Mining For Hidden Gems

This is the reason why I just can't keep up blogging on a regular basis - I'm hooked on generating computer images with the help of Corel's Painter 9, which just lets you unleash your creativity in amazing new ways. Hours can seem like minutes when I'm in the middle of one of my weird 'creations', and fitting this into an already busy schedule of teaching full-time, preparing classes, working out and socializing all takes its toll on the regularity of these posts.

This giant mural on the humanities building at Kyung Hee is one of the few reminders left of the radical student politics back in the 1980s and 1990s here in Korea. The year I first arrived here was 1994 and my was it a different place with regular burning ceremonies by gleeful students of the American flag, effigies of Uncle Sam and GATT treaty posters. Riots in the streets of Seoul resulted in plenty of Moletov cocktails thrown and tear gas fired. Students these days seem only concerned about buckling down to study so they can land that nice job (or any job with the high unemployment rate among graduates) after graduation at the right firm. I miss the idealism and sense of student camaraderie that existed back in the nineties here.

Let the waters flow free once more

Big news in Seoul right now is the official opening of the Cheonggyechon stream in a few weeks time. This small river has naturally flown through Seoul for hundreds of years but has a less than noble history recently. In the early 1900s peasants from the provinces came to build a shanty town along the banks of the Cheonggyechon and for decades used the stream for washing and sewage disposal. For many decades the stream area became equated with poverty and disease, having the highest mortality rate in all of Seoul. This led to the stream being sealed over to make way for an expressway in the late 1950s, but the stream secretly survived as a sewer slowly eating away at the beams and rods holding up the expressway and costing the Seoul city government millions of dollars in repairs every year. A very radical city mayor has been putting a lot of emphasis on environmental spaces for Seoulites to relax and as a consequence the government has spent the last two years dismantling the expressway and completely reinventing the stream system with an ambitious makeover involving reconstruction of 26 bridges and stream water that will be clean enough (hopefully) to drink from as it enters the stream system.
I could see the bigger picture as I walked along the banks of the stream for a good three hours yesterday and think that this really will be an amazing place in a year or two once the plants and river life along the banks grow and provide a more natural, ecological environment. The city center is long overdue for environmental programs like this and Seoul is slowly but surely becoming a much more beautiful city than ten years ago. Taxpayers remain more sceptical about the outcome.

Not everybody was happy about the redevelopment of the river area. Occupants of old buildings along the stream have been "relocated" elsewhere (supposedly with assistance from the government) as have many shopkeepers whose businesses were located too close to the stream area. There were frequent ugly demonstrations here only months ago, but most Koreans I've asked seem pretty positive about the new look of the neighborhood.

Every bridge spanning the stream has a completely original design reflecting elements of the neighborhood in which it is located. This one located in the Dongdaemun market area seems to reflect the dynamism of the market area with all the hasty bargaining going on in surrounding stores.

One of the oldest bridges still retains stone pillars from the original bridge built hundreds of years ago. Underneath the bridge are hidden an amazing variety of unique carving patterns and motifs dating back to royal dynasties when the bridge was used by the king on ceremonial occasions.

There are a lot of stepping stones for getting across to the other side of the stream but I wonder whether these stones will all get washed away in the typhoon season and frequent floods. Still, it adds a nice personalized touch to the landscaping.