A successful peace summit talk had just occurred between the leaders of North and South Korea in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. The resulting 15 June Joint Declaration committed them to arranging reunions of a number of divided families later in the summer. A lottery would determine one hundred families who could meet briefly with their loved ones from the other side of the border. The leaders agreed to work closely for inter-Korean cooperation.
No wonder there was the sense in South Korea of a new era beginning. People hadn’t come here for pleasure for a long time. But the next year, 2001, was official Visit Korea Year. President Kim Dae-jung’s message to the people, as quoted in the first issue of Welcome to Korea, was very optimistic: ‘The development of the tourism industry will attract foreign currency and help promote a positive image of the country, ultimately laying the foundation for world peace.’
World peace, eh? Well, let’s give it a try. I strolled outside. There were already young men sitting on the kerb with their heads on their knees, surrendered to a combination of weariness and alcohol. Myungdong, a busy shopping district by day, now looked deserted. You couldn’t just wander the streets looking for a lively scene. Bars and restaurants lurked in basements or third-floors of square commercial buildings behind dark, tinted windows. And behind pulsating neon signs that seemed to promise wild abandon, I found only sedate lounges with cosy sofas and coffee tables, where a few people were talking quietly. I looked around for people who might be approachable, but they were all wrapped up in their own worlds. I didn’t know how to find the soul of Seoul. The busiest places I’d seen on a Friday night were the PC bang.
Oh god, what was I doing here? I was learning, but it was awfully hard. I walked back in the direction of home. I supposed I’d meet people if I was working, and wouldn’t be as worried about money, yet after seven years of slogging away at a career, I wasn’t interested in getting a job teaching English, although it would probably be possible. But everyone around me was working, and I was losing my self-confidence. It had been a strange role reversal: Gav had gone from being a university dropout and unappreciated bartender to working his dream job as a professional musician entertaining grateful audiences every night, while I’d gone from being incessantly in demand to completely invisible.
Now that summer had arrived, the air was muggy and the streets smelled. The rain hadn’t been enough to wash the streets clean, only to wet the rubbish and start some sort of rotting process. I remembered now being told that it got damp enough for mildew to grow on your clothes. Walking home, I reached the Hyatt around 2 a.m. and so decided to wait for Gav to come out after the show, so we could walk home together. As I stood on the roadside opposite the entrance, a car stopped and a man tried to make conversation through the open window, asking how old I was. When I ignored him and he left, another man in a blue van drew up and – I realised I’d better not stand here again in what to normal people is the middle of the night. Not the kind of attention I’d been after. I was getting tired of the stickiness and the sleaze. I needed to get out of town.
When Korea was freed from Japanese rule at the end of World War Two, an agreement made by Britain, the United States and the USSR determined that the northern half of Korea would be temporarily occupied by the USSR and the southern by the US. Korea had little say in the matter: it was a pawn in a game between superpowers. A United Nations commission was set up to install a united government, but talks reached an impasse, and the commission was refused entry to the North. The administration in the South elected a government and then declared independence.
Both sets of foreign troops were withdrawn from North and South. But then the USSR supplied the government in the North with enough weaponry to fit out a powerful army, and it invaded the South in 1950. The Koreans of the North presumably were fighting to reunite their country under their own, now communist, administration. UN troops, mostly American, were brought back to defend the South, but they had little effect. That was until the US general Douglas MacArthur led UN forces in a daring landing at Inchon, which forced the army from the North within a month to withdraw right back to the border of Manchuria. Then China agreed to send masses of troops to support the North, extending the war, and finally driving the Allied Forces back to the thirty-eighth parallel, where the DMZ is now.
