Pyongyang: The grey shirt in the window

A grey short-sleeved nylon jacket, the uniform of the Workers Party of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, hung in a window of one of Pyongyang's many squat apartment blocks, backlit by the dull yellow tinge of a bare lightbulb. It was one of the few windows that could be seen into. The lights were off in many of the neighbouring apartments, and the view into the majority of the remainder was featureless. The jacket was therefore a rare glimpse into a North Korean home, or about the closest we were going to get to it.

The streets outside were dark and quiet, bereft of streetlamps, advertising and shop fronts. A young couple stood talking in the shadows. Others walked or cycled along the wide, sparsely-trafficked streets, at a pace that seemed 10-15% slower than normal. Others still vanished into the underpasses, their blue signposts, one of the few flashes of light and colour against the darkened city, showing a man walking jauntily down a set of steps.

We were on our way to our hotel, the Chongnyon, from a modern fairground near the triumphal arch in the centre of the city which is a direct rip-off of Paris' Arc d'Triomphe. Only 11 metres taller, as our guides were quick to point out. At the fairground, we went on rollercoasters and rides as adrenaline-inducing as any I have tried before. Joyful screams of the local people in military, civilian and Party (with a capital P) clothes filled the air. Three men in grubby dark blue overalls squatted on their haunches near one of the rides, observing our tourist group. They were the only sign of poverty. We were otherwise barely afforded a second glance.

It is difficult to know what is real and what is not in Pyongyang, a city that warps time. We had taken the train into the DPRK from the Chinese border. As I stepped on to the platform in the North Korean capital, I felt like an extra in an old WW2 film. The brown-tiled platform floor was wide and open. Soldiers queued to board another train. Pretty young women wearing polka-dot dresses and pencil skirts and with wavy, lacquered hair looked like the ancestors of their equally elegant counterparts in Seoul. I had been in the other Korean capital just one week earlier, separated by a couple of hundred kilometres and several decades of history.

In the countryside, there are no cars. It was impossible not to notice their complete absence as we sat on the train, trundling along from the border post at Sinuiju. No cars, and no roads either, save for the gravelly tracks on which the people - surprisingly numerous considering how rural the surroundings - travelled back and forth on foot or by bicycle. The landscape was green and verdant, rice paddies giving way to emerald mountains, free of heavy industry or development. Children bathed in the rivers, heavy loads were being hauled by oxen. This could have been the 1920s.

At Sinuiju, our first glimpse inside the hermit kingdom, we stood glued to the windows of the train as it left the border post and progressed through the town. There were a few cars here. There was a big, white, clean-looking square with one of the obelisk-shaped war memorials frequently seen all over the country. A large portrait of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il overlooked the square, its pale colours reflected in the sunlight. It reminded me of a 1940s imagining of a utopian future.

Second World War, 1920s, imaginary utopian future. So which one is it? None of these and all of these, and all the things I didn't notice too. The North Koreans live in a world which is so isolated it has become a parallel universe. But their reality is as logical for them as ours is for us. It can be found behind the grey shirt in the window, screaming on a rollercoaster under a Pyongyang night sky, sitting on an oxcart in the fields.

The Great Wall at Hushan

I stood at the bus stop outside the rail station, looking for a number 215, supposedly the bus that goes to the very last section of the Great Wall of China at Hushan.

There were a lot of 220s, 204s, and 205s, but that was about it. I didn’t think an awful lot of Dandong’s bus numbering system. All around, people went back and forth on bicycles, in rickshaws, on foot, in cars. I was stopped by a man who, to my surprise, asked in English where I was going. He said he could find me a taxi for 30 RMB. “Okay”, I agreed eagerly. His companion started talking to me in Chinese.

They put me into a decrepit yellow taxi, a Mao pendant hanging from its rearview mirror. Two other passengers got in and we set off, along the river, the countryside of North Korea skipping by to the right. He pulled up at the entrance to the restored Hushan section of the Great Wall with its big gates and pompous statue. He tapped me on the leg and smiled. We were here.

I bought water and dried fish and climbed up the steep path on top of the wall, dazzled and in familiar territory of sweating under the latest bout of hot sunshine. From the top there was a clear view of the Chinese hills and Korean fields, villages, schools and factories. Zooming in was optional, using a telescope installed at the highest watchtower on the mountain. It is possible to see right into schoolyards, streets, even windows entirely shut off to the outside world. All for the bargain price of 5 RMB.

