So, I’m in Korea now, and so am back on the great Eurasian continent. Not, of course, that I can do anything about it, since there is currently no way to get from here through North Korea to the ‘rest of the world’. In this entry you’ll read about my tour to the DMZ which surrounds the military demarcation line which continues to separate the Korean people.

A railway and a main road do run from Korea into North Korea (which is neither Democratic, of the People, nor strictly a Republic since it certainly doesn’t exist for the res publica, so I refuse to refer to it as the DPRK): however, the North Korean autocracy refused to allow traffic in, and so both road and railway stand blocked at the parallel of 38°N. It would seem therefore that those Koreans who want to go to the Soccer World Cup in Germany this year by train should start making alternative arrangements with the airlines. A few lorries do in fact cross the line every day, since there is a ‘city’ on the North of the line which is home to several factories staffed by poor (and therefore, cheap) North Koreans — the factory machinery is provided by the technologically-advanced nation south of the line, and the products are brought south to be shipped all over the world.

I spent four full days in Seoul, and the fifth day was given over to the tour of the DMZ, which can only be done on a group basis. I think my time there allowed me to get a good experience of the city, and it’s certainly the case that I’ve come away wanting.

Myeong-Dong Cathedral

Myeong-Dong cathedral is the cathedral church of the Diocese of Seoul: it was announced during my time in the city that the Archbishop of Seoul would be made a Cardinal. This was addressed quite broadly in the local news coverage, especially soon after the announcement.

The church was finished in 1898, and it was the first Gothic brick church in Korea. You can see my photo of the exterior, and of the sanctuary: the church is dedicated to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.

I was pleased to see that they hold Mass in English on Sundays at 9am. I was a bit peeved, therefore, when I turned up and everything was going on in Korean. It turned out later that I’d misread the leaflet: the English-language Mass is held in another chapel of the cathedral, and not in the nave. Not that it mattered, though.

Gyeongbokgung

Gyeongbokgung was the Imperial Palace of the Joseon Dynasty, which started in 1392; the palace was built in 1395. It consists of many separate buildings which each serve a different purpose, much like the Imperial Palace in Kyoto and the Forbidden Palace in Beijing. You’d think they were all copying each other, or something. One theory popular in Korea of course is that Koreans had a massive influence on both the Japanese and the Chinese. The palace was burnt down during the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592, and was only rebuilt in 1868.

Within the walls of Gyeongbokgung is the National Folk Museum of Korea. The museum contains some interesting exhibitions explaining various aspects of the history of the Korean people, and the traditional Korean way of life. There was a good English audio-guide available, which detected your location in the museum automatically, so that you didn’t need to key in the numbers of the exhibits, as is usually the case. In fact, the system was slightly hit-and-miss but I worked out how to encourage it to work.

After going to Gyeongbokgung I tried to visit Jogyesa, which is the largest Buddhist temple in Seoul. However, when I got there it was to find diggers going in and out of the main building and people making use of a tent for their religious purposes. There were no notices up that I could see explaining what the building works were, or how long they would last.

War Memorial Museum

The War Memorial Museum has a large monument outside commemorating those who fell during the Korean War, 1950-3. The museum itself is quite expansive, and deals with the invasions of Korea by many peoples and nations over the ages, including the Mongols, the Chinese and the Japanese. Of course the largest, and in my mind most interesting, section of the museum is that which deals with the Korean War.

There are explanations of the circumstances leading up to the war, the involvement of the United Nations (one of the few examples, it seems, where the United Nations has actually served the purpose for which it was set up without the mindless bellyaching and bureaucracy), the methods of warfare, and the outcome of the fighting. One thing which I did find annoying was that although copies of various contemporary documents were on display, both in the original language (normally English) and in Korean, they were positioned so that only the first page of each was completely visible, with only the edges of the other pages showing through underneath! Nevertheless, I understand that there are constraints of space and most museum-goers would probably only be interested in reading a sentence or two (at most) of the documents.

While I was reading one of these documents, a man came up to me and asked, “Excuse me, are you American?” I replied that I was not, and when he asked where I was from, I said Australia — I’m travelling on my Australian passport and I think it’s better to be consistent in these matters. “Oh, your country helped my country in the war,” (a pause), “thank you very much.” I was quite taken aback, and it didn’t seem pertinent to point out that I hadn’t had anything to do with it. He then went on to explain that he’s currently living in London, and is involved with trying to help North Korean children with bakeries: his organisation is about to open another bakery. He said that he went to North Korea at the end of last year, and didn’t like it at all.

Outside the museum was a display of military hardware of the type involved in the Korean War. There were some children having a whale of a time among the planes and anti-aircraft guns.

COEX Aquarium

COEX is a large shopping centre (’mall’, if you like) which was absolutely heaving with people when I went late on Saturday afternoon. I’d decided to go to see the aquarium there, possibly to be able to provide a point of contrast with the one in Osaka.

Well, briefly, it doesn’t really hold a candle to the aquarium in Osaka. The whole place is much smaller, and felt very crowded: there were lots of young families with hundreds of children below the age of six there. That is of course not a bad thing in the least, but I hadn’t expected the aquarium to be so geared up for that age group. The tanks were quite dirty, with no divers carefully cleaning the inside of the Perspex. There was, however, a large crocodile to be seen, the like of which isn’t at Osaka.

