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  Busan, Korea Rep.
Thursday, November 22, 2007

Autumn was slow to arrive, Winter was already advancing fast by the time the hills began to lose their green coats. The daily pig truck lurched squealing down the road, and then ceased to come, and the sharp smell of fuel fires hung permanently in the air. Every morning thick clouds of fog descended on the penthouse, and the stripped rice fields were covered in frost. It became very very difficult to leave bed.
 
When Autumn came it came so slowly that it seemed to come suddenly. I had been proudly told by virtually every Korean I had met that Korea has four distinct seasons, and had been eager to see the reputed beauty of Autumn. I looked for it in every tree and field I passed, going about my quiet country life. And then suddenly it was everywhere, the trees outside my door covered in shivering yellow leaves, the slightest tremor of a sparrow dislodging great torrents of leaves that would lie thick over the ground in bright, rustling dunes

gueongju burial mound

.
 
I grew and grow to hate the penthouse. On the long dark evenings, the sun melting orange into the horizon as I arrive home from school, and on those frosty mornings when great cavern of a bathroom seems so far away. Every weekend I hatched a new escape plan to keep me away from those echoing, empty rooms, and from the boredom that grew as fast as the mould on the walls.
 
Friday afternoon is a frenetic time, racing home to work to pack my bag and sprint for some soon-departing train or bus. On Friday night I pull in to some great and monstrous city or other, and meet my company for the weekend. From this moment the weekend disappears impossibly fast, as I try to play friend and guest, shopper and food connoisseur, tour guide and tourist, event organiser and flaneur all at once. It is an exhausting exercise, but an endlessly rewarding one.
 
Seoul is so close and full of friends that it is almost a second home now. It is a backup plan should all other escape plans fall through. Time there seems to pass in a blur of long subway trips, but the moments spent above ground are worth the long and disorienting commutes. Seoul looks dauntingly big, but it is not its size so much as its level of detail that is so striking

gyeongju autumn

. Every available space is filled with something; usually people and often food, but somehow within this vast metropolis there is also space for quiet parks where old men gather to play arcane board games, and for grand old palaces and shrines that have stood for six hundred years.
 
During my frantic weekends there is precious little idle time, and strangely it is in Seoul that I have managed to find the most quiet moments, to relax and look around and drink Korea in. At Gyeongbukgong I watched the changing of the fake-bearded guards, their pennants curling against the crisp blue sky. Gyeongbukgong is a massive, sprawling complex, and though tour groups speaking Korean, Chinese and English congregate around the main palace structures, it's quite easy to find oneself completely alone in a forgotten courtyard. There are a surprising number of these quiet spots scattered about Seoul. They just take a lot of wandering to find.
 
Every time a Sunday afternoon comes around and I leave Seoul as utterly daunted by the city as when I arrived. Step by step and site by sight I am discovering and uncovering more of the city, but weekends are simply inadequate for getting a sense of the monster. I suspect an intimate relationship with the city would have to be measure in long years only. Or in lifetimes and generations. The locals I meet each have their favourite streets and spaces but are also strangers to most of the city. I suspect there is no other way of dealing with such a colossal entity.
 
Korea's second city Busan is at far from Seoul as one can be without leaving the mainland. This location may be a simple matter of survival; the only way Busan could avoid succumbing to Seoul's gravity and being sucked into anonymity as an outlying satellite city

gyeongju bell

. It takes two and half hours and about 40,000 won ($40)for me to reach Busan, and the same amount for me to get back. I've made the trip twice so far, and every time Friday afternoon comes around, I am tempted to make the trek again. The south side might just be the nicest part of Korea I have yet seen.
 
To be honest, walking the streets of Busan as exactly like walking the streets of Seoul, or probably any other city in Korea. The same shops, the same stalls, the same food, the same taxis, the same customs crowd the streets. Busan has the coast, the port, the beach, but I have barely caught a glimpse of these. I have been too busy at film festivals or loitering around the university district, or the markets. What has endeared me to Busan has been the friends I have made there, and also the simplicity of the Busan metro system. It has only three lines, it feels knowable and manageable. And as the subway, so the city. Where Seoul feels awfully infinite, Busan feels pleasantly finite.
 
