flickering pictures

South Korea’s president is not a popular man. He’s not so much George W. Bush unpopular — more like the bastard love child of Joseph Stalin and Richard Nixon unpopular. People here hate him like they hate Mondays, mortgage payments and bumper-to-bumper traffic. And no one seems to know why.

Nevertheless, they’re mad as hell and they’re taking to the streets to prove it. The stated cause of all the unrest is that President Lee Myung-bak is removing the ban on U.S. beef, in spite of Koreans’ concerns about mad cow disease. But any Korean will tell you that this isn’t the issue at all — U.S. beef is seen as safer and higher-quality than Asian beef, and meat prices have gone sky-high during the ban. Which, of course, is just fine with the Korean beef producers who’ve benefitted richly and who are now leading the anti-government protests.

Lately the mobs have been growing gutsier, and even with water cannons and batons Seoul’s riot cops haven’t been able to contain the chaos. Kevin tells me that the daily clashes are getting more and more bloody, and that several policemen have been flanked, separated from their colleagues and stomped pretty bad. Not knowing where the riots were, and looking to fill a few hours while Kevin worked, we headed downtown and found ourselves in the middle of a brewing storm, with a youngish guy on a megaphone whipping a crowd into a frenzy and hundreds of prepubescent-looking cops standing around smoking and looking worried. If that experience was any indication, riot cops here are a scrawny bunch, averaging maybe 5′7″ and 150 pounds. Maybe a bit of Grade A American beef would put some meat on their bones.

The cops, by the way, are armed only with unconvincing-looking little clubs — though I’m sure I’d be convinced if I ever found myself on the wrong end of them — and they’ve commandeered dozens of buses from tourism companies and schools to get around, placing steel mesh on the windows to protect against hurled rocks.

Bad things are about to happen here, and we don’t want to be around to see them, so we head for the famous dirt-cheap Technomart on the other side of Seoul to buy a fancy camera (see photo above). After a lot of wide-eyed wandering and a bit of haggling, I end up with a 12.1-megapixel Nikon for CAD$180, but that’s not the story. The really neat bit is the place itself — seven floors of cameras, laptops and cell phones, each of which is roughly the size of a big-box grocery store. It’s just booth after booth after booth of technology, with so many vendors that any price-fixing would be impossible to enforce, and so it’s all-out war for your business. And outside, pretty girls in full Sailor Moon attire beckon to passersby — not that they need any convincing, judging from the throngs of people. The area is so popular that a crossing guard in a cowboy hat is needed to direct traffic with his whistle. This, by the way, is hilarious.

Oh, and walking through the flat-screen TV section — roughly the size of a small 17th-century fiefdom — we stroll past a TV showing live coverage of the mad cow chaos we narrowly avoided downtown. Needless to say, I’m glad we got out of there while it was still civil unrest, and before it became a full-fledged riot.

After the Technomart, it’s back to home base for a quick freshening up and off to an all-you-can-eat bbq place with Kevin and some of his teacher friends. The idea is to walk in, grab as much raw meat as you can carry, head to your grill/table, crank up the gas and eat yourself silly. It’s also my first chance to try soju, a Korean alcohol that’s something like the homemade vodka you can find in small towns in northern India. It’s smooth, mellow, and stronger than it tastes. No chess tonight.

Speaking of India, as much as I still miss the adventure of the place, there’s something to be said for feeling safe, having reliable access to clean food and water and not being cheated *too* heavily because of the colour of my skin. Although it’s a lot easier to get by without Hindi in India than without Korean in Korea.

Alright, that’s enough for now. More about the sights and smells of Seoul next time. In a few days, we head south to Pusan on Korea’s extreme-high-speed KTX train — something like France’s TGV — where we’ll explore for a day or two before hopping a ferry to Fukuoka, Japan. After that, we return to Seoul and head by bus to the demilitarized zone near the North Korean border, for a tour apparently led by U.S. soldiers. No Koreans allowed — only foreigners can take the tour. The only other thing I know about this little excursion is that there’s a very strict tour rule against short sleeves and jeans for some reason. Take good care, and more to follow soon…

– Mark

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