(South Korea: Seoul - Panmunjom - Gyeongju - Busan)
Good evening, all.
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I'm writing this in episodes when and if I can get to a computer.
Having left the craziness of the Korean local elections behind, I'm now in Taiwan where they too are building up to parliamentary elections, and where the last President is in jail awaiting trial for financial corruption. Between 15 and 20% of MPs in Taiwan have criminal records. They keep getting elected as they get things done: the bureaucracy apparently responds well when it gets a request it cannot refuse.
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So Korea:
As a travel experience it's not unlike Japan except that you have to turn your historical compass a full 180 degrees: those nice, polite, bowing and considerate Japanese have now become the cruel Japanese Imperialist aggressors who removed the sovereignty of Korea for 35 years, including the attempted destruction of Korean language, culture and even family names. They also wiped out Korean modernisation and many Koreans during their colonial control...
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To a traveller, South Korea seems a lot more genuinely friendly and a bit rougher round the edges. They DO talk on mobile phones whilst in trains, perched on slithery stainless steel seats and every meal comes with bloody kimchi: pickled cabbage or something similar which you may choose to acquire as a taste. They probably have kimchi ice cream too, but I was less than tempted to ask.
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On the subway into Seoul from the airport (and yes, Japan Airlines catering is bento meals) the passengers included Korean conscripts in uniform and US servicemen straight off the plane trying to work out how to get to their base, and a huckster trying to sell forearm protectors and plastic-chain-shirt-hangers in vibrant fluorescent colours (using a radio microphone and demontrations to the nearest passengers). He sold: lots!
The next challenge was finding the Lees Hotel in a laneway packed with small family run restaruants (interesting place), then learning how to drive the hotel room using one remote which ran everything except the taps and toilet flush. It must have been a good room because I returned on the following afternoon to find two housemaids asleep on my bed.
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The main task on my first day was to find if I could get to Panmunjom, as the North Koreans were openly threatening war on the South following the South blaming the North for the fatal torpedo attack on one of their naval cruisers at the start of the year. The media was full of the heated rhetoric, strategies and threats (mixed in with local election coverage as the Korean PM was taking a hard line with the North partly to prop up the domestic local government vote for his party). The South Koreans were just seeming to be getting on with day to day life as they have seen/heard it all before. The border and DMZ are a one hour subway train ride north of Seoul (although the subway and highway traffic do have to pass under tank traps which are disguised under advertising for Kumho Tyres.)
After a few visits to agents (a good way to find your way around a new city) I scored the last of the 500 daily seats to the border Demilitarised Zone after a stern briefing about appropriate dress code: nothing military looking and no cases/bags of any kind to go the the DMZ including no camera cases, shoes would be checked and needed to be sensible enclosed leather (I can just hear every Technology and Science school teacher giving this speech...) and no telephoto lenses. Passports, dress and cameras would be thoroughly checked and, because of the tensions, the tour may not go ahead.
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The local and very healthy dish is bibimbap: rice with layered fresh topping of meat and or veges. I didn't really mind being the remedial diner in the Seoul rice restaurant as the waitress very publicly demonstrated how to mix and eat my dinner with the round steel chopsticks.
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It's about now that you notice the high levels of personal security around Seoul: pairs of patrolling police in many streets (in identikit black plastic framed glasses with night sticks), subway police, guards doing bag searches in some public buildings. The police barracks across the road from the pub had regular automatic weapons handling training. Conscripts in uniform are pretty much everywhere, as are Americans of varying militarisation and volume. In the national Military Museum (also a war memorial with public thanks and with flag displays for those countries who assisted in the "Fratricidal Civil War"), groups of conscripts alternated with groups of elementary school kids on mandatory excursions about their country's history, and the repeated invasion aspirations by the Japanese. The guerilla warfare against the Japanese and during the "Civil" war was well covered. Many guerillas subsequently became the leaders of North Korea.
