Don't go back to Incheon (and waste another year)
0 Comments Published by Brian on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 10:35 AM.
A couple things before we get into our main text for today:
Yesterday I went out to Incheon for no particular reason whatsoever. I was curious to see the old neighborhood where I lived and worked in 2003 and 2004, and I had nothing else going on that day, so why not? The subway ride from Chang-dong to Bup-yeong took almost exactly 90 minutes, which surprised me. I thought it would be more like two hours. Bup-yeong station is massive. It contains a Lotte Mart as part of the complex, and forms the terminus of a shopping mall that is a complex maze of underground tunnels. Nothing has really changed in the station, except they have an Outback next to Lotte Mart now. Leaving the station from the ground level (the tunnels are to be avoided at all costs), I walked around the plaza to the restaurant/night life district to try and get some lunch. I remembered a row of cheap eateries close together on one street. Apparently all of Incheon remembered them too, because there wasn’t a seat to be had in any of them. Finally I settled on a tall coffee and a muffin from Starbucks. While wandering around, it occurred to me that Bup-yeong is really just a poor man’s Myeong-dong. Sorry, I know these names mean nothing to my readers who haven’t been in Korea. It’s like saying (Lower Class Shopping Area) is a poor man’s (Higher Class Shopping Area). Make sense?
I had wanted to ride the Incheon subway for old times’ sake, but decided instead to walk to the area where I used to live. It’s about a 30 minute walk from the station. On the way however, I made a small detour to an actual big & tall shop, the only one I’ve seen in Korea outside of Itaewon. The owner was really friendly. Last time I went there I only saw a woman there who didn’t speak any English. He eye-balled me and guessed my correct sizes immediately. It embarrassed me, but there was obviously no point in trying to deny it. I ended up buying a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a belt, which all told, cost 270,000. The whole thing took like all of ten minutes and I was out of there again.
My main curiosity about my old neighborhood was the school across the street from my apartment. See, there was this old abandoned school building there. It just sat empty for most of the year, but in the final weeks of my contract they began to dismantle it. By the time I left it had been reduced to a pile of debris. Now, nineteen months later, the site is the home of the brand new Sangok High School. It looks nice. There is also some kind of commercial complex going up behind the school, on land that used to belong to the US military. The building where I used to work is exactly the same. It looks like they gave the inside a coat of fresh paint, but that is all. No one was at the academy of course, it being a Saturday. For nostalgia’s sake I climbed up the back stairs and had a cigarette in the old smoking area. I was going to go out on the roof, but it sounded like someone was up there so I didn’t tempt it.
Next I walked around the block just to have a look. Again, it was all the same. On my little walking tour I thought about all the places in the neighborhood where I used to buy beer. I think I knew every outlet within about a five block radius. I used to have to keep track of them because I didn’t like to buy from the same shop on two consecutive days, or multiple times on the same day. Let me tell you, procuring and consuming alcohol, then getting rid of the evidence was a lot of work. If I went to 7-11 first, I had to go to Family Mart when I went back out for more. It sucked because Family mart was a longer walk. Eventually I started going to Family Mart first, because I knew later at night I’d be too drunk to walk all that way. I also knew every mom & pop grocery in the area and when their closing time was. That didn’t seem weird to me at the time. Even back then then I knew if I put half the effort into staying sober that I put into getting drunk, my life would be much, much better…and so it is. Thank God those days are over!
Anyway, as I came around the back side of my old apartment building I noticed the Ibadom Gamja-tang restaurant was closed, and all the fixtures were being torn out. It gave me no small pleasure to see that. I fucking hate Ibadom. Gamja-tang is a kind of stew made with potatoes and the spine of a pig. It was the closest restaurant to my academy, so every time we had a special event we went to Ibadom. That whole year, I rarely got to eat “real” Korean food, and every time I did, it was effing back meat stew. That I hold such a deep resentment toward a dish is, I’m sure, an indicator of the vast extent of my sickness, but I don’t care. So long fucking Ibadom!
Every large Korean city looks like every other large Korean city, and come to that, every neighborhood is more or less the same as every other neighborhood, so going to Incheon again was no great revelation. Still I’m glad I went. I got it out of my system at least.
An ariel shot of my old 'hood coutesy of Google Earth. My apartment was on the left side of that U-shaped complex. My academy is the small square building just to the north of it. Moving to the right, The old abandoned school is still visible in this image. The hated Ibadom restaurant is the long orange roof just east of the school.
Bub-yeong station as seen yesterday, May 13th, 2006.
- On Friday when Mr. Lee was picking me up for work he pointed out the sign on the kimbap shop on the ground floor of my building. To the left of the logo there is a green and white symbol of a church. Mr. Lee said it was a symbol of the Unification Church, or in other words, the religion founded by Sun-Myung Moon that is sometimes derisively called, “The Mooonies.” Turns out they own the whole chain of kimbap shops all over Korea. Whether this affects me in any way whatsoever is unclear. I feel a little funny buying cultish kimbap, but then I’m not so naïve as to think my money has never in the past gone to support things I didn’t agree with. After all, I’ve paid taxes haven’t I?
