Seoul-cialite (Part II - Modern day Seoul)

This is part two of my trip to Seoul, because I had such an amazing experience, I had to split it into two parts. In fact, I should have split it into three. If you would like to read part one, it is here.
Despite my previous post delving into much of Korea’s historical culture and development, Seoul is nothing if not synonymous with modernity.

This is definitely one of the first things that strikes you when arriving in South Korea. Of course, this is the land of the tech giant Samsung, etc, but I didn’t quite expect it to be on the scale that it was. Wherever you went, there was some technology around. Even most of the lifts contain TV screens playing some sort of adverts or shows, and there is WiFi EVERYWHERE. And when I mean Wifi, I don’t mean the crap kind where you have to stand in a corner to get just one bar of signal strength, and if you take a step in either direction, then you’ve lost it. I mean the good, four bars full kind of superfast Wifi, where gif downloads on your phone are almost instantaneous. Every single subway stop and many shops have WiFi, and although many are paid, most of them, such as one service called “Olleh” usually cost less than £2 for a whole day’s worth of WiFi, which can be used at one of their many points all around the city. The vouchers can be bought at many, convenient locations all over the city, such as any convenience store, just like phone top up vouchers. The telephone boxes in the street also have WiFi capability, and some places even have it for free, at familiar places like Starbucks, some other coffee shops and anywhere where you can pick up a network called “iptime”. The best WiFi was at the airport, where there were many points with really excellent signals (great when my filght was slightly delayed), and I managed to upload all my Facebook photos in a matter of minutes (I was taking full advantage of my precious few days of unadulterated Facebook access! And I finally managed to watch the infamous Paxman vs Brand interview!), although it wasn’t quite good enough for me to Skype my dad while I was waiting for my plane though!

Even at museums, such as Leeum Museum of Art built by the founder of Samsung near his former home, there was state of the art technology. The audio guides were essentially a modified form of a Samsung smartphone, with a retina display standard screen, and some technology inside meant that it detected when you got within a 1 m radius of any of the exhibits, and played an audio description of the item. This came in especially handy when we got to the modern art section, as that’s something that definitely needs explaining to me. I was surprised to find that there is actually a genuine explanation behind some of Rothko’s paintings (!) I was also glad when Aimee’s husband said he didn’t get modern art either. The Zaha Hadid structure still under construction at Dongdaemun is also met with similar confusion, and a touch of resentment at losing their old, beloved baseball stadium.

Staircase inside Leeum Museum of Art

Since it was an art museum, I don’t have any pictures from inside, just a few from outside:

My Korean friend Aimee and myself

Installation by Anish Kapoor outside the Samsung Leeum Museum of Art

Also, since my friend lives in Gangnam-gu (the region south of the river), which like in many major cities it seems in Asia, was the less productive part of the city until the era of skyscrapers, when many such buildings sprang up and it became a major business centre, bringing along with it all the economic benefits. This resulted in Gangnam becoming quite a rich area, what Aimee says might be considered a bit like Seoul’s equivalent of Chelsea (but with less history), or like Shanghai’s Pudong region. It also means that it has become the haunt of some rich, privileged types, of whom the infamous “Gangnam Style” song is making fun. Since I was staying in this area, I couldn’t resist a visit to Gangnam station, where there is a light-hearted structure erected to commemorate the surprise global success of this song:

Tribute to commemorate the crazy success of the "Gangnam Style" song

My Seoulite friends seem pretty nonplussed about the song though, I guess it’s a bit old for them and the craziness has died down now, but I still think it’s an amazing achievement - the most played video ever on YouTube – 1.8 billion (yes, billion) views at the time of writing, which would no doubt be much higher if YouTube was available in China! It has helped put Seoul on the map internationally, and I’m sure it will continue to do much for the economy for years to come, if only through tourism alone. But when I mention it, it’s met with comments like “oh, most of the video wasn’t even filmed in Gangnam, blah blah…..” But I guess it’s not exactly a piece of high-brow culture!

One of the things the song makes fun of is people’s vanity. A major effect of the prosperity in Korea has been a spike in popularity for plastic surgery. In the Asian world where job applications can specify things like height or weight, image is a very important thing. And nowhere is this more noticeable, than South Korea, which has become the plastic surgery capital of the world, where eyelid surgery, jaw reshaping and nose jobs are very common. This has supposedly resulted in ridiculous situations such as the man who successfully sued his wife on the grounds of marrying him under false pretences, after she gave him ugly children (although now it is widely reported that this story was actually completely false). Nevertheless, you are bombarded with a large number of visual adverts showing before and after shots of a number of surgeries, plastered all throughout the subway and other parts of the city. The health care system as a whole seems to be very commercialised, as there were many shops around for different specialists, and there was even a urologist next to the 7 eleven at the base of where I was staying. On the whole though, I would say that Koreans are definitely the most image conscious of all the Asian people, and in China is it fairly easy to spot them – the men are much more likely to be wearing they hair long (like Beatles 1970s style), or dyed (blonde is quite common, but it just looks so bad!), which makes a contrast for the more traditional, conservative Chinese look. But many of the Chinese are aware of this, and are keen to imitate the trendy Korean style. One of the first questions I got asked when I got back was whether I bought some clothes, and other people have proudly said to be that they had their hair done in a “Korean style” for their wedding (I don’t know what this means either!).

