Busan e-FM Week 36: Love Hotels, Sex and Adultery (Banned)

About 'Open Mike in Busan'

Introduction

It took 36 weeks, but I finally had a script refused for broadcast. When I started doing my weekly segment with Busan e-FM, it was with the agreement that I could be honest about my experiences in Korea, but the question is, does Korea want to be honest about itself?

Ostensibly, the problem was that Love Hotels and Adultery – the main thrust of my piece – were “not appropriate subjects” for the radio. TBS eFM – an equivalent English-language radio station in Seoul had covered these subjects before – but that’s Seoul and this is Busan, which is generally much more socially conservative.

Exploring where these newly discovered boundaries lay, and whether they were strictly sexual, I asked - mindful that the 2011 Dog Meat Festival in Gyeonggi Province had recently been cancelled amidst protests – if the subject I was allegedly considering for the next week – that of dog meat in Korea – would be acceptable. I was of course, just screwing with them. I felt I saw a slightly pained look cross the face of my assigned handler. It was not really an acceptable subject either.

And so it was we reached the climax of our conversation. It was probably best to avoid ‘controversial subjects’. That was the spot I’d touched. The two people I knew that regularly listened to my segment – who for all I know were actually the only two people who listened at all - were surprised. Hadn’t the radio station really been listening to what I’d been talking about before now?

I’ve always found the foreigners who only tell Koreans what they want to hear for the sake of a quiet life somewhat soda-masochistic, even if we’ve all done it from time to time. So I escaped my temporary bondage and continued tackling controversial subjects in the weeks that followed, going on to reference attitudes to homosexuality in Korea, monoculture and corporate enslavement, racism and the often enforced dystopian existence of foreigners, consumer nationalism, chaebol media lies and the absence of critical thought, [stay tuned!] but I did it in my usual style – hopefully relatively gently, diplomatically, and with humour.

I’d like to think that if done sufficiently eloquently, it is possible to speak truth to power in Korea, but whether that’s because people here are truly prepared to have a light shone on certain subjects, or simply because they weren’t listening or didn’t understand, is the loaded question.

I include the script below as an example of the realities of Korean life and culture you can’t talk about on the radio in Busan in 2011.

Introduction – Love Hotels, Sex and Adultery

Last week I talked about ‘bangs’ - such as the ‘DVD bang’ couples go to. This week I’m talking about a related subject, that of ‘love hotels’ or ‘love motels’. I don’t quite know how to translate this because we don’t use the word ‘motel’ in British English, but I’ve seen them called both hotels and motels here.

I think this highlights an issue with the cultural development of language. A motel is described as a ‘hotel for motorists’, and it makes sense this word would emerge from American English because of the long road journeys people have to make in the United States. They don’t have to do this in England because the country is geographically small – so you can normally get to where you want to go in a day. But I understand that many American motels are dropping the word now because it’s seen as being ‘seedy’.

We still have slightly seedy hotels in England – we just call them ‘bed & breakfasts’. But there are no love hotels in England that I'm aware of.

Love Hotels

So I was surprised when I saw the love hotels here, although not totally shocked – Japan is famous for its love hotels and most people outside Japan have probably heard of them. To a Westerner like myself, there seem to be a lot of general cultural similarities between Japan and Korea, so it’s not a complete shock to discover love hotels here, but as I’ve said before, I really didn’t know that much about Korea before coming here, and I certainly didn’t realise how popular they are.

I took them as a sign of social restriction in Korea, in the same way that ‘DVD bang’ represent the same issue. They are both somewhere to go because so many young people live at home. Maybe ‘DVD bang’ are where they go to fool around, and when it gets more serious they graduate to love hotels. I find it funny though how people going there want privacy, but the buildings are usually so very visible and obvious because of their architectural tendency to employ large fake Roman columns, cupid statues, small windows and plenty of neon lighting.

Staying in a Love Hotel

I’ve actually stayed in a love hotel. The first time I went to Seoul it was just for an overnight trip, and my wife and I wanted to save money, so she said “love hotels are cheap... and usually have Internet connections.” I thought ‘why not?’ Anyway, if the word ‘cheap’ didn’t sell it for me, the word ‘Internet’ certainly did.

So we quickly came across a love hotel in some Seoul backstreet near the Blue House, although I’ve learned that in Korea love hotels certainly don’t feel compelled to hide themselves away. That said, they do try to maintain a certain air of privacy, with curtains at the entrance to the drive-in areas to avoid cars and perhaps car licence-plates being seen, which always gave me the impression that a lot of older people might be using the hotels given that younger people generally own fewer cars – and probably don’t care about that kind of privacy as much. This quickly led me to believe that love hotels are frequently the venue for affairs in Korea. But if that didn’t convince me, when we reached the counter it also had a curtain over it, our money went underneath and a hand comes back with a key. No faces are visible and it’s all quite seedy actually, which made me feel vaguely guilty. I felt like trying to look underneath the curtain to say “we’re married”, but then I suppose everyone feeling guilty says that.

Last week I talked about going to DVD bangs with two Korean women, which in retrospect – given the area we were in – looked bad. And in some ways I felt the same way at the love hotel – if the staff had seen my face it wasn’t going to do anything positive for the reputation of foreigners. Then again, love hotels don’t always do much with foreigners for the reputation of the Koreans who run them – last year there wasn’t enough hotel space at the inaugural Korean Grand Prix, so a number of journalists ended up staying in love hotels – perhaps unsuspectingly. Anyway, the main point it that they were charged $310 per night – in other words they were ripped off – which means that evidently the love hotel owners realised they were foreigners early into the transaction – curtains or not.

While it might be cheap – unless you happen to be an unsuspecting foreigner – it’s not necessarily easy to get a good night’s rest there, because my wife was worried about hidden cameras. I don’t know if this is just an urban legend or whether it actually happens – actually I suspect it probably does happen sometimes. So it’s all about undressing in a part of the room where you think the camera won’t see you, then hiding under the covers and sleeping. I don’t want to be famous on the Korean Internet.

So I guess the love hotels are still too much of a risk for some. I was up on Hwangryeong Mountain late one night in Busan taking shots of the city after dark, and there were a few cars parked along the road, spaced apart. There seemed to be some kind of activity in a couple of the cars, and one of them had the stereotypical steamed up windows, and the car was moving around. Given the executive and old fashioned nature of the car concerned, I imagined there had to be an older couple inside.

Adultery is a Criminal Offence in Korea

Of course, adultery is illegal in Korea, so people have to be careful. I was really shocked when I found out about this law, but perhaps it goes some way to explain some of the behaviour I’ve encountered. When my wife and I were at another love hotel, another couple happened to come out of the room at the same time as us, and as soon as they saw us they dashed back inside.

I don’t know what to think about the adultery law. On the one hand, adultery is a bad thing, but on the other hand, in my opinion it seems like the kind of law the Taliban would have, and not something you find in a modern country.

