You know how you feel when you look at a champion bodybuilder? That appalled
fascination? That grudging respect? That mixture of ugh and wow? That's the
reaction you get when you look at the South Korean capital, Seoul.
Because this isn't the most pretty of cities. In places it's downright ugly.
Yet when you consider the whole place has been built in 50 years, from
scratch, after the devastation and carnage of the Korean War, you can only
gasp in admiration.
Here is a vast, brawny, butch, kinetic, energising Asian metropolis of 10
million people that has been lifted into the smoggy sky in almost the same
time it takes you or me to put up that pesky bedroom shelf.
Not that Seoul is all brashness and concrete. Within its hilly swathes of
brick and breezeblock are corners that have a gentler feel, a more feminine
touch. My first such discovery is at the national palace of Gyeongbokgung.
This is a complex of pagodas burned down by the Japanese (twice, as local
guides are keen to mention).
It's impressive, in a monotonous sort of way. But then I reach the side-pagoda
of Gyeonghoeru; this floats above a placid lake, next to serenely empty
concourses, with a curtain of blue mountains beyond. With the freeway
humming like a mantra in the background, it makes for a strangely moving
scene.
And it's not just ancient (or rebuilt) monuments that offer these gratifying
moments of lyricism. For instance, just a few hundred metres from the main
drag of Sejongno - noisy, pushy, frenetic - is tranquil Insa-dong.
This retiring neighbourhood feels like a throwback to an older Korea, full of
exquisite cafés, intriguing art galleries, wooden-framed teahouses, and shy
little restaurants serving suckling pig with kimchi pickle, or the wildly
moreish native staple of rice and spicy meat, called bibimbap. One of the
teahouses even has little songbirds fluttering delightfully through its
rafters.
I just hope the birds don't fall in the tea ('Waiter, there's a thrush in my
cuppa'), because if they did, they'd probably get eaten. One of the most
notorious aspects of South Korea is the nation's penchant for lustily
gulping down the strangest food items - like grasshoppers, octopus eggs and
dogs.
On my second day in town I hunt around for some of these items, and come up
trumps with a tin of silkworm larvae, unostentatiously for sale on the shelf
of a downtown 7/11. Very popular with kids, the cashier tells me. Back at
the hotel, I open the tin.
The larvae are soaked in soy sauce and vinegar, and look like small rotting
beans with a cancerous tan. The smell is even worse. Nonetheless I manage to
force down a third of one slimy cocoon - before rushing into the hotel
corridor and hurling the contents of my mouth, and the can, into a bin.
What kind of people would enjoy this kind of food? The sort of people who like
to drink lots of beer. In the evening I head up one of the city's wooded
hills to take a look at the view (Seoul definitely looks better by night).
The area I explore, Itaewon, turns out to be the alluring Hampstead of
Seoul: full of affluent families and their leggy student daughters. Itaewon
also boasts plenty of bars, hotels and upmarket nightclubs.
For some reason I am expecting these places to be sensible and decorous, or at
least orderly and businesslike, as that is what Seoul is like by day. I
couldn't be more wrong. These places rock. The bars are full of drunken
salarymen whooping it up, the clubs are full of their almost-as-noisy wives
and girlfriends and, I suspect, their paid-for companions.
It's hard to believe these wistful, boozy, poetic souls are the same opaque,
unflappable u characters who work so hard by day, but it's an infectiously
happy scene - and I'm beginning to see why the Koreans are known as the
Irish of Asia. By the end of the evening I find myself in a sentimental
group hug with a bunch of shipowners, as we all join in a maudlin singsong.
The next day I wake up with a concrete high-rise of a hangover, but the good
news is I'm flying to one of the most soothing places in the country:
Cheju-do, the semi-tropical island that lies 160km adrift of the Korean
mainland. I've been told it's the nation's honeymoon capital, and whoever
told me that is dead right. The place is chocker with embarrassed new
husbands in ill-fitting dinner jackets.
This honeymoon tradition began in the 1960s, mainly because ordinary Koreans
weren't, at the time, allowed to travel abroad - due to 'foreign exchange
restrictions'. These days the Koreans are a lot richer, and a lot freer, and
travel the world, yet many newlyweds still trek to the island to have their
photos taken in Cheju-do's lush and rainswept green fields.
Cheju-do is famous for other things, besides consummatory couples. The local
grilled fish dishes are fabulous: try the squid, if not the live and very
wriggling octopus tentacles. Cactus tea is another local speciality,
likewise the phallic stone statues known as harubang, or 'stone
grandfathers'. You might also note that, as with the rest of Korea,
transport, dinners, drinks and accommodation are all agreeably cheap. And
the beaches are good, too.
Yet my favourite thing about Cheju-do turns out to be none of these things.
