Hidden among the soaring glass and steel towers of southeastern Seoul is a wormhole, a portal to a land that physically exists within the Songpa-gu dimensions of time and space but which could seemingly secede and declare a sovereign one block corporation-state at will.  Behold, ladies and gentlemen, the People’s Republic of Lotte.

You don’t even need to exit the station to cross its event horizon, so seamless is the boundary between its world and ours.  And once inside you could conceivably never have to leave.  You could live at the Lotte Hotel World; buy provisions at Lotte Mart; purchase clothing and dry goods at the Lotte Department Store; acquire alcohol, tobacco, and Chanel No. 5 at the Lotte World Duty Free Shops; procure entertainment at LotteCinema or Lotte World Adventure; take in a show at the Charlotte Theater; and eat and drink at Lotteria.  Presumably the only thing the Republic is unprepared for is your departure, as there is no Lotte Funeral Home.

Lotty and Lorry the raccoons are benevolent overlords, though, and with the chill of a Korean winter beginning to hit with full force you may find yourself embracing their gay regime, particularly since it’s entirely indoors.

The Lotte World complex’s main attraction, Lotte World Adventure, is in fact the world’s largest indoor theme park at 82,650 square meters, and you can get to it (and everything else in the Republic) by heading for (though not out of) Exit 4.  You’ll first pass by a plaza with a replica of Rome’s Trevi Fountain.  The one here has improved on the original by adding multicolored lights in the basin!  Of course there’s a Lotteria in the plaza as well, and on the opposite side is an entrance to the department store.  From there you’ll walk down a long hallway flanked with more stores, and if the number of people under one meter is increasing you’ll know you’re headed in the right direction.

Standing in line for tickets, confetti-and-sugar amusement park songs blasted out of overhead speakers and I asked my intrepid (over one meter) companion if they would be playing the entire time we were inside as well.  She said yes and I began to have second thoughts.  At this point, though, there were people behind us in line.  Like in countless action movies the door behind us had closed, and there was only one option left.  Forward.

Tickets in hand, we stepped onto an escalator, the music only growing louder as we ascended until we arrived at the top, smack in the midst of one of the park’s twice-daily parades.  It was October so the song was beseeching us to join the ‘Halloween party tonight,’ over and over again, as the parade revolved in an oval around the center of the park.  The employees were dressed as mummies or vampires or just in what I guess you’d call Victorian gothic.  Oddly, almost all of the employees in the parade were white people.  Granted, I’ve never seen a Korean vampire, but it seems to me the situation is just begging for an undead class-action discrimination lawsuit.  There were some sexy Ghostbusters too (some of which were Korean), and all I could think was ‘Thank God Dan and Bill didn’t wear outfits like that.’

When the parade stopped and I had a chance to look around I found myself rather impressed.  The park is a notable example of the utilization of space; it may be the world’s largest indoor theme park, but it’s still indoors, which means that options are limited.  Lotte World overcomes most of these limitations by stacking rides and other attractions on multiple floors, but still having the majority of them visible from the main floor.  A number of rides also have their entrances on the main floor, but their structures hidden behind the outer wall.  This takes away the ‘Oooh, I want to ride on that’ factor, but on the other hand it preserves a bit of the mystery of what you’re getting yourself into.  Other rides make use of the space in the air – there’s a monorail that loops through the park, and gondolas designed to look like hot air balloons pass around above, hanging from a track in the ceiling – and on the ground whatever nook isn’t taken up by rides or arcades or restaurants is occupied by a game stand or ice cream stall.  All of this sits under a giant glass dome that lets in lots of natural light, which adds a feeling of openness.

There are a couple downsides to all this, though.  One is that all the rides inside feel a bit miniaturized: tiny flume ride, tiny teacups.  If you’re only a meter tall, though, that’s maybe not the worst thing.  The other is that even more than most theme parks, Lotte World can drub you with sensory overload and a feeling of compression.  An area with a Wild West theme sits flush against some European-y buildings with wooden flower boxes, which are both just below a wall of Egyptian statues and hieroglyphics.

Now, with space at such a premium, you wouldn’t expect there to be a giant hole in the floor.  But there is.  Smack in the middle of the park is a giant hole that looks down on the ice skating rink two stories below.  What the hole actually does, though, is give the park some breathing room and make it feel more open.  The empty space gives the light a chance to spread out and provides some structure for what might otherwise just be a crush of buildings and rides and vendors.  It also provides a convenient route for couples on dates to stroll.

At one of the oval’s ends is the Garden Stage where occasional performances are held.  I happened to catch a mini-concert by the Charlotte Band, basically an all-girls marching band.  Dressed in red and white uniforms with gold trim and white boots they went through Girls’ Generation and 4-Minute numbers, as well as the Ppororo theme song.  Let me tell you, you have not truly heard ‘Hoot’ unless you’ve heard it the way it was meant to be played: on a sousaphone.

Lotte World Adventure, isn’t all empty calories, though.  There’s also a small nature center where a variety of plants grow and kids have the chance to hold frogs as a guide explains their mysterious amphibian ways.  There’s also a collection of aquariums containing several species of fish, pools of crabs, and glass boxes holding crickets, grasshoppers, and stag beetles.  Near the gift shop is a large bowl of dirt where kids can sift through and look for Japanese rhinoceros beetle larvae (장수풍댕이).  One boy that was busily digging through was collecting his findings in a quickly growing pile.

Not all of the amusement park is inside, however.  A walkway connects the indoor portion of the park to Magic Island, set in the middle of the western part of Seokchon Lake.  Much of Lotte World feels like it borrowed just a biiiiit too heavily from Disney World: the name; the Magic Kingdom Island designation; the fuzzy, big-eyed, white-gloved, tuxedo-wearing mascot, and the centerpiece of the Island, the Magic Castle, is a dead-ringer for Sleeping Beauty’s castle with a more modest construction budget.  (Cinderella’s place, of course, being a knock-off too, of Mad King Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein.)  The castle is, according to a sign on its front, ‘considered a masterpiece of gothic architecture of 16^th Century Germany.’  Given that it was built neither in the 16^th Century nor in Germany, this seems dubious.  More believable is the claim that it ‘will give you the most memorable experience you’ve never had!’  You may now chew on that one for a while.

The outdoor section of Lotte World has more serious rides than the indoor section, and correspondingly the demographic skews a bit older.  Inside are lots of kids and parents; outside you’ll see more teens and adults, many of them couples on dates.  A word on the Lotte World dress code: couple style here is, while not quite de rigueur, at the very least heartily embraced.  Matching t-shirts or hats are commonplace.  I even saw one couple that literally had the exact same outfit on: shoes, pants, hoodies, bags, everything.  The other dominant Lotte World trend is putting ridiculous things on your head.  Most often this takes the form of oversized bows, but can also be bunny ears or seasonal decorations bobbing on the end of springy coils.

The entire Lotte World setup, like any good amusement park, is a temple to screaming, eating, game playing, and being spendthrift.  I had been highly skeptical of the whole affair and the only reason I went was for research (or at least that’s what I told myself).  Despite having a tendency to be a bit of a crank, however, I actually found myself having a pretty good time at the place.  A lot of this can probably be attributed to the company I had, the beautiful weather, and the limited time I spent there, but all in all Lotte World ain’t bad.

Of course, the risk of amusement park-induced rage is always present, particularly if you visit in the winter and the outdoor section is closed.  Fortunately a couple of pressure valves are built into the system.  Tucked away in a corner of Lotte World’s second floor is a smoking room.  Give the kiddies a fistful of 500 won coins, tell them to play nice, and go light up.

Those unfiltereds not doing the trick?  Leave the park and head downstairs toward the skating rink.  Just off the ice is the entrance to the Lotte World Shooting Range (롯데월드 권충실탄사격장), marked by the posters of handguns plastered around the doorway.

Stepping into the range’s reception area, a half-flight of stairs below the rink, is a singularly weird experience.  The walls are covered with pictures of firearms, gun-wielding heroes and villains from TV and movies, and also a few signed pictures of Korean celebrities who’ve come in to shoot off a few rounds, including Tablo from Epik High and his wife 강혜정, who starred in Oldboy.  Assault weapons are bolted to the walls and copies of gun magazines take up table space.  Pretty run of the mill stuff if you were in your Texan uncle’s den, but this is Korea, where seeing a firearm outside of the military is about as common as sighting a tiger in the wild.

Despite being American I come from a non-hunting, non 2^nd Amendment-worshipping family and had only fired a gun twice.  The opportunity to squeeze off a few in Korea was one I couldn’t pass up, though.  Want to do it too?  Here’s how: Walk up to the counter, give the attendant your ID card and 20,000 won, point to the gun you want to shoot.  That’s it.  Almost as easy as getting a semi-automatic back in the States.  I chose a Glock 9mm ‘cause I’m street that way.

When my turn was up I was ushered into the shooting range where one employee strapped a bulletproof vest on me and pointed me to a second employee who was waiting by my lane.  That guy pointed out how to hold the gun, where to aim, and where to pull the trigger.  Then he gave me a pair of noise-muffling headphones to put on, loaded a clip, and let me fire away.  Ten shots later my clip was empty and the target zipped back to the booth where the attendant unclipped it and showed me how I’d done: one bullseye, eight other holes scattered across the target, and one way down in the corner that had missed completely.  The target was only about ten meters away.  I’m not a very good shot.