I think the law creates a bad impression of South Korea. Maybe it’s not fair expecting Korea to be socially liberal, but this country is very keen to attract foreign investment and foreign companies, but I imagine business executives in foreign companies look at Korean society as a whole before they decide to come here and think “what kind of country is this?”

What I can’t figure out about this law is that legislators are mainly men, and men are usually willing adulterers – in fact male politicians around the world are known for their affairs – so why did these men create and pass this law? Do they like living dangerously or were they really worried about their lives? [I left this question hanging but I’m convinced that men passed this law to control women in the traditionally misogynistic Korean court system, although more recently judges may have been a little more balanced in their judgements].

It’s also worth making some comparisons between South Korea and other countries. China is not known for being socially liberal, but adultery isn’t a criminal offence there. But then adultery is a criminal offence in the U.S. state of New Hampshire – it isn’t enforced and there are people trying to get it removed from the statute books.

I think the whole issue raises some fundamental questions about freedom and democracy in South Korea. Should the majority be able to dictate to – and criminalise – a minority that don’t meet their moral standards? For that matter, what right does the government have to legislate people’s sex lives?

It’s a dangerous road to go down in my opinion. Some Islamic countries have ‘moral police’ who enforce compliance with Sharia Law – is that really what the police should be doing in Korea? Last year, I read about an incident in Malaysia where the ‘morality police’ were knocking on people’s doors in a hotel, and they ended up arresting 52 unmarried couples. I suppose if the Korean police really wanted to enforce the law here they could just visit love hotels, check people’s marital status, and make arrests. To be fair, they don’t, but the fact that the law exists means that one day they could, or just choose to do it selectively to target certain individuals or groups, which is why bad laws should never be on the statute books. Anyway, as far as Korea is concerned, I think the people should be spending their time arresting motorcyclists who ride on the pavements [sidewalks], rather than getting involved in policing people’s relationships.

Korean Porn Movies

While I don’t worry about getting arrested in a love hotel, I do worry about the perceived issue of hidden cameras and ending up on the Internet, but I haven’t avoided Korea’s love hotels despite this. When we went to a funeral in Namhae we found ourselves in the countryside and it was quite isolated. As you can imagine, there wasn’t a proper hotel for miles, but there was a love hotel just up the road from the the funeral hall. So given that Korean funerals tend to be multi-day events, and given that we didn’t want to sleep in the funeral hall with a heaving mass of older Koreans, we had little choice but to stay in a love hotel once again.

This one was even less subtle because even if the building's fake Roman columns and cupid statues didn’t give the game away to the uninitiated, it had a large collection of pornographic videos outside the elevator on our floor - most appeared to be Korean-made. It also had a great looking Jacuzzi placed centrally within the room, but sadly we daren’t use it because of the potential for hidden cameras.

Korean Culture

Staying in a love hotel is an interesting experience. When it comes down to it, staying in hotels in England is often all the same, but Korean love hotels have character. At the risk of giving Korean newspapers even more reasons to hate us, I think it’s something every foreigner should try at least once. They are part of what Korea is, and part of the cultural experience here.

Planned air date: 2011-06-29 @ ~19:30

Footnote

Five weeks after the planned air date of this piece, South Korea's Constitutional Court overturned the provision in the Criminal Code imposing a maximum two-year prison sentence on adulterers, saying it was 'an infringement on the sphere of sexual life that society should maintain on its own' and that 'the state was excessively restricting a matter of personal decision.'

Busan e-FM Week 30: Family Month

About 'Open Mike in Busan'

Background

I prepare notes for my radio segment; I always felt that to be my best on the show I had to construct a narrative. Like most of the things I write, it’s more time consuming than the result appears to suggest or justify; I tend to debate each word and nuance in my head. Sometimes it turns violent. This week was a new low; the preparation time for my ten minutes on air was nine hours.

My topics are sometimes purely anecdotal experiences and while there may be deeper points to be made, the intention is primarily to entertain. But other times there are serious issues to discuss, and this seemed to be one of those times. I feel there are a lot of stereotypes of foreigners in Korea, often perpetuated by the media. One of the reasons I agreed to do a weekly slot on Busan eFM – and then sign on for a second season – was the notion that in just being out there and talking to a Korean audience – albeit one that is learning or already speaks English – it might provide more of an insight into the deeper thoughts and fears of a foreigner living here. I wanted to speak out. I think if you don’t, Korea is something which just happens to you.

But after kicking the ideas around in my mind for a long time, forming structure and writing sound-bites, I felt the result I wanted had eluded me. Writing to me feels like a game of chess, where the paragraphs are pieces and the various parts have to be carefully choreographed into a winning position. Except it’s not so much chess as blitz chess, played against the clock for suboptimal results. This week I really felt the need to win the game, but as it wore on I realised I’d forgotten how to play.

The powers that be at the station seemed to like it, but I’m not under the illusion that anyone really cares. In the end, my writing is as much about getting my own thoughts in order and understanding the confusion of contradictions that is myself, as much as it is about anything else.

Introduction

May is kind of family month in Korea, because of the close proximity of Children’s Day and Parents’ Day. So the TV channels are running lots of family-related programmes. Inevitably this includes the vaguely self-satisfied ‘foreigners integrating well into Korea’ genre of programming, and there are two main types of show – women from South-East Asian countries brought here via marriage brokers for older Korean men, and Western foreigners married to Korean women.

Reality and unreality

I find the programmes featuring the Western men fascinating. Some are obviously willing collaborators, but sometimes I feel that others have a kind of haunted look about them – the look of men who are trapped. There’s something in the body language and the tone of what they say in English. It’s a subtlety I suspect is lost on most of the Korean audience; it’s easy to focus on how well foreigner is eating kimchi or speaking Korean.

I suppose I don’t find these programmes realistic – certainly at least, they don’t match my experience. But then I’ve read a lot of foreigners talking on the Internet about their Korean lives, and these programmes don’t often seem to match their experiences either. They tend to create a positive image, but perhaps that’s not the reality. My wife actually said to me that she hopes her mother doesn’t watch too many of these shows, because they make me look bad in comparison.

Unfortunately she does watch them. In fact we were in a taxi a few ago and the female driver watched these programmes too. “Living with him must be ‘fun’” she suggested. My mother-in-law smiled, but gave no answer, which I think tells you the truth.

So I think these programmes make my life more difficult – I can’t live up to the snapshot positive image they create. I suspect that if I were on one of these programmes, even I’d look better than I am on them; I’d look integrated because I live with my mother-in-law, and now brother-in-law (again), but it’s not the reality.

It can be difficult marrying someone from another culture and living in that culture. It’s easy to feel isolated because of the cultural barriers and language barriers. There’s the pressure to integrate, to learn Korean, to conform, and it can create a lot of stress. My life’s pretty messed up really. Don’t get me wrong, I like living in Korea, but my living here is full of problems – and that’s the reality.