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The Soedaemun Prison Hall is a display of Japanese Colonial cruelty against resistance fighters and others with fairly scary diplays of torture procedures and execution. It's a telling memorial to Korean Nationalists, but also a drawcard for secondary students' history excursions. I've seen some out of control school groups in the past, but nothing to rival this: the squeals of delight from 14 year old girls "riding" the trapdoor of the simulated hanging room undermined any gravitas or quiet impact the museum sought to demonstrate. No teachers were in sight as a lone attendant tried to wrangle 100+ screaming and giggling school girls.
Memo to self: The Australian Teachers' Death Stare does not work on Korean adolescents.
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The Panmunjom trip is unsettling, not quite believable (but it's there) and it was livened up as I was paired with an ageing and slightly satirical journalist from the Christian Science Monitor who was writing a colour piece about the trip.
The bus ride north isn't far, we did the memorials and the compulsory lunch (including 2 varieties of kimchi) met the military escort, were inspected and given further warnings about dress and conduct (no gestures which could be photographed and used by the North as friendly propaganda shots) and the need to line up in pairs. Our coach was taken through tank traps and barbed wire with a military escort to the UN briefing (Powerpoint History and a welcome from the UN South Korean commander - tour cut short due to movements on the "other side". We then signed an indemnity form of soaring anti communist rhetoric which could have been (and possibly was) written by John Foster Dulles. Given the political rhetoric, I was amazed that tours were on at all... but we were bundled on a military bus in strict pairs and driven past the view of the northern propaganda village to a building at the border which is a cross between a Soviet hotel lobby and a Chinese border crossing hall: designed by a South Korean businessman to facilitate family reunions which the North then banned.
In strict pairs (mine kept wandering off and had to be directed back) we were led across some gravel and concrete into the fibro meeting room. Here and outside, UN soldiers stood in exaggeratedly aggressive Tae Quon Do poses, while over in the North we were watched by two officers on the steps of a three storeyed building which is bristling with cameras and observation technology. We were invited to step over the 38th Parallel, then step back, then take photos, then form two lines and leave. Apart from some two-lined observation from behind tinted glass, all else was cancelled apart from the visit to the UN souvenir shop (of course). For a potential flashpoint in international conflict, I think the word I am looking for is "unsettling, or "banal"... Less scary than crossing the old Berlin Wall or crossing the border from the old USSR in to Finland, but more worrisome for its very ordinariness.
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On the rail pass from Seoul to the south (yes there are bullet trains in Korea, but they are French - Korea did NOT buy Japanese):
Finding accommodation became a bit interesting in the southern town of Gyeongju. On limited time and in an area of huge archaeological significance (including old burial mounds and digs going back to 57BC throughout the town) I needed to stay near the station. The local tourist office sent me to an area of motels, each decorated in bizarre Fantasyland turreted, corinthian columned, mock Tudor woodworked and Greek balustraded styles. After a couple of false starts I lucked a room in a three storeyed concrete castle which kind of tried to present the charm of, say, the Jolly Knight Motel at Casula but without the fibro allure. No names or details were exchanged. I was just handed a key and offered a toothbrush, a comb, a shaver... and sent upstairs.
Well. The bed was large and round with a fake Rubens Baroque glazed bed head, mood lighting and a computer with internet access was there. Most interesting. It became even more interesting later that evening when the management, in a spirit of assisting persons to get to know each other a little better, appeared to be renting some rooms by the hour... No problem, really: it was central, safe(ish) and clean(ish) and it did. The sites, museums and temples were wonderful.
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Also in Gyeongju I came face to face with South Korean electioneering. The station square was plastered with large white candidates' banners, teams of color coordinated lines of supporters bowing in unison to the passing traffic, several competing loudspeaker trucks, a socialist (male) meeting complete with socialist realist workers posters and singing in unison with fists raised. Later in Mokpo, within the prevalent odour of drying fish, clowns and stilt walkers and trucks with huge and blaring video screens were part of electioneering. The voter turnout was 49% which was considered a good result (!)