If you’re sweet (and it helps to be female) one of the attendants will take your photo like this.

And that was it.  So how did I feel afterwards?  Powerful?  Sated?  De-stressed?  Like I’d channeled my inner Slim Charles?  Well…mostly I felt that it’s a damn fast way to blow through 20,000 won with nothing put a paper full of holes to show for it.

Back outside, the skaters on the ice rink glided on, completely unaware of the pulpy carnage I’d just unleashed.  The Lotte World Ice Rink is one of the most popular places for skating in Seoul, and if you’ve never skated before it’s a perfectly fine place to try it out; there are always plenty of beginners slowly shuffling around clinging to the outer rail.  If you’re as at home on blades as you are in sneakers that’s good too – as a public rink in a popular entertainment mecca, the sheet here is always a mix of all different levels.  The inner section of the rink is sometimes used for figure skating practice, and I watched a handful of aspiring Kim Yu-Nas landing some pretty impressive jumps as the crowd circled around them.

As nurturing and providing as the People’s Republic of Lotte is, you may find yourself wishing to defect back to the real world at some point.  And after so much stimulation, you may be looking for something a bit less manic.  Head out Exit 3 and walk straight, past the giant neon raccoon, to Seokchon Lake (석촌호수).  (If you turn right at the raccoon it’ll lead to you the Charlotte Theater (Not Charlotte as in the South-Atlantic financial capital; Charlotte as in 샤롯데, as in Char-Lotte, as in ‘Don’t you forget who owns this.’) where ‘Cats’ is currently playing.)

The lake is split into two parts by Songpa-daero (송파대로) and is especially popular for the walking track that runs around its circumference.  In the afternoons and evenings it’ll be full of mostly middle-age and older Seoulites taking some exercise, and after the sun goes down young couples start to join the procession.  This all happens in a very orderly clockwise direction, which makes you wonder why the city’s whole ‘Walk on the Right’ campaign is so roundly ignored while the one-way traffic here is so strictly observed.

The two halves of the lakes have significantly different characteristics.  Though both are pretty, with lots of trees, the east half is markedly more serene.  You may even spot a heron standing stoically near its banks.  This contrast is due to the fact that Lotte World’s Magic Island sits in the middle of the western half, so your romantic evening stroll will be regularly pierced by the screams of roller coaster riders and the wheezing hydraulics of the Bungee Drop.  What it takes away in calm it makes up for in entertainment value, though.

More entertainment is occasionally provided just off the lake’s northwest corner at the Seoul Norimadang (서울놀이마당).  This open-air theater hosts dance, music, drama, and martial arts exhibitions, mostly on weekends and mostly of the traditional variety, though I have seen b-boying performances held there as well.

The west side of the lake has one more item of note – right near its entrance is Samjeondobi (삼전도비), a pair of large stone turtles – one bearing a stele, the other with its stele missing – that are designated Historic Site No. 101.  The monument was erected at the request of Taizong of the Qing Dynasty to commemorate his victory in the Second Manchu Invasion of 1636.

Across Songpa-daero’s ten lanes from Lotte World is a big hole in the ground where yet another piece of the Lotte empire is set to rise, as the construction of the Lotte World Tower is underway.  Walking past I paused to watch as a handful of giant cranes moved their loads about and sparks showered from a welder’s platform.  It was bound to be one more in the neighborhood’s collection of big shiny glass and steel towers that dominate the area.  Banks, convenience stores, and chain coffee shops occupy their ground floors while up above people fill their apartments or toil in their offices.  A block or so north the Number 2 train rumbles by on an elevated track not that far overhead, breaking up the monotony a bit.  Another point of interest tucked between Lotte World and the neighborhood’s modern towers is the series of sculptures of athletes performing various Olympic sports that dot the median on Olympic-ro (올림픽로), recalling when Seoul hosted the 1988 Summer Games.

If Seokchon Lake isn’t enough of an escape, you can head out Exit 6 and hoof it a kilometer to Hangang Park (한강공원).  Jamsil-daero eventually brings you to the Jamsil Bridge (잠실대교), which you’ll want to go partway up before descending down a circular ramp to the park.  If it’s near sundown and you can tolerate the cold and the noise of the passing traffic, you may want to pause in this unlikely spot to take in what can be a pretty spectacular sunset, as the changing deep blues and pinks silhouette the 63 Building, N Seoul Tower, and the mountain ridges to the north and west.

In the park down below some evening joggers and bikers passed by as I listed to the rush of water coming from a spot below the bridge where the river tumbles about a half-meter from one level to another.  The park is much sparser here than in many other places, the only real amenities being a few picnic tables, making it a good area to have a catch come spring.

Stroll west a short ways, however, and two attraction spring up side-by-side.  The first is the Nature Learning Center (자연학습장), an area of flower gardens, fruit trees, and other plants designed for the educational benefit of school kids.  Next to that is what they’ll probably find more interesting: a swimming pool.  That, however, they’ll have to wait for.

Lotte World, Lotte World Adventure, and Magic Island

Towards Exit  4

Lotte World Adventure Hours

Monday – Thursday: 9:30 – 22:00; Friday – Sunday: 9:30 – 23:00

Ticket information available on at website

www.lotteworld.com

02) 411-2000

Lotte World Shooting Range (롯데월드 권충실탄사격장)

Hours

Weekdays: 9 – 21:00, Weekends and Holidays: 9 – 22:00

Fee: 20,000 won for 10 bullets

cafe.naver.com/lwsr

02) 414- 4013

Lotte World Ice Rink

Hours

Weekdays: 10 – 21:30, Weekends and Holidays: 10 – 21:30

Entrance Fee

12 and Under: 7,500 won, 13 and up: 8,500; Skate rental: 4,500

Seokchon Lake (석촌호수) and Samjeondobi (삼전도비)

Eastern Half: Exit 2, Western Half and Samjeondobi: Exit 3

South on Songpa-daero (송파대로)

Seoul Norimadang (서울놀이마당)

Exit 3

South on Songpa-daero (송파대로), right on Jamsil-ro (잠실로)

Hangang Park (한강공원)

Exit 6

North on Songpa-daero (송파대로) to Jamsil Bridge (잠실대교)

Parts of this post first appeared in the December 2011 issue of SEOUL magazine.

If there’s one station that can be said to be the center of Seoul’s subway system, the nexus from which everything expands and to which it returns, it’s Jongno-3-ga.  One of the system’s oldest stations, it’s also one of the few that connect more than two lines, and it sits right in the heart of the city, steps from tourist attractions, historical sites, and a smuggler’s den assortment of markets and specialty shopping areas.  There’s an immense amount of things to see and do here, so without further ado…

Let’s start at Exit 1, where you can join the tourists streaming down Jongno (종로) on their way to Insadong.  You’ll first pass by Tapgol Park (탑골공원), Seoul’s very first modern public park, opened in 1920 and built around Wongaksa Pagoda, a 10-story stone pagoda that’s listed as National Treasure No. 2.

Tapgol Park also played an important role in the history of Korea’s independence struggle, as it was here that Korea’s Declaration of Independence was publicly read for the first time, by a college student named Chung Jae-yong on March 1, 1919.  A number of monuments within the park commemorate this heritage.

On the sidewalk outside the park’s western wall a dozen or so fortune tellers line up one after the other, offering saju or tarot card readings for 3,000 won, as well as face and palm readings.  The fortune tellers each sit in a small tent.  As the sun goes down and dusk arrives, bare fluorescent bulbs light the shacks from within, the glow spilling onto the darkened sidewalk as from lanterns, but the drawn plastic curtains maintain a veil of secrecy about the fates being divulged on their other sides.

Cross the intersection to the sidewalk opposite the fortune tellers and turn right to head up Insadong-gil (인사동길).  Almost immediately there will be an alley on your left below a sign reading 피맛골 주점촌 (Pimatgol Pub Town).  This is, or, rather, what’s left of Pimatgol (피맛골).  Most people know the story behind the creation of Pimatgol, but it bears a brief repeating since it’s one of the most enduring, and winning, stories in Korean popular history.

As it is now, during the Joseon Dynasty Jongno was Seoul’s main street and was where the nobility and government officials would pass, requiring any commoners on the street to prostrate themselves when they did.  To avoid this inconvenience citizens would use Pimatgol (‘avoiding horses alley’) to move back and forth unharassed.

Alas, like so many other places, the alley fell victim to urban development, beginning in the 1980s.  Further west it’s essentially been eviscerated, replaced with high rise towers, but even here, although it’s still a narrow alley and there are a number of small restaurants and drinking establishments, as the sign notes, much of the character is gone.

On one side street, opposite the large 인사동코리아 gift shop and just a stone’s toss north of Pimatgol, is an easy to miss brown sign that points the way to Seungdong Church (승동교회), one of Korea’s earliest Presbyterian churches.  Significant for its role in Christianity’s development in the country, this red brick Romanesque church is even more notable for the role it played in the development of the country’s independence.  The night before the March 1^st reading in Tapgol Park, it was here, in the basement meeting hall, that student leaders met to discuss the next day’s actions.

The sidewalks at the lower end of Insadong (인사동) are crowded with carts selling everything from yeot to incense to clothes, from beondaeggi to jade jewelry to handmade journals.  You’ll even find one stall where you can buy North Korean won as a souvenir.

