Weekend in Seoul – Climbing Bukhansan (9/28-9/30)

After school on Friday, I biked home as fast as I could and packed for my weekend in Seoul, being very careful about choosing only items I would want to carry with me for the entire weekend as we would not have a place to keep our things during the day. For a couple of weeks now, a fellow ATE, Jon F., and I have been throwing around the idea of going hiking. Originally, we wanted to climb Seoraksan, which is supposedly the most beautiful and most difficult mountain in all of South Korea. (There is one in North Korea on the border with China that is rumored to be even more beautiful.) It’s a two-day hike, but supposedly well worth the time commitment. Both of us have 3-day weekends, so it shouldn’t have been a problem, but unfortunately his 3-day weekends start on Friday and mine end on Monday. We decided to pick another mountain. His communications back to me were fairly sporadic, but he finally discovered a couple of good mountains right outside of Seoul. One was supposed to be a five-hour hike, the other a six-hour, so if we were really ambitious, we could do both in one day!

My trip over was an unexpectedly late one. The bus trip to Seoul takes about three hours (at 12,800 won), and I could’ve sworn there was a 5:45 bus, making my estimated time of arrival about 8:45. (I’d abbreviate estimated time of arrival, but I fear this may be misinterpreted as my job title and thus incur the wrath of the Powers that Be.) Unfortunately, the bus was slotted to leave at 6:45, so I had about an hour and fifteen minutes to kill in the hamlet. During this time, I did some Korean homework, listened to some music I had downloaded to my PDA, and also discovered some surprisingly cheap street food in the marketplace. I usually go there at night when the vendors have closed up shop until tomorrow morning because I’m just making my way from TKD to my host family’s beauty shop. I’ll have to go more often during the day, however, because I picked up some delightfully greasy egg, meat, and pepper silver-dollar sized paddies at five for 1,000 won! It makes me wonder what the other street food is selling for.

I finally arrived at Dong Seoul Bus Terminal around 9:30 pm and met Jon F. at the local subway station, where I discovered that I had left my subway pass card from Yonsei Day at home and had to purchase a new one. We made our way to a jjimjilbang (24-hour Korean bathhouse with common areas for relaxing, entertainment, and sleeping) called Siloam. It was a little on the pricey side for a jjimjilbang (around 10,000 won when most are around 6,000 or 7,000), but it was so nice that we decided to sleep there both nights we would stay in Seoul.

The next day, Saturday, we got a late start, so we decided to pick one of the mountains on our itinerary and save the other for another time. The mountain we chose was Bukhansan, which at its peak becomes very steep, bald-faced rock so that it’s nearly impossible to climb without assistance (i.e. a rope). Now, most hikes to such mountains in America will just bring you to a lookout point so that you can see the mountain even closer, or will bring you to the base of the insurmountable part and have a sign saying, “Welcome to the mountain. You’ve seen it. Now go on your way.”

Not in Korea however. In fact, at the top of this mountain was a decent sized flag, scaffolding, a heavy marble marker, and even a vendor selling Bukhansan handkerchiefs and pins for those fortunate enough to have earned them by making it to the top. All this despite the fact that you practically pull yourself up the mountain by means of a rope and metal posts that have been driven into the rock for the final kilometer or so of the ascent. (If you’ve ever climbed Half Dome at Yosemite National Park in California, you may know what sort of hike I’m talking about. I’ve heard it is similar, at any rate.)

(NOTE: The Ubiquitous Pigeon was at the top as well, which I don’t find nearly impressive, as he can fly, but still slightly impressive in that he chose to fly that high, whereas most pigeons are content to walk on the flat plazas and sidewalks near eating establishments or where people have established themselves temporarily for eating.)

Also typical of Korean hikes, it seems, the trail went straight up the mountainside, the Koreans apparently having never heard of a switchback. Even if there is a “switchback” in the trail, it is usually bypassed in favor of a more direct route. This led my friend Jon to comment that there must be a law somewhere that says Korean trails must be impossible to climb for at least 30% of the population. 60% in the case of foreigners, I added.

Koreans even wear special gear for hiking. They have synthetic fiber clothes designed for wicking away sweat and keeping the body’s temperature normal. They have matching telescoping poles that they use to keep pace and help them up steep soil, and sometimes even a third pole for when they don’t feel like coordinating two hands. They have special gloves, special hats, special bags, special shoes. The only time I have ever seen a Korean person where sunglasses (besides when my host uncle had pinkeye) was during hiking. And I’ve never been hiking while the sun was out! My point is it’s all part of the uniform. We may have all of this in the U.S., but most people will just go in shorts and a t-shirt. Korean people, when they do anything athletic, apparently have to wear the whole outfit. When they bike, there’s an outfit for that. Rollerblading is the same. Hiking is no different. At any rate, I’ve resolved to collect an entire outfit by the time I return home to the states.

These facts in consideration, it makes me think that perhaps the Korean phrase 산책는 곳 is poorly translated to English as “hiking”. It is sometimes even translated as “strolling”. In other words, the sentiment is recreational walking in general.

