Getting Lost in Busan

Today, midway through our Korea journey, we took the bullet train.  In just 2.5 hours we were transported by this gloriously speedy transit from shiny modern Seoul straight to bustling oceanside Busan, on what had became a gray and rainy day.

Our trip’s itinerary involves lots of space for health, energy and time change crashes – mine was yesterday and Ano’s was today.  As he rested in our little apartment after check in, Izzy and I ventured out, very underdressed, in the pouring rain, in search of food.  A touch of grump may have been in the air. The more we walked the wetter it got.  The water squished in our shoes. After a while we stopped bothering to avoid puddles.

We walked longer than the map said we should, and we never did find the place we were looking for. But, an unexpected alleyway of food shops revealed itself – tanks of eels and other creatures of the sea waiting to be someone’s dinner.

Standing there surrounded by dozens of vendors and stalls with water dripping down our chilly legs, we were both a little paralyzed by it all.

We ended up selecting – or being selected by – a tiny little udon soup shop.  Nobody else was crazy enough to be out in the storm so we had the place to ourselves. Hot soup served with pickled radish warmed us and steamed our glasses as we both decided it was the best udon we had ever tasted. 

We emptied the large bowls while the owner prepared kimbab and fish cake for us to take back to Ano.  As we got ready to leave, she came to check on us, patted Izzy’s cheeks, declared them beautiful, chided me for not having an umbrella, and then zipped up Izzy’s jacket, smoothed their hair into the hood of their raincoat and admonished us to stay dry and be safe. At least that’s what it seemed like she was saying…

When we left that little place, our steps were still soaking wet but felt lighter and everything seemed like an adventure.  We stopped at the beach and stood in the rain watching a bulldozer build sculptures for a sand festival.  As the rain came down harder and we started to venture back to Ano, we got lost… and ended up finding a sock shop that needed our attention.  Izzy mentioned that getting lost was the best part.

We came to Busan with some excitement and maybe also some trepidation.  It is the area where Ano’s people are from – and where they had to leave. His grandmother first left as a child, moving with her family to Japan where there was work – and just in time to witness the bombing of Hiroshima. She told us that she remembered the American soldiers moving through the country, and that she and her friends called them The Big Noses. 

Afterwards, her family returned to this part of Korea, where she had Ano’s mother, and was again confronted by war – but now as a mother instead of a child.  At the same age that Izzy is now, Ano’s mother left this country, leaving behind the wreckage of war, but not all of the damage.  Multigenerational survival is one of the family’s legacies, with costs that lingered.

Izzy keeps seeing their grandmother in everything here – the clothes, the hair, the ways of standing and talking.  Shopping for gifts and souveniers for her is easy because as Izzy notes, we know she would like all of this. The recognition that her grandmother is part of a larger something made richer by context has been a revelation to this 17 year old, and to me.

Meanwhile, we keep observing, and we keep marveling – things here work. We are not used to this kind of functionality laced with beauty. The systems, the subways, the trains, the healthcare, the apps for convenience, the technology, the preservation of the historic architecture and the public spaces alongside the modern conveniences. The monks and nuns chanting in the temples, the stream flowing through Seoul, welcoming office workers with their lunches and wedding parties to its edges where they are photographed under the paper lanterns.  The celebrations.

Now and then we read the news from home and wonder at the cycles that life moves through and the ways in which we all move with or against it.

All of these years later, after so many hardships and trials faced by the women in this family, to be dancing in the rain on this land with my daughter – the one of us who has chosen to spend the last two years studying Korean, the one of us who will return here to study soon, the one who thinks of it not as a place of a tragic past but as the now and the future, is a blessing I did not expect. 

Getting lost really is the best part.

~Jenny