perpetual motion

Ho Chi Minh City, otherwise known as Saigon, must be one of the most vibrant places on earth. It is a city in a state of perpetual motion, defined by its never-ending parade of motorbikes. Eight million people call it home and clog its streets with four million motorcycles. The cacophony of engines and horns goes around the clock. 

The city still has the feel of a town, albeit a very large one, rather than the metropolis that it will eventually become. The buildings are all on a human scale, tall and narrow painted in a range of vivid colours. The network of streets is a hangover from a time when there were very few motor vehicles of any sort on the roads. In fact only fifteen years ago the bicycle was the most common form of transport. All this is slowly starting to change as contruction of huge residential and office tower blocks is now in full swing and slowly eating into the delapidated grandeur of its overcrowded neighbourhoods.

Vietnam is one of the few places in the world that the economy is still surging forward. That said it is coming from a very low starting point and this fact is made all too clear with even the shortest stroll through any part of the city, where despite all the change and improvements there is still more than a whiff of desperation in the air. Everybody has something to sell but there are not enough people buying to keep them all afloat. 

The Vietnamese are very enterprising people but however much trade restrictions have been lifted there are more than enough reminders that this was and very much still is a communist country. Images and statues of the country’s freedom fighter and father figure Ho Chi Minh are everywhere. There are public information/propaganda posters all over the city urging people continue the fight for progress and prosperity. Uncle Ho looks down approvingly at the new skyline while the good citizens toil to build the new Vietnam. They are urged to continue to contribute their cheap labour while they still have no say whatsoever regarding who their leaders will be or the policies they should adopt. 

The day starts early here. A taxi trip at seven in the morning reveals crowded streets, and parks filled with people playing badminton, going for walks or just sitting around eating breakfast. Saigoners don’t just use motorbikes to get around, they stop occasionally and sit around on them to chat with friends. They park under a vacant palm tree and take a nap in the shade on them. They go on family outings on them. I saw five on one moped but sightings of up to seven are not unheard of. Babies sleep in their mother’s arms while their father weaves his way through the din and chaos of the city’s traffic. In our short stay I even saw some breastfeeding in transit. Traffic lights are few and far between. Despite all this the traffic moves remarkably well. They seem to have a collective consciousness, like a shoal of fish. At first crossing a road seems like an act of suicide. But if you walk slowly and don’t make any sudden changes of direction the fish just flow around you.

The weirdest place in the world

If Kaesong was the saddest place in the world, the Pyongyang is definitely the weirdest. All my preconceptions seemed to be confirmed upon arrival, from the weather (minus 10 and biting cold) to the architecture (grand boulevards built for a city with 15 times the traffic and hopelessly tall hotel buildings housing only a handful of guests).

As it happened it turned out that it was also minus 10 back in Seoul, but being deprived of normal means of communication we didn’t know and kept our impression of North Korea as a country where even the weather is worse than in the south. It didn’t help that most buildings did not have much indoors heating. Even meeting rooms in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were quite chilly, not to mention our guided tour of the Kim Il Sung University, where hats and gloves did not stop our teeth from rattling. At least we had the luxury of retreating to the Koryo Hotel every evening and having hot baths, which I felt guilty about each time. No such luxury for the people we visited in a village outside Pyongyang on a field trip with the Red Cross. We went to see a water pump project which has given 600 households running water. Not hot water of course, as I naively asked. The water comes about three times a day when the electricity is working. Since nobody knows when the electricity will come the pump house has to be manned 24 hours a day. Needless to say there was no heating there either. Yet with all their hardships there was a quiet dignity radiating from all the people we met there, from the leader of the cooperative farm to the doctor who ran the local medical clinic with assistance from the Red Cross, to the young girl who volunteered as advisor at the first post Red Cross clinic.

We were also treated to a lunch at the local restaurant (probably the only one) at the end of our visit. As the dishes kept coming out we felt quite guilty, but reassured ourselves that whatever was left of the chicken soup after we had finished would not go wasted.