International Marriage Damage and Prevention

There’s been some controversy about these TV programmes in the last week, which stems from the rise of ‘anti-multicultural groups’ in Korea.

One group, the wonderfully titled International Marriage Damage & Prevention Center, plans to hold a rally outside KBS headquarters in June to urge the broadcaster to stop airing the programmes which they accuse of ‘beautifying’ multicultural families by creating ‘illusions’ about them. That’s basically the same thing I said, but the difference is that my concern is purely the portrayal on television of these relationships – I think it’s clear what these anti-multicultural groups really want is just for certain types of foreigners to be kept out of Korea.

I find it fascinating that they are mainly targeting migrant workers and imported foreign wives – not Westerners – even though we’re all part of multiculturalism here. Their argument is that migrant workers are taking away jobs from Koreans and ‘committing crimes’, and immigrant wives are coming here as part of marriage scams to ‘earn money’.

I think this ‘committing crimes’ thing is a huge clue as to where they are coming from. There’s always been a strong nationalistic streak running through Korean society, and there’s nothing wrong with being proud of your country, but there’s a narrow line between pride and hatred. The English author Samuel Johnson said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”. I don’t think he meant that all patriotism was necessarily bad, but he was highlighting how common it is for people who have no intellectual argument – or no intellectual ability – to dispense with rational debate in favour of appealing to people’s fears and hatred. I think Europeans like myself are especially sensitive to this kind of behaviour because of what happened in 1930s Germany and other European countries in history. Nothing good ever comes out of trying to make an entire country irrational and angry by lying to them, and it scares me when groups start trying to manipulate people by creating fear.

All Foreigners in Korea are (Potential) Criminals*

I don’t agree with these criminal accusations. I’ve said before that National Police Agency figures show that foreigners in Korea commit fewer crimes per-person than Koreans, and it makes sense if you think about it; if you’re an economic migrant – or any kind of foreigner here – the last thing you want to do is commit a crime, get caught, thrown out of the country and lose it all. Of course, a few foreigners will commit crimes, but these groups are trying to create the fear among Koreans that all foreigners are criminals – it’s certainly the implication of the statements they are making – and that’s just simple racism.

Even though they aren’t targeting Western foreigners, we’ve had these accusations ourselves in the past of course. A few years ago the newspapers were full of suggestions that foreign English teachers were coming to Korea and spreading HIV and AIDS. This time, these hate groups are attacking ‘economic migrants’ from countries perceived to be ‘inferior’ (i.e. poorer) to Korea, which is another thing that tells you this is racially motivated.

The odd thing is if you think about it – given the poor job situation in my country and especially America, many Westerners here are really economic migrants too. It’s not uncommon to hear native-English teachers here say they can’t easily go back home because there are no jobs. But these anti-multicultural groups aren’t attacking Westerners - strangely only people from other Asian countries seem to have this stigma attached to them - although if they aren’t stopped they’ll probably come for us next.

Of course, Koreans in the U.S. have committed crimes – some very high profile like the Virginia Tech Massacre. But how would Koreans here feel if American groups started campaigning for Koreans to be kept out of the country? For that matter, people from Busan have committed crimes in Seoul – how would Busan citizens feel if groups in Seoul said people from this city shouldn’t be allowed to move to the capital because people from Busan are ‘criminals’ or only going to Seoul as part of ‘scams’. It would be ridiculous, but then why should foreigners in Korea have to be treated like this?

Fairly unbalanced

I think these TV programmes are actually part of the problem. By making multicultural families look more positive than they are they are feeding these hate groups. I don’t know if there’s a solution, but it’s clear that migrant workers have lots of problems with discrimination and working conditions, and there have been numerous cases of immigrant wives being abused and even murdered by their husbands in recent months alone. Even as a Westerner, I have problems here. Of course, these groups are probably pretending that these things don’t happen, unless they are particularly ignorant – which is always a possibility.

But perhaps if these programmes showed more of these problems then maybe – like my mother-in-law has realised, and that taxi driver hasn’t – multicultural families are not necessarily as much ‘fun’ as they are made to look on TV.

Links
Busan e-FM
Inside Out Busan

Air date: 2011-05-18 @ ~19:30

It's More Expensive to Do Nothing

I'm not writing this to offer any insightful analysis about the attack on South Korea today, this is just an account of how I spent my afternoon and evening.

When my wife came into our office and said something terrible had happened while scrambling to put the news on the TV, a heavy sense of deja vu was already descending on me as she explained that Yeonpyeong Island was being shelled by the North Koreans. It wasn't a surprise; it's long been a potential target and was thought to be under threat recently due to the transition of power in North Korea and in the run-up to the G-20 meeting.

So it was the Cheonan all over again, except this time the attack was immediately more photogenic, and because of the proximity to North Korea's previous attack the thought briefly entered my head that this time, yes - maybe this time - the politicians in Seoul would respond militarily, and hit back against their attackers. Our attackers in fact, because I live here too.

If the North Korean sinking of the Cheonan taught me one thing, it's that you can't rely on the media or the military here to give you accurate information at times like these. And it isn't about media restrictions or secrecy - but rather it's speculation - sometimes wild speculation - dressed up as authoritative fact, seemingly for its own sake. And the media slips into it's Wag the Dog rolling file footage of ships firing their guns and soldiers running around purposefully. You can almost believe you're watching the war live, if a war was really going on.

This time we were told that South Korea had responded militarily, but later this was said to be with the firing of a singular 'K-9 155mm self-propelled howitzer', and the official announcing this declined to say whether North Korean territory had been hit. Which left me rather suspecting that they'd deliberately missed for fear of escalating the situation. Indeed, while the attack was apparently still under-way, President Lee Myung-bak was - truly or falsely - said to be desperately trying to calm the situation.

In the midst of such gravity, the situation tips into apparent farce. The South Korean government have responded to the ongoing attack... with a telegram. And before long the MBC network reported - with a deadly straight face - a South Korean military source complaining "Even though we sent a telegram, they are still firing." Meanwhile we watch South Korean houses burn on TV.

So if you were hoping the still active North Korean artillery positions were going to be targeted, this is the point at which your heart sinks - because you know the script from here on. The South Korean government vow 'stern retaliation' for any further provocations, but South Korea is like a man in a pub who is knocked to the floor by a bully, and gets up waving his finger saying, 'next time you hit me, I'm really going to get mad'. Punch - 'next time' - punch - 'next time' - punch... and so on. The depressing cycle of a country without any idea of what to do about a neighbour that sinks its ships and shells its civilians. Well, not that I do either.

There will be bluster and harsh words spoken by the government in Seoul but just like post-Cheonan they will never amount to much, and the North Koreans will spend tonight laughing at the weakness of their victims. Then they'll blame South Korea for starting it or claim it was an accident. And some in South Korea will even believe them. It's incredibly frustrating to watch, and even more frustrating to live here watching it all unfold.