The three years of war devastated Korea, ending in a ceasefire and Korea still divided. During the chaos, there was massive movement of people between the North and the South. Some from the South voluntarily joined the North because they believed it was the way to reunify the country. But a line was drawn across the centre of the country, closing of the other half indefinitely. People are still living with the effects. You could easily have a sibling or a child or even a husband or wife on the other side of the border, on the enemy side. Millions in South Korea have relatives in the North.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
SEOUL BY THE SEA
We got into a cab to go to Samgakchi Station, and five minutes later I realised I’d forgotten something essential, so we somehow had to explain to the driver that we needed him to turn back. Of course he couldn’t understand why we wanted to go back to the apartment, and to make matters worse, Itaewonno was gridlocked and in chaos. He huffed and tutted as we awkwardly directed him back up a shortcut to the Hyatt. Taxi drivers could be so unpleasant. If they weren’t refusing to take you somewhere, they were trying to run you over.
A Sunday by the sea beckoned, however. Inchon, famous as the site of a decisive point in the war, was Seoul’s seaport on the Yellow Sea facing China, and reachable by train through the urban sprawl linking the two cities. After the hour-long train ride to Inchon, we took a cab straight to the Wolmido waterfront, one of the landing areas of Douglas MacArthur’s UN forces during the Korean War, now said to be a trendy cultural district of street theatre and art galleries, with restaurants and bars overlooking the sea. But how our hopes were dashed. There was a small amusement park or fun fair, and a boardwalk lined with tacky pubs. Worst of all, the sea was dimly grey, flat and uninviting, reflecting a grey sky. Seoul-by-the-sea was trapped in foggy, grey humidity.
It was already early evening. There was no lovely waterfront to walk along, or much to see. We’d desperately wanted to do something different, to enjoy being by the sea, but there seemed nothing but this row of theme bars. What to do? ‘Let’s just go for a beer,’ said Gav. It had been a somewhat tiring journey, especially for Gav, who was constantly exhausted these days. Trying to have a laugh about it, we settled on a pub called ‘Bull’s Beer’, whose theme wavered between cowboy and maritime, with a ‘Highway to Heaven’ sign on the door that led upstairs to the bar. At a damp table we ordered a jug. Popcorn came in a bucket that looked daubed in engine oil outside and in. But there were views over the sea and islands, and a sunset that you could almost say was turning to gold. For want of something better to do, we ordered another jug of beer. This, it turned out, was our worst idea yet.
I misguidedly veered onto talking about some liaison I’d had in the past. Perhaps I was trying to make myself sound more interesting than I currently felt. It went over badly.
‘I know you’ve had other relationships,’ Gav said. ‘I’d just rather not hear about them.’
‘I wouldn’t mind hearing about your previous relationships,’ I protested.
‘Yes you would,’ argued Gav, probably correctly.
‘So I’m not allowed to talk about before I met you? I’m not sure I’m happy about that,’ I said angrily. Gav, in a patronising tone, told me to control my temper. By and by it developed into a full-scale argument, with me angrily calling him ‘Gavin’ instead of Gav, and him talking in an annoyingly calm, superior voice, which made me remind him how he was still a youngster, which didn’t go down well. We’d been thrown into a strange intimacy – living together in a place where we were reliant on each other, with no friends to let off steam with, when we still barely understood one another.
Abandoning Bull’s Beer, we looked arou
nd and found a yogwan, the Korean equivalent of a pension or motel that, while entirely without charm, was a place to stay and wasn’t expensive at 30,000 won. The old woman in charge brought us toothbrushes and a plastic razor, and then began hovering around saying things we didn’t understand. We smiled and nodded, but I was desperate to put my backpack down and inadvertently stepped into the room without first removing my shoes and putting on the customary slippers. Her tirade increased in volume and speed, without a pause to see if I had half a clue what she was talking about. Surely it was fairly obvious I didn’t understand a word? Why couldn’t she just go away and leave us in peace? Hoping she couldn’t understand a word I said either, I smiled at her as sweetly as I could and said, ‘Yes, yes, I don’t know what you’re saying so just fuck of, OK?’ Thankfully uncomprehending, she nodded and finally left us. Gav was shocked but amused.
