Like all big cities, Seoul is a city of neighborhoods. I certainly didn’t see all of them, but I wandered happily around a great number of them in the walking vicinity of downtown and my own subway station (Cheungdong-no, for those of you who know the city at all).
First, my neighborhood—I like to think of it as that, even though I was only there for a week—doesn’t have a name that I know of, and it’s very much a working Korean neighborhood, filled with fruit stands and little tiny restaurants that seat maybe ten and where many Koreans spend their evenings in animated eating and conversing. Walking into downtown, though, one passes the Agricultural Museum and the Seoul Museum of History, the headquarters of Asiana Airlines, a big office branch of Citibank, which, like Starbucks, seems intent on inhabiting the entire known world. What road is it, you ask? Heck if I know. Few roads are signed or even named, and even odder is the fact that addresses are assigned based on when the building was built as opposed to numerically by location. So 23 might be next to 6045 might be next to 778 . . . one begins to see why business cards have detailed maps on them, and why people navigate by buildings rather than street addresses. I stayed in the Golden Bridge Building, next to the Reit-K 14 Building, whatever that is.
Itaewon is neighborhood that Americans might know, because it’s where the big U.S. Army base in Seoul is. At one time, it was on the outskirts of town, but Seoul, the Asian City That Ate Korea, has spread all around it so that now it’s in the heart of the city proper. It has all the usual fast food chains, sometimes with strange menu items. McKimchi burger, anyone? Leave it for now to say that Seoulites’ attitude toward the American military presence is, shall we say, ambivalent, but they certainly like the military’s penchant for Korean souvenirs: little theater masks, leather coats, Korean flags, military stuff. You name it, Itewon sells it.
Insa-dong is a street and area of traditional crafts—a bit pricey, but oh so beautiful. Here, entire little stores are devoted to jade jewelry and carvings; wonderful Korean kites; paper and paper goods, including some of the most beautiful wrapping paper I have ever seen—if I bought it, I could never bring myself to use it for its intended purpose; Chinese chops, which are official letter stamps that Koreans adopted; fans; antiques; and everything else that defines Koreana more traditionally than Margaret Cho does. (Let me hasten to add that I love Margaret Cho.) I sent a hand-painted card to my mother, and it was hard to part with.
For plain fun, however, it would be hard to beat Namdaemun and its great street market. Here’s where Koreans shop for their household goods—kitchen stuff, lots and lots of cheap clothing, toiletries, leather goods, towels, luggage, everything including the kitchen sink. There are an enormous number of products featuring Korean teen idols. Can you say Tiger Beat in Korean? Interestingly, no matter where you are, the concerns of thirteen-year-old girls remain resiliently constant. Much of the stuff in Namdaemun seems to be cheap Asian tat, which is part of the fun: you find yourself thinking, how many things can Chinese factories produce? and then asking, why am I buying knockoff Calvin Klein jeans? And of course they’re knockoffs. If the ten-dollar price doesn’t clue you in, the spelling “Kalvin Clein” ought to. The narrow streets of Namdaemun are closed to vehicular traffic, so you are arms a-jostle with wonderful noisy shopping Koreans. It looks exactly like what a street market should: slightly organized chaos. Americans who seek to develop that loveliest of marketing euphemisms, the “festival marketplace,” would do well to take a look at Namdaemun.
Namdaemun is also the capital of Konglish printed t-shirts. Konglish is clearly a close relative of Japlish, and both describe Asian attempts to use English, not necessarily correctly, but to just use it. Sometimes the grammar is off, and sometimes the context is off. Sometimes everything is off. A random sampling of slightly askew Konglish, all things I actually read on actual t-shirts worn by actual people: Better Than Milk?, Bovine City Super Slab, Summer Cool Basic Happy Trend, Juicy American Girl, and the clear winner: I Am Cat-Like Robot.
The other wonderful thing about wandering around downtown is that everywhere you turn, there’s another palace. There are five in central Seoul. Much of each palace’s grounds was torn down by the occupying Japanese, and even if the palaces once took up lots of room, they remain modest affairs. I don’t mean that as a slight; they are marvelous. There are lots of separate buildings rather than one big marble monstrosity set in the Royal Grounds Cunningly Designed to Impress, and they are primarily wood. They are the first palaces I have ever seen (not that I’ve seen that many) that I would happily move into. Just roll up my futon, spread it out, have a book or two to read, pull the paper windows shut, and take a sweater. It is a lovely thought.
Comments