South Korea is playing a long game, heads-in-the-sand hoping for a North Korean collapse to take the problem away from them. The old-Korea hands brush it off and say they've seen it all before but I believe they're wrong; this is no longer a conventional stand-off, but a nuclear one where only one side has the bombs. South Korea nestles under the U.S. nuclear shield, but if the day comes when North Korean nuclear missiles can reach American cities, or Tea-Party isolationists control Washington, how far can South Korea really rely on its old ally?

The Government in Seoul will try to brush this under the carpet and move on in the name of diplomacy or absurdity. But for tonight at least, the mood in Korea is sombre - and it's enforced - they've cancelled all the light entertainment shows.

And then there's me, and the butterfly effect from North Korea's attack today. I think radio programmes are like sausages. You might like them, but you never want to know how they are made. So you don't want to know how much work I put into preparing for a 10-minute slot I do on Busan e-FM every Wednesday. An hour ago I took a call telling me that tomorrow's topic - which was about festivals - was now predictably inappropriate, leaving me to prepare something entirely new at quite short notice. And it musn't be funny, which makes the task that much harder. So I'll probably talk about Korean apartments, because in my experience, they aren't something to laugh about. But it pains me to go on the air aiming to deliver a bland performance about a subject I will have to make as humourless as possible while not tackling the elephant in the room of what it's like for me to live as a foreigner in Korea at times like these. But I suppose we don't want to depress the listeners either.

It's nobody's fault that these media upheavals happen at times like these (well, apart from North Korea), and my problems are trivial in the scheme of things. Two men are dead, many more people are injured, people have lost their homes, and we can add them to the list of all the other victims of North Korea's unprovoked attacks. We can pretend their deaths will one day be avenged, but they won't. We'll agonise over our collective ineffectiveness for a few days and move on.

The Face of the Enemy

If we sit by and become complacent and put our heads in the sand, we're complicit. - Shelley Morrison

Last Sunday was a public holiday here. Memorial Day, held on the 6th June each year, commemorates those who have died for what has become the Republic of Korea.

I was on a beach, it was hot and smoke blew overhead from a burning building, but the acrid smell which reached me didn't drive me back; amongst grotesque images of death and destruction I saw tanks and they were friendly. A British flag flapped in the wind. The pristine sands of Haeundae were hosting a Korean War memorial.

Under the title of "Thanks Runs Forever" (except, perhaps, if you're a member of this group), "The World Peace Freedom United" explains:

We would like to publicize the realities of the Korean War... ...which was a fratricidal war, and which everybody is forgetting, especially for young generation who do not know anything about truth.

This may be a fair point - a Gallup poll conducted in Korea suggests that only 43.9% of young people polled identified North Korea as being responsible for the war. 10.9% blamed the United States. While this is contrary to accepted history, it cuts both ways. The memorial describes the 1948 Republic of Korea as 'a free, liberal and democratic country', a narrative which does not necessarily fit well with the Jeju Uprising during which mass executions of suspected leftists took place, or the findings of South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission pertaining to the 1948-1950 period.

People like to label themselves liberals or conservatives, but when they do so they give up their individual rationality in favour of outsourcing their thinking to a newspaper, television network, political group or political leader, and this country has its fair share of useful idiots in this respect. But unless you believe the North Korean propaganda machine (as some in the South are apparently minded to), most of the facts are not in question. Stories like those of the SS Meridith Victory are often no more than historical footnotes, and yet they are profoundly important touchstones in the context of their times.

"North Korean refugees just trusted United Nations Forces and followed them to go the world of freedom, Republic of Korea."

Coming down 'Hwangcho-Ryung' Pass on December 10, 1950, the column of US 1st Marine Corps and a Provisional Battalion of 31st Regiment of US Army 7th Infantry Division, which were composed with survivors, were intermixed with many North Korean refugees feeling from the Chinese Communist Forces to go the land of freedom and life, Republic of Korea.

Some civilians were not so fortunate, and the memorial did not hesitate to show those images too. Below the photo of a dead American soldier with a gaping head wound and minus a leg, we are informed:

Body of soldier killed from 3rd Battalion, 31st Regiment of US 7th Infantry Division. Why this young fellow die? He sacrificed himself for freedom and democracy for Korea and Korean people.

But the memorial is not just about the past, but the present and the future. We are told that North Korea has never changed:

"North Korean Communists who were controlled by Soviet Union have opposed the founding of the Republic of Korea since August 15, 1945, the day Korea was liberated from the Imperialist Japan.

Despite their opposition, the Repubic of Korea was founded on August 15, 1948 through election as a free and democratic country.

Then, under the pretenses of unification as one county, the Communists created an unprecendented fatricidal tragedy, the Korean War.

There are many who believe North Korea has changed and now many look upon North Korea too amicably.

However, we must recognize the goal of North Korean Communist remains the same: the communization of the Korean peninsula. This has never changed. Never changed."

So who are these people that would so readily forget the 'lessons of the past' and 'the realities of the present'? Apparently, it's the people who burned the contents of the first memorial when in was on display by Cheonggye Stream in 2008.

"Behind Candle Light Rally?: Who is trying to overthrow Republic of Korea?
While we held our Korean War Photo Display at the Cheonggyecheon of Seoul in summer of 2008, our peaceful photo display was totally destroyed by some of a so-called candle light rally organization. On the night of June 25, 2008, they attacked and broke most of the photographic displays and again, on the night of June 26 to the early morning of June 27, 2008, they continued to burn the photographic memories of the founding of the Republic of Korea and its defense during the Korean War. The photos which these radical terrorists attacked were mainly related to the national identity of our sovereign nation, Republic of Korea. Who can say that these demonstrators were engaged in a peaceful rally when every one saw their acts of terrorism attacking our peaceful photo display?"

Two years later, there are now images of the sinking of South Korea's navy ship Cheonan to add to the display, and the opportunity was not missed. It was an image heavy with symbolism when I saw it, because the memorial made frequent reference to the "Chinese Communist Forces" that ultimately fought against the armies gathered under a United Nations flag in Korea, and to many people's minds by refusing to condemn North Korea's sinking of the Cheonan, they are siding with the aggressor again. There was a board at one end of the memorial with a large sheet of paper and a pen, where people left their thoughts. Two people wrote in badly formed English letters, which made it highly likely that they were not native speakers, 'Chinese Fockers', or something very similar.

Ultimately though, despite China's considerable contribution to the Korean War, the memorial is really about Korea. And personally, I came away from it with a heightened sense of the darker forces which are at work with the Korean Republic - old schisms forged in blood which would rewrite history, and perhaps even re-enact it, given the right circumstances. It's said that those who do not learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat it, and it's easy to forget those lessons on a bright summer's day on a beach where people are playing games and children's laughter is carried through the air. Yet it's that very banality - immediately beyond the images of horror, that perhaps more than anything is the real memorial to those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of the free and democratic country which South Korea finally became in 1987.

