Sons of Loki

Changing of the guard at Deoksu-gung.

The last ten years have seen a surge of interest in Korean culture in the Far East and the wave spreading across Asia is starting to hit the shores of Europe. Films such as Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy have won critical acclaim; Korean cuisine has been increasingly popular in the US; and Korean brands like LG and Samsung are found in homes worldwide.

The source of this wave? The city of Seoul: home to over ten million Koreans, heart of the Korean peninsula, and destination for six million foreign tourists in 2006. A city steeped in history, Seoul is home to the newly-constructed National Museum of Korea, the largest museum in Asia with over 150,000 articles in its collection covering Korean history, culture, and art, as well as a expansive collection of Chinese and Japanese art.

Seoul boasts an expansive palace district in the north of the city, home to a long line of Korean kings. Built in 1405, the dazzling Changdeok-gung has been recently restored and is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Meanwhile, at Deoksu-gung, Korean architecture blends with Western design in a serene palace complex. Be sure not to miss the daily changing of the guard, held three times a day at 10:30am, 2:00pm and 3:30pm, where dozens of guards parade in eye-catching traditional uniforms to ceremonial music.

Cheonggye stream, an oasis in the midst of skyscrapers.

A unique sight in Seoul is Cheonggye stream, an oasis of greenery and flowing water amongst the skyscrapers of the downtown area. Prior to 2005, Cheonggye was buried beneath concrete, but with the demolition of an overhead highway and fervent restoration work it became a favoured spot for families and couples to relax along the below-street-level banks, a respite from the inner-city traffic. Nearby, the famous Dongdaemun street market offers an amazing selection of products, from Korean traditional clothing to live octopus. For more general shopping, try Myeongdong, Seoul’s very own Oxford Street, with a host of top Western and Korean brands.

Opened in 1984, the Yeongdeungpo branch of the long-established Shinsegae chain of department stores features ten floors for fashion-lovers looking to browse to their heart’s content. Elsewhere in Yeongdeungpo stands the brand new Courtyard by Marriott Seoul Times Square complex, opened to great fanfare in September, with over fifty restaurants and a host of the world’s top fashion brands in residence – Gucci, Prada, Bulgari, Cartier, and Louis Vuitton, to name a few. And a 15,000 square metre rooftop garden ensures a haven of tranquillity above the bustling streets.

A beautiful sunset lights up downtown Seoul.

With a long history of Buddhism, Korea caters for more spiritual concerns through temples such as the Hwa Gye Sa International Zen Center, which offers free meditation sessions and organises month-long Zen retreats for the truly dedicated. And there’s no better place to experience the serenity of nature than at Bukhansan National Park, 80 square kilometres of mountainous forests and burbling creeks on the outskirts of Seoul. The immense 836m granite peak of Baekundae is a achievable if strenuous hike, and the soaring vistas of the park and distant Seoul are well worth the climb.

After a strenuous afternoon of mountain-climbing, what better place to unwind than at the 24-hour Dragon Hill Spa in Yongsan, a perfect example of the Korean jjimjilbang? A relaxation mecca spread across six floors, the Dragon Hill Spa boasts enough hot and cold baths, steam rooms and saunas to satisfy even the most weary and aching traveller. After partaking in the separate men’s and women’s baths, treat yourself to a meal at the rooftop restaurant, enjoy a swim in the heated outdoor swimming pool, or unwind in the communal unisex area with drinks, snacks, and different areas ranging from ice cold to scorchingly hot. A full range of massages and spa treatments are on hand, too.

Then relax at the W Seoul Walkerhill, in Gwanjang-dong, which offers rooms graded from “Wonderful” – which is anything but “standard”, with minimalist décor in elegant red and white and a unique foot-massaging “pebble rug” – to “Extreme Wow”: a 13^th-floor suite overlooking the Han River and featuring a LED-illuminated dining room floor, a fully stocked wine cellar, four-person Jacuzzi with stunning mountain views and your very own personal waterfall.