What I most like about the place is the haunting landscape. With its
drystone hedges, bedraggled cottages, enigmatic stone menhirs, and rainswept
green fields, Cheju-do has something of a Celtic feel. It could almost be
Connemara, or the Isle of Lewis - if it weren't for the bashful oriental
brides plucking tangerines from the trees.
Tempting as it is to loiter in Cheju-do until I'm tanned as brown as a
soy-sauce-soaked silkworm pupa, I have one more stop to make. Back in Seoul
I board a bus. I'm heading for the DMZ - the so-called 'Demilitarised Zone'
that still divides South Korea from the Stalinist North - to see the very
last frontier of the Cold War.
As we get on the coach, the tour guide makes sure no-one is wearing jeans.
Apparently, jeans are seen as 'disrespectful'. It makes me feel like I'm off
to a provincial golfclub, rather than the marches of a Stalinist
dictatorship. But, correctly attired in our suits and chinos, we set off. At
first, our journey is through desultory suburbs, followed by sunlit hills
and paddy fields. Everything is calm, u even jolly. But then the mood seems
to change. The faces of the tour guides grow darker, and even the sky seems
to cloud over in sympathy. Finally, the border looms.
It's enormous. The lofty fences of steel and razorwire stretch over hill and
dale like a hi-tech Hadrian's Wall, and what makes this barrier even more
striking is its utter seriousness. This 240km-long, four-kilometre-wide
strip of no-man's-land isn't just for show. Despite a new railway line
linking the two nations, people are still shot here - defectors, soldiers,
fishermen.
Suitably chastened, everyone climbs off the bus to look at the two villages
that survive inside this surreal ribbon. The first, Taesong, officially
administered by the South, looks bright enough. A showpiece for capitalism.
But then we discover there's a curfew: everyone has to be in their nice
clean homes by 11pm, or else. The village run by the communist North,
Kijong, is even weirder: no-one lives there. It's a ghost village. The only
signs of life are the vast arrays of loudspeakers, constantly blaring
propaganda at the decadent capitalists in their respectful slacks. As
persuasive tactics go, this isn't very effective. I wish
I'd worn jeans.
Back in Seoul, before I leave, I get to witness one more extraordinary thing:
lunchtime, and it happens like this. I am in the middle of sunny, smoggy,
downtown Seoul, surrounded by the skyscrapers, the soaring corporate
headquarters. It's five to 12 and the place is averagely busy.
Then the clock strikes noon. Suddenly the pavements are engulfed with people:
black-haired secretaries, white-shirted executives, bustling office workers
from LG and Samsung and Hyundai. And these people aren't out strolling, they
aren't ambling to the sandwich bar. They are striding, marching, speeding.
The tide of chattering, nodding, hungry, determined, bibimbap-seeking
humanity is so powerful I am swept off the sidewalk and into the street,
where a trendy kid on a motorbike nearly hits me. I don't know what that
says about Korea. But it is eerily impressive. Like watching a bodybuilder
flexing his new muscles.
TRAVEL BRIEF
The easiest way to see Korea is with a tour operator, as it can be a
complicated place. Many streets in Seoul, for instance, have no names, so if
you're looking for a bar/hotel/restaurant, call and ask for a map to be
faxed or e-mailed to you - it's exactly what the locals do.
TOUR OPERATORS
Audley Travel (01869 276289, www.audleytravel.com) has two-week tours of
South Korea, from £2,695pp, with flights from Heathrow. Regional add-ons
from £83. Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000, www.coxandkings.co.uk) has
10-day tours of South Korea, from £2,650pp, departing Heathrow.
WHERE TO STAY
The Grand Hyatt Seoul (00 82 2 797 1234, www.seoul.grand.hyatt.com) has
doubles from £119. The Saerim Hotel (00 82 2 739 3377) has doubles from £25.
The Cala Motel, Tapgol Park (00 82 2 741 4455) has doubles from £18.
WHAT TO SEE
Gyeongbokgung Palace (00 82 2 732 1931; free entry; open 9am-6pm Mon-Wed) is
in Gwangahamun, the old centre of town. The War Memorial Museum (00 82 2 709
3139, www.warmemo.co.kr; £1.60) in Itaewon, documents Korea's many wars.
Open 9.30am-6pm Tue-Sun. Tours to the Demilitarised Zone run daily from
Seoul. Try the US Army's agency, USO (00 82 2 795 3063). Expect to pay about
£43 return.
WHERE TO EAT
De Coree (00 82 2 517 4727), near downtown, does great Korean food. Dinner
for two from £11. Petit Saison (00 82 2 546 6732) is another excellent
downtown venue. Dinner for two from £11. Akasaka in the Grand Hyatt Hotel is
a good choice for Japanese food in a breathtaking setting. Set lunch from
£16. Pay a visit to the Yetchatjip (00 82 2 722 5332) teashop in Insadong to
see birds flying around you as you sip your cuppa.