Primary Colors

"The test of democracy is freedom of criticism." - David Ben-Gurion

Elections were held this week in Korea, and while democracy is a great thing, I'm glad to see the back of the campaign for one reason alone. I work until 1am and I don't always get to bed until 2am. So I haven't appreciated the election candidates who seem to think it helps their cause to drive up and down or park outside my apartment building at 7.30am in the morning with loudspeakers featuring vacuous patriotic tunes on a two to three bar loop, or speeches from candidates delivered so emotionally one wonders if they are actually pleading for their lives.

Personally, it mystifies me as to how shouting hysterically at passers-by or playing loud annoying music would, in any way, persuade me to vote for a candidate in this country, because it seems to me it would specifically provoke me into not voting for them. Evidently I'm not the only one who is thoroughly fed up with the candidates' antics. Perhaps they are making so much noise to hide the fact that they don't have many policies - well, except for promising people free WiFi.

Annoyingly, recorded speeches are only allowed from 8am, so those candidates who have been waking me up before this are breaking the law and supposedly run the risk of prison terms of up to two years. That's the theory anyway.



My wife floated the idea of actually complaining to the police, but I didn't think trying to get a candidate jailed was exactly the kind of introduction to Korean politics I wished to have as a foreigner. Foreigners are allowed to vote – if they've been resident long enough which I haven't – but they are 'prohibited from engaging in campaigning', which seems like something of a paradox.

So the streets then are thick with Korea's ubiquitous Bongo trucks converted for political campaigning, coupled with large numbers of election campaigners which makes you marvel at the spirit of campaign volunteerism in this country... until you realise it's actually a popular form of paid part-time employment. Two trucks were almost parked in close proximity to my apartment building on a near permanent basis, which was not a lot of fun after the first couple of days.

I chanced upon an election bongo parked outside an apartment block in a relatively quiet backwater of our neighbourhood. There was nobody to be seen, but it didn't stop the candidate delivering an impassioned speech at full volume to... well, just me actually.



But this is how it's done, and it's sometimes such an efficient system that they don't even bother taking the candidate off the bongo before moving on to the next location. Yes, I've seen candidates bravely hanging on to their lecterns with their token supporters behind them while the vehicle they are standing on has driven down the bumpy highway outside our apartment at around 40mph. It's all rather absurd, but with bribery and vote-buying possibly down in this election (depending on who you believe) – this appears to be one of the best ways candidates can think up to engage people, although one suspects if this is indeed the best idea they have, they probably won't make very good politicians.

I shouldn't complain too much about the noise though, because at least there are elections, even if noise seems to be the main outcome rather than serious debate. And the candidates can't necessarily be completely blamed for the low-tech and apparently policy free approach, since the National Election Commission curiously banned political parties from engaging in public debates over 'hot election issues' (aka Government policies), in a move which seems straight out of the Hugo Chavez playbook. So candidates have numbers, colours and perceived political positions they're not necessarily at liberty to discuss in public. What can people vote for, and how can politicians differentiate themselves in this kind of environment?

There has been innovation though. Twitter is a rapidly growing phenomenon in Korea. and some candidates have used Twitter heavily. But perhaps I shouldn't be so willing to see candidate leave behind the low-tech Bongo-truck approach; I made the mistake of following a couple of candidates on Twitter who, in an act of presumed ignorance or desperation, followed me. I soon learned that their determination to annoy the public on the streets extended into the online world, and I was deluged with tweets every few minutes.

And this is how the election results were shown on TV - with candidates raising their fists. Korea fighting! Candidates fighting! Or something like that.

Sirens

There is a civil defence drill here around the 15th of every month. The authorities put out flags a day or two beforehand to remind people. Now that the puppet regime in North Korea is threatening to attack South Korea again - in the past it has threatened to turn it into a sea of fire amongst other things, the drills take on a slightly more ominous feel.

Sometimes I don't hear the sirens - it depends where I am. If fact, it's a given that if I'm in the subway or even in a store I won't know anything about it. One person told me that she never hears it in her school where she works, and I never used to hear it in my old apartment which seemed to be positioned in a place where the warning coverage wasn't very good. One would hope that because of South Korea's love of technology, in the event of a real threat in addition to sounding the sirens the Government would have a system in place to text everyone, but I'm not sure that they do.

There is no such danger of not hearing the sirens in the apartment I live in now. And because it overlooks the main road into the centre of the city, every month I watch the entertainment unfold as the sirens sound and civil defence ajummas march into the middle of the lanes and, armed with little more than a whistle and looks that could turn flesh to stone, attempt to cajole drivers into pulling over to the side of the road. This almost always works, because they have to, but as you might expect, for some motorists the challenge is to get as far as possible before they dare not go further. I've seen cars speed past the ajummas on occasion well into the drill, soliciting the dirtiest of looks from them undiluted by my high vantage point. I'm not entirely convinced that if the sirens ever sound in anger drivers are going to be quite so well behaved and pull into the side of the road to possibly die, when their gut instinct is to get home to their families as quickly as possible.

Last month once the sirens had stopped I noticed something new. It was incredibly quiet. So quiet in fact, that I could hear birds singing. That was practically a new experience in Busan, where wildlife is largely confined to the mountains. As birdsong echoed through the valley we live in, it struck me that this must have been a beautiful place once before someone dropped a city on it.

This month there was something new again. The sirens were different. They seemed to have changed from the air-raid type sound familiar from the Second World and Cold Wars, into something more akin to a police siren, with a different pitch and a more rapid cycle. I was a little disappointed - I felt it lacked the menace of the Soviet attack warnings I grew up with, but later it transpired it was actually a natural disaster drill, and the sirens were for tsunamis and earthquakes. I'm not actually sure how you sound a siren to warn for an earthquake though – but that's what they said.



Despite its proximity to Japan, Busan is not particularly directly prone to earthquakes, which is just as well considering the dubious build quality of our apartment block. However, with climate change turning the waters off the southern coast we live on subtropical, the Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Administration (KHOA) are warning us of worse typhoons and tsunamis in future. Unfortunately, typhoons are a very real threat here as are tsunamis caused by major earthquakes close to Japan.

Telling the two types of sirens apart then is actually quite important, as in principle it's the difference between heading down into the civil defence shelters otherwise known as the subway system, versus heading for high ground. (In practice however it's not quite that simple anyway - the subway system might not be the best move in the event of a chemical attack where the gas is heavier than air and sinks).

The Puppet Masters

It seems odd to go on writing about my life in Korea without mentioning current events. Last Thursday the results of an international investigation found that four weeks ago North Korea attacked and sank the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan, with the loss of 46 lives.

