So apologies for interrupting our regularly scheduled programming. This space will return to the regular subject matter of Engineering Open Societies shortly but in the meantime I’m commandeering this space for a travelogue of my time in Korea and Japan. Also, all of this is being written on a phone so apologies.
Follow along here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/FoxgDg2BAp1xb2fA8?g_st=ac
Books are here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/12277599-asa
Woe is me
Logistically this trip got off to a rocky start. I chose not to bring a suitcase for some reason so my hiking backpack doubles as my luggage, and well, a hiking backpack. I also failed to bring any toiletries, cash, sunscreen or an ATM card. Don’t do this.
I had to bum my $4 subway ticket off of a kind soul in the airport to get into town, which only added an hour to the 12 hours flying, 2 hours in the airport, and ninety minutes on the subway. Oh, and I couldn’t take an airport bus because of a holiday military parade.
Oh, and Seoul has two airports. I flew into Incheon but Gimpo is much more central. Word to the wise.
I ultimately managed to set up a pin on my credit card. Get some hard cash. And find some dinner at a seafood greasy spoon down the Sejong Food Alley where I was staying. I stuffed myself on rockfish wrapped in shiso, conch, banchan including GRUBS and two beers. A note on conch the sucker bits tasted similar to abalone but not quite as hard. The interior though was incredibly rich and fatty closer to monkfish liver (or a seafood foie gras).
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Despite not sleeping for almost two nights in a row I promptly woke up at 1am (8am Los Angeles time) after sleeping a total of three hours and then lay in bed until six AM tossing and turning in my uncomfortable hostel bed listening to crickets, creaking, and dripping water, and overcome with nameless anxiety.
Note to present self: You can afford a decent hotel room in the future. Or capsules actually provide a nicer stay than hostels.
In Media Res
But let’s back up. This trip really started on the airplane where I gave myself a crash course in contemporary Korean literature courtesy of my favorite contemporary author: Han Kang and her fantastic guide to reading Seoul:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/books/seoul-books-han-kang.html
I chose for the flight (in order):
Flowers of Mold
Cursed Bunny
One Hundred Shadows
Shoko’s Smile
Your Republic is Calling You (unfinished)
All were worth reading. For general interior perspective on Korean life. Just being good literature. And with an emphasis on a feminist perspective which was a nice change of pace. Flowers of Mold was a lot of fun slice of life stories with twisty endings, some of which were unsatisfying but ultimately lots of good scenes of life.
Cursed Bunny was my second favorite. Again, short stories this time all with a fantastical or sci-fi feel with many feeling like taut contemporary ghost stories.
One Hundred Shadows was interesting and allegorical take on the down and out in Korea’s lost generation in the 1980s-1990s with an interesting and unusual love story. Ultimately a bit unsatisfying in the conclusion but a fun conceit related to people and their shadows.
Shoko’s Smile was my favorite. Very personal, introspective short stories with lots of pathos and real emotion. I’m sure my seatmates couldn’t see me tearing up on the flight. Four or five really fantastic riveting stories in this collection. Highly recommend.
So far your Republic is Calling You has also been a real brain worm. Well-told tense novel about a North Korean spy living in the South with his family. Another reason I failed to sleep.
Overall themes that emerged across the works: the difficulty of intergenerational relationships and female friendships, the insidious, omnipresent fear of and consequences to falling into debt in Korean society, and the real massive shifts in recent Korean history between WWII, post-war, 80s-90s, to present. The dictatorship and transition to democracy are fascinating to see played out over and over again in these stories (and Han Kang's opus Human Acts).
I could go on but I realize this is supposed to be a travelogue not a literary analysis.
Climbing the Wrong Mountain
So being up at 6am and hyped on sleep deprivation and anxiety, I decided to go for a hike to beat the heat. I had wanted to go to Baekundae peak in Bakhansan National Forest. And hopped on what seemed like a straight bus ride up to the park.
However, I made the mistake of not realizing how big the national park was, and considering that it might have multiple entrances, and using Google rather than Naver to map directions.
