Uijeongbu Time Capsule

Someone shared this photo in the Uijeongbu Crew Facebook group (which I can never bring myself to leave, ever):



Main street Uijeongbu, 1966.

Googling to find the original online (in case the Facebook image link ever breaks), I came across this page. It's mind-blowing how much Uijeongbu changed in nearly 50 years and how quickly.

http://www.qsl.net/wd4ngb/crc1a.htm

Now Uijeongbu looks like this:





If that photo up there is taken where I THINK It is, then these two right here are just a few blocks down from that location.



This fresh on the heels of news that the THC9, beloved downtown movie theater, has finally been crushed under the heel of the CGV that opened when they put in the Shinsegae right at Uijeongbu Station. And that one of my favorite places downtown, Birdland, has gone from a cool jazz club with regular performers who recognized me and my friends to "Birdland 7080," which means no more live jazz in Uijeongbu and probably yet another loud, obnoxious 7080 bar.

Nothing is permanent except change. But when you leave a place, you like to pretend that you're leaving it in a state of suspended animation. That the things you loved will continue on after you forever and in some way that part of your life will, too; that you can come back whenever you want to and it'll be like you never left.

Womp womp womp.

Glorious Vacation: Day 4

Day 4 was Friday, which was when I was leaving Gwangju to see a friend in Busan. I had to do at least one May 18th related thing while I was in Gwangju (see my reason for choosing to visit it at all), so I decided the best one would be the May 18th National Cemetery.  I kind of wish I had done something for the April 19th protest as well, but truth be told there wasn't that much.

The bus that goes to the cemetery (and the surrounding cemeteries where I think other victims of the May 18th massacre are buried) is the number 518. 518. 5/18. I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.

I totally spaced out on the bus and accidentally rode it to the end of the line, which is an old folks' home.

Putting the old folks' home next to a shit load of cemeteries? Really?

Anyway, I had an awkward little moment where I got out of the bus, sat at the bus stop and read for a few minutes, then got back on the same bus with the same driver, but whatever. Fortunately I hadn't overshot the cemetery by nearly as much as I thought I had, so it was all good.

I kind of lost it at the cemetery, y'all. Maybe it's because I'm a big baby, but it was an awfully sobering couple hours. I've been to war memorials before (trips to Washington, D.C. much?) which are in the same vein, but none of them have been as serious and real to me as this. Everyone who died in the May 18th massacre were civilians, or students (at least, everyone buried in this cemetery; I don't think the police officers or paratroopers who died are buried in this cemetery), which to me makes it entirely different. Soldiers are expected (sadly) to die; students are not. Especially not at the hands of their own government. Plus, so many of them would be my parents' age, about, if they had survived: all of these people would have been someone's father or mother, if things had been different. They could have been the parents of someone who would have been my friend. Not to mention even younger casualties: small children inadvertently caught in the crossfire.




In case it's hard to read:

Here in the National Cemetery for the May 18th Democratic Uprising lie the meritorious persons who fought and sacrificed themselves during the Gwangju Uprising of 1980 and those laudable victims who died in the aftermath of the physical or mental injuries they sustained.

The bodies of the victims were carried in garbage trucks and carts and  buried without official reognition in the Old May 18 Cemetery (the 3rd graveyard of the Municipal Cemetery).

With the completion of a 3-year conservation project (1994-1997), all bodies were moved and reburied together in this new cemetery. In accordance with the Act on the Honorable Treatment for Meritorious Persons of the May 18th Uprising, this cemetery, which had been managed by the Gwangju Municipal Administration, was promoted and renamed as the National Cemetery for the May 18th Democratic Uprising on July 27, 2002 by the Korean state.

This cemetery will function as an education center, promoting the conviction that injustice and dictatorship should never return to this country, so that the spirit of the May 18th may be engraved on the hearts of all people making this a sacred place for democracy forever.

Beyond  the "gate" is the cemetery proper.

