334 down, 31 to go

It seems a little strange, but my year in Korea is very nearly up. This time one month from today, I'll be zipping up my backpack and preparing to go to Cambodia and other magical places.

So now, 11 months since my arrival in the Hermit Kingdom, I once again find myself in the position of figuring out what to do next. Fortunately, for the moment I've made my decision: procrastinate. I'm putting off most thoughts of the future until my triumphant return to Toronto two months from now.

This past weekend was spent in Seoul. We had Monday off for Children's Day, and I have a friend visiting from home at the moment, so the timing for a three-day weekend was most opportune. You can also expect a guest column from Sara-Jane later this week.

Random thoughts on Seoul:

I've been there a few times now over the course of the year, and it's always been an enjoyable experience. I like the opportunity to get out of Busan for a couple of days, and Seoul has a cosmopolitan vibe that my "hometown" doesn't. It's not just more international, though that's certainly true. Rather, Seoul as a city emanates a certain confidence lacking in Busan. There's a vitality, a vibrancy to the city which makes it a great place to visit. Museums, restaurants, palaces...I like it.

Having said that, I do like Busan, and in some ways I'm pleased not to live in Seoul. For all its attractions, it's much easier to live a Western lifestyle there, and I suspect I would have fallen even more deeply into that trap than I have in Busan, where one is forced to practice rudimentary Korean regularly, and where Korean food is about all one can eat in many corners of the city.

On a different note, one of the sites we visited in Seoul this weekend was the Seodaemun Prison Museum. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, it's where the political prisoners would be taken, tortured, and often murdered. It is, as one might suppose, a sombre site. However, I left it feeling dissatisfied because of the overall tone of the museum. It's clear that the museum founders and curators have striven to convey an understanding of the horrors committed there and what it was like for the prisoners. This does come through, but not always in the manner they might have intended. I found there to be a certain low-budget theme park feeling to the museum at odds with the respectful tone they might have intended. Many of the cells have animatronic figurines sticking bamboo spikes under fingernails, or screaming mechanically, and one is not allowed to forget, even for a second, that the Japanese were the ones committing these atrocities. One of the cells has been reproduced as an execution chamber, which isn't a bad idea, but visitors are encouraged to sit on a stool which suddenly drops four inches. Presumably, this is to show what it might feel like to be hanged, but instead it gives more an impression of a house of horrors in Niagara on the Lake. So that was a little strange.

We also went to a microbrewery which featured the best beer I've had in Korea. The most popular Korean beers are OB, Cass, and (s)Hite, and are generally even less flavourful than the Molson/Labatt/Budweiser stuff one might find back home, so it was a great relief to try a nice brown ale and a stout that actually had some colour and taste. Hurray for microbreweries!

Oh- and I learned recently that (apparently) Koreans weren't allowed to travel outside of Korea until the late 1980s. I intend to investigate this further; the results will be published here as they become available.

Seoul Train

Firstly, let me apologize for the obviousness of the titular pun. Unsubtle or not however, it is appropriate, given that I paid a visit to Korea's capital city over the weekend.

The city that jumps to mind most quickly, interestingly, is Athens. Seoul is much bigger than Athens, obviously, and has the whole Modern Asian Metropolis (MAM) thing going on, but what the two of them do have in common is the pieces of antiquity scattered in a seemingly random pattern throughout the city. Seoul has five (five!) palaces and various other shrines, pagodas, and other bits of history around every other corner.

There's something almost intoxicating about being let loose in a large and unfamiliar city. Every step teases with the promises of wonders as yet unseen. There's a rush of realizing you're going through what is, for you, uncharted territory. Even the mundane holds a special allure. You're not just riding the subway, you're riding the subway in Seoul. Awesome. I love new places. When that new place happens to be the second-largest city in the world? Double-awesome.

I don't think I'd quite realized it until arriving there, but Seoul has long held a special place in my...not heart, as such, but at least my consciousness. My memory of global events from the 1980s is sketchy at best. The first News item I remember is the Challenger explosion in '85. Sitting in the waiting room table at the dentist's office was a magazine (Time, I'd guess, but I really have no idea) with the astronauts on the cover. So that's the first thing I remember from outside my immediate sphere of reference. I also remember, albeit vaguely, the ascension of G.H. Bush to the U.S. Throne, and the 1988 Olympics. The Winter Games in Calgary were a big deal, obviously, taking as place as they did just to the west of Canada, but it's the Summer Games that stick out. You can attribute this to the fact I was eight months older by then (7 and a half years old), but I think it has more to do with the fact that a sprinter by the name of Ben Johnson happened to be stripped of his gold medal for steroid use. Remember that?

It's not to say that I only remember the Seoul Games because of our man on the track, but I think that what Johnson did do was give me a reference point for a city that would likely not have featured very prominently in my mind at all.

I just hope he got to see some of the sights.