Seoul, Day Four: Creeps of the Night and the Dancing Hologram
I love Seoul. I want to live there.
While we really enjoy Daegu and have met some amazing friends, I do regret, just a little bit, that we didn't choose to live in Seoul. Four days just didn't seem long enough to really explore and experience the city. But we were definitely satisfied with everything we'd done. The pace of life is even more intense than we've become used to in Daegu and there's always something to be entertained by. I found out recently that the square mileage of Seoul is actually less than Daegu, with nearly ten times as many people.
Our last day was mostly spent in the neighborhood around the hotel. We went back to Insadong and spent too much money on Korean art and traditional things. You could literally spend days searching every shop and stand, looking at antiques, jewelry, carvings, paintings, masks and anything else that might be considered Korean or Asian.
With Cate it wasn't possible for us to go out and really experience the Seoul nightlife, but Carmen and I each made solo late-night excursions, although mine would probably be considered early morning. This was possibly my favorite part of Seoul. It's as busy at midnight as it is at noon.
Clubs are open every night of the week, and Korean businessmen love to drink every night of the week, so it works out well for both parties. However, this is where I saw one of the ugly sides of Seoul. As I was walking through the narrow pedestrian streets where most of the clubs and bars are located, I noticed men with ear pieces and two-way radios, just sort of lingering around. Most of them were standing in intersections and some were walking back and forth along the streets. After seeing several of them I began to wonder what they were up to, so I started to watch a little closer. Apparently, their job was to entice random young women to come to the club they were working for. They'd approach the women, sometimes in a friendly way but usually very aggressively, and give them a quick spiel. It was obvious that most of the women knew exactly what the men were up to and were very uncomfortable by it. Most of them would walk past quickly, holding their arms in so the men couldn't grab them, but it wouldn't always work. One instance I witnessed was particularly disturbing. I was with Carmen and Cate and we were on a busy street getting ready to cross and head back to our hotel. As we were waiting at the intersection I was watching three men who were 'working' the corner. One little dude asked a girl to come to his club, and when she wouldn't, he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her. The woman was clearly scared and did not want to go, and her friend was pulling her in the other direction. The idiot wouldn't let go and after a few seconds was joined by a couple of his co-workers who also started pulling her. There were hundreds of people standing on the corner and no one was doing anything about it. There was a man in a lawn chair sitting on the steps of corner store who was, apparently, in charge of the whole operation. He looked on like nothing was happening. Finally the woman slipped loose and the light changed so she was able to cross the street with her friend. I went for a walk again later and 'accidentally' bumped into another jerk who was doing the same thing to another woman. He looked at me as if he wanted to stab me in the heart, but I just put my hands up with an 'I'm just a stupid foreigner' look on my face. I was shocked that A. this was a legitimate method of business and B. no one did anything about it, including the police whose station was a block away.
Enough of the tales of fear and injustice. I also witnessed the coolest and most entertaining form of useless technology I've ever seen. This guy:
I thought the following image was interesting. We don't get to see or read much of the news in Korea. We don't have access to either of the English newspapers and there's no local English news programs on TV. So most of the information we've got regarding the ongoing story of the Korean hostages in Afghanistan has been through sources outside of Korea, which means we haven't been able to gauge how big the story is here. This banner on City Hall gave us an idea:
Sorry about the quality. It was taken from a distance in a moving taxi with a compact camera.
Here is a look at the alley in which our hotel was located. It looks quite shady, and it is actually. Not in a dangerous way, just in a dirty, seedy kind of way. These guys, and guys that look just like them, were there 24/7.
Eventually we had to call it a day and return to the South. We took the KTX once again and enjoyed an incredible view of the Korean countryside on a beautiful, misty, rainy day.
We'll miss Seoul, but fortunately we're going back there for a short stay in two and half weeks when we meet my parents at the airport and bring them back to Daegu for a visit.
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