Seoul for Seolnar

The situation was this: I'd been in South Korea for nearly seven months, and still hadn't seen Seoul. Holidays weren't exactly thin on the ground during the first half of my tenure here, but nonetheless Seoul seemed prohibitively far away, even for a four-day weekend. (I have since discovered that it can be reached in four hours for the rough equivalent of twenty American dollars, as long as one is willing to ride an Express Intercity Bus.)

But hope was in sight: Seolnar, the Korean New Year, and one of the two most profound Korean holidays, was coming up. I and my coworkers at Reading Town, Adam Humble and Elaine Orkney, late of Newcastle, England (which makes them Geordies through and through), had five whole days to see the near-mythic city of Seoul. Here's how it went. Seolnar is pronounced roughly like the English word "sonar," except with an "l" in between the "o" and the "n." (Don't bear down hard on the "r," either.) In addition to Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving, it is Korea's most important holiday. Everybody goes home to their parents or grandparents, visits their ancestors' graves, bows low to their elders, gives gifts, and feasts for four days straight.

Conditions seemed ripe for action: according to our then-new head teacher, who goes by the Anglo alias "Charles," everyone would be leaving Seoul instead of entering it. We couldn't believe our luck. We were accustomed to major cities becoming jam-packed for holidays. Instead of having to fight our way through a city crammed with twice as many as the ten million people already routinely living there, we'd be coasting our way through a virtual ghost town, or close enough. This was our original plan. We'd rise early, link up with our friend Jeff (late of Ottawa, Canada, working for a rival hagwon), catch the bus out of the Gohyeon terminal to Busan, get a cab to Busan Station, and board a train for Seoul.

This plan went through several permutations over the ensuing weeks. We'd decided early on to ride the KTX to Seoul. Short for "Korea Train Express," the KTX is quite simply the one-and-only Korean bullet train. Boasting a top speed of 186 miles per hour (300 kilometers per hour, for all you metric weirdos) and the latest in comfort and grandiose views, it seemed like the perfect way to make a grand entrance to what we were positive would be the golden horn of our travels in Korea.

Securing our tickets (about 50,000 South Korean won—that's pronounced "wuhn"—equivalent to about $35 at the time of purchase) was easy. However, new information came to light about transportation to Busan. Charles assured us that the buses, not to mention the roads themselves, would be packed to the gills. We'd be looking at a four- to five-hour ride to Busan - prohibitive considering our train left at 9:00 a.m. We then considered catching a cab to Busan, but then cost came into play. Long-distance cab rides, especially early morning ones, were ridiculously expensive, even factoring in the still-easy exchange rate. I'd just like to stop here and vent a bit. When I got here the exchange rate was blissfully simple: 1,000 won to the U.S. dollar. (Well, okay, it was more like 1,039 won, but who's counting?!) Nowadays it's something like 1,400 won to the dollar! A month or so back it was 1,500! What's up with that? By my calculations I'm losing about $300 or so in translation every time I wire money home, dad blast it. I'm hoping it picks up soon or I might have to cut my time in Alaska short.

So eventually we opted for the following caper:

• Get up at 5:00 a.m.
• Rendezvous at the northernmost gate of the old P.O.W. camp and war memorial conveniently near our respective apartments.
• Dial up Charles, who has graciously offered to be woken up at this ungodly hour to phone a cab for us. Have him phone a cab for us.
• Take said cab to the Guyeong ferry terminal on the west side of Geoje's northern peninsula. (By this time we'd already learned that it was both inconvenient and downright futile to attempt to take a ferry directly out of our town of Gohyeon: tickets had to be bought up months in advance, since space was so limited. Plus there were only three departures per day, the earliest three hours too late for our purposes. We were much better off taking the gargantuan car ferries based out of Nongso and Guyeong, two tiny burgs up north, on either side of the peninsula. The Guyeong ferries left on the even hours and Nongso's on the odd ones. We aimed for a 6:30 departure.)
• Board said gargantuan car ferry, cross the narrow, island-dotted straits between Geoje and the mainland, arriving at Jinhae at approximately 7:15.
• Snatch a cab from Jinhae to the subway station at Hadan, a thirty-minute ride costing a ridiculously high, flat-rate 20,000 won. Arrive at 7:45 or so.
• Traverse six subway stops between Hadan, nearly the westernmost end of the Busan subway system, and Busan Station. Arrive no later than 8:15.
• With forty-five minutes or, at worst, thirty minutes to spare, pick up tickets, sit, and have a leisurely breakfast of whatever-the-hell in Busan Station.
• Ride the bejesus out of the KTX, our lips and cheeks flapping in the imaginary wind of our tremendous speed, on up to merry ol' Seoul.