The route down from the wall back to the entrance clings to the side of the mountain as it sneaks its way around the far side, bringing you within touching distance – literally, not figuratively – of the old barbed wire and concrete posts that form the border, some of them in a state of disrepair. A concreted slope leads up the bank on the other side. Then the fields begin.

The Great Wall of China stretches for hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres. I visited an unrestored section of it north of Beijing once, and found the experience so astonishing that I didn’t even try to describe it on the blog I was writing at the time. Although this is a lazy excuse, I can understand it to some extent. Standing at the place where the wall ends seven years later, I know at least that it is not possible to follow it back to the point where I had stood in such awe that I knew not what to say.

I took a bus back into town but lost my bearings and got off in an area I didn’t know, a busy downtown neighbourhood. There were stalls selling fruit, street food, and baby turtles; mobile phone shops and restaurants with bilingual Korean and Chinese signs. Roadworks. I walked in the direction of the river and when I found it, I still had a little further to go.

The bridges of Dandong

"Dandong is a prefecture-level city in southeastern-eastern Liaoning province, and is the largest Chinese border city, facing Sinuiju, North Korea across the Yalu River, which demarcates the Sino-Korean border. The two cities are connected by the Sino-Korea Friendship Bridge. North Koreans often gather close to the river's edge, waving to foreigners... There is a rarely used ferris wheel in Sinŭiju that tourists are able to see from across the Yalu River". - Wikipedia

There are two bridges between Dandong, China and Sinuiju, North Korea. One is broken, its grey flagstones coming to an unceremonious end halfway across, left in a state of destruction since the Korean War.

Fifty metres upstream, lorries trundle slowly back and forth across the colourfully-lit Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge in a steady procession of import and export between the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The promenade along the river on the Chinese side – known as the Yalu River Scenic Area – is a lively place. I walked along the waterfront. It was busy with people enjoying the refreshing, cool temperature of the late August evening. There was so much going on, it was difficult to register it all. People dressed in Korean traditional costume posed for photographs in front of the river. Stands sold barbecued mushrooms; others fake North Korean money alongside cigarettes and little key rings bearing the flag of South Korea.

Large groups of men and women of varying ages took part in communal aerobics on the big open areas adjacent to the promenade, some making patterns with their movements using day-glo pink strips of material. Two men walked around the square drawing calligraphy using a wet sponge in the shape of a nib attached to the end of a broomstick. Another man with deformed legs played a melody on an acoustic guitar.

I heard the chimes of the bell at Westminster Abbey. Was someone watching BBC World News with the volume turned up? The noise came from a house-sized replica of the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament.

All the while, a big, bright full moon shone through the haze over the elusive land on the opposite bank of the river.

I walked past the bridge and took a right turn towards the interior of the city, aiming for the railway station. The streets here were poorly lit, the pavement broken. The buildings big, square, grey, stained. Like an inhabited Hashima Island. People sat outside playing cards or eating and drinking.

I arrived at the station, a big, clean, modern affair with the two characters that spell “Dandong” illuminated in a blaze of red above the entrance. In the square in front of the station stands a 25-metre tall statue of Mao, that brutal old bastard, raising his right arm in a magnanimous gesture and looking overdressed for the season in a long, flapping overcoat.

Beyond, the cranes and half-built skyscrapers provide the contrast between Mao’s China and the modern economic powerhouse it now is, a country where even a border outpost has a population of well over one million people.

It is possible to walk on to the broken bridge. When you reach the end, you stand closer to Sinuiju than to Dandong. You can see the Koreans going about their business; almost close enough to think you can solve the mystery of what is going on there, but not quite. The inscrutable dirt roads and squat, grubby houses don’t look much in comparison to the Dandong skyscapers. But seen from this distance of just a few hundred metres, their secrets remain intact.

Incheon-Dandong ferry

The luggage drop area at 1^st Incheon International Ferry Terminal consists of an area of about 100 square metres. It was crammed with trolleys, people packing and wrapping box upon box of rice cookers and other electrical goods, ready for the journey across the Yellow Sea. Litter and discarded tape lay scattered across the floor. I took my backpack and set it down on the x-ray machine so that it could be checked in.