 

                Another thing that was high on my priority during my visit to Seoul was to eat some proper Korean food. After arriving in China, many people said that Korean food was particularly delicious, and it was a special treat to go to a Korean restaurant. My DK guidebook also told me that it’s exceptionally healthy for Asia, partly because they use much less oil than the Chinese, but also because they eat a lot of vegetables and cook things very fresh. It seems to be standard in Korean restaurants to bring bowls of fresh ingredients, and cook it on a hob embedded in the table in front of you, which means you can cook it just the way you like, no over-cooking, leaving all the good vitamins and minerals intact, and it goes straight to your plate, so it’s very nutritious

So, Aimee and Bina took me to the Bulgogi Brothers restaurant (불고기브라더스) to have bulgogi, which is a kind of beef stew with sugar and lots of vegetables, and it also came in this way. Aimee said that foreigners always like this dish, and I was no exception!

 

As we sat with our food steaming away in front of us, we nibbled on an array of vegetable side-dishes, including kimchi, mashed pumpkin and many others, which were all unlimited, so there was no fighting over who had the last bit, because you could always ask for more! This really was one of the tastiest dishes I’ve ever had, and the girls told me that this place is so popular that there are now stores in America, Canada and Malaysia (wish they would open one in London!).

                After this delicious experience, I was feeling ready to try anything new, so when Bina suggested getting Ddeokbokki for lunch the next day, I figured I may as well try it out. It was mentioned in my DK book under “top ten Korean meals”, and although it was described as “rice-cake chunks (ddeok) in a thick, and very spicy red-pepper soup”, Bina assured me that she knew a place in a trendy part of town Garosu-gil (가로수 길) that made a more tolerable version. Bina ordered, and our delicious meal came in all its fresh, raw glory, piled high with minced beef, spring onions, rice-chunks, noodles and sauce, all sat on our own personal camping stove.

Bina, with our lunch just after it arrived, ready to cook

Before trying the ddeokbokki

Looking back on it, I probably should have seen the warning signs, as this place was called “Villa de Spicy”. As soon as we started eating it was quite obvious that it was going to be a rough ride. Apparently Bina had asked for a “medium” spice, but even she and Aimee had struggled with the dish, looking round at the others in the restaurant going “why is no one else suffering?!”. As some of you will know I have a very low tolerance to spice anyway, so this was a real effort for me. All the other ingredients in there I knew were very delicious, and I especially love the rice chunks, so I tried to battle my way through a small plate. In desperation, we ordered some extra rice and I got myself a beer, but to no avail. Even a San Muigel couldn’t wash away all this capsaicin. After a while, it was possible to ignore the spice, mainly because we had lost all feeling in our mouths. I can honestly say that I have never tasted anything like this before, but that would imply that I was able to taste anything. I gave up after a plate and a half, and though the girls bravely ate some more, they couldn’t finish the dish either, and we decided that our next stop had to be an ice-cream parlour. By this point I had succumbed to the pain and it made my eyes water just a little bit!

After trying the Ddeokbokki!

I also developed a sudden headache, started to wonder whether I would be experiencing capsaicin toxicity for the first time. It was either that or the beer had gone to my head! It was a really interesting experience though, and I’d love to repeat it, but first I’d learn how to say in Korean to the chef “stop torturing people by making delicious food completely inedible and painful!”

Korean “ice flake” after the fiery meal to soothe our tongues

And the toilets! I could write a whole separate blog post about South Korean toilets! After some horrific experiences in both Beijing and Shanghai, you realise what a luxury it is to have a good, clean toilet. Before you wonder whether if I’m a few meatballs short of a dumpling, toilets in Korea are note worthy because even in most public places, they were so clean and were electronically controlled to within an inch of their life. I was so surprised to find that many seats are heated, even at my friend’s home and at the airport. The electronic seats have so many buttons at the side to spray water in this or that direction, you don’t really know what to do with them. Almost everywhere the remaining facilities were touchless motion sensors, but what really surprised me was that the airport even had a map of the cubicles when you first walked in, with red and green lights to indicate which places were free! I was so astonished, I wanted to take a picture, but I thought this was probably too much, and anyway, the facilities were so well designed that I would have been in full view of a group of women at the specially designated area with floor length mirrors for adjusting your looks (cleverly thought out to avoid having people blocking the way to the hand-wash basins – is there nothing they don’t think of?!). So, apologies, but no pictures here of coloured toilet maps and heated seats.

