20 interesting things I noticed around Seoul Korea
1. These elegant kiosks can be found around the city and sell cold drinks, newspapers, and other odds and ends. They are also used for shoe repair and other useful purposes. Similar kiosks can be found in most other cities in the world, but not in Vancouver. Hmmm.
2. Idling Tour Buses are a major source of pollution, especially around popular sites in Vancouver. However, this unusual looking bus is powered by electricity.
3. Some Korean taxis are fitted with ‘interpretation devices’ to accommodate foreign tourists. They would be helpful in Vancouver…and not just for foreign tourists!
4. After baseball games, a pretty young girl gets to interview the team manager, who acts disconnected and gruff, just like most American managers, regardless of whether they win or lose!
5. Seoul’s subway system incorporates a very easy to use Smart Card system. I know we’re getting one too, but I just hope it’s as extensive and easy to use. Transit is very cheap, perhaps thanks in part to the item below.
6. Seoul's subway system generates considerable advertising revenue from electronic billboards along station platforms and inside the cars. The video system is also used to provide easy to follow directions.
7. In some Seoul gas stations, the pumps drop from above. I have no idea how this works or why, but it was odd to see. But it reminded me, why don’t we build small gas stations into the base of new buildings in Vancouver similar to what one sees in Europe. (Don’t tell me it’s a liability issue!)
8. Seoul has a Press Arbitration Commission. I have no idea what it does but it sounds like the sort of thing we need in Vancouver!
9. I saw a lot of attractive planting down the middle of some streets and in planters. We could do so much more in Vancouver, and not just to separate bicycle lanes. Check out Gilbert and No 2 Roads in Richmond to see what is possible.
10. McDonalds does home and office deliveries in Seoul. This is something we don’t need!
11. In many locations one comes across these public declarations of love. I think we could do without them too!
12. Seoul is getting a new City Hall built around a portion of its old City Hall. This is something we need…but maybe not just yet! But time to start planning?
13. Koreans, like the Japanese, often wear outfits with ridiculous English words and expressions. Who makes up this stuff? And while we’re at it, what does the railway company mean by “Fast, but Slow Life” as stated on their magazine cover? (Someone told me the Koreans like English words, even if they don’t understand them, to demonstrate they are becoming global. Hmmm.)
14. I saw a lot of beautiful and interesting Public Art around Seoul. While the Vancouver scene is improving thanks to the Biennale, we could do much more in this regard. Coming soon on my blog…the best public art installation I have ever seen….it’s at EXPO 2012!!!
15. The connections from some Seoul subway stations to surrounding development sites and streets can be very convenient. While we may not need such extensive and complex links, we certainly could improve on what we have built. I mean, just look at Cambie and 49th!
16. Seoul’s bridges become works of art at night with exquisite lighting and even spraying water. I think there’s a lot we might do with our SkyTrain pylons and other similar structures. Although we might do without the spraying water!
17. While the Seoul City Tour Bus does not offer a very good commentary, it does have excellent translation equipment and headphones when compared to most cities. But check the limited choice of languages offered.
18. There is an unusual fascination with American things from the 50’s and 60’s. It’s not just the chocolate brownies…you should hear some of the music!
19. The 19th thing is something I didn’t see. Graffiti tagging!
20. Finally, we really should start installing these hi-tech toilets in more hotels and homes. They really make our practices in the bathroom seem quite old-fashioned!
- post by Michael Geller
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Michael, I’m surprised you did not add this to your list but it took me most of 4 days to notice it. I was floored when it sank in, so maybe the realization is coming. Seoul has a large number of massive 6/8/10 lane roads to cross the city (with the expected traffic lights). These are clearly distinguishable from the narrower local streets – as the should be; form dictating function. But the local street intersections are for the most part uncontrolled! No traffic lights and NO STOP SIGNS! And not a single accident and barely a honk was seen or heard during my stay.
