Today I’m taking you to Jagalchi Market, in Busan, South Korea, to one of the largest fish markets in the entire world. We’ll go first into the village-sized hangar where more stalls than you could possibly count are selling single fish, several fish, restaurant loads of fish to buyers who come here knowing that what they choose will have only left the sea a very few hours previously.
More interesting though are the stalls outside. Here are small-time stallholders who come with the family catch, in among larger set-ups who specialise in certain kinds of fish and seafood. I’d like you to meet this woman. She has squid to sell. And I can assure you they’re fresh. I know this because they’re still alive, and they spend their entire time breaking out from their surroundings to lope off down the street, until Our Woman in Pink retrieves them, until the next time … or until they’re sold and become somebody’s supper.
It astonishes me that there are any fish still left in the sea. Look at the header photo. These tiny dried fish are sold in vast quantities by any number of stall-holders, and garnish many of the dishes we ate there.
Everybody but us was there to buy what they needed that day. We contented ourselves with eating what someone else had brought and prepared as our wanderings came to an end, at a neighbourhood restaurant just down the road.
Who doesn’t enjoy a bit of window shopping? And perhaps particularly in parts of South Korea, which can offer a few differences from the high streets that many of us are used to. Let’s start in Busan. in Bosu-Dong Book Street (보수동 책방골목 문화관). There are books, and only books on offer – but of little use if you’re as slow as me in decoding hangul script.
Browsing in 보수동 책방골목 문화관
On our first day in South Korea, in Seoul, jet lagged and in need of a gentle day of orientation, we mooched round the markets area. And we found not only whole shops, but whole streets dedicated to shops selling just one product: it might be string. It might be elastic bands, or electric cables, or empty cardboard boxes to be filled with other products. or even gift-packs of a product beloved of Koreans since American soldiers had been part of their lives during the the Korean War – spam. We arrived in time for Chuseok, the festival that’s the time for families to get together and exchange gifts, as we do at Christmas – though historically, Chuseok was more of a Harvest Festival. Trust me, the perfect present for your granny is some gift-wrapped spam. And jumbled in among these workaday products are streets of jewellers’ shops. Come window shopping with me.
That man making his choices from among the books on offer is Just One Person from around the World, enjoying browsing and deciding whether or not to buy, just as we all do, wherever we live.
Today I’ve decided on a virtual visit to South Korea, a country we visited four years ago when our daughter was working there. I’m not – on the whole – going to take you to national monuments this week. We could go on the metro – there’s a station in the featured photo, just as clean, high-tech and efficient as you probably expected. Some metro stations are so extensive that you have to catch a train from one platform to the next when you need to change lines.
Let’s walk the streets of Seoul, where the very first thing that will strike you is the astonishing tangled knitting that is the overhead electrical wiring. We could visit the market area. Whole streets are devoted to the sale of just one product – rubber bands say (yes, really!), electrical wiring, cardboard packaging … or even spam. Since the Korean War, Americans – and spam – have enjoyed an enviable reputation. In a country where western tourists are still not all that common, we often profited from being thought of as American. In among all these workaday offerings are spacious and elegant jewellery shops – whole department stores devoted to nothing but that. We popped into one – and popped right out again.
Towards lunchtime, we could peer into tiny kitchens, and watch meals being prepared, packed up, and stacked onto trays. They’ll be delivered to workers in shops and offices on bikes, or on the heads of purposeful delivery women, who’ll later collect the empties.
But let’s glimpse through a window from in one palace, at least: Seoul’s Changdeokgung Palace. You can read a short account of the troubled history of South Korea’s cultural heritage here
And now let’s travel south to South Korea’s second city, Busan: a coastal city and port, and Emily’s home for that year. It has one of the biggest fish markets in the world, Jagalchi Fish Market. You’ll rarely see anywhere so many fish gathered together in one place – I posted about them here.
