Seoul, November 4
Hey Jack,
It’s an early morning here in Seoul. I rise early these days. Gone are the days, or better the nights, of owl’ing my way through the last hours. I loved those quiet nightly hours before sleep. I used to call ‘1.30 am’ the best time of day. It’s been a while since I saw any clock hit that spot realtime. Inyoung prefers to stay up late and sleep a little longer. I follow an opposite rhythm. Living in a tiny Seoul apartment, I guess it is how we like to accommodate our lives nowadays. Lots of together hours but also some alone.
We live on a side alley off from the main street that runs through our town. Life in the alley is quiet for only five hours a night, maybe a little over six on Sundays. Life in our town, Changsin-dong¹, evolves around labor. Hard manual labor. Processing textile, converting fabrics into clothes, blankets, sheets, sewing. I had never lived in an area before where living and working are so intertwined. It’s one of the main reasons why the past two and a half years have been so exciting. Feeling like one of the ants in the large ants community. These little factories operate mainly on the ground floors of the apartment buildings. There are still over 900 of these factories active nowadays. It used to be over 2,000 back in the 80’s and 90’s and I struggle to understand how that must have looked like as currently they’re already omnipresent when you walk around the town. You can hear the sound of sewing machines anywhere you go. The first two months of our new life in Korea, we lived with my mother-in-law and I would wake up to the humming of the neighbour’s sewing machine. They start work around 7 or 8 in the morning, often to continue work until midnight. The town is a confusing maze of alleys, there are very few streets where cars can go, and it’s all built on the steep slopes of a hill, Naksan. The best way of transportation therefore, especially when you’re in a Korean rush, is by motor or scooter bike. They are everywhere. They come carrying big roles of fabric from the wholesale market not too far away, and they leave carrying big bags of processed material to similar wholesale markets. So it’s the humming and the whizzing of the sewing machines and the loud roaring of motor bikes that dominate the sounds of our town.
If no early morning run for me, I brew myself a hot, black coffee and wake up with either a book, or pen and paper. All accompanied by life in the alley waking up. By the sounds, the smells and the temperatures making their way up to our windows. Things that I’m now so familiar with. The neighbour kickstarts his bike every day just after 7. There is someone running down the alley towards the city, towards where metro’s and buses are. I’m guessing it’s a she, and she is a student. I may be wrong, but this person is often late for something. Too often. She’s an alarm snoozer and she’s good at it! Another woman walks through the alley frequently, always on the phone, somewhere between chatting and shouting. She sounds old, well in her sixties, and I’m guessing it’s her sister on the other side. She tells the other side to change something in life, behaviour, dinner plans. Learning Korean is still an interesting process, especially if you only hear one side of the conversation.
Thanks for checking in with me this weekend after the Halloween disaster that shocked Korea and even caused a stir in global news. It made me wonder why certain events reach global news, and why certain don’t. If at my most cynical I would say this one creates very marketable headlines. Halloween, students partying, Seoul’s neighbourhood known for its international atmosphere. Unlike a bomb in Mogadishu on the same day, a collapsed bridge in India the same weekend, insane flooding of Seoul earlier this year. Then I warn myself not to be too cynical. In life in general, but especially in the direct aftermath of what happened this weekend. Korea is mourning, memorial locations are set up all over the country. Only in Seoul itself there are some 20 locations where people pay their respects and lay down white flowers. On my way to meet a friend I stopped by Itaewon-dong ¹ yesterday. This is where the disaster happened and a minute of standstill and contemplation was needed. Obviously the memorial area here is gigantic. The smell of white chrysanthemum flowers is overwhelming. People leave heartbreaking notes, they leave toy animals, cookies, and bottles of soju to accompany the last journey. The amount of police securing the area is insane, sinister even given that a lack thereof, over the weekend seems a major cause of the disaster. Banners were strung announcing a week of mourning in light of the Itaewon accident at first. They’ve all been replaced now for similar banners announcing a week of mourning in light of the Itaewon disaster. It seems a fair change of vocabulary. All events in and around Seoul for the week, and many for the foreseeable future are cancelled. I struggle to see this country happily cheering for its Taeguk Warriors, the national team, in only three weeks from now. Let’s see. Korea has proven all too often it can bounce back well. It might bring unexpected powers to the nation.
On a more upbeat note though, I’m curious to hear what life looks like for you nowadays. Did life change dramatically over the past few weeks now that you are no longer two, but three? I’m guessing your sleeping pattern has altered quite a bit, your earlier routines are now prioritised a little lower because of someone else’s routines, and you typically cannot wait to get home when you are somewhere else. Close? I’m picturing you going to the supermarket to ensure primary life needs are met, with a wide grin on your face, exhausted after another night of half to no sleep, contemplating if playing the trumpet does well to the little man’s development. As for the upcoming World Cup, is there a better way for an afternoon nap, laying horizontally on dad, who himself is horizontally on the couch watching Poland – Saudi Arabia? Yes, I verified this one with the match schedule which I will send you later today. This game has a 2 pm (NL time) start in the Education City Stadium (!), ideal for some well-deserved sleep if you ask me.
Oh man, that Bosnia shirt!
The importance of national shirts is something we definitely need to address in future writings. I saw some newly revealed kits online and that definitely stirred some emotions with me.
I just read your Goodreads review of Angels With Dirty Faces stating: ‘Speaking of which, folks, you heard it here first: The 2022 World Cup Winners will be Argentina’ An interesting take, and/although a very popular one.
There are a good three weeks left before kickoff, Louis van Gaal has announced the first decisive list of 39 players for the Dutch squad. Nothing too exciting there. The Dutch press goes back and forth between the chances of (finally) winning the title and the aversion with everything that is Qatar. As for the Korean peninsula: Son Heung-Min caught himself an eye injury and might miss the tournament. Korean newspapers spewing dark clouds.
Jitse
¹ A dong is, usually, the smallest level of urban-area division to have its own governmental office and staff in South Korea. Currently Seoul has 426 dongs (Wikipedia) A little bureaucracy to serve the people!