English translation:

Oh, Gwangju! The Cross of Our Nation! by Kim Jun-tae

Oh, Gwangju! Mudeung Mountain!
Our city of eternal youth
that sheds blood tears
between deaths!

Where has our father gone?
Where has our mother collapsed?
Where has our Son died and been buried?
And, where does our Daughter lie dead,  her mouth gaping?
Where have our soul and spirit
gone, torn and broken into pieces?

Gwangju, which both God and birds have left!
Our blood-covered city
where decent people
are still alive, morning and evening,
collapsing, falling down, and rising again!
Ah, the phoenix, the phoenix, the phoenix
of the South Province full of wailing
that has tried to drive away death with death,
and to seek life with death!

When the sun and the moon nosedive
and all the mountain ridges
stand shamelessly high,
ah, the flag of liberty
that nobody can tear down
or take away!
The flag of humanity!
The flag, hardened with flesh and bones!

Oh, our city
where at times our songs, dreams, and love
roll like waves,
and at other times we are hidden in graves.
Oh, Gwangju, Gwangju
who carries the cross of this nation,
climbing over Mudeung Mountain,
and walks over the hill of Golgotha!
Oh, the son of God,
whose whole body is covered with wounds,
and who is the emblem of death!

Are we really quite dead?
Dead,
unable to love this country any more,
unable to love our children any more?
Are we absolutely dead?

On Chungjangro, on Kumnamro,
At Hwajungdong, at Sansoodong, at Yongbongdong
At Jisandong, at Yangdong, at Kyerimdong,
And, and, and . . . .
Ah, the wind that blows over,
gobbling up our blood and flesh!
The hopeless flow of time!

Should we now
just collapse, fall, and cry?
Terrified of life, how should we
breathe a breath?

Oh, all those survive
lower their heads like sinners.
All those still alive have lost
spirit, and they find it difficult
even to face their rice bowls.
Afraid, they don’t know what to do.

(Dear, I was killed
while I was waiting for you,
waiting for you outside the door.
Why did they take away my life?
Though we lived in a rented room,
we were quite happy.
I wanted to live, loving you.
Oh, my dear!
But I was killed like this,
pregnant with a child of yours.
I am sorry, my dear!
They took away my life from me,
and I took away everything of yours,
your youth, your love,
your son, and all.
Oh, my dear! In the end,
did I kill you?)

Oh, Gwangju! Mudeung Mountain!
Our city of eternal youth
who breaks through deaths
and flutters the ends of white clothes!
The phoenix, the phoenix, the phoenix!
The son of God of this nation
who climbs up the hill of Golgotha again,
carrying the cross of this nation!

Jesus is said to have died once
and been resurrected,
and to live till this day or rather forever.
But our true love
that would die hundreds of deaths
and yet resurrects itself hundreds of times!
Our light, glory, and pain.
Now we will be revived ever more.
Now we become ever stronger.
Now we – ever more.

Oh, now we,
putting our shoulders to shoulders, bones to bones,
climb the Mudeung Mountain of this nation.
Oh, we rise up to the oddly blue sky
to kiss the sun and the moon.

Gwangju! Mudeung Mountain!
Oh, our eternal flag!
Our dream, our cross!
The city of youth that will get younger
as time goes by!
Now we are firmly united,
surely and surely,
we hold each other’s hands tight
and rise up.

To the one side there was an indoor photo memorial, with photos of everyone interred and either white or yellow artificial flowers. To the other was a "tree memorial," a rather nice, bright contrast to the dark and serious photo memorial. It's basically a nicely-manicured garden.

On the same side as the tree memorial was the May 18th museum, one of the more modern museums I've seen in Korea. Since the cemetery was dedicated in the early 2000s, its modernity makes sense. I would have gotten more out of it if my Korean weren't terrible, as they had short documentaries playing at every exhibit, but I did absorb as much of the English signage as I could. (I have to say, I don't think I could stomach an old school Korean version of a May 18th museum: those would be the bloodiest, most upsetting dioramas of all time.)