Other impressions: The communist aesthetic leaves a lot to be desired. When it comes to paintings, especially the ubiquitous ones of the Great and the Dear Leader, the regime seems to prefer the kitsch, Jehova Witness-style.

Speaking of Jehova, there certainly were other similarities with religious based faith. The tour of the Kim Il Sung University, which basically consisted of viewing a collection of artifacts from Kim Jong Il’s time there as a student, brought my thoughts back to my confirmation training. Apparently Kim Jong Il excelled in all subject, impressing his teachers and making his fellow students wanting to give him teacher-like status. Despite such star-like obvious qualities young Kim was very modest and unassuming, putting everyone else before him. Kim also showed his revisionist talents at an early age, writing a thesis claiming that Korea was unified by the Goryo kingdom, not the Shilla which is commonly assumed, in the 8th century. It is of course a total coincidence that the Shilla was located in the south of the Korean peninsula whereas the Goryo was located in – yes, you guessed it – in the north. But the best bit was the room full of stuffed animals which the Great Leader, old Kim, in his graciousness had bequeathed to the university. Iguanas from the Galapagos Islands, anyone? A bird Phoenix? How about a Korean tiger? As far as I knew the last Korean tiger was shot in the 1930s, but our guide proudly proclaimed that this particular specimen was shot in the 1980s. I had to struggle quite a bit to keep a serious face, I have to admit.

Other interesting Pyongyang events included a trip to the circus. In an eagerness to please, or else in an eagerness to keep our program as devoid of political content as possible, our North Korean hosts had packed it with sightseeing events in addition to the unavoidable official meetings. Well, I certainly didn’t complain about the circus. The artists’ skills were amazing and kept us in awe the whole evening. They also kept me in a permanent state of anxiety as they only used a safety net for a couple of super spectacular stunts, but for the main hang about 15 metres above ground level from their little finger or toe, or doing double saltos on a lose rope. Afterwards we were told that this was probably the B team, as the A team normally tours in Europe. Well, I can’t imagine what that A team could do to top this. The awe and anxiety was also mixed with a nagging feeling that such skill can only come from a training regime in which employment health and safety standards are probably unknown words.

Apart from going to the circus and admiring Kim Jong Il’s student days I also did some exercise myself in the hotel swimming pool. Not knowing that such an extravagant facility existed I had not brought my bathing suit, but was assured by our guide (or should I say minder) from the ministry that I should be able to rent one. This turned out to be a case of lost in translation as the non-English speaking staff at the swimming pool brought out a big bathing ring. Eventually they seemed to get what I was after and indicated that my request was not possible. Desperate for a swim I ended up buying the most horrendous swimming costume ever for 20 euros. It was also too small as it was obviously made for Korean sizes. Anyway, it was well worth the money as I made good use of it for three nights. On the last night I discovered a sign in English saying rental swimsuit for 70 cents an hour. I am still not sure whether this was an honest mistake on my Korean hosts’ part or a deliberate attempt to fraud me. Anyway, although the people working in the Koryo are priviliged compared to the rest of the population, privilige is a relative concept and I am sure that those 20 euros went to good use. 

Apart from this case the people we met in Pyongyang were invariably nice and pleasant. In fact, having small talked with our Korean meeting partners over dinner and with our minder on all our car journeys here and there it seemed absurd that they are part of one of the most brutal and viscous regimes in the world. I preferred to think of them as trapped in a system rather than conscious participants. 

So how about the North Korean traffic police women that I had heard so much about? I am happy to report that there were no short skirts in sight. It seems that even North Korea bows to a temperature of double digit minus degrees and the police women were clad in smart blue trouser suits adorned with furry sleeves and a big furry hat. I think somehow this lessened the sex appeal and I only caught Alan photographing them once. We got him back on the plane to Bejing without too much trouble.

