Meeting Mr Kim

by Jennifer Barclay

  Our food arrived minutes later, and whatever it was, it was still moving. Our dinner was pink and squirming. I tried not to look too closely, but out of the corner of my eye it seemed like those little wriggling eels I’d often seen leaping about in plastic tubs in the market – except now they had apparently been chopped up into pieces and skinned and were writhing about.

  ‘They’re not really alive,’ Gav said. ‘It’s just electrical impulses.’

  ‘Just like sashimi really, only fresher,’ I replied, turning green. We tried to talk across the table without looking down at the awkwardly alive-looking things trying to get our attention as they cooked in the middle of the table.

  ‘You can’t get fish fresher than this.’

  ‘A real cultural experience.’

  ‘I just wish they’d stop moving.’

  ‘Me too.’

  We looked at the pictures on the walls, at all the other people happily eating. For a moment, the food seemed to stop moving, but the ajumma came by and turned up the heat, which started it jumping again.

  Eventually she came back when it stopped moving again, and said the food was ready to eat, which is what we were afraid of. We asked for more hot pepper sauce. And bravely we started eating. It didn’t taste great.

  Two young guys at the next table were gorging on some delicious-looking shellfish stew, and we eyed it jealously. They sent over a bowl of it for us, and then a couple of glasses of soju. We’d never been so grateful for that toxic-smelling inebriant, and shouted a thankful kombae, cheers, as we downed the shots.

  Feeling somewhat nauseous, still not quite sure how we managed to eat whatever it was, we paid and said our thank yous, and got away from the scene of the crime. We wandered further into the market, which was now lit up by strings of light bulbs as people strolled the gleaming alleys and shopped. We found ourselves entering a huge hall, bright with electric lights hanging over fish tanks. Huge tanks were everywhere, rows and rows of them at individual stalls, where people sat at tables and big pipes hung down to keep the water fresh. We walked around taking photos, dodging busy stallholders in their rubber boots and full-length rubber aprons and gloves.

  One stallholder who spoke English approached us and we asked out of curiosity how much a raw fish cost. It was expensive, 30,000 won (US$30), as you had to buy the whole fish. But he was happy for us simply to look at the weird creatures in his tanks. I burst out laughing when I saw creatures that looked like smooth pink penises, changing shape as they took in water at one end and expelled it again at the other. The guy picked one out and squeezed til it sprayed a thin stream across the stall to general hysteria, and he whispered something to Gav, with a universal gesture suggesting virility. Gav said he was OK in that department, thanks.

  It was rowdy, noisy, the place to be in Pusan. As we walked around, a group of people I’d caught in one of my photos beckoned me over. They asked me to sit down with them in the insistent manner of those who’ve had a fair bit to drink and won’t take no for an answer. The table was covered with green bottles and plates of fish. When Gav found me again, I was doing a shot of soju with my new friends. They were young office workers, the men in short-sleeved checked shirts and the woman in geeky specs and a bob haircut, and they all handed us their business cards to show they worked for an ISM management company. There was much shouting of kombae and much demanding of ‘One shot!’ and much taking of photos, much smoking and shouting, much slurring of words and dropping things. I had visions of my camera going in the fish tank. But I finally got to taste some Korean sashimi, some fweh. It was thin slices of a white fish, clean-tasting, beautiful.

  When we found an opportunity to leave, and perhaps save ourselves from a monumental soju hangover, the woman of the group, Miss Choi, came along to show us the way, and dragged us by the arm, insisting on taking us to the nearest hotel, despite our protestations that we already had a place to stay.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said, ‘my English is not very good,’ and she dragged us on. We couldn’t quite find a way to make her understand or politely shake her off. Then as we waited to cross the road, another man said hello and proceeded to paw Gav’s arm hair, feeling his biceps, not letting go until I removed the probing hand myself. We finally reached the un-needed hotel and said goodnight to the persistent Miss Choi and the pawing stranger, and burst out laughing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:

  HAPPY AS A SQUID IN SOUP

  In the morning, we reluctantly left our comfortable room in Pusan. We had a couple of bottles of beer left over, so we gave them away to a baffled man on the street. Unfortunately, the good karma didn’t take immediate effect. We sat down in a cafe and were asked to leave because we had backpacks. So instead we caught a bus to Tongdo. We’d see the temple there, and continue up the east coast to Soraksan.