In looking at models for the future of Vancouver, we could do a lot worse than Seoul. Development across the megalopolis (population around 10 million, when I lived there between 1999 and 2006) includes an ethic of environmental consciousness that makes it a very liveable city. There is green space everywhere and incredibly efficient public transportation means that you can get from one end of the city to the other in about half an hour. The drawback is that the train system is constantly in a state of construction, wreaking havoc on the streets overhead.
But it’s unfair to say that Seoul came to be in an organic fashion. The giant 10 lane roads that go through downtown areas of Seoul were designed to facilitate tank and troop movement through what is actually a major strategic location in a war that is ongoing. And the amazing transit system? If I understand correctly, it is an inheritance from a brutal era of Japanese colonization, as is the ingenious urban architectural ethos that incorporates streetscape aesthetics combined with a complicated system of superscape aesthetics. An interesting fact: Korea’s buildings are numbered according to when they were built, not where they are built. This means that taxi drivers and mail delivery people both have some serious job security because the only way to find where you need to go is to know where it is before you try to get there.
Seoul, like Vancouver, is a city that was thrust to the world stage after a world event (unlike Vancouver in 1986, Seoul was still under a military leadership when the 1988 Summer Olympics put it on the map), but that is really where the similarities end. Seoul’s climate is similar to New York or Toronto, so a sophisticated underground public transport system is more of a matter of survival than it is here.
It seems to me that urban development in Seoul is done almost entirely without any consultation with the public. In fact, the public don’t generally ever own the buildings they live and work in – the chaebol, the untouchable upper classes made up of the families connected to Samsung, Hyundai, and Daewoo do. Buildings are built on spec by these ‘corporations’ (for lack of a better English word) and are meant to last a couple of decades. People don’t own them, they only own the right to be in them through the process of “key money” (another system inherited from the Japanese) which allows one to reduce or eliminate rent with a lump-sum up-front payment, but without the actual transfer of ownership.
The buildings are only meant to last a couple of decades, and then when new buildings in a “village” are built (my experience with the Korean word “maull” is that it refers to a designed collection of buildings with both commercial and living space, and usually joined by a park space. I don’t think “maull” really translates into English, so I use “village”), the families in the old buildings have the first pick of the new apartments. The benefit is beautiful and relatively inexpensive living space. The drawback is living in a constant state of construction and tearing-down (BUT because construction happens first, the space created when old buildings are demolished is often turned into park space and public gardens).
The differences aside, I stand by where I started this response: in looking at models for the future of Vancouver, we could do a lot worse than looking at a very green city like Seoul.
Look cluttered, kitschy, let them keep it all there. Please, don’t bring THAT here!
Seoul (and Korea in general) is an amazing City. Living for a few years was eye opening and fantastic. I lived in 3 different areas of the city, each was unique and fun, but not without issue.
I wonder where Eli was living when he says there is green space everywhere, or at least how he defines it? Lack of green was the one thing that bothered me about the City. The removal of the elevated freeway was just wrapping up when I left so I actually never got to enjoy it, but during my year and a half up near Suyu Station, there was precious little green to be found. There were certainly no neighbourhood parks as we think of them here, when we played sports it was either on the river bank (extremely crowded!) or on gravel elementary school fields.
Public transit is world class. Hands down, no question. The subway is cheap, efficient, frequent, it is what a subway system should be. The connecting buses likewise are world class. Different sized/coloured buses for different routes/distances, it was easy and cheap. What I loved to was how each station was unique and a neighbourhood unto itself. When someone asked where you lived, you would just give the nearest station.
But it was really the small things that made me love Seoul. When we first moved to Seoul, up near Suyu, we were pretty much the only white foreigners around. It’s a real working class part of town. A few days after arriving I was looking for a power converter and bumbling my way around to different stores in my busted Hangul not having much luck. Over the next few days different random people would come by our apartment (everyone knew where we lived of course) and drop off random electronics, thinking that’s what I was looking for. Not looking for money or anything, just trying to help. That was my first real impression of the people there–a massive City–top 5 I think worldwide? But a true sense of community and helping people out. Similarly a few people would order things that came with English instructions and they would just wait outside my apartment until I came home so I could help program their watch or whatever it was. You help me, I help you. Fantastic.