As an aside the thing that has been most frustrating in Korea (that was not a frustration with my own actions) has been how poorly Google works here. Translate, Maps, Wallet all are leagues worse than in Japan which seems like a relatively fair comparison. I think this is directly due to the strength of homegrown tech platforms in Korea like Naver, Kakao, Samsung, and TMoney. While there are in arguably local benefits here it definitely creates a real data paucity that notably hobbles my preferred platform. This would be an interesting topic when we get back to our regularly scheduled program as I see real local/global trade-offs here but let’s get back to our mountain.
There are No Wrong Mountains
The hike was fantastic. I didn’t see a soul once I was a kilometer past the parking lot. As I expected, the trail was beautifully maintained, clean-scoured rocks winding up through multiple streams and waterfalls, encased in greenery to the remains of medieval fortress wall. A straight 2 mile uphill burn, my favorite.
Also, Naver had great trail map integration.
While I was forced to make discretion the better part of valor by not making my own trail or continuing on an empty stomach and shaky legs attempting to blaze a trail to my intended route and the view left something to be desired it was a fantastic hike.
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Which brings me finally to what I should have really remembered from the beginning. There are no wrong mountains. The best part of travel for me is the serendipity of starting somewhere and ending up somewhere else as the result of a semi-directed random walk through a new location.
With this welcome recollection dusted off from layers of silt that time and tide have covered my life in the entire tenor of the trip changed.
And the rest
Unwilling to stop the momentum, I rode the bus back to Gyeonbukgong in a state of mental clarity but physical failure as muscles tightened and froze due to lack of free-flowing sugars in my blood.
Waiting for the kalgukis spot to open I checked out the National Folk Museum. Which actually had a lot of cool exhibits but more importantly an absolutely fantastic setting with lots of stone carving and way markers replanted. While I rushed through the museum to get to some food.
The kalgukis place was amazing. The perfect example of a place that gets a Michelin star while charging $10 for a meal because they make a few simple dishes absolutely flawlessly. I stuffed myself to the point of physical sickness (I do not leave food on my plate when I travel under any circumstance). I also highly recommend going immediately when they open at 11am. By the time I left at noon the wait was in the hours.
Reinvigorated, and fortified by enough caffeine to give an elephant cardiac arrest, I tackled the modern art museum, the traditional Hanbok, the palace, Li Sang the Strange’s home, another small art museum, and several more coffee shops.
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The modern art museum was going through some exhibit changes. And the exhibit they had in keeping with one of our themes of female Asian artists had some decent pieces but was too heavy on long video pieces to be digestible. The palace and the Hanbok village were misses for me. Mainly tourist traps.
Serendipity
In addition to the cultural museum just walking around was the best part. The density of shops, coffee, food, and everything else was overwhelming.
I said I wouldn’t get back to my hobby horses yet but the fantastic liveliness of walkable cities is amazing. The density, infrastructure, care is amazing. In a few hours walking I passed more interesting art galleries, food spots, l and museums than I could have visited in a year. And if I had any eye for fashion that too.
And the world was so much more mixed. Lots of locals, tourists, and kids. I love taking my kids around LA but the ability to do it at all hours with ease with the safety of numbers is overwhelming. The number of amazing scenes of kids just being kids on their own in space was truly inspiring. But again. Something to save for another day.
The best thing I saw just happened to be at a coffee shop I randomly stopped at on the way to the post Li Sang the Strange’s small house museum. An artist I'd never heard of, in a gallery I only knew existed because the barista mentioned it when I ordered, and it completely captured the mood.
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A fantastic exhibit by a figure I'd never heard of who fit flawlessly into the literary and historical milieu I'd been cultivating and completely vibing with my melange of mixed feelings.
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That was followed up by a couple more great exhibits with an opportunity to read some Li Sang poems and see some of the original printings and get some great views of Seoul.
Enough for now. I’ve walked over 8 hours today. Had five coffees. Stuffed myself in one giant meal. It’s nearly 6:30pm. I need to stay awake for at least another 4 hours. But I'm going to go grab a cocktail.
I’m sure there will be more travails but to quote Paul Newman in The Color of Money.