 

Getting back to more serious issues, as we sat at our trendy dessert parlour recovering from our experience and discussing the passage of time, as well as agreeing on when we should meet up next (the girls want a 10 year reunion with all the guys from our halls in Hong Kong!), I suddenly felt very lucky to be there, and the realisation dawned on me I thought that barely a stone’s throw away (about 50 miles to be exact) was a country at the complete opposite end of the scale of living standards in Asia. At the end of World War II, as the Japanese surrendered, they also had to give up Korea, which they were then occupying. The US, who had previously maintained troops there during the war did not really acknowledge the temporary government set up to rule Korea. At the same time, Soviet tanks entered North Korea from Siberia. The division was meant to be temporary, but during the years that followed, which precipitated the Cold War, each side began to be suspicious of the other, and would not yield their half of Korea. Each side felt that they had a right to govern the other, and in 1950, the Korean War broke out, when the North side decided to take forceful action to take back the Southern half and create a unified communist country. Of course, the Americans would not tolerate this, so they boosted their military presence by hundreds of thousands of soldiers, as well as from the help of other UN countries. Meanwhile, China got involved on the North Korean side. The conflict reached a stalemate, and eventually, an armistice was signed in 1953, which means that neither side has won, and technically, the war isn't over. It is frightening to think that earlier this year, North Korea had claimed that this armistice was now finished (a decision it made all by itself) and that North Korea "is not restrained by the North-South declaration on non-aggression." Despite this, people seem to be carrying on as normal for the time being.

           The net result of all the conflict mainly caused by North Korea is that it forced America to evaluate the importance of this country in Asia, and it decided that South Korea was valuable enough to protect and keep friendly, so in the subsequent years has maintained a steady presence with much aid in assistance from town planning and businesses, which has benefited the country enormously and is probably ultimately responsible for South Korea's current thriving economy. This small Asian country seems in infinitely better shape than China, a country with much more resources and a larger workforce. I have to admit that I naively believed that this is what all of China would be like before I came, but definitely, China is not there yet. South Korea is clearly one of the most comfortable Asian countries, which others look up to, to some extents. The American influence can be seen very clearly, from the naming of blocks as numbers on very long streets (as in New York), to the omnipresent "Dunkin' Donuts" stores. Never before has such a political experiment produced such staggeringly different results. The closest similarity that comes to mind is the chapter in “Collapse” by Jared Diamond, in which he compares how one Caribbean island split into two countries – Haiti and the Dominican Republic - has similarly massive chasms in prosperity. Although some have criticised his review of this situation, it would be interesting to see what he has to say on the Korean issue. The conflict is technically still ongoing, but apparently trips out to the Demilitarized Zone are very popular, and that’s definitely one trip out of the city I’d like to do next time I go back.

  Despite the political conflicts, Seoul has the luxury to indulge in some really nice renovations within the city. One night, after we came back early from dinner on account of Aimee’s baby and because Bina lives outside the city, I just couldn’t help myself, and I snuck back out to take a look at the lantern festival at Cheonggyecheon. This is a part of the old city that used to have a small tributary of the main river. However, due to overcrowding by the poorer communities, it became very polluted and unsightly and was filled in and turned into a highway by the authorities during a 20 year renovation of the city starting in 1958.

Then, in 2003, then mayor of Seoul, Lee Myung-bak (who subsequently became president of South Korea) decided that it would be a great project to restore the stream, creating jobs and also re-introducing more of nature into the heart of the capital (again, this seems to be a common theme that it held in high importance by forward-thinking South Koreans). It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but the mounting costs to remove the highway, and then the pumping of water artificially to the site to replenish the now dried-up stream, coupled with some safety issues, meant that the total cost of the project reached around $900 million. This left a lot of Korean tax-payers very unhappy, as they felt that this was a pointless vanity exercise.

However, I couldn’t disagree more! I really like the idea, and I really loved it when I got there. I think bringing the natural elements back into the city gives a really nice atmosphere and a very pleasant walk along major part of the city, since the stream stretches over 8.4 km. The removal of the highway improved the air quality in the city centre, although the air is already infinitely better than the major Chinese cities, which made me laugh when I saw the odd Seoulite with face masks.

Also, since I’m a lover of lights and night photography, I simply couldn’t resist the lantern festival, and took as many photos as I could before it closed at 11 pm. I only just made it back to the last subway home, but I think it was worth it (even if I had to walk the last stop or two back to the hotel!). Each lantern tells a story and there are full explanations next to them. There was everything from a traditional Korean wedding scene, complete with guests; to mythical creatures, flying fish and even something resembling a Christmas tree. These are some of my favourites:

Seoul Lantern Festival

It was also raining that evening, but there were still plenty of people about who, like me, were undeterred, and many left only once all the lights went out. So, this popularity, combined with the positive effect on the environment means it doesn’t seem like such a failure after all! But then, I could be speaking as a naïve tourist here, who just likes pretty lights!

Overall though, my main reason for coming to visit this city was to see an old friend, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover and fall in love with a beautiful city which has such a diversity of things to offer. I would definitely recommend it to others, especially in the autumn.

This trip was my main reason for getting my Chinese visa changed, but the new one they gave me gives me two entries, so now I have done one, perhaps I’ll do another before my time runs out…..