Hongdae nights

Hongdae is Seoul’s bohemian heartland, its Soho if you like. A couple of weeks ago we tried to go to a jazz club there. The instructions we had said to come out of exit 6 of Hongik University metro station. The only problem was that there were only five exits, at least only five that were signposted. We walked the length of the station to no avail. Up on the streets we asked people if they’d heard of the place we were looking for. Nobody had. I was starting to think that exit 6 was a secret exit accessed through a ventilation shaft which led to a subterranean Xanadu of noctural delights. Naked angels swinging gently from the chandeliers. A faded beauty signing the saddest song in the world. We abandoned our plans and went for a drink in a little wine bar that was all discoball and red velvet. They had a bit of Korean Dickie Rock going on in the background and a pleasant evening was had by one and all.

Last night we ventured forth once again and this time found what we were looking for – Freebird, a music club in a little backstreet off a backstreet where we were hoping to see Jens Lekman, a Swedish singer songwriter we’d never heard of before but had decided might be good. We bought tickets but had to wait an hour before we could get in. We took a left back to the main backstreet and went down a backstreet off another backstreet where we found a bar that had a big windmill on the roof and a life-sized sculpture of Chewbacca dressed as a cowboy. We didn’t go in there. We decided to take a left onto another little backstreet to Margie’s a great little cafe with one of the most extensive and delightful nibbles menus we had ever encountered. It also had a special coffee preparation room behind a protective glass screen. It looked like the boiler room of the Titanic such was the range of heavy grinding and roasting machinery busy squeezing out those precious drops of brown gold coffee juice. It’s nice to see a place that takes their coffee seriously. I had an orangeade which, wait for it, was not even orange, it was clear with only the merest tinge of orange on the skin of the bubbles, yet miraculously it tasted like orange. I thought I’d died and gone to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory. 

Before heading back to the club we make a little detour, just to stay in out of the cold, to a great little bar that you have to enter via a very steep narrow staircase and then a ladder to the top floor. It was one tiny room with a gas heater in the middle with plywood walls, very cosy with lots of 50′s knicknacks, but you got the impression you could blow the place down. 

Back to Freebird and Jens Lekman didn’t take to the stage til around half past midnight for his ten o’clock show. We were ten years older than almost everyone else (there was one old guy with a big white moustache which went blue because he was standing under a light like the ones you get in toilets to stop junkie’s finding their veins). Before we got in we’d met Brett and Evie from America. Brett heard my accent and announced at top of his voice that here was the mad Irish motherf%*@r in the queue. It was a billing that I’d have struggled to live up to so I decided not to try. The younger generation think they are almost unbearably cool but they have a tendency to go around in wolly hats indoors with T-shirts. Why can’t they just take off the hat and put on a jumper like any sensible human being. It was a cold night. They won’t get any benefit out of the hat on the way home, unless of course they have a second hat in the cloakroom to put on top of the first one.

So anyway, Jens takes his time and leaves a bad Korean student rockabilly band to play their entire repertoire twice before gracing us with his presence. In the meantime we’d met Melody and Gene a wide-eyed twenty-something couple from Perth who were in town to visit their geek-chic friend and his funky Korean girlfriend. They were very nice. When Jens came on stage, (Else was still awake – just about, as I had insisted on her taking a nap that afternoon) Melody and Gene seemed to really like the music, they danced and clapped exactly in time as if they’d been practicing at home in front of the mirror for months. Jens didn’t do much for us. But I tried to nod my head and tap a foot so as not to disappoint Melody and Gene. I didn’t want to puncture the illusion that life would always be as happy-clappy as it was for them right now. We left after three songs.

In the taxi Else told me she’d talked to a Korean professor about Korean names and we realised that if you were unfortunate enough you could be called Hae-ree Bum here, and we had a laugh about that.

All the way home the Seoulometer was high as the driver booted along and the night was alive and the city glittered like a Christmas tree.

chilly willy!

If you stick your head in the oven and your feet in the freezer you can maintain a perfect average body temperature. You might kill yourself in the process but by the law of averages everything will be just fine. It’s a bit like that here in Korea. A month ago, well into the second half of October, the sun was still strong and the evenings were balmy. Last night we hit -11. It was a bit of a shock to the system. 