There was a big mirror on the wall right next to the bed, a plastic brown headboard, faux satin bedclothes, rock hard pillows and a lurid purple bathroom. As well as toothbrushes and razor, the management provided hairspray, moisturiser, shampoo and vile-smelling aftershave, all in half-used family-sized containers. There was no sheet on the bed and the towel was barely big enough to dry your face. Once again, you had to laugh. I wistfully thought of the basic but lovely rooms I’d found in seaside towns all over Europe, forgetting that I was supposed to have left my expectations at home. Still, the room provided a weird sort of neutral space, a kind of haven from the craziness out there, and Gav and I made friends again.
When we went out in search of dinner, we found a fairly comfortable restaurant where we ordered bulgogi, marinated beef with rice, glasses of hof, and some horrible sandwiches on white bread with unidentifiable contents, just because we craved sandwiches. Late at night, drunk, we went back to the yogwan, acting silly all the way home and forgetting to buy water.
We woke early the next morning, aghast at how much money we’d spent, wilting in the heat of the room and completely drained of energy. The shower barely worked, obliterating the possibility of feeling fresh and revitalised. When we got outside, the streets were smelly and dirty and the sea looked brown.
Our plan had been to take a ferry to a nearby island, but the islands were totally obscured by a thick fog, which seemed to hang at ground level and stick to your skin. It didn’t seem worth the trip. So we continued down the quay, hoping to walk off our hangovers and glum spirits. At the end was the area of, according to an English sign, ‘Sliced Law Fish Restaurants’. The letter in hangul that denotes ‘r’ also denotes ‘l’. Sushi! The sushi district turned out to be a long alley flanked by two rows of shacks with fish tanks outside, housing octopus, crabs, creeping sea slugs, unidentifiable molluscs and creatures resembling human hearts and orchids. Not the best sight for a queasy stomach. Interesting? Yes. Breakfast? I think not.
Away from the seafront we found ourselves on a road where a coach was parked, and a busload of old folks had laid mats across the pavement. Women were squatting on the mats preparing bowls of kimchi, beans and fish. I smiled to see them enjoying themselves, and they beckoned me over and asked if we wanted to eat. I couldn’t have eaten a thing, but it was a heartwarming, redeeming moment.
Life in South Korea hasn’t been easy for a long time. As the nation was recovering from the post-war years, it fell under the sway of a succession of anti-communist military regimes that suppressed personal freedom. Attempts were made on the lives of those who protested against the system, including the young Kim Dae-jung.
After the assassination of the military president General Park Chung-hee in 1979 – by the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, who claimed he was impeding the path to democracy – came censorship and martial law, and a brutal incident that can only be likened to the Tiananmen Square massacre. In Kwangju in May 1980, a rebellion against the infringement of freedom by police and militia led first to beatings, then to mutilations and killings. The deaths of ordinary people were officially said to be 200, but were later proven to be closer to 2,000. And the American commander-in-chief was implicated for condoning the withdrawal of troops from the border to deal with the rebellion.
Kim Dae-jung was accused of being a communist and instigating the uprising, and was sentenced to death by court martial. He was abducted, held prisoner in a basement cell, unable to see daylight for sixty days, living with his interrogators in the same cell. He was naked and could hear the cries of pain from torture taking place in adjoining cells. ‘Under those circumstances, one can turn anybody into a communist,’ he has written. South Korea’s international reputation was severely tainted.
The eighties for many South Koreans were a period of struggling and fighting for justice. There were secret police tapping phones and beating up anyone they perceived to be a radical. People were not allowed to travel abroad except for business or study. When Seoul hosted the 1988 Olympics, Kim Dae-jung encouraged the world to boycott them. He was accused of trying to overthrow the state, and spent three years in prison and three under house arrest, then went abroad, conducting research at Cambridge, where he wrote The Launching of Many Beginnings. His inauguration as president, in 1998, marked the first peaceful transfer of power.