By this time we were reasonably well accomplished travelers, and the prospect of doing all this didn't faze us. We'd become semi-proficient at directing cab drivers in pidgin Korean and Konglish, and had ridden the ferry to Busan about five times between the four of us. The train station bit was the only part we weren't sure about; we didn't know what security (if any) would be like, nor how long the lines would be to get our tickets. Even with all the contingency planning we could muster, we weren't leaving ourselves a very wide window to get our tickets. We were reassured by Charles, who insisted that if we'd reserved our tickets in advance the whole affair would take five minutes or less. Trusting him, we set our timetable.

That's how we found ourselves shifting from one foot to the other outside the gate to the P.O.W. camp in the early-morning chill on the morning of January 24, 2009. The sky was still black. The streets were silent and deserted, except for the occasional car. Cabs were nowhere in evidence; blessing Charles's benevolence, we rousted him from his slumber and had him call us a cab. The kind fellow even told us to call again if we had any trouble, as had the other Korean teachers the previous afternoon before class let out. (Korea is a ridiculously helpful and friendly country if you have the courage to open up to them first. If you ask a question, don't expect to get a half-baked answer or a rough guess; expect to have a thoroughly-researched reply given to you in writing in a few minutes. If you ask for directions, don't expect to be told; expect to be taken by the shoulders and cheerily led there.)

The cab came and we piled in. After making dead sure the driver was headed for Guyeong, we only needed to sit back, eat our knees (five to a cab puts a premium on elbow room) and attempt to hold on to our potatoes as the cab swerved and swayed at a breakneck pace along the sinuous, two-lane roads that span the gaps between settlements in Geoje.

Twenty minutes later we were standing in front of the ferry station: total fare ₩12,000 or so. We purchased our tickets for a ridiculously low ₩5,000 and then stood around conversing in the comforting warmth of the small, well-lit station office (German expatriates being the only other occupants). Presently the imposing bulk of the auto ferry pulled up to the cement quay and began disgorging its contents. Trying not to think about how early those people driving those cars out of the ferry's belly must have had to get up to secure a ride at this hour, we boarded and sought a seat inside the passenger cabins, but for'ard, directly behind the enormous ports, affording us a good view of land and water.


And a good view it turned out to be. The sun rose just as we were in the middle of the crossing. I can't describe to you exactly how beautiful a soft reddish-gold orb, slowly ascending over a rustling expanse of indigo water, beneath a sky of the most tender pink and orange, shining between the trees of the wooded, rocky islands that dot the straits, is. But this might help.


We arrived at Jinhae, caught a cab with ridiculous ease, rode to Hadan, boarded the subway, and got to Busan Station well before our preset deadline. The gleaming face of our gateway to Seoul shimmered in the morning sun as we crossed the parking lot.

Getting our tickets took about five minutes, as predicted. We then adjourned upstairs to Burger King and feasted on a Whopper apiece. When the hour of destiny approached, we ambled contentedly downstairs and got in line; we were let past the barriers; quivering with excitement, we traversed a sky walk, rode an escalator down to the platform, and sauntered jauntily along it until we reached the number embedded in the floor that signaled our train car would stop at that point.


It wasn't long before the pointy nose of our ride poked itself into sight and the blue-and-gray KTX came slithering slowly up.


And so ends part one. Stay tuned for part two, JAMSIL JAMBOREE!