Also, food. Delicious. You can order food, have it delivered in metal bowls with metal chopsticks–no styrofoam, no plastic, no garbage. Then when you’re done you just leave it outside your door and they come back and pick it up. No waste, no dishes
But of course that’s only possible in a culture where it wouldn’t get stolen, I don’t know if that’s possible here.
I could go on…if you have the chance–go!
So let me get this, public transit, world class… to take through a dried out of vegetation city, that looks like a basket full of candy wrappers and recyclables… Great! Why didn’t you stayed there? Ayeee …
Michelle,
I’m not sure what’s more laughable, your incomprehensible grammar or your ignorance of the topic of which you speak.
@boohoo – I first moved to Seoul in January and, like you, I missed green space. In Seoul, green space is stark and brown for most of fall and all of winter. Two things changed that for me: 1) spring, and 2) a week in Beijing.
When I talk about green space I’m talking about the riverside parks all along the Han, as well as virtually every tributary and feeder river that drains into the Han. I first lived in Daechi-dong in Gangnam-gu and I lived right next to the Yanjae river which is several kilometers of park running parallel to the south Gangnam business district. It was a half-hour bike ride to the Han from my apartment.
I’m also talking about the endless choice of hills in the city that make for fun weekend rambling (particularly Namsan and surrounding areas), or just outside the city (particularly Pukansan and the foothills around it).
When I moved to the Bucheon (in the northwest) I missed the network of waterside parks, but I saw the same trend – all of the bigger apartment complexes have avenues of green space that link the living centers with the commercial centers.
When I look at downtown today, I see parks here and there, but it doesn’t look much like an intentionally-planned network of green space within a modern city landscape – yet. I think we’re going that way, though, and I’m hopeful we’ll keep moving in that direction. You touch upon an important point, boohoo, and that’s the ethic of Han – the sense of community that comes with a group of people who feel they are connected by something other than proximity.
I don’t know if Vancouver has that – it seems like the vocal minority who oppose change around here don’t have any idea who they are (or who they identify with) nor what they want, but prefer simply to point at anything that looks foreign and say “Not that!”. It’s not even xenophobia (which Koreans are pretty famous for), it’s just a willful ignorance towards the inevitability of progress.
Eli,
Yes, like I said we used to play sports at Yeouinaru all the time–but it was crowded! But I totally agree about China–I went to Shanghai twice while I lived in Seoul. We stayed in the same hotel for a tournament. The first year the pollution was bad, but the hotel was kinda out of the City so there were fields and empty land around us. One year later, only one, and the hotel was surrounded by other towers–no joke, not a single field or empty land in any direction. I couldn’t see the tower across the street through the pollution, and we had 3 players collapse during the game from the pollution. It was disgusting.
One thing about parks, and the lack of organized neighbourhood parks in Seoul is that it never felt like there were no public places to hang out. Because all the local streets are so narrow and animated, you could hang out basically anywhere and it felt like usable public space.
I remember the building we lived in near Suyu had a corner store below us, they sold beer and chips and whatever, but didn’t have any place to sit–it was your standard corner store. One day a pub opened up across the street so what does the corner store owner do? Buys some patio furniture and glasses and starts serving beer on the sidewalk. Fantastic! Imagine the bureaucratic red tape involved in trying that here. There was a real blurring of the whole notion of sidewalk/street–it was all public space, to be shared by everyone.
Well put – it’s that sense of ownership of all public space that I would like to see more of.
Beer and patio furniture at all the bodegas would be a great start…
I would love to see Seoul, thanks to the travelogue from Micheal, boohoo and Eli. Like to see “new” ideas in action.