The one that stuck with me the most, for whatever reason, was a very small display containing wrist watches. These were the old fashioned kind that needed to be rewound, and since their owners were shot, no one rewound them after May 1980.

The whole time I only saw a handful of other people, which made everything even more serious, somehow; loads of families and shrieking kids would have taken away from the atmosphere.

That was the entirety of my day; after this I had a couple hours on buses before I got to my next destination: Kimhae/Busan.

Glorious Vacation: Day 3

I got off my duff and went to Soswaewon Garden. It was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, but a bit smaller than I expected/hoped for. Nonetheless, I saw my first-ever bamboo grove! How cool! I've never seen bamboo in the wild before because I am a loser of a white person who lives in really urban Asia!

Then, it was a long bus ride back to Gwangju proper. Long. I figured out my bus wasn't going to the bus terminal near where I was staying, so once in Gwangju I got off at a stop to change to a bus that was, but it was still a nice ride. I like riding buses, I guess. I'm a weirdo.

I tried to find a park afterwards, to enjoy the nice weather and people watch, but the one I tried to find COULD NOT BE FOUND. Signs had me wandering around a rather sad and poor-looking neighborhood, which isn't entirely weird because the entrance to Bukhansan Park is exactly the same thing, except there was never any entrance; the indicated street just dead-ended, so I looked like either a lost white person or a douchebag class tourist. Annoyed, I went back to the terminal, had Jeonju-style bibimbap for dinner, and had a nice long soak in the sauna (where I was promptly English bombed).

It was kind of a dud of a day, but it was better than sitting in my motel room doing nothing, I suppose! And Soswaewon was really unbelievably lovely, an infinitely big version of it would be my idea of heaven. My pictures do not do it justice.

Obligatory Korean Tourist Spot #8: Suwon Fortress

You can take a bus from Suwon station to the fortress (and the palace), but it was such a nice day (and since I had forgotten which exit from the station put you in the right bus direction) I walked it. I also got English bombed by an ajosshi drinking makgeolli straight from the bottle at 2 in the afternoon. I HAD MAD RESPECT FOR YOUR RAMPANT ALCOHOLISM UNTIL YOU TRIED TO HOLD MY HAND, MR. AJOSSHI.

Because I walked, I also came upon the fortress by a kind of weird side way instead of from the "entrance." So you get a sideways chronological tour instead of a normal ways achronological tour.



The first of many, many stairs to be climbed, because it's a fortress and so naturally it's on a hill.



Nice view, though.





All along the watchtower...



The fortress walls enclose a lot of greenery.





At this particular pavilion I had a nice sit and read for a while. Despite the innumerable hordes of people there, I was alone for quite some time, maybe half an hour? It was a dead end off the main fortress "trail" so that's probably why. I pretended I was the only person in the fortress and tore through The Poisonwood Bible.



Close up of the sign on the pavilion.

After the pavilion I wandered down the wall on the other side of the hill and nosed around the palace.



Traditional Chuseok game that's kind of the opposite of a seesaw. You jump and try to launch your partner up in the air. Not pictured: doofy foreigners attempting it as well.



The wishing tree! I left a wish (in Korean!) tied on it as well.



My wish. It's secret, though! Otherwise it won't come true. (Not a Korean thing; that's my own superstition.)



Decorative roof tile.

Lots of bits of the palace seemed to be under (re)construction, as they were not painted or not fully painted:







I'm sorry Korea, but I kind of prefer your architecture without the salmon-colored walls. =/



The history behind this particular fortress and palace is that it was built to commemorate a dead king who was sentenced to death because his father thought he would make a terrible heir. The dead king's son (somehow this guy managed to reproduce despite vague "mental illness," I guess) had the palace built to commemorate his father.

How was the dead king killed? Buried in a rice chest.

I spied this going on in the corner of the main courtyard:



"Hm, what are they doing? Let's saunter over to look! There's an informative sign!"



"This looks fun!"



"...oh."



RICE DEATH CHEST!



