flickering pictures

As I write this, I’m sitting in one of Pusan’s Internet cafes — or “pishi bangs” — surrounded by twenty-something guys laughing and smoking and blasting the hell out of each other online. We got in this afternoon on the KTX, a blazing fast train something like France’s TGV that can hit 350 km/h. Safety regulations keep it under 300 km/h in regular service, but man, it’s fast. Looking out the window, Korea’s mountains and country towns just whip by, faster than you can raise your camera to shoot them.

Once we arrived in town, the first order of business was an RFID subway card, followed by a hotel room. Korea this time of year is about 30 degrees and a million per cent humidity. Aside from the train ride over and investigating ways to get ferry tickets tomorrow, we didn’t do much today, which is just as well because we were melting through the pavement. And we learned a valuable life lesson today: never get a room in a fish market district because, you know, it smells like fish. A lot. Just don’t do it.

I’ve been a litle sleepy the last few days, mostly because Kevin and I have been up chatting and playing chess until 4:30 or so every morning since I got here. He has to be feeling it more than me though, what with his eight-hour work days, Korean lessons and daily Taekwondo black belt training. The guy’s a Sherman tank– I’d be asleep on my feet.

A few days ago we headed to Seoul City Hall to book our DMZ tour and satisfy a craving for overpriced coffee in a hyper air-conditioned global chain restaurant. Plus, Korean doesn’t distinguish between the letters “L” and “R,” and I’ll admit that my darker side got a kick out of hearing the barista girl try to say “large caramel macchiato.” Just like she probably got a kick out of my pathetic attempts to order in Korean.

Have I mentioned how much I love this place?

After that, we headed to the Korean War Museum — an amazing place not because of the old MIG fighters and deactivated missiles outside, but because of the feel of the place and the attitudes it projects. This country spent half the last century at war — first fighting Japanese colonization, and then its northern neighbour. Millions have died violently on this tiny resource-poor peninsula, and Koreans know better than most that war is hell. And yet, there seems to be very little resentment toward yesterday’s enemies. South Korea seems to view the North as a prodigal son who’ll eventually return home, or a wayward little brother who’s lost his way — a view immortalized in the famous Statue of Brothers outside the war museum. The scars are deep, but I haven’t yet seen the anger you’d expect in a country that was torn in half just 55 years ago, and brutally conquered 40 years before that.

I promised I’d say something about the smell of Seoul. It isn’t good, and I’m told that the heavy metals in the tap water complement the lead in the air very nicely. Extreme rapid growth doesn’t come without a cost, and Koreans have paid with their air, their water and their peace of mind, due to the heavy industry and the 12-hour work and school days. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but the whole country is built around efficiency, with little or no consideration for R&R. So much so that Samsung — which incidentally owns the half of Korea that LG doesn’t — recently released a nine-minute cell phone commercial portraying a domineering 1984-like society and urging people to “work, play and love.” Samsung hired most of Korea’s biggest pop stars for the ad, and is banking on Koreans’ growing view that theirs is a drudgery-centred society. Other companies are doing the same thing, bombarding consumers with slogans like “follow your dreams,” and urging them to lead a “beautiful life” by buying some gizmo or other. Even washing machines sing little songs to inject some cheer into your chores. The other day I was chatting with a successful Korean programmer who asked me how much vacation time I got off work each year. When I told him, his eyes nearly bulged out of his head — he gets four days off a year.

Before I forget, Lysanne asked me to go into more reasons for the backlash against the president — I can’t actually figure it out entirely, but after a few more chats and readthroughs of the Korea Times, some pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together. On top of wanting to override Koreans’ mad cow concerns by reintroducing U.S. beef imports, he also apparently wants to make English the main language of instruction in Korean schools, a super-sensitive issue. There are apparently some other issues as well — he’s seen by some as too right-wing and a little too cozy with Washington — but for some reason the mad cow thing is really the issue everyone is rallying around, even though you’d think language would be a bigger issue than burgers. I mean really, if you don’t want to take a chance on U.S. beef at the grocery store, you can always just pick up domestic beef instead. But no one speaks Korean outside of Korea — if the language withers away here, it’s gone.

Incidentally, we happened by some apartment listings the other day, and a tiny 12-foot by 12-foot pad in Seoul’s Itaewon district runs at about $340,000. This in a city where you can stuff yourself silly and drink yourself dumb for less than $10.

And if you ever travel here, you’ve got to try the “omurice,” a mangled Konglish translation for “omelet.” It’s usually eggs and rice with an Asian flair, and it’s fantastic. Also, if you’ve never had cold spicy noodles and a deep-fried pork cutlet for breakfast, you really should try it — it beats the hell out of toast.

Once again, it’s late, so I’ll sign off — next time you hear from me I’ll be in Japan.

Take good care,
Mark

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