  We had been tempted to travel south to Chejudo, the large semitropical island renowned for its beauty, its dormant volcano, yellow mustard flowers, Easter Islandlike grandfather statues, and women who dive for sea urchins. But it was a holiday resort, a popular honeymoon destination. A ‘must-see’ place, we feared it could be costly and commercialised, full of photo opportunities. We’d explore the east coast instead. After all, I’d had some of my best adventures when simply wandering through the less famous places. I wanted Gav to experience the same magic.

  From the windows of a school in Tongdo, kids hung out of the windows shouting, ‘Where are you from? Where are you going?’ We smiled and waved, then made our way towards the temple entrance, playing Botticelli, a way of passing the time while travelling together. Gav was irritatingly good at the game. In The Young Ones, the TV comedy we’d bonded over, there’s an episode in which Rick explains in painstaking fashion to Viv how to play Botticelli, otherwise known as ‘Twenty Questions’, using the astronaut Neil Armstrong as an example. On this particular occasion I managed to ask Gav twenty questions about who he was without guessing that he was in fact Neil Armstrong. It was most annoying. Whenever it was my turn, Gav guessed almost immediately.

  A friendly man let us put our backpacks in his shed at the temple entrance, and we had a pleasant walk under big trees beside a wide stream gushing over boulders, Buddhist inscriptions carved into the rocks along the way. Halfway to the temple was a museum with a famous collection of Buddhist paintings, only open a few hours a day because of the delicate nature of the eighteenth-century paintings in ground minerals on silk. Though it was well after the specified closing time, the curator unlocked the door for us and let us in. They were huge paintings, depicting how all life is suffering, while high above the Buddha sat serenely detached from it all.

  Tongdosa, an important Buddhist temple, was peaceful. Clouds obscured the mountain, said to resemble the mountain in India where Buddha delivered many sermons. The temple was founded here during the reign of the Shilla queen Sondok – the same time as Kirimsa. Korean monks traditionally took ordination at the so-called ‘Diamond Platform’, a special, decorative (but not diamond-encrusted) enclosure supposed to enshrine relics of Buddha. The wooden buildings had dragon carvings in the buttresses, elaborately painted exterior walls and ceilings and beams. Yet the halls were simple and bare except for an altar, a small table holding a book, clock, bell and gong, and a satin cushion for kneeling. After the gold and imperial pomp of Japanese temples, Tongdosa seemed humble, peaceful. I bowed to a monk, hoping we might be invited to talk to him, but he just bowed back.

  We returned to town and ended up eating overpriced pizza that tasted nothing at all like pizza in a chalet-style building with an alpine theme and a bullying waiter. The next day, we struggled up the east coast on buses that battled through traffic, stuck in eight lanes of standstill around Ulsan, and were subjected to utter confusion and loud buzzers at Pohang station; until finally we found ourselves on the picturesque coast road to Samchok, with waves crashing up on a rocky shore to the right, and mountains to the left. At a rest stop, we got out of the bus to feel salt spray in a freezing wind. The te
mperatures were rapidly cooling now that it was September. It went dark after seven and the reading lights on the bus didn’t work.

  A cab at Samchok bus station agreed to take us to Samchok beach. There was drizzling rain and a cold wind as we searched for a place to stay, and nothing seemed open. I felt like crying. Finally, a woman came out of a restaurant and guided us into a plush, new building, showing us a brand-new, spotless room. She even agreed to rent it for a price we could afford. We bought pots of instant noodles and sat on a bed of quilts, watching CNN, listening to the big waves crashing on the beach as we fell asleep.

  The sky was pale grey when I woke but it was good to see the open horizon, so while Gav lay sleeping, I went for a walk on the beach. The pale yellow sand was covered in rubbish: bottle tops, empty cigarette packets, instant noodle cartons, all manner of plastic wrappers and polystyrene containers that might have washed into shore or been left there after the rubbish ladies had finished for the season. Then there were the buildings, a row of new office-type buildings with odd misfit features in primary colours and mirrored glass. So much for the Korean desire to live in harmony with nature. At either end of the bay were military outposts, sentry boxes in camouflage colours, and razor-wire fences blocked of the cliffs. Samchok was in fact one of the first places to be attacked at the start of the Korean War.