There’s a fruit tree just outside my window. A month ago its leaves were a lush dark green and it was heavily laden with a large orange fruit, a bit like an orange but furry like a peach – I’ll call it a perrange. The fruits gradually disappeared. Some were picked by a pleasant perrange plucker, some over-ripened and fell off and some clung on for dear life. As we moved into November the leaves thinned out and yellowed a bit, but after last night’s artic blast I woke up to find a scrawny naked skeleton of a tree with not a single leaf left to spare its blushes. One tenacious little perrange stood firm. I take my hat off to that brave fruit.

The saddest place in the world

I went up to North Korea for the first time on Friday, and Neil asked me to write something about it. The town we visited was Kaesong, just a few kilometres from the border with South Korea. Kaesong is known for two things: first, that it was the capital of the Koreyo dynasty back in the 900s and hence has some historical sights; and secondly, that it is home to the Kaseong industrial complex, the only remaining north/south cooperation project. The concept is basically that South Korean factories (and a few overseas ones) employ North Korean workers at a fraction of the price they would pay in the south. Besides the obvious economic benefits this has for the companies involved the idea behind the project is that the cooperation and interaction over time will expose the North Koreans to outside thoughts and ideas, and thus contribute to breaking down the boundaries between the two peoples. But more about this later.

We left Seoul at the ungodly hour of 6am. The reason for this early start was not that Norwegians have masochistic tendencies (although that might be true in other contexts, read a passion for outdoors activities at minus 20 degrees), but that the passport and customs procedures involved in crossing the south/north border remind you of the heyday of the Soviet Union. You have to be really careful with what you bring. Mobile phones are not allowed (and would not work anyway because of the North Korean jamming towers), newspapers are a big no-no (no corrupting outside influences), and your camera must be a digital one (so that the border guards can go through them on the way back and delete any that portray the country in an unfavourable way). When this procedure has to be gone through with 500 people at the same time (there were lots of South Korean tourist buses as well), you can imagine it takes time.

Well, we finally got across and started our journey into North Korea. At first it did not seem too bad, as we first passed through the industrial complex. The buildings and factories looked new and state of the art, the traffic lights were working, the roads were broad and well signposted, and we even spotted a Family Mart, a South Korean convenience store. Once we left the complex behind us though, it was a different story. It was like driving straight into one of the many reports I have read about the north in recent months. The first overwhelming impression was that everything was greyish brown. Admittedly it was November and the weather had been getting cooler, but still the whole place just seemed to be devoid of colour. This is also because North Korea is nearly completely deforested. The contrast with South Korea is enormous – in the south even the mountains are covered in thick, dense forest. A few metres into the north and hardly a tree in sight. The explanation is banal – people are so desperate for firewood that they chance sneaking out at night to chop down what they can get their hands on. This is not without risk as there is plently of military officers stationed at regular intervals along the road. In our case we imagined it was probably partly to supervise the busloads of tourists to make sure we didn’t get up to anything suspicious, but it is obviously also to keep an eye on the local population. It was quite absurd to be driving along a small and winding country road on our way to a “famous” waterfall, and every kilometer a soldier would be standing on a side road, completely expressionless, watching us pass. 

Apart from this desert-like feeling the next thing that struck me was the derelict housing. On the outskirts of Kaesong it consisted mainly of simple, one-storey buildings, looking greyish and tumbledown and very often either with no windows at all or with the windows or doors wide open. Considering the temperature was less than 10 it was a strong indication that they have no heating system whatsoever. A lack of energy sources is actually, together with the dismal food situation, the biggest problem North Korea faces at the moment. No wonder there were no traffic lights in operation after leaving the industrial complex – there is no electricity to operate them. 

Towards the centre of Kaesong there were apartment blocs and high rises, but that certainly was not an aesthetic improvement. Everything looked derelict and run down and very often empty. We passed by buildings that looked like they had once been shops, and my Korean-speaking colleague explained that the signs read “barber shop” and “library”. Well, you’d think you’d see a few books at a library, but the buildings were just empty shells. And Kaesong is supposed to be one of the good places to live in North Korea, together with the capital Pyongyang, where only the regime faithful are allowed to live.

