Impressions of Korea II

Before we arrived in Seoul, we learned that there would be a lot of “yellow dust”. Here, “yellow” is not an adjective, but a part of the noun. There are never days that I am aware of where there are warnings of “green dust” (that would indeed be more unsettling). The dust is in fact yellow though. It is invisible as you walk through the labyrinthine streets, but when you get above the buildings, where you can look a distance, one can see that the otherwise beautiful granite mountains outside of the city are washed out with a yellow haze. We forgot and left the windows open that night. In the morning, we were greeted by a distinctive grittiness coating the room.

In America, low quality food is something one must work to avoid when eating out. Not true in Asia. Korea and Japan seem to simply have higher standards for their food. The most ironic part of all this is that the primary culprits and representatives of American bad food are (while not the shining examples of good food) proof that fast-food can be prepared in a way so that at least to tastes and appearances, it has not been made with all the disregard of a three year old slapping dirt and sticks onto a plate. The big American players for a market share in Korea’s communal stomach: McDonalds, Dunken Donuts, Baskin and Robbins, KFC, Starbucks, and Burger King, are all surprisingly large and clean inside. The employees look cheerful and clean themselves for the most part, not greasy, tired, and stressed as their American counterparts do. The restaurants are almost all very large. Most have at least three stories. On the first story is the counter, on the second and third are the seating areas. At Baskin and Robbins you are given a menu and a place to sit before you order. At McDonalds the hamburgers are delivered looking like genuine hamburgers and not, as my colleague described it, “looking like they were just run over by a truck”, as is the norm in America. Dunken Donuts was found to have the freshest coffee beans in all of Seoul recently, and the store features doughnut flavors such as broccoli and carrot. By far the largest Starbucks I have ever seen in the world have been in Korea. One was four stories high and packed full of people.

One final note. There is a certain vision that going into an American fast food restaurant in Asia one will behold crowds of fat, homesick Americans, seeking some solace in a Big Mac or Mocha Frappachio. This however is certainly not the case. Entering a McDonalds at 10:30 in downtown Busan to satisfy the craving of one of my colleagues, I saw one table of Americans, and probably 80 tables of young, hip Busanites chatting away over burgers.

Impressions of Korea I

It is the late morning in a loft apartment near the Sillim metro station. The apartment is already hot having spent the morning intercepting the yellow, dusty light before it could reach the undergrowth of the city streets. Looking down from this canopy, one can see an old man hobbling along the street. Down another direction are children dashing toward a grotto like playground. Somewhere in the distance is the sound of an electric saw, the banging of metal. A ripping sound, as if the film of the placid movie that had just been playing was rudely ripped apart. The air-raid sirens. It takes a minute for the world to come back into focus. But gripping the window sill with a sweaty hand and looking outside, it is clear that nothing has changed. A few building over an old woman is hanging her laundry, without the slightest hurry. As if an invisible and impermeable box were enclosing the loft and confining the ear drum tearing sound within. Outside the world is still peaceful.


There is a certain nocturnal cityscape that only exists in Asia. There is no doubt that Asian cities use far more blue and green tinted lights than there yellow-centric American counterparts. This lends deep-sea sort of look to the city which is only accentuated by the humid air, which in turn blurs the starkness of the lights, their illumination instead contributing the a glowing haze. Standing on the roof of the largest department store in the world at 9:00 and looking down, the air feels thick, as if the lights of the city have lent it weight. Looking down one feels as if one is looking down into some phosphorescent tide pool full of glowing alien corals and pulsing, skittering crabs.