  When I got back to the room, Gav was watching more CNN. Then came the breakfast challenge. The only restaurant served whole raw fish only, even though the owners were eating a slap-up meal of rice and vegetables which looked tantalisingly good. They directed us to a cafe, which refused to serve us at all. We jumped into a cab to go back to the station, and the taxi driver tried to charge us for a detour to get some petrol. At the station we hoped to have some breakfast, but there was a bus going north ready to leave, and the information desk didn’t understand my attempts to find out when the next bus after this one was leaving, so we hurried onto the bus.

  Looking glumly out the window at dead trees, industrial landscapes and mangy cats, I wondered why everything was going wrong. Perhaps because I was no longer honja, no one seemed to care very much. Two people travelling together are left to themselves. Maybe if I were on my own I’d take more chances? I felt sad that Gav hadn’t been able to sample the experiences or the spontaneous kindness I had found during the summer.

  People could be mean-spirited, logistics could be difficult, anywhere in the world. Maybe people were sad the weather was turning cold. We were outsiders in a place unused to outsiders, and still only had a rudimentary grasp of the language. It was hardly surprising when plans didn’t always go well. Discovering Korea, you never knew how things would turn out. I was lucky to have done so much. I tried to remind myself of Buddhist ways: you have to take the good with the bad, not cling to dificulties or despair but keep moving. This time, once past, will never more return. Perhaps it was time for us to move on.

  The scenery improved as we continued north. The sun came out from behind the clouds, turning the sea deep blue, the waves trailing white spray, helping me ignore the barbed-wire fences and military outposts. At Naksan, we found a cosy little room above a fish restaurant for a tiny price, because it was out of season and there was no hot water. The sea was too cold for swimming, but we waded in up to our knees anyway.

  Naksan was a pretty seaside town, but I never need to see as many dead squid again as I saw hanging to dry on its streets. Racks and racks of them, cleaned and splayed out, row upon row in their thousands. Everywhere I turned there was another rack of drying squid. Sadly, the Koreans are guilty of using terrifyingly destructive driftnet vessels to harvest squid from the depths of the Pacific Ocean. They have a large appetite for squid. I surveyed this bizarre scene of maritime massacre and thought of the cartoon smiling squid on packets of dried ochinga or ochinga-flavoured noodles: happy as a squid in soup.

  As dusk fell, flashing neon signs were lighting up the night sky declaring discos and fun, but Naksan by night was chilly and deserted. Afer a delicious dolsot bibimbap, the kind served in a hot earthenware bowl that continues cooking as you eat it, and then a beer at a funereally quiet bar/coffee shop, we went to bed early out of boredom. We huddled under quilts on the floor, and cranked the under-floor ondol heating so high it kept blowing the fuse.

  The most beautiful mountains on the Korean peninsula were said to be the Kumgang or Diamond Mountains, but since the war these had been inaccessible in North Korea. Soraksan, or Snow Rock Mountain, was considered by many to be the most beautiful part of South Korea. It was in the very north-east, close to the thirty-eighth parallel, and many North Koreans were thought to have escaped and settled there. With its jagged rock spires, Soraksan was so popular with hikers and rockclimbers that the trails had to be closed for ‘sabbatical years’ from time to time. Its peaks were full of waterfalls named after dragons, ancient Buddhist hermitages and steep, rugged cliffs; the park had a wealth of animal species including the endangered grey bear, and plants including junipers and edelweiss.