Insadong-gil (인사동길) and the neighborhood surrounding it is filled with galleries, cafes, tea shops, and places for tourists to buy souvenirs, which run the gamut from schlocky t-shirts and trinkets to fine pieces of pottery and lacquerware.  Despite Insadong being tourist central, it’s one of few such places where I don’t find the mass of visitors bothersome and the neighborhood best avoided.  I actually like going there, and from conversations I’ve had with locals their general feeling is similar.  Why is this so?  Some of it stems, I believe, from the fact that Seoul just isn’t a tourist town the way other capital cities are, and so the tourists it does get are fewer in number and generally not of the rush-around-with-a-camera-and-act-obnoxious variety.  Another key factor is that Insadong’s current character isn’t much of a departure from how it was in the past, with its long history as a center of the antique trade and its postwar status as the focal point of Korea’s artistic and café culture.

But the main reason I think that Insadong has weathered its emergence as a tourist district remarkably well is that it doesn’t cater to tourists at the exclusion of locals.  Despite some pretty pathetic stabs at tradition, like hangeulized Starbucks and Olive Young signs, and the commercialization of tradition (Show me a culture that doesn’t do that, though, or a part of Seoul that isn’t commercialized.) it doesn’t feel like authenticity has been sacrificed too much in the process (though the thought occurs to me that it may feel this way because traditional Seoul has been so thoroughly sacrificed nearly everywhere else).  The alleys just off Insadong-gil are filled with tea shops and restaurants that recall an earlier Korea in their wood-beamed architecture, devotion to traditional food and drink, and ambience that recalls a time before the country’s economic and tech boom.   And unlike in so many tourist districts the food and drink here are actually quite good, which is why you’ll often find them crowded with locals while the tourist surge carries on just a few feet away. It’s also in some ways still just a local neighborhood, the kind of place where the convenience stores advertise cigarettes and trash bags on their signs, and workers sort through cardboard in a huge recycling yard.

The other major attraction near Jongno-3-ga is Jongmyo (종묘), a short walk from Exit 11.  Constructed in 1395 under the direction of King Taejo, founder of the Joseon Dynasty, Jongmyo was built to house the memorial tablets of the dynasty’s deceased kings and queens.  (The original structure, though not the memorial tablets, was destroyed by Japanese invaders in 1592.  The current structure dates from 1608.)  In 1995, its 600^th anniversary, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Six years later this honor was augmented by the listing of the Jongmyo Jerye (종묘제례), a rite for honoring the spirits of the deceased royalty, and the Jongmyo Jeryeak (종묘제례악), the accompanying court music, as Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.  The Jongmyo Jerye is performed annually on the first Sunday in May and is open to the public.

The shrine and surrounding grounds are remarkably peaceful compared to their contemporary surroundings.  Dirt paths wind between patches of trees and small ponds, and you can hear birds chirping in the treetops.  The atmosphere is matched by the lovely but austere buildings, which have none of the colorful and intricate ornamentation found on other royal structures.  Buildings here are simple in structure and hew to a consistent burgundy and mint color scheme, a nod to the solemnity of their purpose.  On Jongmyo’s main paths runs a raised, three-part stone walkway, the outer lanes reserved for the king and crown prince, the central one for the spirits.

Tablets of kings at Jongmyo (only two kings’ tablets are not enshrined here), are grouped together with their wife (or wives).  An auxiliary hall called Yeongnyeongjeon (영녕전) (Hall of Eternal Comfort) holds the memorial tablets of Taejo’s ancestors and some lesser Joseon kings and queens, but the majority reside in Jeongjeon (정전), the main hall, a long one-story wooden building with a sloped black tile roof as tall as the story below it.  Jeongjeon is divided into 19 rooms, one for each king enshrined there.  Memorial tablets of 30 Joseon queens can also be found in Jeongjeon, together with the king they were married to.  When a king or queen died the mourning period would continue for three years.  The exterior of each room is absolutely identical – a door of vertical wooden slats punctuated by circular iron bolts – with the single exception of the central door, which bears a heavy metal lock on its frame.  King Sejong’s room is the third from the left.

A wide stone plaza extends in front of Jeongjeon, surrounded by trees.  Standing in it the only things you are able to see are the top of N Seoul Tower and the upper reaches of the Boryeong Tower in Jongno-5-ga.  These, of course, were not around when the shrine was actively being used and the visual quarantine was meant to prevent worldly matters from intruding on the king’s thoughts as he performed ancestral rites and to preserve the tranquility of the memorial.

To visit Jongmyo you must join a one-hour guided tour – in Korean, English, Chinese, or Japanese – except on Saturdays, when the shrine is open to explore at your leisure.

The park areas on either side of the entrance to Jongmyo are serious oldboy hangouts where dozens of ajeosshis gather to kill time and do ajeosshi things together.  West of the entrance hosts a huge congregation of games of, mostly, Go (baduk (바둑) in Korean) but also jangi (장기), Korean chess.  It’s a bit like New York’s Washington Square Park’s chess corner on steroids – the day I visited there must have been close to 100 games going on, providing a background clicking as stones are set down so constantly it practically becomes some sort of mantra.  As many men as there are playing (and it is exclusively men), there are an equal number watching, some of the more intense games pulling in crowds of ten or twenty.

Other ajeosshis were napping, chatting, or just sitting around.  One group had drawn a small target on the pavement in chalk and was taking turns tossing coins at the bull’s-eye like school kids.  Still others were practicing calligraphy or speechifying to crowds of fellow oldboys at loudspeakers that had been set up on either side of the park.

Also in the park, near the Jongmyo ticket booth is a statue of 이상재, a religious leader and independence fighter born in 1850.

Walking to Jongmyo from the subway station, your eye will likely be caught by the gleam emitted from the string of jewelry shops that cluster along Jongno, part of the Jongno Jewelry District, which, according to the Korea Tourism Organization encompasses over 1,000 stores in the area.  The stores here are popular with locals and tourists alike, and generally offer prices below what you’ll find in other parts of town.

The district also extends into the backstreets, most easily accessible from Exit 8, where there are more jewelers, particularly wholesalers, and a number of gem cutters.  All kinds of different stones sit in little trays in the windows, and in their unset state the colorful tabs look like small pieces of rock candy that have been polished to brilliance.  Also in the area are a number of shops selling gift boxes, should you be looking for a special package to hold what used to be your paycheck.

One of the most noticeable aspects of the Jongno-3-ga area is that it has approximately the same median age as the shuffleboard courts in Boca Raton.  Walking around you’ll frequently hear decades-old songs coming from shops and carts selling CDs and cassettes.  That’s a whole lot of antiquatedness, but given the populace it seems oddly right.  Just about everyone walking around seems to be over 50, and the vast majority of these are men.  What does this mean?  Well, it means that Jongno is the best place in Seoul for going tragic outfit-spotting.  If Jongno had a coat of arms it would be plaids over stripes and studded with rhinestones.  The single worst (or best, depending on your point of view) offender that I spotted was wearing a metallic silver shirt that had a red checked collar with blue and pink teddy bears on it.

This particular party animal, and others of his ilk, was out enjoying himself in the area around Exits 1, 2, and 2-1, which is full of old dudes getting their kicks at the local restaurants, bars, noraebangs, and, yes, love motels.  On the left a short walk from Exit 2-1 a number of food stalls are set up in a small plaza that serves more or less as the center of the action.  One side of the plaza is bordered by Tapgol Park’s eastern wall, and along this wall dozens of guys eat and drink, often heavily, at the plastic tables and stools that have been set up.  Walking around, something about the scene felt a bit off to me, and it wasn’t until I’d been there a while that I realized I’d had similar sensations before, in Cairo and Tangiers.  There were virtually no women around; the only ones I could see being those working in the restaurants serving up food and drinks.

Which brings me to my next point.  I hereby petition to have Jongno-2-ga (종로2가) officially renamed the Barney Gumbel District, as the rates of alcoholism in this area must be some of the highest in the country.  Retired and with nothing better to do, a lot of old men seem to simply spend their time here getting drunk.  Several were slumped over those plastic tables or up against the park’s brick wall, empty makkeolli and soju bottles around them.  There isn’t the menace in the air that can hang over a large collection of drunk young men, but there is a tinge of aggression; I witnessed one loud argument that nearly devolved into a fistfight.  More than anything, I felt the neighborhood gave off a sour, abject air, a picture of how not to grow old.

Perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps not, the homeless are much more visible in the Jongno-3-ga area, and it’s not uncommon to see them sleeping on benches or pieces of cardboard, or shuffling down the sidewalk begging or pushing shopping carts.  Seoul’s homelessness problem is insignificant compared to what American or British cities are used to, but that dearth makes their increased presence here, in the heart of the city, all the more jarring.

Just north of the Barney Gumbel District and Tapgol Park is the Nakwon Arcade (낙원상가), a large gray building on columns like stilts so that the traffic on Samil-daero (삼일대로) can pass where its ground floor would otherwise be.  You can reach it via Exit 1 by turning right after Tapgol Park and walking past the fortune tellers or more simply by using Exit 5 and taking an immediate right.