- The other night I noticed my local E-mart carries the same high-fiber cereal that I’ve been buying imported from the Netherlands at the international grocery in Itaewon. Now I feel like a schmuck because the cereal costs 4,500 won at E-mart, and the exact same product costs 16,000 won in Itaewon. Sixteen dollars for high fiber cereal. Pardon me for saying it, but that is some expensive shit!
Yesterday I went out to Incheon for no particular reason whatsoever. I was curious to see the old neighborhood where I lived and worked in 2003 and 2004, and I had nothing else going on that day, so why not? The subway ride from Chang-dong to Bup-yeong took almost exactly 90 minutes, which surprised me. I thought it would be more like two hours. Bup-yeong station is massive. It contains a Lotte Mart as part of the complex, and forms the terminus of a shopping mall that is a complex maze of underground tunnels. Nothing has really changed in the station, except they have an Outback next to Lotte Mart now. Leaving the station from the ground level (the tunnels are to be avoided at all costs), I walked around the plaza to the restaurant/night life district to try and get some lunch. I remembered a row of cheap eateries close together on one street. Apparently all of Incheon remembered them too, because there wasn’t a seat to be had in any of them. Finally I settled on a tall coffee and a muffin from Starbucks. While wandering around, it occurred to me that Bup-yeong is really just a poor man’s Myeong-dong. Sorry, I know these names mean nothing to my readers who haven’t been in Korea. It’s like saying (Lower Class Shopping Area) is a poor man’s (Higher Class Shopping Area). Make sense?
I had wanted to ride the Incheon subway for old times’ sake, but decided instead to walk to the area where I used to live. It’s about a 30 minute walk from the station. On the way however, I made a small detour to an actual big & tall shop, the only one I’ve seen in Korea outside of Itaewon. The owner was really friendly. Last time I went there I only saw a woman there who didn’t speak any English. He eye-balled me and guessed my correct sizes immediately. It embarrassed me, but there was obviously no point in trying to deny it. I ended up buying a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a belt, which all told, cost 270,000. The whole thing took like all of ten minutes and I was out of there again.
My main curiosity about my old neighborhood was the school across the street from my apartment. See, there was this old abandoned school building there. It just sat empty for most of the year, but in the final weeks of my contract they began to dismantle it. By the time I left it had been reduced to a pile of debris. Now, nineteen months later, the site is the home of the brand new Sangok High School. It looks nice. There is also some kind of commercial complex going up behind the school, on land that used to belong to the US military. The building where I used to work is exactly the same. It looks like they gave the inside a coat of fresh paint, but that is all. No one was at the academy of course, it being a Saturday. For nostalgia’s sake I climbed up the back stairs and had a cigarette in the old smoking area. I was going to go out on the roof, but it sounded like someone was up there so I didn’t tempt it.
Next I walked around the block just to have a look. Again, it was all the same. On my little walking tour I thought about all the places in the neighborhood where I used to buy beer. I think I knew every outlet within about a five block radius. I used to have to keep track of them because I didn’t like to buy from the same shop on two consecutive days, or multiple times on the same day. Let me tell you, procuring and consuming alcohol, then getting rid of the evidence was a lot of work. If I went to 7-11 first, I had to go to Family Mart when I went back out for more. It sucked because Family mart was a longer walk. Eventually I started going to Family Mart first, because I knew later at night I’d be too drunk to walk all that way. I also knew every mom & pop grocery in the area and when their closing time was. That didn’t seem weird to me at the time. Even back then then I knew if I put half the effort into staying sober that I put into getting drunk, my life would be much, much better…and so it is. Thank God those days are over!
Anyway, as I came around the back side of my old apartment building I noticed the Ibadom Gamja-tang restaurant was closed, and all the fixtures were being torn out. It gave me no small pleasure to see that. I fucking hate Ibadom. Gamja-tang is a kind of stew made with potatoes and the spine of a pig. It was the closest restaurant to my academy, so every time we had a special event we went to Ibadom. That whole year, I rarely got to eat “real” Korean food, and every time I did, it was effing back meat stew. That I hold such a deep resentment toward a dish is, I’m sure, an indicator of the vast extent of my sickness, but I don’t care. So long fucking Ibadom!
Every large Korean city looks like every other large Korean city, and come to that, every neighborhood is more or less the same as every other neighborhood, so going to Incheon again was no great revelation. Still I’m glad I went. I got it out of my system at least.
An ariel shot of my old 'hood coutesy of Google Earth. My apartment was on the left side of that U-shaped complex. My academy is the small square building just to the north of it. Moving to the right, The old abandoned school is still visible in this image. The hated Ibadom restaurant is the long orange roof just east of the school.
Bub-yeong station as seen yesterday, May 13th, 2006.
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