Busan has also worked hard to extricate itself from Seoul's shadow. I think it is fair to say that most of the world - including me until I arrived here - mistakenly equates Korea with Seoul. Busan still lags far behind Seoul in terms of international recognition, but in circles its name is quite well known

gyeongju buddha

. One such circle is the artistic-cultural setting; Busan's international film festival, for instance, is well known on the international scene, and is an enormous event. On my first arrival in Busan a huge fireworks display began the moment I stepped through the station doors and out into the city. So began ten days of grand festivities, festivities with sufficient gravity to drag great crowds of people away from Seoul and down to the south side.
 
Seoul has taken measures to counter this threat to its centre-stage position. Every fortnight a new film festival seems to be starting somewhere in Seoul: the European film festival, the family film festival, the short film festival. None of these can compare with Busan's offering, though, and so the rivalry goes endlessly on.
 
I will get to the beach at Busan one day, just not yet. On my second trip to the south side I turned almost immediately inwards and northwards, heading for Gyeongju. Gyeongju is where Autumn lives in Korea. When the rest of the country is still stuck in a stale green or scorched and barren yellow, Gyeongju is aflame with reds and oranges that glow electrically.
 
Gyeongju is also an old historic centre for Korea. The Korean ancients - whether monks or emperor - had impeccable taste. All the most naturally beautiful sites in Korea are marked by temple or palace or temple-palace. Bulguksa temple, a 1500 year old site, looks very like most other Korean architecture more than a few hundred years old. Its history and it location, though, ensure that all through autumn it is awash with people and their cameras.

gyeongju frollick

 
On the hill behind the temple lies Seokgulam Grotto. From the bell podium built below the grotto the ocean is visible white in the distance. Vibrant red slopes roll down and throw themselves into the ocean. Once again it is the natural beauty that eclipses the human artistry. Within the grotto a great granitine buddha broods, surrounded by demons and deities, and separate from the stream of visitors by thick glass and 'no photo' signs. Back when this was still an accessible religious site the atmosphere in the tiny chambers must have been incredibly eerie and powerful. Now the crowds bustle through, the tide allowing only the briefest of pauses to reflect and appreciate. Outside the hills are on fire. The sky is as sharp as glass.
 
After dark Gyeongju continues to entertain. The colours melt into the white of evening fog, and then the smoky black of night, but at the town centre great floodlights illuminate the ancient tombs of the Silla royalty that held court in the region.
 
The tombs look like great grassy-backed animals grazing in the parkland. They are too high and steep to be mistaken for natural contours. They seem to have a sentience about them, a cautiousness. They watch you watch them. Maybe it's the monarch buried at their loamy centre.
 
Whatever the reason, the moment of uncanniness passes, and you notice the local kids scrambling up one of the mounds and sliding down. And you cannot help but venture up yourself. The slopes are surprisingly steep and high. From the top much of diminutive downtown Gyeongju is visible. It is of course, very cold, as it should be upon a tomb. The herd of other mounds ruminates not far off. Getting down is difficult. No disrespect is intended to the long-dead; in Korea space is at such a commodity that a tomb may make a perfect playground. That's the fun and wonder of Gyeongju.
 
My roadshow continues, weekend after weekend. It is very much the life of the rock star and the circus animal, shuttled from location to location, offering entertainment in exchange for companionship and lodging. It's a grand life but an exhausting one, and as winter marches steadily nearing, shivering the leaves from the trees, I begin to yearn for a warmer, drier, cleaner, friendlier place to call my own. I have met with extraordinary warmth and friendliness everywhere I have been, but for now I continue to be restless and unable to stay put for a weekend. The winter will be different though, as the country begins its hibernation and it becomes to cold to traverse the surface, a new phase of life here will have to begin. But until then the roadshow continues ever onwards, back and forth across this country..

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