Walking in the nearest door, the wail of a soprano drifted down the stairwell from somewhere up above.  Covering two floors, the majority of Nakwon is devoted to the Instrument Arcade (낙원악기상가).  If you can play it, you can almost certainly find it here, everything from electric guitars to trombones to harps.  Some of the shops in the building are jumbled fish-and-finds; others are well-organized with instruments lined up in orderly rows, their wood and brass immaculately polished.

As I wandered through the arcade I caught snippets of people testing out violins, guitars, flutes, and drums.  The effect was a bit like walking through a radio dial set to ‘scan.’  Moving through the streets of Seoul isn’t all that different, and as I passed from someone drawing a bow across the strings of a cello to someone else peeling off some riffs on an electric guitar I realized just how rare it is that one isn’t exposed to ambient music in this city, whether it’s music pumping out of a noraebang or cell phone shop or muffled beats seeping out of a subway rider’s headphones.

Besides instruments, there are of course also cases, amplifiers, mic stands, and any other accessory you might need at Nakwon.  Rather oddly, however, the one thing it looks like you can’t find here are traditional Korean instruments – no gayageum, no janggu, no piri.  It’s certainly possible that I simply missed the stores selling them, but I spent a good while in the arcade and didn’t see a single non-Western instrument.  The surrounding streets, however, are home to a number of stores selling these things.

Make your way up to the fourth floor of the arcade and you’ll find Seoul Art Cinema (서울아트시네마).  Decorated with lots of old movie posters, the cinema was quite quiet when I happened by, the guy working the snack bar eating dinner and watching TV.

While not as buzzing as your nearest CGV multiplex, Seoul Art Cinema screens movies you won’t be able to see anywhere else, ranging from global cinema to Korean indie flicks to periodic director retrospectives.  There’s little English information at the website, but most films are screened with English subtitles.  Look for the little circled ‘e’ next to film titles in the ‘Programs’ section.

Finally, in the basement of the Nakwon Arcade, below the Samil-daero traffic, is the Nakwon Market (낙원시장).  Everything you’d expect to find in a market is here, but being underground the market experience comes in a more highly concentrated form.  Stuffy, dimly lit, and slightly claustrophobic, stalls and merchandise are jammed even closer together, with stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes containing bulk produce sitting behind the stuff for sale, and the minimal ventilation rendered the usual market smells especially pungent.

North of Jongno is where all of the Jongno-3-ga neighborhood’s most well-known sights are, but the south side also offers plenty of interest, and that’s where we’ll be heading next, moving west to east.

Via Exit 15, the intersection around Insadong and and Tapgol Park is full of international chain stores, and yet more line Samil-daero as you follow it south.  You’ll also come across the Cine Core building, in front of which are the bronzed handprints of several celebrities set in the sidewalk at the Star’s Handprint Plaza (스타의 광장 핸드프린팅).  I didn’t recognize any of the names, but my celebrity IQ is pretty low, so if anyone is familiar with any of them please feel free to leave a note in the comments.

Just a few steps further and you arrive at the Cheonggye Stream (청계천).  Not too far from its heavily engineered headwaters near City Hall, its banks are remarkably lush at this point, and willow trees droop over the water.  There are of course walking paths on either side, as well as benches and stepping stones that cross the olive-hued water.

Across Cheonggyecheon-ro (청계천로), the street running along the stream’s north side, is a string of small shops, and all around men wearing construction helmets and driving mopeds buzz past, picking up or dropping off merchandise.  Typical of the area’s tendency to clump similar businesses together in one area, many of the stores here occupy the same niche – you might call it Disaster Management Street – selling traffic cones, fire extinguishers, alarm bells, emergency exit signs, and flashing red lights.

Strolling up Donhwamun-ro (돈화문로), just before I reached Exit 14 I passed the Seoul Theater (서울극장), one of the oldest movie theaters in town, around since 1964.

When I reached Jongno again I turned east and noticed a pair of science supply shops flanking a small alley between Exits 12 and 13.  Their windows were full of beakers, droppers, dials, scales, mortars, pestles, microscopes, and corkscrew tubes.  Heading into the alley revealed nearly a dozen more similar stores, on this alley and one running parallel to Jongno – a high school chemistry teacher’s dream.  Among the science supply shops were also a number of simple restaurants, which the sign above the ally, reading 종로 먹거리 골목 (Jongno Food Alley), tips you off to.  Unsurprisingly, all of the clientele looked to be over 50.

After wandering about in the back alleys and recalling my high school days under the chemistry tutelage of Ms. Swiecki (just about the last time I was any good at anything science-related), I emerged back on Jongno.  There, across from Jongmyo was a small plaza called Seun Greenway Park (세운초록띠공원).  Not so far from Exit 12, this curious little spot looked like a patch of Jeolla-do farmland had been scooped up and airlifted to downtown Seoul.  Along the sidewalk was a swath of gold-green dry rice (벼), the stalks’ heavy tops all bowed over like question marks, and when a breeze blew it would shake them and produce a barely perceptible rattle.  Other crops – including broomcorn (기장), millet (조), and sorghum (수수) – were planted in adjacent sections, and between them were a couple scarecrows and an earthen sculpture of two peasants and their ox.

I strolled down the walkway between the crops, brushing my hand against their dried leaves as dozens of dragonflies flitted above, and tried to make up my mind about what I thought of this quixotic little place, tucked between the city’s main avenue and the huge and rather rundown Seun Arcade (세운상가) behind it.  What was it doing here and what was the point?

A few signboards at the edge of the park answered those questions.  From 2008 to 2009 a few dilapidated old buildings that had previously stood there had been torn down and the park put in their place, with the aim that it would be the first part of a greenbelt that would connect Namsan to Jongmyo.  Who was behind this plan?  Why, hara-kiri mayor Oh Se-hoon, which means that the greenbelt thing probably ain’t happening, at least not anytime soon.

From the park I continued east to the corner of Changgyeonggun-ro (창경군로) where I swung a right into the watch and clock market that takes shape in the alleys near where Changgyeonggun-ro and the Cheonggye Stream meet.  I went past a few small, greasy booths where men doing repairs poked at the innards of watches with tiny little tools, small selections of new watches for sale laid out before them just in case the patient died on the operating table.

Shop walls in the alleys were practically wallpapered with clocks – analog clocks of every shape and design, digital clocks with glowing red numbers (always red), intricately carved cuckoo clocks – like some sort of German rail conductor’s fever dream.  I pitied the man who worked here who was ever late for dinner with his wife.

The area between the watch and clock market, the stream, Jongno, and the station is jammed chock-full of electronic shops and walking through it feels as if you’ve been shrunk down and are walking through the innards of some giant machine.

There are of course things identifiable to the lay person – TVs, CD players, microphones, walkie-talkies – but there was also a huge amount of things that I had no clue what they were. All of these oddly shaped pieces with wires and dials…like little plastic and metal magic charms.  They had to do amazing and sophisticated things, the sort of things that if I stopped writing to pause and consider how a small bit of pressure from my finger translates into a digital symbol on a glowing screen I would marvel at.  Or maybe they just helped make my toast.  It was like seeing a thousand puzzle pieces but having no clue what the puzzle looks like or even if they all belonged to the same puzzle or to entirely different ones.

After several minutes of this confusion, I stepped out of the electronic wilderness and back out onto Jongno.  Jongmyo’s leafy enclave continued to hold the spirits of Korea’s past in repose, customers walked out of the jewelry stores with shiny new purchases in pretty velvet boxes, and across the street I could see a homeless man napping on a bench.  I was left with only one question for myself: Was this city one puzzle, or a thousand?

Tapgol Park (탑골공원)

Exit 1

Straight on Jongno (종로)

Fortune Tellers

Turn right immediately after park

Insadong-gil (인사동길)

Exit 1

Straight on Jongno (종로), cross Samil-daero (삼일대로), right on Insadong-gil (인사동길)

Pimatgol (피맛골)

Exit 1

First alley on left after turning right on Insadong-gil (인사동길)

Seungdong Church (승동교회)

Exit 1

Left at sign on Insadong-gil (인사동길)

Jongmyo (종묘)

Exit 11

Straight on Jongno (종로)

02) 765-0195

Entrance

Age 7 – 18: 500 won, 19 and up: 1,000 won

Hours

Mar – Sep: 9 – 18:00 (last entry 17:00), Oct – Feb: 9 – 17:30 (last entry 16:30); closed Tuesdays

For tour times see website

Jongno Jewelry District

Exit 11 and 12

Nakwon Instrument Arcade (낙원악기상가) and Nakwon Market (낙원시장)

Exit 5

Take an immediate right

www.enakwon.co.kr

Seoul Art Cinema (서울아트시네마)

Exit 5

4^th floor of Nakwon Arcade

www.cinematheque.seoul.kr

Nakwon Market (낙원시장)

Exit 5

Basement of Nakwon Arcade

Cheonggye Stream (청계천)

Exit 13 and 14

South on Donhwamun-ro (동화문로)

Seoul Theater (서울극장)

Exit 14

Turn right out of exit

Science supply shops and Jongno Food Alley (종로 먹거리 골목)

Exit 12 and 13

Turn down the small alley between the exits

Seun Greenway Park (세운초록띠공원)

Exit 12

Straight on Jongno (종로)

Watch and Clock Market

Exit 12

Straight on Jongno (종로), right on Changgyeonggun-ro (창경군로), right into alleys

Electronic Shops

Exit 12

Straight on Jongno (종로), right after Seun Greenway Park

Sitting at the foot of Namsan, Dongguk University Station is of course the jumping off point for Dongguk University (동국대학교), one of Korea’s most prestigious Buddhist-affiliated universities.  Just after riding the escalator up to Exit 6 you’ll spot a second escalator that leads up to the school.  It drops you off on a small plaza with a statue of the venerable monk Samyeong (사명대사), robes and long beard flowing, his right hand holding a staff and his left one placed over his heart.  Samyeong is most renowned for assembling a militia of fighting monks to combat Japanese invaders during the Imjin War, instigated by the theft of one of Buddha’s teeth from Geonbongsa, the temple for which Samyeong served as head priest.  After the war, Samyeong traveled to Japan as an envoy of the Korean government, at which time Tokugawa Ieyasu, the ruling Japanese Shogun, granted the monk’s request and returned the tooth, along with 3,500 Korean prisoners, which, it must be said, is not a bad day’s work.