Nightmare fuel!

I'm trying to make the most of my remaining time here. This weekend is a fireworks festival over the Han, which I plan to attend with a few friends. At some point, though, a weekend will have to be devoted to packing (and shipping home what I can). Dislike.

More Weird Pop Culture Appropriations in Korean Fashion

You all recall the 5,000 won tank top I bought because it had the Reel Big Fish lyrics, right? Of course you do.

A few days ago I spent 28,000 won on this shirt and I regret nothing:

"You know The Magic School Bus? What if we combined that with The 27 Club?"
"GENIUS!"

The cartoon renditions leave me a bit puzzled. I can pick out Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain, but everyone else I can only place by virtue of knowing who's in The 27 Club.

Is that supposed to be Morrison and Hendrix with Janis? If so, why is Hendrix white?! Or is the blond one supposed to be Brian Jones?

Kurt Cobain is driving, but I can't figure out who's supposed to be sitting shotgun. Is that Amy Winehouse? Why is she blonde? At first I thought it was Marilyn Monroe, but she died at age 36.

Also no comment on the "Foreven" destination, or "Too Young Too Die," or "Fan Sweat."

Obligatory Korean Tourist Spot #6: Happy August From Jeju!

I'm back from my trip to Jeju. I've actually been back since, uh, Tuesday, but between starting intensives (read as: extra classes) on Wednesday and losing my phone (in my goddamn apartment and the first person to make a joke about how I need to clean gets their clock cleaned because MY APARTMENT IS SPOTLESS) I haven't had the energy to blog anywhere about anything.

Well, it's the weekend, and the phone situation will be sorted on Monday, so here's my BIG FAT VACATION POST!

Day 1: Lava Tube, Shamseonghyeol Shrine, Jeju Folk and Natural History Museum

Okay, a lava tube is a type of cave. Unlike the vast majority of the world's caves (solutional caves), these aren't formed by water over millions of years; lava tubes are the remnants of flowing lava. In some respects they are a totally different beast than solutional caves. (At least, if you're the kind of person to distinguish between different kinds of holes in the ground. Like me.)

The one I went to is Manjanggul, and it is (part of) Asia's longest lava tube. The part you can visit is 1 km in length, the whole thing is 7 km. They have bats but I didn't see any, they hang out far away from where the people go. :(


The entrance to the lava tube.


I believe this formation is technicially known as rope lava. The formation has to do with inner, hotter lava pushing the cooling, more hardened lava around, but I'm not entirely sure and there is no Wikipedia entry on this!

Also the lights look like Daleks.


Lava stalactites!


The midway point.


Close-up of the midway point.


A lava column.

This was the second of two literally breath-taking moments (I audibly gasped at each one). The first was unfortunately impossible to photograph without things like a tripod and extra lighting, but I can try to explain:

For a long while, the lava tube isn't very high. Maybe about ten feet from floor to ceiling. Then you turn a corner and suddenly opens up into a much vaster, bigger room, maybe fifty or sixty from floor to ceiling. Even more. And on your left is a beautiful rockfall of black volcanic rock, with splashes of what the signage says is quartzite. Amazing and impossible to photograph for obvious reasons.

This second one, the lava column, marks the end of the lava tube open to the public. Every cave has at least one trademark formation that you see on all of the brochures and ads and whatever else; Manjanggul goes with this lava column. So here's a picture of a better picture of it that I snapped after the tour:



(If you're wondering, my cave's trademark formation is The Chapel/The Frozen Waterfall, and The Giant Ear of Corn.)



Leaving Manjanggul.


Then, I had to hightail it back home because my pants were kind of ruined (sudden downpour, wet cave). The day was still young after I got myself situated so I decided to follow the brown road signs to some walkable sites. (Convention in Korea is that cultural/historical/touristy stuff is designated by brown road signs instead of blue, though also you could tell from names like Samseonghyeol Shrine anyway.)