North Korea has, over the years, previously attacked South Korean military vessels, launched a 31-man commando raid on the President's residence in Seoul, attacked a Presidential delegation in Burma killing the South Korean Foreign Minister amongst others, blown up a South Korean passenger plane, launched a disasterous spying mission in 1996, kidnapped Japanese citizens from the Japanese mainland - although at least they eventually got an apology - and generally made a mockery of international agreements and the international community at every available opportunity. These are merely the edited highlights of North Korean provocations. Which is why most people in Korea have reacted to the latest incident with a certain stoicism. One must be careful of reading too much into the South Korean media in these times, but I would concur that there has been little panic buying in the shops either in Busan or – I understand from my social network – in Seoul. This is not to say people are unaffected. A friend in Seoul who has a young baby said that at the moment she has no enthusiasm for her job – all she wants to do is be at home with her child now. There are more police on the subways, possibly due to the recent capture of a North Korean spy and the information she obtained about the Seoul Metro, and the underlying tension is just that little bit higher. Despite this, bizarrely, North Korea has still demanded that South Korea's SBS network give it a free World Cup television feed and pay for Northern journalists to attend the football tournament this summer.

It's said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. We paid a high price once in my country for appeasing a ruthless dictator. In retrospect, South Korea may have repeated that mistake with its 'Sunshine Policy'. It's tempting to have hoped that North Korea would have gone down the Chinese road of economic development, but this perhaps ignores the reality that the Chinese Communist Party is somewhat meritocratic and these days, pragmatic. North Korea is more akin to a feudal dictatorship, with hereditary succession where the leader is often raised to the status of a God. Our mistake has been to believe that Kim Jong-Il would do the logical thing, but ego and internal politics in dictatorships is rarely about logic.

I've been part of that mistake too. Back in the naive 'Sunshine' days I invested in a company called Aminex which had done a deal to explore for oil in Northern territory. That saga still goes on, with a deal on the Eastern sea – the place where North Korean submarines disappear - being signed despite the latest crisis. Needless to say, I've come to see that move as a mistake, and now don't believe in supporting a dictatorship in any way when it will spend the foreign currency it receives on weapons which might eventually kill me and my family. I've also considered not buying Chinese-made goods or investing in China any more on the principle that North Korea is increasingly a puppet state of China and protectorate at the UN Security Council. But it's a problematic position, because if South Koreans rose up as a whole and boycotted China in protest, it may push China into nationalist outrage. But if we all continue to do business with them, are we once again travelling down the road of appeasement with another dictatorship?

And how much do South Koreans care anyway? Believe it or not despite all this, a recent Gallup Korea survey revealed that if North Korea invades the South, apparently 25.7% of respondents are against the Government immediately exercising its right to self-defence. You read that correctly - allegedly one-quarter of South Koreans don't want to fight back. This might be because they don't want to be conscripted or because they want to just talk to the attackers. The allegation that many young people have no idea who started the Korean War may be a contributory factor. Still, I find it inexplicable.

Right now, I've done nothing about the situation, which is surprising for a financial trader. We tend to think in terms of offsetting risk – hedging our positions for worst case scenarios – and that makes us financial survivalists. That sense of survivalism often extends into the real world, where it seems we are the first to buy masks during viral outbreaks, store emergency food, water and equipment. It's not always the direct problem we fear so much as the collapse in infrastructure that leaves people short of basic essentials. And gone down that road too in the past, but despite the vague risk that conflict could break out at any minute, this time I've done nothing to prepare for it. Yes, Busan's distance from the border puts it in a much more fortunate position than Seoul, but since any war is likely to be fought asymmetrically by the North, it would be a mistake to believe that we are safe here. And a widespread infrastructural collapse will carry its own implications.

Another reason why I really haven't addressed this is that I've been extremely busy of late for various reasons, and life goes on. Preparing for a war is some way down my list of things to do, which is my judgement on the probabilities involved. If conflict breaks out that will prove to be a bad trade. This is the slightly surreal nature of life in Korea right now – it feels like the Cold War all over again. Will the sirens one day sound in anger?

Che Guevara

"Police arrested two communist activists, Kim Yong-Chan and Kim Jong Gon, on 11 July 2003 for possessing books about communism and for downloading from the Internet material including Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto." - Reporters Without Borders

So what are the chances of finding the thoughts of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in a subway station book vending machine between legendary investment guru Warren Buffett and Mother Teresa? If you thought "not high" then think again:



But don't take this to mean that Glasnost has broken out in South Korea, because when I left two months ago my Internet connection was still being censored.

So how does Che end up in a South Korean subway station? Perhaps it's an oversight, or perhaps the material does not fall under the definition of 'books about communism' which need to be banned by the democratic Korean government, or perhaps they just think it's a story with a happy ending. Alternatively, it may be a manifestation of geography.

Many Westerners have been surprised to learn of the existence of the Hitler bars that once appeared in this part of the world, but Nazism happened a long way from Korea and arguably it was really someone else's problem. Recently in my own country, there was a case of an elected public figure who was wrongly alleged to have participated in a Nazi-themed orgy. Before the judgement was handed down there was considerable public revulsion and a confidence vote was held within his organisation in which, it was suggested, European members voted against him and Asian and African members voted in favour. Certainly, anecdotally I'm aware that Korean people didn't necessarily see the matter as being of any great significance. However, when I hypothetically asked how they would react if a public figure in their country was accused of dressing up as a Japanese soldier and performing acts with 'comfort women' an entirely different attitude emerged.

I should add though, that if there is a historical and geographical gulf of understanding between myself as a Westerner and Korean people, it's not simply an inevitable division along racial lines; my family was selling a piano some years ago and the elderly gentlemen who eventually bought it for their club initially phoned and opened up their conversation with the question "It's not Japanese is it?" They'd been in Singapore during the war.

Personally, while Che Guevara didn't make the wall of my student flat back at University, unlike those of quite a few of the people I knew, I'd still like to think my book-vending machine discovery is a positive sign of progress in Korea.

Exit Napoleon Pursued by Rabbits

I am of course an actor, playing a part, and I have been since I got here. I always knew this was the way it would be, and it's one of the reasons I chose to title every entry in this blog after a dramatic work. Free will or fate? You know my answer, and as Laplace's demon has inevitably revealed itself as my time in Busan unfolded, I have followed the script as it has been delivered to me, trying my best to fade into the background as an extra, but all the while feeling I was being watched as though I was walking centre-stage.

Standing outside the theatre on the Kyungsung University campus where a film crew is hovering, I felt the inevitability of them being drawn towards me, and a minute later I am once again stood next to a student union building giving an interview - different country, same modus operandi - smile, be diplomatic, don't start a riot.



What do I think of the festival so far? Let me explain how my life works here - "There's a mime, do you want to go? OK." Context often comes in retrospect, and I'm usually far too busy to worry about something until it happens. So I've seen some banners for the Busan International Performing Arts Festival, quickly put two and two together, and explain how this is my first event so I really don't have a view yet, but how I'm sure it's great for Busan and a good way of promoting the city internationally. Please don't ask any deeper questions about what I'm here to watch because the first time I glanced at the script was a couple of hours ago and I certainly haven't studied it in any detail.