I’ve a feeling I may have an occasional South Korean season coming on, and maybe next time in glorious technicolour. Thanks to Sarah at Travel with Me for putting the idea into my head, and to Jude, whose photo challenge this week constrains us to think of the urban environment. Country Mouse hasn’t been to town for weeks,
I’m pretty fed up. I was sickening for something down in London, and once I got home, The Virus took a grip. Goodness it’s malevolent: and it’s not letting go. The only consolation is that I’ve got through an astonishing number of books, including Min Jin Lee‘s Korean family saga Pachinko.
This is the story of several generations of one Korean family with roots near Busan, who emigrate to make a new life in Japan following the repressive occupation of their own country by the Japanese from 1911. It’s a compelling family saga taking us from 1911 to 1989; from poverty to economic stability, with sacrifice and hardship as constant themes.
How could I not be interested, since Emily’s just returned home to Spain from a year in Busan? And yet the world in which the book begins is not one she or we would recognise. A time traveller from 1911 or 1930 London, Liverpool or Leeds would find a lot that’s familiar in those same cities today. A time traveller from Busan? Not a chance.
The story starts in Yeongdo, which is now part of Busan, but was in 1930 a fishing village on an island set apart from the mainland.
‘…..the market ajummas squatting beside spice-filled basins, deep rows of glittering cutlass fish, or plump sea bream caught hours earlier – their wares arrayed attractively on turquoise and red waxed cloths spread on the ground. The vast market for seafood – one of the largest of its kind in Korea – stretched across the rocky beach carpeted with pebbles and broken bits of stone, and the ajummas hawked as loudly as they could, each from her square patch of tarp.’
Here’s an ajumma, 2016 style, at Jagalchi market.
Well, I doubt if the market is still there – it certainly won’t be on the beach. Instead, the immense Jagalchi fish market is on the nearby mainland, together with ajummas, certainly, but these days it’s all plate-glass buildings and the ephemera of modern port life.
Jagalchi Market – outside ….
…… and inside
As for Yeongdo. No longer is it an island fishing settlement, with small wooden houses surrounded by productive vegetable patches. I can’t find any pictures, so instead must rely on Min Jin Lee’s word pictures of empty beaches, densely wooded hillsides rich in edible fungi. Those hillsides still exist – but look down over the settlements and the docksides below. And Yeongdo is linked to the mainland by a bridge. Sunji and her family wouldn’t recognise a thing.
Apart from my photo of an ajumma selling fish, all other images are from Wikimedia Commons
The view from the Igidae Trail to Busan and Haeundae
Life’s complicated just now. I don’t need any more challenges. But here I am, taking on one which is entirely self-imposed. It’ll help me reflect on the good moments in life, or at least on interesting times.
The challenge is one provoked weekly by WordPress, my blogging platform. Once a week, they provide a word. Just one. To respond, I and fellow bloggers choose one of our own photos to interpret the theme. Just one.
Imagine Busan, the city where Emily’s living just now. Imagine busy streets, crowded markets, streaming traffic, a high-rise metropolis of three and a half million people.
But it’s a coastal city too, and one day we took the path at Igidae. Here were views across the bay to those high-rise towers at Haeundae, to Gwangan Suspension Bridge, and to a jagged, rocky coastline.
As we walked away from Haeundae, we replaced city bustle with solitude, with crashing foaming waves, salty spray crusting our hair and faces, rugged paths leading us first up craggy cliffs then down again. The busy city was never more than minutes away, but we were at the edge of a primitive, savage untamed world, unchanging since time began. That was a kind of magic.
The sea crashes to the cliffs of the Igidae Trail
My challenge posts will appear on Sundays. Hence ‘Snapshot Sunday.’
Why go for a good long walk? Well, for the pleasures of the countryside of course. The views, the mulchy paths through woodland and across meadows: all the sights and sounds of The Great Outdoors. But for most of us, there’s another reason too. We want a decent bit of exercise. Get those legs into gear!
It’s no weather for walking at the moment, so in front of the fire, we fell to reminiscing about walking in South Korea. Not the mountain walks to hidden temples, secret waterfalls. No, we remembered walking in the metro systems of those mega-cities of Seoul and Busan.
It was courtesy of the subway that we got from A to B when we were tourists in those cities. Our command of hangul was so limited that the bus had disappeared round the corner before we’d decoded its destination.