It’s getting better, sort of. After about a month too long and a few chats with teachers I have got the hang of the Japanese lessons, to an extent, just in time for our week-long break (school festival, which if it means no lessons is something I’m all for). And I’ve settled in, sort of. I still make the same kind of stupid mistakes I did at the beginning (I accidentally bought a second duvet cover instead of a bedsheet the other day, so I just hacked (literally) the duvet cover into a bedsheet and it’s worked so far) but they no longer bother me.

I love TV. Yesterday I watched a Korean language-learning programme on NHK Educational, and it’s in Japanese of course, and it’s a strange experience to learn a language in a language you do not yet know entirely. But it makes perfect sense in a strange way, seeing as Korean is far more like Japanese than English.

NHK is the equivalent to the BBC, and NHK Educational is what BBC Two started off as – the more highbrow intellectual counterpart to the entertainment-based NHK General. It’s touching (and telling) that even at prime-time, when BBC 2 is showing How Clean is Your MP? and Mastermindchef Extreme, NHK Educational is teaching people how to make a quilt and while ITV is sticking Simon Cowell’s fat mug on screen to gurn at hapless children, NHK is showing the sign-language news on at 8:45pm.

Yeah. So yesterday I decided to get out, fix up something highbrow like.

Had a wander around Shinjuku for lunch (been here six weeks and I still don’t think I will ever get tired of that place) and got the train to Rikugien, a lovely little garden tucked away by Komagome station on the north side. Birds tweeted. Couples walked around in kimonos. Salarymen entertained their compensated dates. It warmed the cockles of my cold, cold heart, to see the pretty trees and the swimming turtles. The light was doing lovely things.

20:25, Seoul time. Said goodbye to Joo-sung and So-jin, our illustrious RAs. Boarded the bus, the five of us: Dare, Rebecca, Grace, Rosie, and me. Only passengers, only people to watch the banal Korean variety show on the TV at the front of the coach.

Watched skyscrapers float past the window, neon totems of light. Another coach slides by on the highway, a fluorescent island in the night. A brief film reel of windows, friends laughing and playing, vignettes streaming past. I wonder if I’ve caught the eye of my counterpart on the other side of the glass, but they’re sleeping.
“Just Like Honey” on the iPod.

Mere photographs cannot capture this scene. Empty airport buses go by; the drivers must be looking forward to a warm bed.

We got on the plane about 23:30, a shiny new Boeing 777. Walked through first class – such luxury! – to our seats in economy, which weren’t bad either. Widescreen touchscreen LCDs with digital video on-demand in every seat back, a far cry from the tiny, fuzzy TVs I remember from my flight to Japan all those years ago.

“B777 has never had a fatal accident,” I scribble in my notebook. The most dangerous parts of flying are take-off and landing, I tell myself. Planes do not drop out of the sky at cruise altitude. Even so, I watch the lightning blaze in the pitch-black clouds below us with trepidation. Better to be above it than in it, I imagine.
It is 2am Korea time but still the afternoon in the UK. To avoid jet lag, I must feel awake. I watch The Green Mile, a three-hour slog of a movie, and enjoy it, but I am happy to doze off listening to Richard Hawley on my iPod.

I do not sleep for long. Sleeping on an airliner is like eating on one; lots of small portions, not entirely satisfying. Next to me, the middle-aged Korean couple are cuddled up, asleep. It’s alright for some. I crack open one of my emergency cans of Dr Pepper and offer a swig to Grace and Rosie, seated in front and behind me respectively.
I wake up, with comic timing, at the sound of “Breakfast?” Eat. We land in the darkness

and wait in the airport until it is time for Grace, Rosie and Dare to catch their flight to London Heathrow. We say our farewells. It is just me and Rebecca now, with a long four hours to wait for our flight. We wait. I think about buying some duty free, but thankfully for my bank balance, my card is rejected.