But the worst thing was the people. Everywhere we drove people were walking along the pavement, or cycling, seemingly aimlessly at 10 o’clock in the morning, but obviously on their way to their assigned task for the day. And everybody seemed completely expressionless and stone-faced. No one cast a glance in our direction as we drove past, naturally since any interaction between the North Koreans and foreigners is strictly forbidden. Further out of the city we then started to see what I have only read about – city workers commanded out to work on the fields. All along the (unused) railway tracks people were gathered, doing some kind of work that mystified us. Were they repairing the line? Or growing some kind of food on any conceivable patch of land? The same sight greeted us on our way back to the town after our tour, but then people seemed to be coming back from work. Somehow the atmosphere also seemed a bit more relaxed then, although perhaps I only felt like that because we passed two teenage girls who walked by holding each other’s arms, talking and smiling. Smiling! But the saddest thing was to pass mothers with young children and wondering about what that child’s life consists of, what hopes and dreams the mother has for her little girl, or whether she has any dreams at all – perhaps they are rooted out of you from an early age. The only good thing was that people did not look like they were starving. Had we gone to the countryside we would have seen a different story. NGOs working in North Korea report that 70% of the population have to survive on grass porridge at the moment, and the World Food Programme estimates that 3 million people in the east and 1 million in the west will be close to starvation by December if more foreign aid does not arrive quickly. At least the people of Kaesong did not seem to be at that stage just yet.  Maybe because many of them work at the industrial complex, and although their wages of 70 dollars a month are paid to the government and not to them directly, and you therefore do not know how much ends up in their pockets, at least, as the spokesperson for Hyundai Asan who runs the complex, told us: “they get a free lunch each day”. 

The official tour itself was not that interesting. We were taken around to the sights of the Koryo dynasty, which might have some meaning to the South Korean tourists who had learnt about all this in school, but which didn’t mean much to us Norwegians. “This house used to belong to a learned nobleman who was later killed at this bridge”. Oh – interesting. Or maybe we are just philistines. Anyway, I think what was interesting about the trip was all the stuff that was not part of the trip – the glances you managed to steal of the city and the population as we drove past, all the stuff that we were not allowed to photograph. But then again, the official trip also serves some purpose. For instance, it provides employment to the people who act as tour guides, or who work in the many stalls selling bad tasting coffee and funny looking Korean sweets. In fact you could sense capitalism creeping in the back door, as people were obviously keen to sell and offer their goods. These people you are allowed to talk to as long as the conversation centres on safe topics, and they were invariably nice, polite and smiling. One of my Korean colleagues got into a long conversation with a North Korean guard who had the same surname as her. Our trainee Alan got smitten by the beautiful North Korean waitresses at the place we lunched and seemed to harbour ideas of defecting to the north. How he will handle the short-skirted and high-booted traffic policewomen in Pyongyang, who reportedly are chosen for their aesthetic qualities rather than their knowledge of traffic rules, when we go there in a week, I don’t know. Anyway, that’s an aside. The point is that maybe the idea of the Kasesong complex of contributing to intercultural understanding, however much the cynic in you finds it hard to believe, maybe holds some truth. And the tourism also provides much needed income for the people involved in it, as well as the regime.

One should also not underestimate the effect the visit has on the South Korean tourists, most of whom have never been across the border. It was a powerful experience for my Korean colleagues. One of them said, with tears in her eyes: ” For the first time I truly understand the tragedy of my divided country”. 

As mentioned I am going to Pyongyang in about a week’s time. That will be the place really to witness the regime’s megalomania, as well as getting some sobering counterviews from representatives of the international community based there. More reports to follow – and I won’t forget to include an account of those North Korean policewomen.

Else

Woo Baby

After months of anxiety and sleepless nights now that Obama has been elected I can finally get on with my life. A great victory for intelligence over the dark forces of ignorance. The world can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s been a while since I’ve sent news from these parts due to a combination of election obsession, work projects and a visit from two beautiful women from Ireland – Ann and Jan, otherwise known as me ma and me sister. 

Took advantage of the babysitters, flown in especially all the the way from Dublin, to treat Else to a night of luxury and romance at the coolest hotel in the city. The room was great, polished concrete walls and ceiling, nice music, and a huge jacuzzi with an amazing river view. 

