BC period) and was thankfully spared the ravages of bombings during the Korean war. Therefore, the city is known these days as an open-air museum and you can walk amongst Silla temples and burial mounds.
I am also gonna put my name down for a tour of the DMZ - something that didn't interest me much before I arrived but which now seems like an opportunity not to be missed. Of particular interest to me is the Third Infiltration Tunnel: the north's attempt to dig their way into the south and mount a surprise invasion. They had already attempted this one twice before (hence the name), this time painting the rocks of the wall black in order to support their claim that they were innocently mining for coal. Of course! And I went to a chess club with Kim Jong-Il!
On a side note, I frequently have to stop myself from singing his "I'm Ronery" lament out loud: in the office, on the streets, in my house. Seriously, the walls are so thin. While shaving this morning the guy next door echoed my tap-tap-tapping of the razor on the sink. Strange to live so crose and yet both be so ronery...
Moving right along. I seized the opportunity to complete my walking tour of Seoul on Wednesday when public servants all over Gyeonggi province enjoyed the day off due to to the council elections. Teaming up with the delightful Kristin, I finished the second half of the tour at a leisurely pace, while the old Olympus didn't miss a beat. We saw a number of things that have been on my list since I arrived. Sejongno, the "main street" of Seoul's Gwanghwamun area and home to the statues of Admiral Yi Sun-Shin (above) and of King Sejong (below) is worth a second visit as there are museums in the vicinity which we didn't have time to enter. I've also befriended a restaurant owner in the area who serves up a pretty good bibimbap and who repeatedly asked if I wanted a "pocko." "Pocko? Pocko? Pocko pocko?" She meant fork. I told her not to patronise me. You should see me with a pair of chopsticks now: I'm amazing, if I don't say so myself. If I go home with nothing but excellent chopstickery then I'll consider this trip, well, a complete waste of time.
Moving on again. Yi Sun-Shin was the admiral who back in the late 16th century commanded Korea's naval victories over the Japanese. Using tactics reminiscent of the Battle of Salamis some 2000 years earlier, he lured the numerically superior Japanese into the straits of Mokpo and blasted them out of the water with his fleet of "turtle ships" - which he designed, the clever bugger!
Now Sejong on the other hand was the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty, which got underway in 1392 and crumbled with the surrender to the Japanese in 1910. He was the King who developed the Hangeul alphabet - the written language of Korea still in use today. Until Sejong, the Confucian elite of Korea had shoe-horned Korean sounds into written form using Chinese characters, which are far more difficult to learn than an alphabet with a finite number of components, like ours. In this way they kept the uneducated peasants in their place as nobody without an extensive grasp of the classics and a lengthy education (i.e. a lot of money) was able to become literate, and therefore qualify for the best jobs (like teaching English in Bundang). China has always been venerated in Korean history and I don't think the development of Hangeul meant that Chinese was suppressed, as you would expect from one of our more dynamic Western societies. You still see a lot of official documents and even buildings with Chinese script on them now.
Kristin was accosted by some locals wanting to ask her questions about English, after which we strolled along and stumbled upon the changing of the guards at one of the temples in Gwanghwamun (although I like to think of this as the Sejongno Dunkin' Donuts Grand Opening.) This was the band that went with the guards. As well as drums and cymbals and bells, the bands consist largely of these bugle-like instruments which make a very piercing sound. The music has a middle eastern flavour to it (mmmm....souvlaki...) and this marked the first time I was able to listen to it without wincing. I heard the melody of the bells underneath for the first time and was able to place the wailing bugley thing more appropriately in the overall presentation.
After a stroll through the 24 hr Namdaemun markets, adjacent to the site where the great southern gate of Sungnyemun once stood (some nutter burnt it down 2 years ago: it had marked the southern extreme of Seoul since the 14th century), we went searching for the old Seoul station, which took forever to find, mostly because it was hidden beneath a giant potato sack. The old station isn't exactly a beloved structure of Seoul: it was constructed by the Japanese colonial administration, and definitely appears more "western" than anything else of the time in Seoul (the Japanese generally embraced western architecture and clothing more than the Koreans, who didn't embrace them at all). So when we walked around the site where it should have stood yet couldn't find it, I thought it may have been pulled down. It's still there but undergoing renovations. Currently it attracts the homeless of Seoul. Compared to Sydney, there aren't many of them. And according to Kristin, it wasn't anything like the US either.
Not a very clear picture I know, but I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice in Seoul. Even though this started as a clear day (the second since my arrival!), by the time we had reached the top of Namsan tower the dust and the smog had rolled in, somewhat obscuring our vision of the general sprawl of Seoul. But I assure you that even on a clear day all you can see is buildings in every direction! Making me all the more homesick for this place of fine sands, clear skies, fresh air and quite nice people:
And I took note of that homesickness. And I paused. And then I saw this:
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