Jeoldusan Martyrs’ Museum

In 1866-7 on Mt Jeoldusan (which means ‘decapitation’), thousands of Korean Catholics were martyred — by, you guessed it, decapitation — on account of their faith. In 1967 (the centenary of the executions) a shrine, chapel and museum were built on the top of the hill. I went to the museum, which has more details about the lives of some of the individual martyrs than was available at the similar museum in Nagasaki.

Downstairs there were also some papal documents appointing and disappointing recent Archbishops of Seoul (the disappointment does of course come with the appointment to the shepherding of a titular diocese). Those Popes are really rather good at their Latin prose composition. I had to be thrown out of the museum because they were closing for their lunch hour at 12; however it didn’t really matter because I’d pretty much covered the whole museum anyway.

The De-militarized Zone

As I say, you have to go in an organized tour to be able to get in to the DMZ. I’d arranged my tour through Expedia, at the same time as booking my accommodation in Seoul. I looked at the website of the tour company the night before and saw that I’d paid considerably less than I would have done if I’d booked with them direct, and as it turned out, I was the only person in my group, so I had a guide and a driver all to myself.

My guide was called Clark — like Superman, he told me — and we actually had to join a larger group centrally organized by the company which arranges the tourist visits to the DMZ, so we had to transfer from our small bus onto a coach. I still had Clark to myself, but there were two other groups (one of about 15 Japanese, the other English-speaking of two Americans and two Australians) with us in the ‘mega group’ which actually went to the three separate sites in the coach.

I should point out that I didn’t ever actually go into the DMZ itself: instead, we went to three sites in the ‘buffer zone’ south of the DMZ. The area is still very tightly controlled — I had to show my passport to prove that I’m not a North Korean spy, and our photography was strictly limited, which I hope explains the scarcity of photos from the tour.

The Third Tunnel

Various North Korean defectors informed the South Koreans that they had been digging many tunnels underneath the DMZ into the South Korean territory. The ‘third tunnel’ was the third to be discovered, although it is thought that many tunnels go undiscovered to this day. The third tunnel is relatively large (not that the crick in my neck agrees), and could allow a massive army of thousands of soldiers through to invade the South in a matter of hours.

Before we went in the tunnel, we were shown a video which explained the basic situation of the DMZ. It highlighted the plight of Korean families which were rent apart by the division of the country, and showed scenes of joyous reunions made possible only recently. I was impressed that the film was so up-beat: there was no outright attack on the Kims or the North Koreans, and it ended with an expression of hope that Korea might be reunited again soon, possibly even under a ‘one country, two systems’ arrangement.

We then went down into the tunnel itself: we were taken on a rack railway which descends sharply into the tunnel some 70m underground. When we got off the open train, we walked some way along the tunnel. During this time I was very grateful for the hard hats we’d been given, since it was difficult to stand up and every so often, I’d forget to crouch enough and whack my head against the stone ceiling. I couldn’t quite see how a fully-equipped army could get through so quickly, but I suppose they know what they’re talking about.

We got as far up the tunnel as a large concrete wall (with a door), the first of three effectively blocking the tunnel. Only the command soldiers at the nearby base shared by the Koreans and Americans have keys to open the doors.

Dora Observatory

This was a little bit of a letdown because of the poor weather, which rather prevented us from seeing anything clearly. You’re supposed to be able to look out over the wall, over the DMZ and then on to North Korea on the other side of the military demarcation line. There are fixed binoculars available to aid the sightseeing, for the privilege of using which one must of course pay. You aren’t allowed to take photographs except from behind a yellow line which is a long way back from the wall: therefore, I assume that most photographs turn out with a lot of wall and not much beyond, as mine did.

Dorasan Railway Station

Dorasan Railway Station opened to great fanfare in 2002. As I understand it, the arrangements had been made for trains to run over the DMZ and into/through North Korea, but at the last minute the North Koreans refused to sign the documentation. As such, this large ‘international’ railway station was opened in the presence of the Presidents of (South) Korea and of the United States, but the only trains that run there at the moment are a few daily tourist services shuttling to and from nearby Seoul. It was interesting to see such a large station standing empty, since it looked so smart, like it should handle thousands of passengers a day. For the moment, however, that’s not going to happen.

As it is, there are a few commemorations of the opening ceremony at which both Presidents spoke in favour of unity. One such commemoration is a concrete railway sleeper signed by Mr Bush, who expresses a desire that the railway “unite Korean families”. Inside the station building they were playing a recording of the second movement (adagio) of the Mozart 23rd Piano Concerto, which seemed pretty fitting to the surroundings.