We are here to see Exit Napolean Pursued By Rabbits, performed - I discover once I get home - by Nola Rae, or rather, Nola Rae MBE - making her a Member of the Order of the British Empire, which is more than I'll ever be, particularly if I keep taking the Empire to court. Which is all to say that Nola Rae is moderately well-known, and certainly well-respected back home in the Empire, so this then, is no ordinary mime.

Before this revelation I'm just hoping that attending doesn't transpire to be a mistake. I've arrived in a group with twelve other people and I've been told the mime is British. so even though this wasn't my idea I can't help feeling that like everything else which is British in Korea, it reflects on me to some extent. I needn't have worried though, because the Koreans apparently loved it, despite some finding themselves dragged onto the stage. They should be used to it anyway, because I have yet to attend anything here where there members of the audience weren't conscripted as part of the entertainment. I always try my best to appear invisible at these points; I'm already on the stage in Korea without being on it literally, and I only want to carry the metaphor so far. But here's a tip if you don't want your fifteen minutes of fame here, don't sit on the front row. I suppose that's life all over. Participation eventually extended to the whole audience, which evidently wasn't to The Times of London's liking, but as Ms. Rae made puppets of us all from the stage, I thought surely this was the point. Did we refuse to stand, to gesture, to make fools of ourselves or was it easier to go along with arbitrary and illogical diktats of someone commanding the majority? After the show, it was our hosts turn to be on the spot as an audience member suddenly burst out that it was Children's Day in Korea the next day and 'requested' that the performer pose for pictures with all the children in the audience. Exit Napoleon had demonstrated how quickly one dictator can be fall and be replaced by another, perhaps in more ways than one.

I've never sat through 75 minutes of mime before, unless you count two years I worked under an old boss, so I wasn't sure it would appeal to me, although it held my interest - and not just because the material seemed vaguely autobiographical. But while we cycled through various European dictators some uncertainty was voiced to me afterwards as to how many of the references the local audience picked up on. It's easy to grow up with a Euro-centric view of history and not appreciate how the 'important global events' taught in school turn out to be merely important European ones, with little coverage of, or meaning to, our Asian peers. In the question and answer session which followed the performance someone asked about the genesis of the work and Nola Rae commented on the importance of opposing dictators, a message which does, however, have a particular resonance here.



On the way out the film crew caught me again and once again I offered my diplomatic answers. For some reason, this time they were quite keen for me to say 'something unknown... fighting!' to the camera, where the something unknown is presumably the name of whatever group they belonged to. So one moment we are condemning dictators and the next we are shouting 'Korea Fighting!' or whatever other cause you want to rally people's base emotions to. It seems we walk a fine line indeed. I did it of course; it was in the script.

WarGames

South Korea is, of course, technically still at war with its northern neighbour, which at the very least, makes being exiled here by my Government on the grounds that I am free to enjoy my family life in Korea without this breaching breach of my human rights a somewhat interesting theoretical position. But aside from the vague and currently unlikely threat of a sudden nuclear attack from the North, the reality is that, at least as far as my own experience has been concerned, living in this country has probably been lot safer than living in the UK, given that large areas of my home city have the atmosphere of 1980s Beirut (car-jackings being a regular feature of the local news).

Still, actually having a definable external aggressor, and a nuclear-backed one at that, does add a certain tangible paranoia and, I suppose, requires the Government to take certain steps to ensure that if the end comes, we all die in the correct way. So there are civil defence drills eight times a year (every month except January, February, July and December), which involve sounding the air raid sirens, and scaring newly-arrived foreigners who don't know what's going on. Aside from the excitement of my first drill, I've missed most of the subsequent ones through being out of the area when they've happened, and it's taken me this long to realise that when there's a drill, flags with the '민방위' - 'Civil Defense' - logo (green, blue and yellow triangles which may be supposed to resemble mountains, psychedelic wigwams or party-hats, I'm not quite sure) are flown on the street. This means that on seeing these in future I no longer have to nervously wonder whether I should be sprinting in the direction of the nearest designated shelter, which is usually a subway which features the party-hats logo outside it, on the dubious grounds that it's better to be buried alive than blown apart.



My apartment block is besides one of the main roads through Busan, so when we had a drill on Friday I was able to watch as the drama unfolded - this is not merely a test of the air raid sirens. The first thing that becomes immediately apparent is that during the drill traffic is supposed to pull over to the side of the road, and generally does so, leaving them eerily quiet. In fact, since moving to our new place, I think it's the first time I've ever seen the road outside with no cars travelling along it, day or night. A man and woman wearing armbands - presumably Government workers, stood in the middle of the road, their purpose initially unclear. But when a taxi sped down the road it incurred the wrath of one of their whistles, though it seemed little else as the driver disappeared into the distance. Conversely, a couple of other cars were directed to pull over and did so. While ambulances lurked at the junctions, motorcyclists emerging from side-streets were warned off and proceeded to ride down the pavements/sidewalks, as is unfortunately perfectly normal in Korea even when faux nuclear attacks aren't immediately scheduled. Meanwhile, some pedestrians stood fixed to their spots, as I gather is technically the proper behaviour in such circumstances, while other people calmly walked along seemingly oblivious to the entire affair. All in all, it makes for something of a surreal sight.

Eventually the sirens were turned off and police cars, ambulances and fire trucks trundled up and down the streets. Occasionally an Civil Defense SUV rushed past, but otherwise, it was ten minutes of waiting around with nothing happening for all concerned. The city around us was deathly quiet, save for the occasional background noise and somewhat disturbingly, under the circumstances, the sound of children playing somewhere near us. Finally, whistles were blown up and down the road by the Government workers, the all clear sounded, and with seconds the streets were full of traffic, as though nothing had happened.

What this probably means is that when the real attack actually comes, people will sigh, stop where they are, and neglect to rush down the subway to the false safety of the underground shelters. But on the off-chance that Busan will not become a twenty-mile wide three-meter thick layer of melted steel and concrete, at least the roads will be clear for the fire trucks to move around extinguishing the post-blast fire-storm from their water tanks. I can also tell you the war will probably be Googled - for the first couple of minutes at least - because every time the sirens go off my blog gets hit with searches such as 'sirens busan', presumably from somewhat nervous non-Koreans.

Maybe in a country still technically at war, it's necessary to do these drills, and maybe it has as much to do about internal politics as disaster readiness - fear rather than rationale is much favoured by politicians of all persuasions, and not just in Korea. But as this country agonises about its need to attract more overseas visitors, I can only suggest that sounding what many foreigners interpret as nuclear attack warning sirens every few weeks perhaps doesn't necessarily do much for the tourist trade.