  Soraksan was ranked – in a country that loved to rank everything – as one of the top three mountains in the country, along with Chirisan in the south, and volcanic Hallasan on the island of Cheju; the highest peak of each rose over a mile above sea level. So although mountains covered seventy per cent of Korea’s land area, making it one of the most mountainous regions in the world, going to Soraksan was seen as somehow better than going to less famous mountains. It was the ultimate ‘must-see’ in a ‘must-see’ culture. There were many famous things to see there, too: famous rocks, hiking routes, and the ‘eight wonders’, which included summer thunderstorms, moving rocks and caves. There were also ‘eight views’, corresponding to different seasons: the scent of spring, spring flowers, ascending dragons (waterfalls), rainbows, the sea of fog in summer, autumn foliage, moonlit peaks when the full moon rose high in the autumn sky and the rocks looked like ‘dancing nymphs’, and snow patterns on trees and rocks.

  In spite of my misgivings about this sort of sightseeing, like the ‘museum without walls’ in Kyungju, we just couldn’t leave Korea without seeing Soraksan. The Korean people would be very disappointed. This was my final concession to travelling the Korean way, my final gesture of accommodation to Korean culture. And in spite of the emptiness of Naksan the previous night, we appeared to have picked a national holiday to visit. The entrance was swarming with hordes of people. We set off up the mountain alongside them to experience Soraksan the true Korean way.

  Somehow, in the midst of all this, the huge Buddha at the first temple towering above the crowds conjured calm and gentleness in the mere curve of its fingers. Pilgrims were bowing, kneeling, laying their head and hands on the ground in prayer. I remembered the photos Cheung-suk gave me of herself and her husband here.

  Next stop on the route was the Moving Rock or Rocking Rock, a big boulder which supposedly could be shifted by the touch of your finger. It was not enough to see something famous, however: you had to have your photograph taken in front of it, which is why some fifty people were queueing to get to it. I went one better and had Gav take my photo in front of the queue of people waiting to have their photo taken in front of the Rocking Rock.

  The path to Ulsanbawi Peak continued uphill pretty steeply, although as usual lithe Korean women in tight jeans and high-heeled sandals were tripping up it like mountain goats without breaking a sweat. Serious hikers wore colourful socks pulled up to their knees and the full sporty regalia. We stopped with other crowds at a rest area with food and drinks and souvenirs, and discovered we were about three quarters of the way there already. Energetically, we resumed our pace, and then suddenly we saw a huge, sheer rock face ahead, rising up like some awful dragon’s tooth, and a tiny steel staircase clinging to it. That was the last quarter of the way to Ulsanbawi.

  There was a spirit of camaraderie as we all marched up to the start of the steel staircase. How did they build it? Could it take everyone’s weight? We took it one step at a time, step, step, step, a
ll the way up, legs aching, not wanting to complain as there were others carrying children on their shoulders.

  And finally we were at the top, looking out across the bare peaks that gave way to green forest sweeping down to the valleys. Sheer rock steeples reached finger-like into the sky around us. The only sound was the wind that blew clouds of mist across the cliffs, covering then revealing the scenes below. According to legend, Ulsanbawi was too late to make it to Kumgang where all the most beautiful rocks were, so it stayed here instead for the nice scenery. The only disappointment was that the stall selling ‘I Climbed Ulsanbawi’ badges was closed.

  By the time we returned to the temple below, a bright, almost full moon shone over the darkened statue of Buddha in a dark grey sky. It was cold. The leaves had started changing colour, and in a few months there would be snow here. Rivers would freeze over. It was hard to imagine after the heat and rain and sunshine of summer. I thought of the monks in their isolated hermitages in the mountains, white with snow and ice.

  A slow boat to Shanghai would leave in a couple of days, and we planned to be on it. So the next morning, after an icy shower, we had to take the bus to Kangnung. This wasn’t easy, as it was apparently pronounced something like Kangreung, and I couldn’t get anyone to understand. Then in Kangnung, we needed to find a bank to get money for our bus tickets back to Seoul. However, the bank machine in the station didn’t work – and on asking directions at the Tourist Information Centre to the biggest bank, I discovered that all the banks were closed for the public holiday.

  I pleaded with the young woman in the Tourist Information Centre to change US$20 to won so we could make our connection to Seoul. These slow boats to Shanghai didn’t run very often. She giggled at my admittedly ridiculous suggestion, and said it was impossible because she didn’t know the exchange rate. Not to be deterred, I asked her to look it up on the Internet, and she thought that was a reasonable proposal, and changed some money for me.