After the railway station our tour had officially ended, although we were then given lunch nearby. I asked Clark if his company (which he’d already told me was the largest tour company in Korea) could arrange accommodation for me in Daejeon, since I hadn’t been able to find anything by that point for myself. He took great pleasure in taking me to the tour company’s building, explaining what each of the departments did, showing me in to his office, giving me a desk to sit at while they made the arrangements (I felt like the external ‘consultant’ Marianne in the fourth series of 24, sitting at a desk, I hadn’t yet worked out who to blackmail to get me high-level privileges on the network so that I could have some idea what was going on and pass it on to my criminal friends). After that, we went to explore Insadong, which is an area of the city I hadn’t had a chance to visit. The whole experience was very pleasant, and I thoroughly recommend Hanatour for any travel services in Korea.

Observations

Tad (remember him?) had given me the details of a friend of his working in Seoul, and so on my last full day in the city I was glad to be able to have lunch with Nick, an Englishman who’s been working there for the past nine months. Although I had had a very interesting time at many of Seoul’s sights, my experience was of a somewhat unfriendly city. Nick assured me that I wasn’t alone in this, and said that most expats have to have done something wrong to be sent to Korea!

Seoul Expectation

My expectation of Seoul was of a city that was highly developed, very clean, and full of the technology for which Korea is famous — this is the country of LG, Samsung, Hitachi and Hyundai. In fact, I found Seoul to be quite a funny beast: there is a certain highly developed ‘element’, but there are dirtier aspects to it which is a stark contrast from Japan.

Aesthetically the city seems like Tokyo-meets-Damascus. All along the street where I was staying there were constantly people selling things from the top of cloths and tarpaulins they’d laid on the ground for the purpose. There were knock-off watches and wallets, as well as fresh fruit and vegetables. Of course, next to the ’stall’ selling freshly-cut, unwrapped herbs and vegetables, were a group of men cutting lengths of metal with a circular buzz saw.

The Seoul metro is quite easy once you’ve got the hang of it, but it does take some getting used to. Although the minimum fare is 900 KRW, the ticket machines rarely accept notes (the smallest note is 1000 KRW, while the biggest coin is 500 KRW), so you have to be prepared and come with pockets a-jangling: some stations have note-changing machines, but not all of them.

The Lonely Planet Guide to Korea (the only readily-available guidebook) suggests that the whole metro system is absolutely lovely. In fact, the writers of the guidebook seem to have a painfully positive attitude about everything they discuss: I found the style of the Rough Guide to Japan far more useful since it told it like it was from a Western tourist’s point of view, and wasn’t averse to employing cynicism where cynicism was due.

Remember when I mentioned the Japanese love of all things jingle? Well sometimes (I couldn’t work out when) on the Seoul metro they played first few bars of the third movement (minuet) of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart, which meant that I found myself humming that for a lot of my time in Seoul.

People

My real problem with Seoul comes from what I perceived as the abrupt rudeness of so many residents. Some individuals were of course very charming, such as my guide Clark, or even downright obsequious, like the man in the War Memorial Museum. However, very often, especially en masse I found some people to be quite unpleasant to deal with.

For example, when I didn’t have coins to get tickets for the metro, I would of course have to go to the window to buy a ticket with a note. I’d approach the window, and the chap would just sit there, obstinately continuing to read his newspaper, refusing to believe that I was actually before him desirous of buying a ticket — this happened several times. Even more frustrating is the tendency to cram on to one of the metro trains before anyone has a chance to get off.

I suspect that there is a certain degree of ingrained anti-occidentism in many Seoulites. Nick told me that he’d been shouted at in the street on some occasions, and I got the impression that many people were just trying to pretend that I wasn’t there: hence no need for an acknowledgement that I’d stood aside to let a stream of people come through a door, or to let me off a train before cramming on themselves, or to mind bashing into me in the street.

Most frustrating of all was the woman on the train out of Seoul who was sitting in my reserved seat: I showed her my ticket, indicating the seat number, and she just gave me a withering look to say, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” Eventually I persuaded her to show me her ticket, and she was booked in to the seat next to mine, so I took that: I didn’t mind at all having the aisle seat rather than being wedged in next to the window, but it was her attitude which most irritated me. A couple of minutes before we arrived at Daejeon, where I was going to get off (and where I am now) she indicated that she wanted to get out: I stood up to let her pass, and she pointed to her seat to suggest that it was now mine for the keeping. I sat there waiting for her to move to the door, but she didn’t, and just took the seat by the aisle instead! In the end, I made motions that I wanted to get out, and she raised her eyebrows to say, “Oh, you’re getting out here? After you just got the seat you wanted?”

I’m not quite sure why this anti-Western feeling exists so prevalently (with exceptions of course, as anywhere), but I was glad that Nick was able to confirm that it wasn’t all in my head. There is of course a large American military presence in and around Seoul, but I don’t know if the soldiers have in fact done anything to lose them (and everyone else) favour with the locals. I walked past the American embassy one day, and it’s even more heavily fortified than the one in Grosvenor Square: there are troupes of Seoul police outside (like the Metropolitan Police employed for the same purpose), but even more impressive was the armoured vehicles parked alongside the embassy, including a SWAT Winnebago, which presumably spent several weeks tossing on the high seas before arriving in Korea.

Finally, I wonder if someone living on his own in Seoul would be considered a Seoul Occupant? If two people were living together, perhaps they’re Seoul Mates? But enough of this nonsense. Farewell, Ordinary Time: see you after Pentecost.