Once I was aboard the ferry, I felt as though I was also adrift. I had taken leave of family and friends, and a chapter of sorts had been completed by my departure from South Korea. The feeling seemed comparable to dropping a feather over the side of a boat, and watching the beauty of nature at work as it floats away, but knowing that it can not be retrieved.

If I was feeling lonely, the ferry was a good place to be. I wandered around the decks, viewing Incheon from the boat. A woman asked me to take a picture of her and her friend, and then made the effort to start a conversation with me, asking questions in halting English. She was going on a hiking trip with an 18 person-strong tour group. As the ferry left port, seagulls hung in the air just above the deck, presumably using the slipstream from the boat to help them glide.

We passed under a bridge and by a small island, its pilot’s boat coming out to sail alongside us for a while before heading back to the island to which it belonged. The only other Westerner on the boat, a man of about 65, said hello to me as I walked past.

I sat down again. Two men were already at the picnic table in the outside area at the stern, where passengers could enjoy the sea air. They offered me a beer; we said “Cheers” and shared snacks. The sky went red as the sun set behind more of the small islands that are sprinkled around the coast here.

Groups of middle-aged people gathered on the deck in their polyester hiking gear, drinking soju and singing Korean folk songs in chorus. I returned to my bunk, tired. In the morning I would be in China.

Suzie Q's

Deep into Hongdae’s sprawl of pretty pedestrians, cool clothes stores and hip cafés is a street slightly away from the noisier sections. On the street is a discreetly marked entrance to a bar. The entrance leads directly downstairs. The steps lead the way in to Suzie Q’s.

Inside, the dark wooden interior is decorated by LPs stuck to the walls, various other musical memorabilia and a large photograph taken looking out from the main stage of a festival during a concert one sunny day long ago.

The DJ’s area accounts for an entire side of the modestly-sized bar. An archive of records fills the whole wall behind the record player, LPs spanning from corner to corner, ceiling to floor. The owner, an elderly gent in a beach hat, and his assistant, a younger man with floppy hair and horn-rimmed thick plastic spectacles, only play vinyl.

They do not decide what vinyl they play. Customers can request anything they want, by writing it down on a scrap of paper and handing it over. I asked for Lola by The Kinks. A few minutes later, a black-and-white record sleeve with "The Kinks" on the front could be seen being waved around behind the record player. The sound of 1960s London duly clanged over the speakers, following on from a Fleetwood Mac song.

At the bar, the wife of the owner, a friendly grandmother type, pours spirits and mixers straight from supermarket bottles into plastic cups. Beers can be taken directly from the refrigerator, then over to the bar to be paid for and opened.

When they played Roxanne by The Police, the drinking games commenced. One team drinks when Sting sings "Roxanne"; the other when he sings "Red light". It’s an old game, but fun in the right surroundings. Maybe that’s why it fitted in so well here. You could listen to David Hasselhoff in a place like this and it would sound like a classic.

A short documentary film about Jo Gyu-Nam and his bar, Suzie Q's can be seen here.

Cat café

The cat café is a concept common in both Japan and Korea and, as an admirer of pet cats, street cats and even the odd sand cat, something that I wanted to try out. Here, customers can drink iced lattes while cats of every description sit, play, sleep and generally have a lovely time.

At the cat café in Hongdae in central Seoul, cats greet you before you even make it through the door, sitting languidly in the area for removing and leaving shoes that is a standard part of Korean residences. There were cats on the floor, in their beds, on specially-fitted walkways close to the ceiling.

A large hairless cat slept in a box on a wall near us, and was far from impressed with the attention it received from me when it briefly woke from its busy period of slumber. A long-haired ginger cat ran around, excitedly chasing diverse toys and trying to reach all of them before any of the other cats.

A white Siamese cat approached in a friendly manner, even though its features had a serious, stand-offish quality that for some reason reminded me of Shakespearean actor Charles Dance. A little dark-haired kitten lay back, resting in a position that can best be described as “sleeping ajoshi”, its legs spread-eagled at an unnatural angle. 

I went along to the cat café with hostel-roommates-turned-couchsurfing-contacts-turned-friends. We were surrounded by cats. There must have been nearly 25 cats in all, coexisting in an area too small for them in peace, much like the human inhabitants of their home city. I couldn't have wished for better company all round.