Dong-dae was predictably quiet on the recent Sunday that I visited, which made for a pleasant walk beneath the campus’ abundant trees, whose leaves had felt the bite of autumn and had just begun to turn.  Many of the university’s buildings were rather old and had chipping paint, dull in a 1960s kind of style, but there were a few slick new ones that had either gone up or were in the process of being constructed.

The prettiest, most stately building is of course Dong-dae’s main one, a long, three-story gray stone building with a central tower that forms one side of the campus’ main plaza.  In the middle of the plaza is a gray-green statue of a standing Buddha, surrounded by decorative black metal latticework.  Facing both the Buddha and the main building are three statues depicting a family of elephants mid-stride.  Three stone pagodas are also located on the plaza, as well as several trees, below one of which a young girl was scooping up fallen gold leaves and tossing them in the air before letting them fall over her.

The most significant Buddhist marker on campus is not located on the central plaza, however, and this is the Sungjeongjeon Hall of Gyeonghui Palace (경희궁 숭정전).  Built between 1617 and 1620, Sungjeongjeon was a royal audience chamber of Gyeongdeok Palace (경덕궁).  The area that the hall was located in was destroyed by the Japanese to build a middle school in 1910, and the hall was moved to Jogye Temple (조계사) before being moved to its present location in 1976.  It’s now used as Dongguk University’s sermon hall and called Jeonggakwon.

The stairway up to the hall is flanked by a pair of stone lanterns, and when you make it up to the top you’re able to see the fading and chipping that time has wrought on the intricate painting decorating the underside of the roof and the supporting beams.  This wear and tear contrasts with the immaculate inside where, a buffed wood floor and paper lotus lanterns hanging from the ceiling frame a gilded seated Buddha that gazes out across a dirt athletic field.

Also outside of Exit 6 is Jangchung Park (장충공원), a relatively new and remarkably lovely park.  In the northeast corner is a small pond that collects the water from a man-made stream that runs alongside the park’s eastern edge, under small wooden bridges and trees leaning over the water, over a series of little cascades, around a small circular island, and past thick bunches of tawny reeds with wispy gray tops.  It also passes below the 27.5-meter granite Supyo Bridge (수표교), which, according to the plaque nearby means ‘water mark observation balloon bridge.’  Supyo Bridge was constructed during the reigns of Kings Taejo and Sejong, originally spanning the Cheonggye Stream (청계천).  When the Cheonggye underwent its postwar redevelopment the bridge was moved, then moved again to its present location in 1965.  If you’re planning on heading up Namsan you can cross the bridge, as there’s a stop for the N Seoul Tower bus right there.

The park is a popular place for the elderly to gather, and also for families with kids to hang out.  In addition to pavilions and walking paths, the south end of the park also hosts a teahouse, in front of which is a courtyard where you can play tuho (투호), the game where you try to throw an arrow into a trio of tall cylinders, and gulsoe (굴쇠), using a prod to roll a metal ring.

Also within the confines of the park are a number of commemorative memorials and statues.  Occupying an open space in the center is the Jangchungdanbi (장충단비), a stone that was erected by Emperor Gojong in 1905 to soothe the spirits of those victimized during the Eulmi Sabyeon, the period in 1895 during which Empress Myeongseong was assassinated and many soldiers were killed fighting the Japanese.  Of course the stone was removed when Japan annexed Korea in 1910, only to be replaced after the war, in 1945, at the current site of the Shilla Hotel (just across Jangchungdan-gil (장충단길)), before ultimately being brought to its present location in 1969.  Located behind it are a stele and two stone lanterns.

On the park’s west side a trio of monuments are lined up.  From the station, the first you come to is the Monument of the Korean Confucian Scholars’ Independence Movement of Long Letter to Paris, which is, above all else, a mouthful.  The letter in question was sent to the Paris Peace Conference around the time of the March 1, 1919 independence movement, asking for the conference’s support.  Signed by 137 Confucian scholars, it was delivered by 김규식 (Kim Gyu-sik), a delegate of the provisional government in Shanghai.

Several meters south is the Statue of Patriot 일성 Lee Jun (일성 이준열사 동상).  Born in 1858, 이 was a member of the Independence Association, and in 1907 received an order from Emperor Gwangmu to participate in the International Peace Conference being held in The Hague.  Unable to enter due to Japanese obstruction, 이 sought recourse by going to the press, appealing to them to recognize the Eulsa Treaty, which deprived Korea of its diplomatic sovereignty, as void and to denounce the Japanese invasion.  Though the plaque in front of the statue says that the press was sympathetic, world powers ignored 이’s case.  Despairing, he committed suicide by disembowelment.  이 posthumously received the Republic of Korea Medal in the Order of Merit for National Foundation in 1962, and his remains were transferred and buried in Suyuri Cemetery the following year.

이 is depicted standing, feet firmly planted at shoulder-width, a scroll clutched in his left hand, but the statue fails to project any sort of gravitas as its execution is remarkably cartoon-like.  There is almost no detailing, and even the proportions seem to depict the man as he might be depicted in an educational video shown to elementary students.

Finally, at the far southern end of the park, you’ll find the Lee Han-eung Memorial (이한응선생기념비), There was no information on site, and I couldn’t turn up anything online, so if anyone knows anything about the man or the memorial, please feel free to share in the comments.

Across the street from the south edge of the park is the Jangchung Little Baseball Field (장충 리틀 야구장).  Despite the fact that the entire surface is synthetic, even the dirt (it’s just brown astroturf), it’s the nicest facility that I’ve seen for youth baseball teams.  Most of the time athletic fields for anything below the professional level are extremely modest affairs, even for university teams, frequently just patches of dirt, but the Jangchung field was fitted out with covered stands running along either baseline and even lights for night games.  A youth team was holding practice when I happened by, shagging fly balls and taking grounders.

The road that runs south, Jangchungdan-gil, skirts the eastern side of Mount Namsan, running past yet more monuments.  Across from the ballpark is a statue of 류관순 (Ryu Gwan-soon) rushing forward, torch held aloft.  류, a student activist and independence agitator, is one of Korea’s most famous martyrs.  Following March 1^st protests that she helped organize, she was arrested, imprisoned in Seodaemun Prison, tortured, and killed at the age of 17.

A few dozen meters more and you’ll find the Commemorative Monument Tower of March 1 Korean Independence Declaration (3.1 목립운동기념탑).  19.19 meters tall, for the year of the declaration, the large stone tower comes to a sharp point at the top, a bit like a weaponized fountain pen.  There’s necessarily a certain amount of aggression inherent in any declaration of independence, but, to my mind at least, that aggression comes across a bit too (and I tried to avoid this word and the ensuing pun, but it’s apt) pointedly.  Plus, I think it’s kind of ugly.  Behind the tower are a bas relief and two groupings of statues.  The west side of the tower’s base also bears an English translation of the declaration.

Across the street from the monument tower is the current home of the 107-year-old Seoul Club, the National Unification Advisory Council (민주평화통일자문회의), and, perhaps most interestingly, the Club E0E4 Drive-in Theater, where you can pull in and watch a flick from the comfort and privacy of your own car, exactly like your folks did back in the ‘50s; just substitute Kias and Hyundais for Fords and Chevys.  Exit 5 is the most straightforward way of getting to these.

Opposite that trio, just past the tower, are the grounds of the National Theater of Korea (국립극장), where you’ll also find the Performing Arts Museum (공연예술박물관).  The theater was opened in 1950, making it the first national theater in Asia, according to the Korea Tourism Organization.  Today it’s the home of the National Orchestra, National Dance Company, National Drama Company, and the National Changgeuk Company, which performs the eponymous traditional Korean opera form that incorporates pansori.

A long, wide set of stairs leads up to the imposing main building, the Haeoreum Theater (해오름극장), giving it an appropriately grand feel, magnified by its prime setting on the slope of Namsan.  In front of the theater is a large open plaza where, on the day I dropped by, a number of families were out taking advantage of the Indian summer: a young boy was skateboarding and a father was kicking a soccer ball back and forth with his toddler.