The whole grounds had a very cool garden/park vibe to it. I would have sat and caught up on reading/writing, but mosquitos just thought I was too delicious. None of the pictures I took there really captured that garden atmosphere, except maybe this one.

This is the hole in the ground from which the first Jeju-ers were thought to have emerged, at least as far as the Jeju mythos is concerned. It's been a designated shrine/special area for thousands of years; this is the closest most people can come to it. They have assorted ancestral/shamanstic/(maybe touristy?) rites on April and October 10th where apparently they...I guess walk up to it and do stuff? The signs didn't really say.







Where people still prepare for the aforementioned rituals; also this used to house a prestigious Korean Confucian school.



It's so weird (to me) to see these buildings my brain parses as "old and historical" used in a contemporary/modern context.



Shrines/altars to the three important shamanistic gods of Jeju, at least two of whom are sea deities, if I understood my time in the folk museum correctly. Again, note how it's roped off.

Once I had enough of being mosquito dinner, I decided to go to a nearby museum!



The pictures are mostly really boring, I guess. The most interesting thing to me was a video about the rituals the Jeju women divers still do early in the new lunar year to appease the aforementioned sea deities.



The women divers of Jeju are really important. Each city in Korea has its own cartoon mascot. Seoul's is Haechi, some Chinese monster that, like, judges your soul when you die or something. Uijeongbu has a girl and a boy in hanbok that I'm sure must be important but hell if I know who they are. The mascots for Jeju are a cartoon version of a woman diver and the "stone grandfather" statues all over the island, like this one:



So I don't have many museum pictures, and the ones I do have suck and are boring.

Afterwards I caught a cab to a jjimjilbang that a friend who used to live in Jeju recommended. I find the jjimjilbang water is really great for drying out mosquito bites and I was really suffering from my walk around the shrine. I also have an unofficial goal of visiting as many jjimjilbangs as I can in Korea, so two birds and one stone. I wanted to relax outside my motel room a bit, so I brought some reading and writing to the co-ed hang-out part upstairs...and promptly fell asleep at 10.30. I didn't leave the jjimjilbang until noon the next day. Oops!

Day 2: Love Land, Students at the Beach

Jeju is a popular destination for Korean honeymooners, at least in part because of a surprisingly obscene (and yet sadly heteronormative) art park called "Love Land."

Have a truncated, G-rated version of the park!










I sincerely hope my boyfriend never makes a face like that when we kiss.




"American Love." If I had been a friend of the sculptor, I would have suggested the name "Love American Style," but I guess they didn't have any American pop culture junkie friends.




Awww.



Yeah, I dunno.

After Love Land, I decided to be a lazy bum and go to the beach. I picked a beach off the tourist map that looked the closest and after some minor transportation snafus, arrived in the early afternoon. I think I was in the middle of my second or third go-round splashing in the ocean when I heard a familiar voice: "Katherine teacher!"

Two of my students were going to Jeju with their parents during the same vacation break, but I didn't seriously expect to run into them. Small world! I splashed around with them for a couple of hours, met their parents in my soaking-wet, bathing-suited, not-wearing-clothes-on-top-like-Koreans-do, hairy-legged, state and waved them off when they eventually left. (I stayed on much longer to finish reading my book.) I camped out in a PC bang for a couple of hours to charge my mp3 player and catch up on life, and then I had a quick shower in my motel room (no hot water!) and zoned out with a documentary on Arirang about Samarkand and Uzbekistan and some famous Imam from Uzbek or buried in Uzbek or something.

I had forgotten how awful, twee, and stupid Arirang can be, because after this really interesting documentary came a terrible PSA for Korean liquor, involving a foreigner in a hanbok rapping (poorly) about the different varieties of Korean liquor and why they're great.

Because the foreigner community in Korea is big-yet-small, I'm sure I'm only a few degrees of separation removed from him; I might have even met him or been at a bar or party at the same time as him. Nevertheless: seriously, man? Have some dignity.