The flight back to Stansted is delayed. We take off, something like an hour overdue. This is my fifteenth takeoff, I conclude:
2 to Japan, 1 in Japan, 2 to get back
1 to the US, 4 in the US, 1 to get back
2 to Korea, 2 to get back

Eating lunch – or breakfast, it’s hard to maintain temporal contiguity when it comes to food while travelling – I start thinking about who I’m going to put on the Acknowledgements page if I ever finish a novel. And then I think – who wouldn’t I put on there? In some small way just about everyone I’ve met or spoken to or even seen has contributed, in some small way, to this book I’m writing. I thought about people like Carly Brandt or Mike Fenton from way back in the day, people who were great friends despite the fact I only knew them from the internet. I haven’t thought about them in ages, haven’t spoken to them in even longer. What became of them, I wonder?

The fellow in the seat across from us is stretched out across three seats, sleeping. Has he bought them all? A guy in the seat in front of him, oozing cool, is reading a Bill Hicks biography. Doesn’t Bill Hicks look awfully like Peter Buck from R.E.M.?, I wonder.

We land at about 3pm. I meet my dad and sister and drive home. It doesn’t occur to me that I was in Korea the day before. It doesn’t occur to me that I’ve been in Korea for a month and now everything is strange and unfamiliar. It is the end, regardless.

Sitting in the apartment in the afternoon, it suddenly occurred to me that I was spending my penultimate day in Seoul playing bloody SimCity 4. This was ridiculous. I decided to head to Dongdaemun market, about which I had heard a lot.

The titular Dongdaemun, a big old gate destroyed by arson in 2003. Although it doesn’t show. Perhaps I was misinformed.

Maybe I got there too late, as most of the stalls were packing up as I got there, or maybe I was in the wrong place. Either way I spent a leisurely 45 minutes browsing the stalls, picking up a t-shirt in nifty MARPAT camo for 10,000w (shrewdly negotiating from the original 12,000w), a shirt combining gratuitous English with gratuitous Korean for 5,000w (from an Arabian-looking guy in the subway who was selling shirts with a cartoon Jesus on them winking) and a no-name-but-strangely-stylish watch for 15,000w (expertly bartered down from 20,000w).

It started to rain, so I got the train back to Dongjak station, walking through the brand new Line 9 extension corridor which still had that new-station smell on it. The four of us guys left went to a nearby galbi restaurant we’d been to occassionally for delicious meat barbecued outside by us. As we left, the entire staff (it’s clearly a close-knit, family-run place) came out to give us our farewells, the patriarch warmly shaking my hand. I was rather touched. If/when I return to Seoul, hopefully next year, I will be sure to drop in on these guys.

Back at the flat, Joo-sung said we could head up on the roof, and who was I to disagree?

Creepy!

Bizarre!

Well, everyone’s still left.

Yesterday we had our first language class – good stuff which is already coming in useful – then a quick lunch with my RA before heading back to the flat to pack. Tomasz is staying at his friend’s, but Paul and I headed across to Joo-sung’s flat where I would join Dare, Oscar, and Tommi.

I know, it’s totally different right?

Today after the lesson Oscar, Dare and I wound up at Seoul Grand Park, a sizable place quite far from the city (and, consequently, refreshingly quiet).

I bought some “carbonated rice wine” (which turned out to be a lot like dongdongshu) and together we wandered. After politely declining a wandering salesman who tried to sell us a pair of socks for 3,000w (£1.50 – but just 10,000w for three pairs!) we headed down to a place by the lake and watched the cable cars go by. And got covered in gigantic ants, but it was pleasant regardless.

We wound up at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, which had an extensive free exhibition (which is to be commended).

The central space was a three-story high spiral walkway with thousands of tiny little individually-decorated squares on the walls around a central Nam June Paik installation, The More, The Better, with of hundreds of television screens displaying bizarre imagery, ranging from eyes to Mandlebrot sets to David Bowie.

Elton John, eat your heart out.

We could have stared at that all day, but we had a cursory wander around before getting the cable car back. Memories of childhood visits to Pleasurewood Hills flooded back.

Back in Seoul proper, we headed to a nice local restaurant for Korean BBQ, galbi. We sat outside under a clear sky (for once) at dusk. Everyone looked so happy to be there with their friends and families and colleagues.

whoops