After dinner we headed to the hotel bar, called Woo Bar, where there was a big party on. It happened to be Halloween, not that you would have known about it otherwise, it’s not a big thing here. The city’s young and beautiful slung back on the white leather divans. Many dressed for the occasion. I think it was Po, or maybe La La, one of the teletubbies anyway, strolled by with a cocktail in his hand and on his arm a female NYPD officer in thigh-high boots and hotpants with handcuffs on the side. Could be a scandal if the tabloids get hold of that one.  

Two young men with horse heads grooved away on the dancefloor. Graphic equalisers on their t-shirts moved up and down with the thumping beats. Else must have thought she was hallucinating just before she threw in the towel and retreated to her favourite refuge – the land of nod. It was only eleven and we missed the fashion show but when we got back to the room someone was still dancing. Number two, or young Barack as I call him, started to kick for the first time.

A nice night was had by all.

Blarney, Korean style

I have a confession to make. I darkened the door of an Irish pub. My first since arriving here. The reason was entirely legitimate, I swear it wasn’t because I had a desperate urge to see Connemara signposts, old black bicycles hanging from the ceiling, or rows of worn out hardback books on everything from ferret handling to badger baiting. The reason I went in was because they had pizza. My tolerance for Korean cuisine is not massively high I have to admit. 

Anyway the pub in question at least went to the effort of concocting a tall tale. And here it is -

Jong Oh Kim was an adventurous young man. Footloose and fancy free he left his home in the city of Seoul and set out for a life of adventure. He worked in the merchant navy and saw the world. Not content to skip from port to port Kim liked to stop over and sample the culture along the way. He also liked to sample the local brew wherever he came to rest. He may have liked the occasional sup but Kim was also a great sportsman and always like to try his hand at the local game. It is said that he took the game of golf by storm when he first arrived in Scotland, and he tamed many of the finest links the country had to offer. In France as well as sampling the local wines he got on his bike and won the Tour de France. It was in Ireland however that Kim really lost his heart. His fondness for the whiskey was legendary but it was on the gaelic and hurling pitches of the country that he earned his fame. He was such a natural in fact that locals christened him John O’Kim. His sporting prowess is still talked about in the pubs of Ireland to this day.

When O’Kim returned to Korea he decided to open an Irish pub to share his love for all the fine beers and spirits he encountered in the Emerald Isle.

O’Kim must have played a bit of football in Italy too because he also knew how to make a decent pizza.

BusanBusan

On my first trip to Busan one of the locals compared the city to Honk Kong. It’s a long strip of a city built around a huge port and backed by large mountains, but as far as I could tell that’s where the comparison began and ended. I put the remark down to wishful thinking. The city seemed grim and the architecture oppressively dull. I had also been told by a Seoulite before my departure that Busan has a bit of a second city complex, always trying to prove itself against the big capital and that the inhabitants are a bit rough around the edges. On my return this weekend I got a better look at the place and the Hong Kong comment didn’t seem so far fetched.

It helped that I spent the three or four days in the Haeundae area and the Eastern side of the city. Think of the Docklands development in Dublin then just add an extra thirty floors to all the buildings. Busan, home to four million people, is a city with big plans. High rise apartment complexes are shooting up all over the place. Even if Seoul has the top three or five tallest buildings in the country at the moment I wouldn’t be surprised if Busan doesn’t have more in the top 50. The city also has plans to construct a 150 storey building that will be the world’s second tallest building after the Burj Dubai. There’s a vast new expo centre (BEXCO) and a number of huge department stores opening up. Double and triple decker motorways perched up on stilts cut through the towers. With the Asian games and 2002 World Cup already under its belt the city is now setting it’s sights on the Olympics. I won’t be too surprised if they get it.

Check out the visuals here

The game of life is hard to play…

This week has been an eye-opener. I’ve spent most of it with a busload of Korean War Veterans from Norway and Belgium. I’ve been following the Norwegians, and shooting a documentary about their involvement in the war.