Day 3: Seogwipo: Yakcheonsa, Cheonjiyeon


There are two major cities on Jeju island: Jeju and Seogwipo . I decided one day spent on the opposite side of the island wouldn't kill me and got a bus to Seogwipo, where I planned to see Yakcheonsa Temple and Cheonjiyeon waterfall.



The entrance to Yakcheonsa Temple.



The main prayer hall, which is the largest Buddhist prayer hall in Asia (supposedly).





I wonder what English camp at Yakcheonsa is like...






For the first time on a temple visit (because it seemed so very touristy), I worked up the nerve to go inside the prayer hall.





I love temples. Even with so many tourists it somehow retained an incredibly tranquil atmosphere. If there is any such thing as reincarnation then I must have been some kind of monk in a past life because a life full of thoughtful reflection a temple like this, or even the sesshin I did years ago, is so appealing that if the Boy and I ever break up I'll just run away and become a nun.

Cheonjiyeon was slightly underwhelming in comparison.



It's supposed to have mythic healing properties (and is apparently rare in that it's a waterfall that flows directly into the ocean but I don't know how true that is?); I guess it's more of a mythology site than an aesthetic site. Speaking of mythology:



A Greek mythology museum in Jeju? Dafuq....?


Proof that I was in Jeju!

Apparently Cheonjiyeon also makes dreams come true:





The familiar stone stacks where out in abundance at Cheonjiyeon. Here's an especially nice one I found opposite the entrance.



I made one next to it but like the moron I am forgot to take a picture when I finished! Oh well. This one is much better, anyway. =P

These two trips more or less exhausted my reserves (I went on a nature hike near Cheonjiyeon but the pictures of that are kind of boring so just trust me when I say I did it), so I got a taxi to the bus depot and hopped on a bus back to Jeju-shi. Just in time, too, because when we rolled into the terminal at Jeju-shi it was dark.





Day 4: Baller Pants, Beach

I promised myself I'd buy certain things in Jeju: miniature stone grandfather (check), Jeju chocolate (got at the airport), one piece of clothing. Clothes from Jeju are a distinctive orange/brown hue because they dye them with persimmons (I think it's persimmons?) and I like "local" clothing for souvenirs (my sarong from Indonesia, for example). Lucky for me, there was a tailor's near my motel, so on Day 4 I worked up the nerve to try and navigate a complicated economic transaction in my mediocre Korean.

And I was successful! I didn't get them until the next day but they are amazing and they fit perfectly and it's a color palette I love.

All of my goals were accomplished so I decided to be a lazy bum and spend my last day at the beach.

I picked a different beach than the one I went to before, because while it was close, it was also crowded (meh) and not very picturesque (bummer). This one was more famous, more expensive (meh), but beautiful:



The only downside was that at low tide the designated swimming area (go beyond the buoys and people get mad at you) was REALLY shallow: I'd be out way far and in water that was only up to my knees, at a distance when my feet would normally no longer be touching the floor. The waves were also not much to speak of (that is, just wake from motor-powered rafts going back and forth beyond the buoys).

It picked up at high tide though, and I got some good swimming in. I love the water. Maybe I should be a swimming monk.

I also tried some Mount Hallasan Soju (Hallasan being the big mountain in the middle of the island I didn't climb because SCREW MOUNTAIN CLIMBING AT 30*C I'M GOING TO THE BEACH), which is the same as regular soju, but whatever. I was drunk on the beach and I didn't care. I dried off at the beachside bar with some beer and kimchi bogeumbap, the first not-from-a-convenience-store meal I had the whole trip.



I hate when Korean meals come with a fork because I never know if it's just what that restaurant does, or if they associate white people with chopstick failure. There were no Koreans nearby for me to spy on, either.



And some light beach reading.

Once the sun started to go down, I paid my tab and went back to my motel room to shake the sand out of myself and have one last night of exploration.

I found Jane's Groove, my favorite bar/club from Seoul that moved to Jeju years ago, but it was closed. I had a few more drinks at a nearby bar, Cult, and then called it a night. And a trip.