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Travel must be ageing me (surely it cannot be my job?) as I was asked by one bloke if I had fought in the Korean War - Sorry: that should be the "Fratricidal Civil War" in Korea in the 1950's. When I explained that I was too young, but that my father had served in the navy in Korea, I was asked to pass on my thanks to him and to explain how Korea had developed since. (This was one of many conversations with Koreans in trains, buses, on the street, usually starting with the interesting line: "I believe you are a foreigner...")
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Every town or village in South Korea appears to be clustered around a Christian church or two or three with accompanying rice paddies. I saw lots of these on the 8 hour train trip from Busan to Mokpo: 6.45 start, 50 station stops and no catering, but a pleasant enough way to see a bit of the country on a diet of two mandarins, half a pack of chips and a cold bottle of milk tea.
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South Korea was also starting to seem like LOTTE World, as LOTTE branding is everywhere: on hotels, supermarkets, duty free stores and even ice cream. Apartment buildings are emblazoned with names like "LOTTE CASTLE". Subway ads in Busan say "Busan IS LOTTE"... and maybe it is.
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Busan was actually a Japanese creation: their bridgehead into Asian colonisation where Korean industries were shut down, infrastructure was built to serve colonial needs, and the Korean government offices were demolished to create land for Japanese amusements (and to offend the locals). It was a great little local museum in Busan.
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I got a bit lost in the markets west of the Busan Museum, looking for the Japanese governor's residence which had became the refuge for the South Korean government at the worst point of the Korean War when only the area around Busan was not in the hands of the Communist North.
On a footpath was a small cage of desultory looking puppies. Through the open shop door were stacked cages of long haired alsation-like dogs. There was not enough room for the dogs to stand or turn in the cages. No food or water were in the cages. Amongst a bit of barking there was a fair amount of whimpering. From the back of the shop came the strong smell of boiling meat. The street door was quickly shut when they saw me look in to... what?
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Some other random stuff:
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The sacking of 130 South Korean teachers who joined a union will be postponed until after the local elections (which include the position of School Superintendents)
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There are few beggars, but one blind bloke worked his way through subway trains wearing a three piece suit and carrying a pink plastic bowl and a CD player broadcasting "Amazing Grace".
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On local government election night in Seoul, crowds were gathering in the main square on a balmy evening. Many kids were jumping in and around and through the interactive fountain just having the best time. A huge screen was broadcasting exit polls. And a full SWAT team including a tank and two busloads of armoured troops were parked quietly in a side street, just in case...
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So you could go home and watch Korean TV. Along with the news, game shows, soaps and so on are the 24 hour baseball channel, or the 24 hour golf channel, or my particular favourite: the MATHS channel. This broadcasts endless problems and solutions performed by various teachers on a blackboard. Sleep inducing for me.
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The standard Korail apology for late trains: "The train due at ___ will now arrive at ___ due to circumstances on the train. We are very sorry that this train will arrive late." (?)
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Yellowtail Chardy is 18 Australian dollars at the Family Mart convenience stores across Korea (and Taiwan).
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I'm finishing this episodic email in Manila where I spent today at Corrigador, where General Macarthur departed for Australia before the Philippines fell to the Japanese. After 3 weeks in Japan I seem to have spent the rest of the trip looking at what Japan did to others, and how they survived and prospered (except perhaps here where Manila was destroyed in order to save it) after the war.
It's been a really political journey too, with elections in three countries, and the latest Aquino announced here today as the new President. His parents are honoured by masses of yellow flags along the waterfront in Roxas Boulevard. A popular T shirt here is a portrait of Corazon Aquino with the caption: "Mother of Democracy".
This is a real third world urban jungle with beggars and hucksters on what passes as footpaths: it’s safer to walk on the street and risk life and limb amongst the lurid jeepneys. On my first night here I was offered all kinds of fleshly delights on four legs or two. Because I refused, on my second night the blokes on the street were trying to sell me packs of Viagra and Cialis (packaged up as physicians’ samples): also refused. Tonight the same blokes are trying to flog umbrellas between tropical storms.
I fly home on Saturday to a conference next week, and back to school on Friday where they MAY still be talking to me.
Hope all is well with you.
And so, good night!