Announcements on the stations were helpfully in Korean and English, and you knew which direction the train was heading in, because as it pulled into the station, a tune would play. Outward – one tune: inward, another. One of Busan’s tunes was a few bars from Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’.
Seoul subway. Once in the carriage, we older travellers had a dedicated area where the younger commuter wouldn’t dare to sit, unless disabled or pregnant.
But all that’s for when you’d reached the platform – sorry – ‘tracks’. First find your platform. At one station in Busan, I found that once below ground, I still had a whole 750 metres to walk to get to the automatic ticket barrier marking the station entrance.
Here we are. Exit number 13
Some stations were vast, with up to 16 exits spread over a large geographical area. Leave by the wrong one and you could find yourself clueless, or stranded on the wrong side of an impenetrably busy highway. Within the station, distances can be so great that they’ve often installed travellators – not to mention three or even four long steep sets of escalators plunging far into the earth. Or a lift – sorry, elevator – four storeys deep. But it won’t get you out of walking, walking, walking, along sparklingly clean tunnels, unending platforms. No wonder every station has scrubbed and user-friendly public toilets for the weary traveller.
And who knew that stations can have more than one stop? If, for instance you need to transfer to another line at Eulji-ro in Seoul, you may need to catch a train to get to the line you’re changing to. And then there’ll still be a route march to get to the right platform.
Seoul metro system. There’s a pre-paid transport card that you can use country-wide, making day-to-day travel super-easy.
If your main interest in walking is to burn off the calories, I can recommend a trip to the metro system in South Korea. Plan a journey from one station to another, build in a couple of line changes, and you’ve more than got your 10,000 steps a day under your belt.
Here’s a challenge we spotted whilst walking down those the long station corridors. Guess the work of art inspiring this advert. Answers in ‘Comments’ please!
You’ve seen post after post showing urban Korea to be home to the high-rise. Often it is. But not always. Gamcheondong in Busan for instance. At the time of the Korean war the little houses clinging to steep hillsides provided safety and refuge. The community was closely-knit over the years, but not prosperous.
In the early years of this century, the area started to become something of an arty community. Murals appeared, galleries, quirky touches of all kinds. Now the narrow streets and winding alleyways are a tourist destination. Today, we joined those tourists.
Emily came to Korea to teach. She’s at an Elementary school – children up to thirteen. And today, the Principal invited us to look round.
What a day. We were welcomed like royalty with elegantly presented ginseng tea and dainty fruit slices. We looked round the spacious, clean and orderly building where 360 children study.
We saw the classrooms, the well-stocked library, the science labs, the music and art area, the counselling room, the resources area, the sanatorium, the English room, the school broadcasting area, the after-school club rooms, the spacious kindergarten, the staff work rooms … and then the dining room, where we had school dinner, and jolly good it was.
After, we saw the playground, the garden and the sports pitches. We were beyond impressed.
The children were excited to see us, and there were welcome notices greeting us everywhere. My pictures of course are child-free, which is a shame. We had a truly special experience. Koreans clearly value education, and are proud to show off their achievements.
……. are sold almost every day at Korea’s largest fish market at Jagalchi, Busan. Fish so fresh it’s still kept alive in tanks; cured fish; dried fish; seaweeds both fresh and dried; sea foods of every kind.
Two market halls, one with fish restaurants above – they’ll cook the fish you chose in the market below, or serve it raw. Several streets full of vendors. Can there be any fish left in the sea?
We found ourselves in a cable car, rising slowly and stately, above the city to the forested mountain above Busan.
Once there, we explored the maze of forest trails. For the first time, my hard-won hangul came in handy. Only a few signposts were translated.
I wanted to visit the Buddhist hermitage of Seokbul-sa
If only I’d known how hard it would be, scrambling down stony forest hillside, then up again. Then down again. Then an endless hairpin-bended track.
It was worth it. Commanding views of the distant mountains; intimate, beautifully painted prayer rooms, and best of all, figures from Buddhist legend carved directly into the rock looming above the hermitage.
I was glad to have made the effort. But it was a very tough walk indeed.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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