Considering South Koreans couldn’t freely leave the country until 1989, no wonder they found foreigners unapproachably weird.
On the train back to Seoul, the carriage filled up quickly with an oddball cast. A giggly young woman sat beside me and slapped my face with her ponytail every time she turned to her friend. Another woman stared into her pocket mirror unblinkingly for ten minutes straight. Next to her, a skinnny old man asleep with his mouth open slowly fell sideways until he was leaning on her shoulder. Further down the carriage was a suave young fashion victim wearing black drainpipe trousers, a diamanté fake Chanel watch, and crocodile ‘long shoes’, as I called them. ‘Long shoes’ were a wildly popular current trend, whereby your shoes are trodden down at the heel and clownishly long in the toes. They seemed to go along with ‘long trousers’, trousers that were way too long, in a cumbersome way. Perhaps it was something to do with trying to look taller, in the way Tokyo girls were supposed to favour really big platform shoes.
I was relieved to be back in Seoul. The onslaught of multiple lanes of mad traffic, the cab driver who refused to take us from the station to the Hyatt – somehow they seemed pleasingly familiar, sophisticated and cosmopolitan.
That evening, after Gav went to work, I found an elegant cafe in Itaewon, further down where the street became less seedy and more expensive. I decided to treat myself. I sipped a cafe latte and a chilled blue glass of water at a spotless glass table, which held a little dish containing two perfect floating pink flowers, each a subtle shade different. People spoke in hushed tones and there was soothing classical violin playing on the stereo. The place was called The Espresso Coffee Club, and its slogan was ‘Best Taste – Since 2000’. A venerable institution. Well, they got my vote. They even gave me a free peanut cookie. I relaxed, happy to be on my own.
I’d mostly travelled alone before. Travelling with someone, you never really leave your own culture behind. You never forget who you are. You are more concerned about having a good time than stretching yourself. I needed that stretching experience. Gav didn’t have the same sense that there was something missing. Drumming is physically demanding, and Gav was waking up exhausted, his back aching, needing rest. And in the best of circumstances, Gav was happy just reading the paper all day, while I needed to be out and about and active. Maybe it was partly our age difference: I perhaps felt more keenly the march of time, and certainly knew how many months it had taken me to earn the cash fund I was steadily depleting here. When I felt like I was wasting my time, it made me bad-tempered.
After touching some nerves in our argument in Inchon, Gav and I had talked calmly about each of us spending a little more time alone. I wanted to see the country. I was excitedly poring over maps, trying to drag Gav out of town on the afternoons and Sundays, whe
n he was torn between wanting the same and needing to relax. Gav had been drumming since his skinny legs would hardly reach the pedals of the bass. He was having fun, and I should too.
I’d worried what time apart might do to our relationship. The first time I left behind a boyfriend to travel, I only lasted a few weeks before meeting someone else. But maybe our time was up then anyway? I was so young then – maybe I’d changed? And our relationship wasn’t going to survive anyway at this rate unless something was done. I’d just take a few days at a time, and then come back to Seoul to spend most weekends with Gav.
I needed to find out more about Korea’s tantalising ancient traditions, which I’d glimpsed in Seoul at Namdaemun, Chongmyo Shrine, Kyungbok Palace. There must be a happier history than that of the twentieth century. Koreans led mostly a rural existence until only a few decades ago: the countryside was where I needed to start looking for the soul of Korea.
Now that I was planning this, suddenly even Itaewon felt pleasant. It had been raining for hours, clearing the air and cleaning the streets. Perhaps the rain made everyone happier. Even one of the stern guards at an embassy gate on the road up to the Hyatt smiled back at me and said annyung haseyo.
PART TWO: MAKING FRIENDS
‘Myself, being in a manner a haphazard loiterer about the world, and prone to linger in its pleasant places...’
Washington Irving
‘If you live without any kind of self-reflection, the days fly by and before you know it, your time here is finished.’
Meeting Mr Kim Page 6