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.

Weekend

On Saturday we went to Gyeong-Ju, which is the old capital of Korea. It's known as a tourist city now because of its many temples, tombs and scenic attractions. This weekend was the annual Cherry Blossom Festival.

Visiting temples and cultural sites hasn't been easy because they're all outside of the city and in the mountains, so we have to make a day out of it. After sleeping in and missing the 9:20 train, we took an hour long bus ride north and spent the day wandering.

Personally I was very excited to see the architecture of the ancient temples and buildings. Most of them were originally built around the 5th or 6th centuries and have been restored or rebuilt after the Japanese invasions.


These dudes may just look like museum pieces now, but they're still very important. Several Koreans bowed to them as they passed through the corridor in which they stood.

One More Sleep

Counting down the hours. That's basically what we're doing now. Tomorrow evening we fly from Calgary to San Francisco, where we'll stay the night, and then it's off to Seoul on a short 13 hour flight. With a 17 hour time difference between California and Korea, we'll arrive in Seoul at 6:15 pm on Monday and stay there for the night.

Navigating our way through the third largest city in the world seems daunting to say the least but, fortunately, Carmen knows a couple from Saskatoon who has been living in Seoul for two years. They'll pick us up at the airport and we'll spend the night at their apartment.

On Tuesday morning we catch the bus (the high-speed train won't allow all our luggage) to Daegu where we'll be picked up and taken to Carmen's school. She'll meet her principal and co-workers and then we'll be taken to our apartment. We don't know anything about it right now, other than it's furnished and it has two bedrooms . . . and it's free.

Excited? Yes. Terrified? Yes. Prepared? I bloody hope so. I'll post again from San Francisco and let you know if we've changed our minds.

-David

Note: Feel free to play the track at the top right of the page when you visit. Music is always a good thing and the selected track, which changes often, will always reflect the deepest feelings of this big, soft heart.