If you come out Exit 5, before you get to the Seoul Club or the drive-in, you’ll be close to a couple other locations of note.  By turning right and walking under the traditional-style gate you’ll arrive at the Shilla Hotel.  Even closer, practically right outside the exit, is the Jangchung Gymnasium (장충제육관).  This silver-roofed building was Korea’s first domed gymnasium, built in 1963.  Judo and taekwondo competitions were held here during the 1988 Summer Olympics, and today it hosts basketball, handball, wrestling, and ssireum competitions.

Professionally, Jangchung is home to the Seoul teams that play in Korea’s national volleyball leagues, the Dream 6 men’s team and the GS Caltex Seoul KIXX women’s team.  The women’s team actually had a game going on when I happened by, and the lampposts on the stretch of Dongho-ro east of the station were decorated with banners of the various players.

Just a couple hundred meters from the same exit (and signs point the way) is a section of the old city wall and the Seoul Fortress Trail (서울성곽길).  You can now walk the path of the wall around its former circumference, though of course not all of the wall remains.  Here it, or at least a restoration, is in place, and a stone path and boardwalk trace its outer side.  I walked along it for a few minutes as it started to get dark and the lights in the apartment towers to the east came on like an electric checker board.

The Jangchung section of the wall was also apparently where a scene from Winter Sonata was filmed, as a sign near the trail’s entrance points out in Korean, English, and Japanese.  Follow it and you’ll find a photo spot where you can stick your head in a cutout of the female lead and nuzzle your nose against 배용준’s (Bae Yong Jun).  Dreamy.

If you’re looking for a postgame or post-hike nosh, head across to the north side of Dongho-ro.  Just outside Exit 2, across from a small manicured pond and plaza, is the Tae Keuk Dang Bakery Shop.  This Chinese bakery, open since 1946, is stocked with bags of sweets and glass cylinders full of snacks and biscuits.  Up ahead is a strip with lots of restaurants, noraebangs, and bars, and as I kept walking north I even spotted a couple places with signs in Cyrillic, hinting at the Central Asian neighborhood that lay up ahead nearer to Dongdaemun.

For a more serious feed go out Exit 3.  Along this stretch of Jangchungdan-gil running north from the station is a string of jokbal restaurants; it’s one of the most well-known places for pig’s trotters in the city.  There are about eight places in a row here, almost all of them bearing either the word ‘original’ or ‘halmoni’ in the title, and in this instance at least, they’re not misnomers.  Most of the eateries here have been around for a long time, and many of them are in fact run by grandmothers who are often either manning the door or are out on the sidewalk trying to hustle for customers.  Judging by how busy the places were, it seemed like most people didn’t need much convincing.

Dongguk University (동국대학교) and Sungjeongjeon Hall of Gyeonghui Palace (경희궁 숭정전)

Exit 6

Go up the escalator outside the exit

Jangchung Park (장충공원)

Supyo Bridge (수표교), Jangchungdanbi (장충단비)

Exit 6

N Seoul Tower Bus Stop

Exit 6

U-turn, right on Jangchungdan-gil (장충단길)

Jangchung Little Baseball Field (장충 리틀 야구장)

Statue of 류관순

Commemorative Monument Tower of March 1 Korean Independence Declaration (3.1 목립운동기념탑)

U-turn, right on Jangchungdan-gil (장충단길)

Seoul Club

E0E4 Drive-in Theater

Exit 5

U-turn, left on Jangchungdan-gil (장충단길)

National Theater of Korea (국립극장)

Performing Arts Museum (공연예술박물관)

Exit 6

U-turn, right on Jangchungdan-gil (장충단길)

www.ntok.go.kr

Jangchung Gymnasium (장충제육관)

Exit 5

www.jangchunggym.co.kr

Seoul Fortress Trail (서울성곽길)

Exit 5

Straight approximately 200 meters

Jokbal Restaurants

Exit 3

Straight on Jangchungdan-gil (장충단길)

It should be obvious that in a city the size of Seoul there will always be a place that catches you unawares, that opens like a fold of paper in Exquisite Corpse, revealing something at once recognizable and yet utterly, sometimes bewilderingly unexpected.  It should be obvious, what with the enormity of Seoul’s population and expanse, but it isn’t.  One gets accustomed to their surroundings, often remarkably quickly, and an idea of the city congeals.  This is no less true for expats.  Our primary motivator for moving abroad may be the promise of adventure, but we also tend to pride ourselves on how rapidly we adapt to the new surroundings, and how quickly we can claim (with varying degrees of falsity) that we ‘know’ the city, that it’s all old hat.  Listen to a second year expat talk to a first year.  Call it the race to blasé.

But then a fold lifts and you suddenly feel like you don’t know the city at all.  For me, Sindang was one of those folds.

I started my canvasing of the neighborhood south of Toegye-ro (퇴계로), which didn’t have such a dramatic effect.  The area is like many I’ve come across before.  Some clothing stores line the main drag heading east, a large high school sits near the corner of Toegye-ro and Nangye-ro (난계로), and behind those is a neighborhood of low red brick and granite apartment buildings, where some of the streets actually have sidewalks of sorts – stone strips running flush with the road.  East of the station and Dasan-ro (다산로), closest to Exits 7 and 8, a couple small warrens of tiny homes sit nestled among the buildings, obviously very low-income areas, though relatively clean and orderly, not like the slums we’ve seen near Geoyeo for example.

Also near these two exits is Sindang Tteokbokki Town (신당 떡볶이 타운) (also sometimes written 떡볶이길 or 떡볶이촌).  There’s never a bad time for tteokbokki, really, but it’s undoubtedly best when the weather has gotten cold.  That’s when well-lit pojangmachas on dark streets are their most alluring, the steam pouring out of them into the cold air wrapping the carts in an irresistible haze; and when you pull aside the flap and step into the pungent circle the warmth of the hot food, the steaming odeng broth, and the bodies packed in next to you make the cold all but disappear for a few minutes.

Most of the time when you eat tteokbokki it’s something like that: a quick plate on the street, standing up.  In Tteokbokki Town, however, there’s only one place like that.  The rest are true restaurants where tteokbokki is an entire meal, and the basic pinkie-size rice cakes in spicy sauce are augmented with noodles, veggies, and more.  The restaurants, and almost nothing else, take up an entire block, and each has a pitchman or two outside trying to wave customers in to their particular establishment.  Approximately ten different restaurants can be found there, each displaying the logos of TV networks on which they’ve made appearances like badges of honor.

A couple co-eaters and I decided to stop in at Maboknim Halmeoni Tteokbokki (마복림 할머니 떡볶이), which purports to be the oldest restaurant on the strip, open since 1953.  There’s only one thing on the menu here – tteokbokki – which you can order in various sizes depending on the number in your party or your appetite, or you can simply order a la carte.  Add cheese to the mix for an extra 3,000 won.  If you’ve only ever had tteokbokki at street stalls, you’ll likely be a bit surprised by what gets put in front of you.  More like what you’d be presented with at a tchiggae restaurant, a large cast iron pot filled with water, chili powder, chili paste, tteok, ramen noodles, jjolmyeon, odeng, mandu, cabbage, carrot, green onion, and hard-boiled eggs is placed on a gas burner in the middle of your table.  As you cook it, the watery concoction slowly bubbles away, condensing into the familiar red-orange sauce of Korea’s favorite comfort food.  To get it go out Exit 8 and take your first left, on Toegye-ro-76-gil (퇴계로76길).  Tteokbokki Town starts one block up, past the fire station.

Before turning into the street leading to Tteokbokki Town you may have noticed Chungmu Arts Hall (충무아트홀) across Toegye-ro.  Just a few steps from Exit 9, the 8-level center hosts art exhibitions and theater performances – ‘Rent’ was in the middle of a run and an exhibit of photos of Mongolia and Africa by 신미식) was opening on the day I happened to stop by – as well as a fitness center, arts academy, driving range, café, and gymnasiums.  While people browsed through the photos downstairs, several girls’ volleyball teams where holding practice upstairs.  In front of the Arts Hall you can also take a look at a model of 이순신’s famous Turtle Boat (거북선) housed in a glass case or sit in one of the bright red, green, orange, and yellow chairs shaped like globs of melting taffy that sit on the fake grass out front.  This last gimmicky feature was likely meant as an attempt to make the Hall seem ‘greener’ and more inviting, but in fact does little but remind visitors of what the city really lacks.

Continuing northwest from Exit 9 or 10 Sindang Station provides a backdoor entrance to the Dongdaemun fashion shopping area, near the Nuzzon, U:US, and Designer Club malls.  A short walk straight from Exit 10 on Dasan-ro will lead to Cheonggye Stream (청계천).  It’s a pleasant stretch with a thickly vegetated bank about fifteen feet below the Dongdaemun bustle, and the birdsong from the pet market on the north side of the stream even gives things a bit of a tropical feel.  Just before the stream you’ll find the Cheong-Pyeonghwa Market (청평화시장) where in the late afternoon many of the sellers are just starting to roll up the grates and set out their goods for sale.

If you walk to the stream from Exit 11, near the corner you’ll spot a curious little statue of a friendly looking man in a bespoke suit and bow tie sitting down raising his hand in a wave.  It’s 장소팔, a famous 만담가, or comedian and story teller, who used to live in the area.