Thank you to Sarah for the pictures of me being given the run around by some Korean cats.

Jegi-dong and Gwangjang street markets

Jegi-dong fruit and vegetable market has all the lively activity and down-to-earth scruffiness of a market in a developing country – which it’s easy to forget that the Republic of Korea was, not so long ago. Ajoshis push around the big, flat wooden carts stacked with their boxes of fruit. Some of the stallholders doze off behind their piles of goods, while others shout out sales pitch.

We were given slices of peach to try. “Look! So delicious, even the foreigners want some!” shouted the stallholder as my two friends each came away with a bag.

At Gwangjang food market we saw dog meat. Disgusting and fascinating at the same time, it was proof of a stereotype about Korea’s otherwise near-peerless cuisine that I had presumed was long-extinct in real life. But there it was, pre-cooked and kept under red heat-lamps to keep it warm, the paws still attached, a kind of gruesome confirmation of the identity of the animal.

There was a plethora of dried fish and other types of seafood. One shop sold pigs’ heads with the tongue still hanging out. I bought a big bean-shoot omelette from a seafood stand for the equivalent of about £2.50, and three of us shared it for lunch.

Next, we looked around the vintage clothes market, a place that would delight anyone who has ever picked up a snazzy jumper at Beirut’s Souq al-Ahad, for here were enough fine wooly specimens to warm many a chilly winter night. In addition to jumpers, there were shoes with thick rubber soles in colours that didn’t match; bright vinyl jackets with cartoon characters, dragons or baseball logos on the back; and a wide range of army surplus gear.

Shopping done and dusted, we took a bus home. It patiently progressed through the Saturday afternoon traffic, passing streets of shops selling mountaineering gear, fast food restaurants and convenience stores. At one point we went by an inner-city golf driving range, fifty-foot high nets on all sides catching the drives of two storeys’ worth of practising golfers not spending their weekends by ruining a good walk. There is a lot to see when you travel over ground rather than on the metro. So much so that you almost fail to notice the shopping malls.

Seoul welcomes the world

On Line 6 of the Seoul Metro heading from the World Cup Stadium back towards the suburban area near Janghanpyeong Station, a chubby toddler in a blue vest with smart spiky hair sits opposite me, playing with the fingers of his young mother’s spare hand as she toys with her smart phone with the other. The clean, grey and white-coloured carriage is about two-thirds empty, the cooled air adding comfort to the journey. 

I decided to spend the rest of my time in South Korea in Seoul. On the morning of the day of the train journey described above, I had been to the former Seodaemun Prison, now a testimony to the brutality of the oppression of Japanese security forces during Korea’s period of colonial subordination from 1910-1945. The prison’s red-brick walls and outhouses provide contrast to the nearby light grey high-rise apartment buildings that are so characteristic of modern Korean cities.

The displays inside the prison offer proof of the fact that North-East Asia, like everywhere else in the world, has in its past experienced human beings treating each other in a manner anything but humane.

It was perhaps because of this that I was in a ponderous mood as I walked around the outside of the World Cup Stadium later the same day. A wedding banquet hall and a cinema have been added to the stadium complex since its heyday as a major venue for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. “Seoul World Cup Stadium” is displayed proudly in large block capitals on the side of the stadium facing the exit from the metro station that serves it.

Inside the metro station, there is a set of commemorative photographs on one of the walls near the barriers. The pictures show the area in front of the stadium turned into a meadow of red shirts, the words “Seoul World Cup Stadium” standing proud, then as now, on the outside of the structure behind them. Other pictures show a various memorable images from the tournament: a young Park Ji-Sung; action from South Korea’s round of 16 and quarter-final ties; and City Hall surrounded by fans. Draped across the front of City Hall is another, huge, banner: “Korea Welcomes the World”. 

The hard-working optometrist

The air conditioning is losing the battle against the peak summer heat in Choi Bek-ki‘s optometric practice in a quiet suburb of Pohang, an industrial city in the south-east of South Korea. Although his two junior colleagues do not have much to do, Bek-ki is busy fitting and glazing two new pairs of spectacles for his cousin, Heeyoung, who is visiting him in the city during her holiday.