The Norwegians set up a field hospital (NorMASH) close to the front and provided ships for transport of supplies to the US led UN force that backed South Korea after it was invaded by Kim Il Sung leader of Soviet backed North Korea. 

The war started in 1950 and Norway got involved, to a certain extent, due to the fact that the then General Secretary of the UN, Trygve Lie, was a Norwegian. The veterans have now returned, some for the first time, and they are discovering a very different country to the one they left behind. I have been struck by how huge a part Korea has played in their lives since then, and how many happy memories they had of encounters with the local people and culture even at a time of war. It is all the more remarkable when you consider how gruesome this conflict was with an estimated 3.5 million casualties.

The visit has included trips to Panmunjon and the DMZ (demilitarised zone) where the South and North Korean soldiers stand face to face just a few metres either side of the border line. The South Korean guards are handpicked (particularly tall and well-built soldiers are chosen), and they stand in a Tae-Kwon-Do combat position to intimidate their counterparts.

Our visit coincided with a rare tourist visit on the North Korean side. There was a strange atmosphere. We had been warned not to interact with anyone on the other side of the line. There had been flare-ups in the past when people made attempts to run across to defect to the South. This is the point when the North Koreans whip the machine guns out. This large group probably consisted, we were told, of Chinese and North Korean tourists. Luckily nobody tried to make a break for the border.

After the UN/South Korean forces started to get the upperhand in the war the Chinese sent in huge numbers of troops on the North Korean side. I was struck however by how much China has changed so quickly while North Korea has remained isolated, as if the cold war had never ended. The Chinese tourists who stood on the North side probably had more in common now with the tourists who were busy photographing them on the other side of the line. 

It was quite a bizarre scene with two groups of humans standing opposite each other as if the other were aliens who had just walked out of a spaceship.

Back on the bus there has been lots of good humour throughout the week. This is helped by Cindy and Michelle the Korean guides who like to talk saucy and get the old men going. Around half the Norwegians brought their wives so they are generally behaving themselves up the front of the bus. The Belgians had more sense leaving the women behind and are behaving like a bunch of rowdy fourteen year olds on a school trip. Most of the men are at least seventy-five. The Belgians speak two different languages and many are deaf in at least one ear. Throw Michelle and Cindy’s Korenglish in the mix and you can image how much is getting lost in translation. It’s hilarious.

Of course there’s also the serious side. It’s very poignant for the veterans to revisit the sites they served at and the memorials to their colleagues who died. And it’s fascinating for me to be part of their journey.

frisky chimp

What to do with a two and a half year old kid for a whole week while the creche is closed? Forget about going to the playground. That will bore you senseless and the kid might get about a half an hour of enjoyment at best before either getting bored or breaking a collarbone, depending on how cautious/adventurous the child is.

The answer is contemporary art. I’d be the last person in the world to make a claim that Lukas has some kind of superior intellect for a child of his age. In fact he has the attention span of a frisky chimpanzee, so how come when it comes to modern art he just can’t get enough of the stuff.

We went along to an exhibition called Turn and Widen (nice website, strange title, meaningless Korenglish perhaps) otherwise known as the Seoul Media Art Biennale. This was more for me to be honest but I had a feeling that L might find some things that he’d really dig. My sneaking suspicion was based on a trip to the Museum of modern Art in Stockholm last year when L became totally enraptured by an installation that featured an electrical current running between two wires inside a five metre glass tube.

I was right, the exhibition was a great success. After going up and down in the lift a few times the first thing we saw was a giant video wall with animation running over about a hundred screens. Lots of the imagery featured galloping horses and other animals. This was far more exciting than the zoo last weekend where most of the animals were sleeping wherever they could find a bit of shade or else pacing dementedly around their cramped enclosures. 

Some of the ideas in the show were just incredible, and many had an interactive element that worked just as effectively on the two year old brain as it did for adults. There was an amazing piece which combined sculpture and video and we could have sat there all day. Another favourite was an interactive video installation where you held a glowing red ball against a thin mesh curtain. Wherever you walked lots of little moths (as opposed to butterflies this time) followed flocking around the ball.  

See some clips from the show now on the video page of the blog…