Very modern places like the Chungmu Arts Hall and the restored Cheonggye Stream contrast sharply with much of the rest of the Sindang area, which can be decidedly, stunningly archaic.  The first hints you might get of this could come by walking west on Toegye-ro.  On the south side, via Exit 8, the road is lined with woodworking shops after about a block, and the smell of sawdust fills the air as you walk over the shavings sprinkled on the sidewalk.  On the north side, past the Arts Hall, is a trio of actual blacksmiths shops, which quite literally stopped me in my tracks.  Blacksmithing is one of those professions that, living in a first-world country, it’s easy to forget even exist anymore.  It just seems so medieval, something from the realm of artisan guilds and apprenticeships.  Don’t machines do all of that now?  Even the famed Blacksmith Street in Hanoi only has one actual smithy left.

But there, on the same street that goes right in front of Myeongdong, the profession continued.  In the largest shop of the three, a man gazed out at the street from a pocked red face, exactly the face you’d expect a blacksmith to have, while behind him the burning embers of the forge glowed orange-red, illuminating the dim interior.  All around the blacksmith and on racks outside hung finished products: saws, stakes, hoes, picks, sledgehammers, trowels, rakes, saw blades, and hooks of various sizes, as well as several other things that I couldn’t identify but which looked like their only possible use would be by very bad men to do very bad things.  Each languished in various stages of rusting.

If the woodworking and blacksmith shops raised the corner of the fold, the area north of the Line 2 entrances and east of Line 6 pulled it back completely, revealing an area of the city that felt foreign compared to the rest of Seoul, and that made me feel more foreign than I had in a long, long time.

This area is home to Jungang, or Central, Market (중안시장).  So, what do you know about Jungang Market?  Odds are, not a whole lot.  I didn’t, being only vaguely aware of its existence.   Despite being the third of Seoul’s big three markets (after Namdaemun and Dongdaemun) and, according to the Jung-gu website, having handled 80% of the rice traded in Seoul at one point  it gets scarce media coverage and is largely ignored by the English press and blogosphere.  Neither the Korea Tourism Organization nor Seoul city websites have an entry for Jungang Market on their English pages.  Whether the reason for or the result of that lack of exposure, Jungang is strictly a locals-only market.  You will find no kitschy souvenirs, no I love Seoul t-shirts; in the course of several hours spent at the market on two separate days I didn’t even see another foreign face.  What you’ll find is a Korea that hasn’t changed terribly much in the past few decades.

Do I dare to steal a peach?  A U-turn from either Exit 1 or 2 will put you in front of the market’s main entrance. I went from Exit 2, immediately outside of which was a small fruit store that had taken up residence in an ex-cell phone shop.  As I stood there listening to the stereo pump out MC Hammer’s ‘U Can’t Touch This’ (as suddenly hearing a song that ruled the airwaves in elementary school will make you do) I witnessed an old guy in an outrageously loud shirt – white on red Hawaiian print with a different white on black Hawaiian print collar – steal a piece of fruit in a blatantly premeditated act.  As he stood in front of a row of plastic bowls containing peaches that had been set on the ground in front of the store, his wife walked past, pretending to accidentally bump him in the process, whereupon the ajeosshi pretended to be half knocked over, taking the opportunity to bend down and grab a peach before straightening up and casually walking away.

Past the fruit shop and beneath a two-story ceiling the huge Jungang wet market extends far in front of you, motorcycles zipping up and down the aisle ferrying produce.  There is pork, beef, and dog meat; chicken breasts and chicken feet; fresh fish and octopi and shrimp a colorless gray; purple eggplant sits on trays next to huge mounds of garlic; and platters of banchan surround firey bags of kimchi, swollen from the gas of fermentation.

Walking through the market I began to have the odd, creeping sensation of being in a foreign country, which may seem like a strange thing to say at first, but by which I mean that my scales of banality about the city were falling away.  I didn’t know about this place.  Why didn’t I know about this place?  It wasn’t like the Seoul I knew; it was earthier, more insular, somehow different.  It was strange to me and I felt strange in it.

When I reached the end of the market I turned left onto Majang-ro (마장로).  By now it was shortly after dark, and both sides of the street were lined with small places to eat – gopchang, or pig intestine, restaurants, each just a single parasol with three or four plastic tables surrounded by stools, while bare fluorescent bulbs lit up pungent clouds of steam and smoke rising from the grill and drifting into the night air.  The single ajumma working at each eatery called out as I passed.  Korea has outdoor places to eat, sure, but this didn’t feel like one of them so much as it felt like the improvised night markets in China or Thailand.

Just north of Exit 1 the market is filled with several blocks of furniture stores, signaled by the sign reading Furniture Complex (가구 단자) above the entrance to Toegyero-83-gil (퇴계로83길), and walking through the area my nose would periodically catch whiffs of epoxy.  Animal lovers may want to approach from a different street, however, as before arriving at the furniture shops, you’ll pass a small grouping of dog butchers.  A handful of stores sit next to each other on either side of the street, with dogs in cages on display outside.  The dogs, kept in groups of three to seven to a cage, either slept, curled up next to one another, or gazed out at the street without expression.

Just west of this area are grain wholesalers where huge sacks of rice are piled to the ceiling in small, one-room warehouses.  Majang-ro and the nearby streets are crowded with shops selling every possible kitchen good you could imagine – from domestic to industrial – as the pillar at the corner of Majang-ro and Nangye-ro reading 황학동 주방가구거리 (Hwanghak-dong Kitchen Supplies Street) lets you know.  Yeoinsuks dotted the passageways.  I went by a clothing factory with workers lined up at sewing machines.  Stores with gaudy clothes for old women and tiny, gritty restaurants were jammed into miniscule alleyways where the shop awnings created a canopy above the lane.

My sensation of displacement only grew as I walked through the area between Sindang Station and Cheonggye Stream.  What was couched away here between the station and the stream felt virtually unrecognizable to the high tech, appearance-conscious picture of the city that expats generally carry, and that many Seoulites do as well.  It felt cut off not just from the expat world, but from the rest of Seoul, like a remote island where unique and strange species have evolved.

A bit further north, between Majang-ro and the stream things got even more curious, in the remnants of the old Hwanghak-dong Flea Market, before it was moved to Dongdaemun Stadium to make room for the Cheonggye renovation, from which it was subsequently moved to the new Seoul Folk Flea Market complex to make room for the Dongdaemun History and Culture Park.  Here a strange pantomime of commerce takes place, as stalls open every day, though it’s hard to imagine who would buy what’s being offered.  A small sampling:

Cameras, computers, fake jewelry, fishing supplies, Super Nintendo game cartridges, fake steer horns, typewriters, rotary phones, golf clubs, two-decade-old stereos, Laurel and Hardy piggybanks, industrial size soup ladles, dirty movies on VHS tapes, burlap in ten-foot long rolls, ice buckets, tacky pirate statues and décor you’d find on the walls of small town American pubs.

These are things that I either can’t imagine any Korean having cause to buy or that anyone I know would buy in the kind of store where the goods were newer by twenty years and came with a receipt.  I didn’t notice anyone buying or selling anything and it made me wonder: Who actually shops here?  How do these people stay in business?  They must own their shop and not hire any staff.  And can it be worth it, to come here and open every day to try and sell a video game that’s a quarter-century old?  Or is it simply a mix of habit and social obligation and the despair of not having any other options?

I walked back out to the stream and to the east, where at the corner of Nangye-ro there was an enormous new Lotte Castle apartment complex, complete with an attached E-Mart and Starbucks.  This was a more familiar side of Seoul, but after having disappeared into the market for so long it was just as unsettling as the market had at first been.  The two – the market and the apartments – seemed to be different countries, as foreign to each other as I am to Korea.  I wondered how many people who work in the market live in the high rises, and how many people that live in the high rises ever ventured into the market to do their shopping, and I doubted that it was many at all.

Sindang holds one more surprise, this one underground.  As you go into the main Jungang Market entrance back between Exits 1 and 2, you might notice a yellow sign to your right above a ramp leading underground that reads 신당창작아케이드 next to another for the Sindang Hoe Center (회센터) that’s accompanied by a more artistic than usual picture of a fish, painted in bright segmented colors like a stained glass window.  Go down the ramp and into the arcade, where you’ll pass a number of small, remarkably clean raw fish restaurants before arriving at Seoul Art Space Sindang (신당창작아케이드).

Seoul Art Space Sindang is part of a series of studios and performance spaces that have been established around the city (We visited another one when we went to Mullae Station.) in an attempt to foster up-and-coming artists by giving them access to a collective community and a place to work.  Taking up a long stretch of the arcade, dozens of old market spaces have been converted into bright, clean studios about the size of a large goshiwon room, or approximately 160 square feet.  The workshops are occupied by artists who produce work in a variety of media: metal, fabric, ceramic, glass, paint, and simple pen and paper.  안경희 does book artworks, bookbinding, and papermaking at Studio AN, including a lovely and tiny book that was on display that unfolded to show translucent thumbnail snapshots imbedded in the pages.  연고은 creates whimsical household goods designed to confuse – kettles shaped like radios and pencil holders like rolls of toilet paper.

The Art Space is more than just a collection of workshops, though.  It actively engages with and tries to give back to the Sindang and Seoul communities.  You’re free to stroll past and look at the work, and possibly even at the artists working.  You can also participate yourself, as the Art Space holds special classes for kids, and on Saturdays classes in various media – usually of the arts and craft variety – are offered to the public, free of charge.  For details and to register, refer to the website.  Besides inviting the community in, the artists also try to take their work to the community.  They’ve painted walls and murals in the area, and as you walk through the underground arcade you’ll notice their charming tribute to their neighbors that work in the raw fish restaurants.  Many of the columns lining the middle of the hallway have holographic images of the workers on them, some switching poses from angle to angle, others turning into Superman or Wonder Woman at the tilt of your head.