Heeyoung’s extended family, including her father, brother, stepmother, and any number of other cousins – plus her foreign husband and brother-in-law – are all gathered in a corner of the practice, eating complimentary ice cream and drinking coffee and trying to keep her energetic son Oscar under control.

Bek-ki manages to concentrate on the job in hand and the spectacles are ready. The crowd leaves him in peace to finish his day’s work, which, at 2 p.m., is already four hours in and has another eight or so to go.

When Bek-ki gets home from work, it is well past 10 p.m. He arrives home to find the same extended family that visited him at work, having made themselves at home in the apartment where he lives with his wife and two children. They have been eating and drinking for the majority of the afternoon and evening, although they did pause at one point to take an evening stroll along the beach, a five minute walk from Bek-ki’s apartment. It is now getting late, and the atmosphere within the gathering is starting to become somewhat sleepy.

Not so for Bek-ki, who bounces through the door carrying fried chicken and a couple of pairs of bottles of beer and soju, a kind of spirit that is as easy to drink as a strong G&T, if a little more potent at 20%. Although everyone else has eaten enough to feed a small conference of hungry eyecare specialists, the chicken is well received – after all, it is unthinkable for Koreans to drink alcohol without accompanying it with a side snack. After several rounds of “Ganbei!” (“Cheers!”), the bottles are empty.

Now it is definitely time to sleep, though, and the sleeping arrangements are typically Korean – men in one room, women in the other, and everyone finds a space on the mats laid out on the floor. Bek-ki is the last person to put his head down, the time around 2 a.m.

At 5:30 a.m. an alarm goes off, but only one person is quickly up and about. Just another day in the life of a hard-working South Korean optometrist.

One hillside, one hundred Buddhas

I jumped up on to the green bus number 218 at Gwangju bus terminal just in time, taking my place in a low seat that happened to be above the rear wheel on the driver's side. As the bus moved through the suburbs of the city and out into the countryside, I could feel the soles of my feet warming up. Whether this was the result of the climate, the mechanics of the bus, or something else, I do not have a good enough understanding of physics to explain. One thing was for certain, though - it was going to be a warm day.

I got out of the bus at the turnoff for Unjusa. Nothing was here - just a few houses and a couple of closed workshops, their corrugated iron roofs glinting in the severe heat. Not so much as a convenience store. I began to walk along the road when a people carrier pulled up alongside me. A woman in her mid-thirties, Mrs. Kim, offered me a lift. "I work at Unjusa", she said. "Jump in, I'll give you a lift and you won't have to pay to enter".

Buddhist chants backed by soft music played over loudspeakers around the gravel patio in the courtyard where temples and other buildings stood. I climbed a hill and came to a few Buddhas carved from stone, standing by the path. Further up, I reached a look out point  A line of pagodas pinpricked a grass plain at the bottom of the valley, beyond the patio and main entrance. The hills rose in all directions, becoming mistier and more silhouetted as the distance increased, like a theatrical stage of the landscape of an ancient world.

This wondrous spectacle distracted me from the effects of the relentless heat, which soon left my t-shirt without a dry patch on it. I can not remember ever sweating so much. After climbing a second hill I lay down under a rock in an attempt to cool down, but succeeded only in getting dirt to stick to my legs and arms. Directly above where I was laying there were another two Buddhas, carved into the horizontal rock face, reflecting the powerful rays of the sun.

I have visited few places where the sense of spirituality that others have been able to access there has swayed my own consciousness. Unjusa, though, is one of them. I edged back down hill, past the pagodas of the aforementioned viewpoint, which now towered above the lawn from my lower perspective. Legend has it that Unjusa once was home to a thousand Buddhas, with a hundred or so still scattered around the hills. I passed many more of these, carved into rock or standing alone by the path in their litany of poses.

Eventually I arrived back at the bus stop. Ajoshis and ajummas sat on the foot-high wall, shouting at each other across the clear area in front of the road. The old men wore thin, baggy cotton trousers and shirts. One played loud K-pop through a handheld radio. The tiniest of breezes moved the branches of a tree around in the heat. An old man arrived on a scooter, and another equally old man got up from where he was sitting on the wall, hopped on to the back of the scooter, shouted something in a tone that suggested both surprise and satisfaction and they zipped away past the junction for the Buddhas and off in the direction of the fields ahead. The remaining ajoshi switched off his radio. The road was quiet again.