Given both of my experiences, first at Songnisan and now at Bukhansan, I think “mountain climbing” might be a more appropriate translation, so long as one keeps the idea of rock climbing as a separate category, which, despite the ample amount of rocks in Korea, is not a popular activity.

It was beautiful though, and well worth the climb. In total, the hike took us about 5 hours including breaks. During this time, I don’t think we covered more than 8 kilometers, and certainly not more than 10. As I said, the trails are steep, and not designed for land speed records.

About half way up the trail, we came to the top of the mountain range, where we discovered a king had built a walled fortress and auxiliary palace during the Three Kingdoms period and later to fend off Mongol invasions, which he was not successful at. Just imagining carrying all of that stone to the top of the range made me wonder at the power that king must have wielding. Even if they carried it from the top down, it could not have been easy given the mountain’s steepness.

In fact, we saw some construction workers restoring a portion of the wall, which essentially involved taking perfectly cut stone and chiseling it to make it look jagged and worn. But as for the poor workers who delivered the stone to that site, I imagined this dialogue:

Deliverer: Here’s your stone. Where do you … … want it?
Worker: Oh, just put it down there or something.
Deliverer: Ok. Man, it was hard getting that thing up here! And look at that! Not a scratch on it. Had to be really careful with it to do that! A satisfactory delivery, right?
Worker: Yeah, sure. Whatever.

To be honest though, we did see a helipad at one of the rest stops, so perhaps they just had to carry the stone over, rather than up. Still, admirable.

That evening, we ate at a decent restaurant. I had teriyaki chicken, while my friend had the bibimbop, being the conscientious vegetarian that he is. We actually joked on the trail that his being a vegetarian must give him unlimited strength and endurance, as he was certainly cruising along while I huffed and puffed my lagging way behind. Afterwards, I had coffee and cheesecake at a Starbucks to get my fix of Western food for the next week or so. I never know how long it will be, so I have to stock up like the squirrels in fall preparing themselves for the winter chill.

We decided that it would be a good idea for me to check the time schedule at Dong Seoul Station before tomorrow morning so I could attempt getting back to the hamlet before my weekly tutoring lesson. I couldn’t find my town on the bus schedule, however, so with assurances from a friend over the phone that it was possible to get a ticket directly to my small little village, I made my way over to the ticket booth and said the words that ended any chance of recuperation for the weekend:

Naeil the hamletae gayo. (Tomorrow, I am going to the hamlet.)

They of course gave me a ticket for the first bus out of there at 7:10 am. We calculated the time it took by subway to get to our jjimjilbang and found it to be about one hour, meaning I’d have to wake up at 5:45 am to be safe. Sigh…

We had a little trouble navigating the green line back to the jjimjilbang (We accidentally took a spur off that line instead of the main line.), but our time on the subway had been good for catching up all weekend, so the conversation made the time pass quickly. We did the usual comparing of notes on homestays and schools. His school experience has been vastly different because he teaches elementary students instead of high school. He also told me about a Winter Korean language intensive program in his area that I may attend to bone up on my language skills. We wound up at the jjimjilbang around 10:45 and, after bathing and sitting in the cool room for a while, finally went to sleep around 11:30.

One conversation of note that we had during the weekend was on how it was always a little awkward seeing other expatriates in Korea. One always feels compelled to greet these complete strangers, but then one would be faced with the awkwardness of feeling, “I have no idea who you are, but you’re like me and perhaps have had a similar trouble in adjusting here and I’d really like to just sit and talk with you about it.” It’s also awkward perhaps because in the United States we’re conditioned not to think differently of people just because of outward appearance. Whether this conditioning works or not is up for debate, but most people still at least think to themselves, “It is culturally wrong for me to think of this person as different from any other person based on their skin color.” Thus, I always feel a little ridiculous when I see a fellow foreigner and immediately think to myself, “Friend!” After all, are not the Koreans all around me decently friendly people?

It is different in Korea at least to some extent though. One is surrounded by so much homogeneity that one is immediately drawn to the different, especially if that one grew up in what would be surprising (perhaps even overwhelming) diversity compared to the Korean context. I’m not sure if it’s something I’ll ever get past. Or even want to get past for that matter.

Sunday morning I woke up around 6:00 am, later than I should have, hurriedly changed, said goodbye to Jon, promising each other that we’d do it again sometime, and was out of the jjimjilbang by 6:10.

I was as dignified as possible, of course, but I was also practically running to each subway station in my attempt to get to Dong Seoul Terminal before my bus left at 7:10. I calculated the average time it took between stops to be 2 minutes and examined my subway map to determine when I should arrive at my stop. When I got on the green line, I fervently prayed that I had gotten on the right spur and would not be sent off one stop in the opposite direction before I could correct my mistake. I arrive at Dong Seoul at 7:02, enough time for me to get a 300 won iced coffee from the vending machine. I downed it and ran to the bus. No breakfast, no water, a spoonful of coffee, and two hours to the first resting area, but I was on the bus at 7:05. Five minutes to spare.