Seoul. A fleeting visit.

Remember Remember the 5^th of November, pollution, filth and smog.

So started our long weekend in Seoul.  Only a 90 minute flight from Beijing but thanks to the ‘fog’ (air quality index of 400+) we had an 8 hour delay.

In China the government decide when it’s cold enough to turn the heating on (yep. One big switch for everyone) and despite it hovering around the 0 degrees mark it wasn’t deemed cold enough yet so our 8 hour delay was in an unheated airport.  To be fair, we were given a free meal (2 family sized packets of biscuits that would be best used in an eating competition as they contained -10% moisture) while we waited so shouldn’t moan.   Also, the plane full of Koreans waiting to get home were very good at moaning/shouting/mob-rule so our British tutting would have been embarrassingly inadequate. 

When we did get there it was 9ish so we made our way to our hotel, found something to eat and hit the sack.  Next morning we had a quick breakfast which is the only way I can cope with communal meals. Most guests were Chinese who take the ‘get involved as loudly as you can’ approach to eating. Noodle slurping, open mouthed chewing and burping at 8am is a bit testing for me.  Also Chris tried to toast his bread beyond slightly warm (i.e. toasted) and caused great panic amongst the staff so we ate up and left.

Off to the DMZ – the De-militarized Zone between the South and the North.  Very interesting and utterly bizarre.  The war is still ongoing as the North still believes it should control the South while the South feel less enamored about the idea.  It’s meant to be peace-time but there are still land mines all over the country, tunnels still being dug under the border and spates of killing soldiers for no reason other than flexing military muscle so the tension continues.

We visited the border where barbed-wire stops anyone crossing (and if you fought your way through the landmines would come into play pretty quickly), the train station that used to cross the border until recently (in an attempt at consolidation South Korean workers were going to North Korea on a daily basis but then a flurry of violence put an end to it and the train station is now a ghost station) and the museum that tries to explain how WW2 created such division in a small island.  The latter is built on the site of one of the tunnels that runs from the North to the South (one of several that were discovered accidentally) so we put our hard hats on and scurried down them.  The guide said that the tunnels were big enough to deploy an army of thousands within an hour which may be true of Asian soldiers but really not of European sized ones.  My claustrophobic panic was only kept at bay but the regular sound of heads being banged and swears being done as we scuttled along, hunched over, very hot and in total agreement with the guide that there really is ‘very little air supply’ down there.

Then came the weirdest bit – the viewing platform into the North.  Like at the seaside when you put 20p’s into a telescope to see the horizon, we took a stack of coins and stood at high point to watch North Korea put on it’s daily show.  Military music was played from the North towards the South masking any other sounds, trucks appear and groups of workers dismount and pretend to work the land.  Completely choreographed (they do it all day every day in the same place), the chosen comrades wear rough fabric uniforms (think peasant outfit if you staging Mother Courage) and appear industrious solely for the benefit of us watching them from the South.

Behind them are blocks of flats that look relatively modern and a decent standard but our guide told us that the lights never go on in them so they are most likely just facades.  The real living conditions (not visible from the border) much more sparse.

Such is the madness of North Korea, and while I was keen on visiting it while we’re living in China (not that hard to do although you have to go as part of an approved tour), seeing people being made to perform like that changed my mind very quickly.  In the West we laugh at the regime and poke fun at the Erstwhile Leader but up close it’s terrifying and very very sad.   

Time for a change of mood so we went back to Seoul, had a pick-me-up beer and headed out to the lantern festival.  An annual event, lantern artists create all manner of installations and float them along one of the canals.  Some were clearly sponsored by corporates, others impressive pieces of art.

While we were there the PM had just been discovered to be up to no good (her best-friend (the daughter of a cult-leader) had been told too much and was trading her knowledge for money/shares/favours etc.) so there were ‘mass protests’ through the capital.  The most peaceful and aesthetically pleasing protest I’ve ever seen – thousands of people quietly carrying lit candles in an orderly fashion while police stood by waiting for the opportunity to make arrests but not getting it.   The sheer volumes of people were very impressive and the PM has since stepped down so ‘candle vigil shaming’ seems to have worked.   

That only left time for a stroll around the castle the next morning – like most old castles really but we were graced with a changing-of-the-guards -like performance where all the men wore fake beards for no apparent reason (like most of Asia, Koreans don’t have much facial hair) and played tuneless instruments.

And with that treat we headed home impressed with Seoul – a very friendly, polite and incredibly good looking city.