Sindang Tteokbokki Town (신당 떡볶이 타운)

Exit 8

Left on Toegye-ro-76-gil (퇴계로76길)

Maboknim Halmeoni Tteokbokki (마복림 할머니 떡볶이)

www.신당동마복림할머니집.com

Chungmu Arts Hall (충무아트홀)

Exit 9

www.cmah.or.kr

Cheonggye Stream (청계천)

Exit 10 or 11

Straight on Dasan-ro (다산로)

Cheong-Pyeonghwa Market (청평화시장)

Exit 10

Straight on Dasan-ro

www.cph.co.kr

Jungang Market (중앙시장)

Exit 1 or 2

U-turn

Seoul Art Space Sindang (신당창작아케이드)

Exit 1 or 2

U-turn, enter Jungang Market, and follow the signs leading to the underground arcade

www.seoulartspace.or.kr

Parts of this post first appeared in the November 2011 issue of SEOUL magazine.

Not to be confused with next door Dobongsan, Dobong Station sits perched on concrete pillars above Dobong-ro (도봉로).  Below the tracks is an arcade lined with small restaurants, and due west a handful of apartment towers line up like dominoes.

I started on that side of the station, crossing the street from Exit 2.  Shops along the road were open, but business was slow, and one woman selling vegetables on the sidewalk had taken advantage of the lull by commandeering a phone booth where she sat on a plastic stool, out of the sun.  Across the street, to the east, the Prosecution Service (검찰) sat big and blue, gleaming in the sunlight like a giant computer chip.

Aside from those towers, there weren’t too many tall buildings around and I could see more of the sky than was normally possible in most places in Seoul.  From certain angles the only thing visible above the elevated tracks was an autumnal blue sky, and when a train went past it was a pretty picture.

After I crossed Dobong-ro I wandered through the backstreets, unassuming and very typical: four- or five-story red brick buildings, people out for walks or an October bike ride, small businesses doing light sales.  On Dobong-ro-167-gil (도봉로167길) I took a left, going past a taxi park, a couple concrete shells of buildings, and some small shack restaurants, before arriving at a minor entrance to Bukhansan National Park (북한산 국립공원).  That’s not clearly marked, but if you see the 국제 배드민턴 클럽 (International Badminton Club) sign, you’re in the right place.  ‘International Badminton Club’ is a pretty lofty name, though, for what seemed to be there: a few fenced-in courts where some weekend warriors were playing tennis, not badminton, and another group of about ten middle-aged friends were grilling and picnicking just behind the chicken wire.

Near the courts is a set of stairs, and this leads up to a section of the hiking trail that runs through Bukhansan.  The sandy, gently rising path winds between thin trees, their summer foliage still up, making things shady and cool.  As I sat on a tree stump and listened to insects humming in the treetops a wild caramel and white cat strolled out of the underbrush and trotted off down the path.

After a bit of a rest I followed Dobong-ro-167-gil back out to the main drag, and it was at this minor intersection that I came upon a modest stone plaque set amid a small flower bed.  The plaque was a memorial commemorating U.S. Army General Walton Harris Walker who died on this spot on December 23, 1950.  Walker graduated from West Point in 1912 before serving with the 5^th Infantry Division in World War I.  An illustrious military career found him command troops in both World War II and the Korean War, rising to the rank of a four-star general, collecting a display case’s worth of awards and honors along the way, and even landing on the cover of TIME magazine.  In contrast to his decorated career, however, his death was a remarkably prosaic one, as he was killed in a traffic accident when his jeep collided with a civilian truck.  The plaque may seem a small and remote commemoration for someone who played such a large role in South Korea’s self-defense, but then-president Park Chung-hee honored him with a much more visible memorial, which you’re no doubt familiar with if you’ve ever visited the eponymous Walker Hill.

If you walk north from here, or if you cross Dobong-ro from Exit 1, you’ll note a signpost at the main intersection, with Dobong-ro-169-gil (도봉로169길), pointing the way to the Bukhansan Dullae-gil (북한산둘레길), 1.4 kilometers hence.

The route takes you along the Dobong Stream (도봉천), which, at the time of writing was completely drained, save for a few big algal puddles between long stretches of rocks and sand.  There seemed to be some construction work about to begin, which was the likely reason for the dry bed, though no indication of when the water would be back.  Nevertheless, several people were out using the walking and biking paths on either side of the stream.  Although the waterless stream was a bit glum, the sights of the hazy gray ridges of Bukhan Mountain in the bright afternoon light and the thickly forested hill just behind a quiet neighborhood to the north did well to make up for it.

If you follow the dry streambed east it’ll take you to the Jungnang Stream (중랑천), which runs south, eventually draining into the Han.  There’s a small plaza near where the two meet, which may well best be avoided if you’re not a fan of the endlessly obnoxious strain of Korean techno that sounds as if it were made by one ajeosshi armed with nothing but soju and a Casio, which was what was blaring out of two massive speakers that a saxophone player had pulled out of his minivan.  Judging by their clapping and even dancing enthusiasm, a large crowd of ajummas evidently did not share my distaste.

The stream itself, parallel to Madeul-ro (마들로), is wider than many other urban streams but less nice.  There’s less vegetation on the banks and residents along the walking paths aren’t particularly buffered from the noise of traffic on the major roads flanking either side of the stream.

A hike south on Madeul-ro eventually leads to Dobong Market (도봉시장), not much more than a series of open stores on the sidewalk and a cluster spilling out of the first floor of an old gray concrete building on Dobong-ro-162-gil (도봉로162길).  If you need to pick up huge bags of popped corn or dried chilies, though, it’ll do.

More amusing is what you’ll find just north of the prosecution service, that big blue computer chip-looking building.  Step out Exit 3, take a left, then a right onto Dobong-ro-168-gil, and then follow it along the concrete wall as it curves around to your right.  Just before you meet up with the main road there’s a small entrance to the Sungkyunkwan University Baseball Field (성균관대학교 야구장).  (A bit longer but more direct would be to go out Exit 1, walk up to the intersection, turn right on Dobong-ro-170-gil (도봉로170길), and follow it until you see the entrance on the right.)

Anyone weaned on big time college athletics in the States or elsewhere might be a bit taken aback by what passes for one of Korea’s most prestigious universities’ baseball diamond: a dirt expanse whose only grass was some rough stuff in the outfield that disappeared into three big swaths of sand where the outfielders stood.

There was a game going on, but as much of a baseball fan as I am, I was more intrigued by the American football game going on on the adjacent soccer pitch.  There’s something almost bafflingly amusing about watching Koreans play football, the fish-out-of-water element and the sheer unexpectedness of it all; much the same, I imagine, if a bunch of Americans decided to take up ssireum.

The football game, between Korea University (Go Tigers!) and what I presume was Sungkyunkwan (The lettering on their jerseys was all in Chinese characters, so I couldn’t be absolutely sure.), was being played on dirt, giving a whole new meaning to the saying ‘Three yards and a cloud of dust.’

Without meaning any disrespect at all to anyone involved, although this was technically college football it bore little resemblance to its American brethren.  The level of play was generally lower than what I experienced playing high school ball, some of the jerseys had numbers peeling off, one of the Korea defensive linemen had a helmet a different color than the rest of his teammates, and the referee announced ’10-yard penalty, holding,’ in a comically heavy accent.

What the spectacle had going for it, though – and this was particularly winsome in the wake of the multiple scandals that enveloped U.S. college football at the beginning of the season – was the unassailable purity of it.  For the kids playing, and likely for the coaches too, there was no possibility of money in it, no possibility of advancement to some higher level.  Both sides had no more than a handful of reserves on the sidelines.  There were seven people watching the game, including the scorekeeper.  Outside of the people there and maybe a few parents and girlfriends nobody in the entire country could care less about what happened between the end zones that day.  There was nothing to play for but the love of the game.

When I showed up, just after halftime, the score was 7 to 2 in favor of Korea University.  When I left, a quarter later, it was the same.  For the next twelve minutes that was all that was going to matter to about 50 people, if no one else.

Bukhansan National Park (북한산 국립공원) Entrance

Exit 2

Cross Dobong-ro (도봉로), turn right, left on Dobong-ro-167-gil (도봉로167길)

Walton Harris Walker Memorial

Exit 2

Cross Dobong-ro (도봉로), turn right, at intersection with Dobong-ro-167-gil (도봉로167길)

Bukhansan Dullae-gil (북한산둘레길)

Exit 1

Cross Dobong-ro (도봉로), follow signposts

Dobong Stream (도봉천)

Exit 1

Cross Dobong-ro (도봉로)

Jungnang Stream (중랑천)

Exit 1

Right on Dobong-ro-170-gil (도봉로170길)

Dobong Market (도봉시장)

Exit 3

Turn left and walk east, right on Madeul-ro (마들로)

Sungkyunkwan University Baseball Field (성균관대학교 야구장)

Exit 1

Right on Dobong-ro-170-gil (도봉로170길)