A Race Through Dark Places

Saturday - Deoksugung, Seoul Plaza, Cheonggyecheon, Namdaemun

We left Busan early Saturday morning with the wind and rain from the periphery of Typhoon Man-yi battering us, and travelled up to Seoul in almost deathly silence at speeds approaching 300kph on Korea's equivalent of the bullet train, the KTX. The weather improved and then it was bright sunshine all the way to our destination. From Seoul Station we took one stop on the underground to the City Hall (Jung-gu) area where the British Embassy is located. Once we'd found it, we looked for a motel - our searches beforehand on the Internet had not yielded any results. But while there were motels to be found beyond the plush hotels of the main road running by City Hall itself, their shabby appearance and locations - down narrow back streets amidst massage parlours - eventually saw us checking in to the New Kukje Hotel next to the tall 'Seoul Finance Center' (SFC) building at 120,000 won a night. We'd been trudging around for well over an hour in the heat and the moral of the story is to plan things out beforehand. People we stopped to ask directions were nervous, cold or just downright unhelpful, and I missed what I perceived as Busan's friendliness.

The SFC makes a virtue out of the two floors of underground restaurants beneath it, but with prices (by Korean standards) to match the yuppie aspirations of those who worked above it we found a KFC across the road instead; by this time our desire to eat was entirely functional and the expensive meals could wait until they'd be more appreciated. I think I've become used to paying Busan prices. After lunch, we visited Deoksu Palace (Deoksugung) (entry cost: 1,000 won - not everything here is expensive) next to the British Embassy before crossing the road to Seoul Plaza in front of City Hall where an event was taking place, people enjoyed the weather on the grass and children sought relief from the heat in the fountains.



A short walk down the road took us to the famous Cheonggye Stream (Cheonggyecheon). While the project has been controversial, it is also clearly popular judging by the considerable crowds it was attracting. We walked some distance down it as the daylight faded, before turning around and walking back in the dark. Along the way were a mix of old and new bridges, one with an art exhibition underneath, a jazz band on a bridge, fountains, waterfalls and artwork. Many of the locals whiled away their evening sitting on the banks with their feet in the water, and underneath the Citigroup building we joined them, finally finding some relief for ourselves as well.





From the stream we sought out the equally famous 'South Gate' Sungnyemun (aka Namdaemun). While using the nearby subway we also discovered something that isn't on the tourist maps - a cardboard city of homeless people bedding down for the night - shocking in itself and perhaps all the more so for its proximity to City Hall and the many embassies located in the area. I snatched a quick photo, but we were not of course welcome and needed to leave quickly.



We'd planned to have a nice meal under the Finance Center Mall, but the sight of the homeless made me lose my appetite for such indulgences. Inexplicably, all the small restaurants and diners along the road back seemed to close at ten or eleven so with midnight approaching we retired to our hotel with no more than a bag of crisps and a can of beer.

Sunday - Insa-dong, Tapgol Park, Unhyeongung, Cheonggyecheon, Seoul Finance Center

After breakfast in at a reasonably-priced Singaporean toast place in the Seoul Finance Center, we headed towards a traditional Korean craft area in Insa-dong, first stopping by Tapgol Park (free entry) which is famous for being the origin of the 1919 'March 1st Movement' calling for Korean independence from Japanese occupation. Various monuments in the park tell of the struggle against the Japanese. The Park seems to act as a focal point for those old enough to remember the occupation, and they gather here to talk or simply to sit. The Park also contains National Treasure No.2 and Tangible Cultural Property No. 73.



Later we went to the Japanese Cultural Center next to another palace, Unhyeongung, to get their side of the story but it was closed. I didn't care for the architecture at Unhyeongung but the insides of some of the buildings were set out to show what life was like for the privileged in its day. A photography club armed with digital SLRs and a model made it a little difficult to negotiate.



At what point is a place no longer real but instead it becomes a theme-park version of itself? The Korean craft area at Insa-dong crossed that line for me. Predictably full of tourists (ourselves included), and enough Korean trinkets to satisfy all your friends and family back home - or if you're feeling more extravagant, there's an old map hanging on the stairway of one establishment for a mere 18,000,000 won (about £9,700). We bought ice-cream from a Turkish ice-cream vendor - a task not quite as straightforward as it might seem in Korea. Yes, our experience was pretty similar.



Somewhere back near the Seoul Finance Center we encountered a protest against political interference by the Korean equivalent of the National Security Agency in the political process. It seemed from the elderly demographic of the protesters they were right-wingers, though we could be wrong... If the Korean security agencies are trying to get left-wingers elected they must be just about the one in the Western world. Then again, whether you class someone as left or right-wing very much depends on where you're coming from yourself - which in this context is a sobering thought. A photographer - who may or may not have been with them - took photographs of the seated protesters who, in the quest to take good shots myself, I found myself standing amongst. As he raised his camera very deliberately in my direction it was hard to imagine that he wasn't taking a shot at me, so I pointed my camera back at him in return. A little further along the road there was a heavy police presence with patrols and multiple buses. At first it wasn't immediately clear why, but we'd stumbled upon the US Embassy. By contrast the British Embassy had one police car sat at the end of the road.



We'd debated whether to take a ferry along the Han River, but it was getting late and it started to rain, so for a second evening we sat with our feet in Cheonggye Stream, but under a bridge this time.

As I'd walked around today, I'd noticed more and more apparently homeless people - in the subways and the parks, slumped up against buildings and asleep on benches in the open spaces. If Seoul had any glitz or glamour, the sight of the bedraggled and psychologically defeated underclass gave it a sinister edge, and although we had our 'expensive', and as it turned out, very nice meal in the end in the Finance Center, it was at one of the cheapest places with a bill totalling 26,400 won. What life is like here is beyond my control but it doesn't lessen the sense of frustration.



I took a lot of photographs over the weekend and a number of videos, and spent time looking out for an electrical store where I could buy another SD card, to no avail - in Seoul. There seemed to be a Dunkin' Donuts on every block though.




Monday - The British Embassy

I dare say whatever its problems Seoul is a vibrant and colourful place, and I fear I may have been remiss in my descriptions of its people and places. There was much more to say but if what I have written seems soulless, it is because I had what soul I had left ripped from me by the unseen officials lurking in the Embassy building, and everything else that happened this weekend seems like a black and white film in comparison. There is a problem with my wife's visa application and it is not at all clear that there will be a satisfactory resolution to this story, so today I am facing up to the reality of being made a de facto exile by my own government if I am to live with my wife.

Koreans on the Net have quite a lot to say about their experiences with the British Embassy so perhaps it shouldn't come as a complete surprise, but when it becomes personal and you realise just how high the stakes can be it really hits home.

Perhaps this will all blow over, perhaps it won't. In the meantime, there is considerable emotional distress and much time, like yesterday evening, spent reading Acts of Parliament, the European Convention on Human Rights and legal precedents, because it was not my plan to never be able to return to live in my own country.

Korean keywords: 기차, 여행, 궁, 공원, 호텔, 대사관