My other overseas work experience was going to rural India. If you recall I was pretty amazed at the difference between the Indian culture and ours. Sure there were nice areas... but the poverty and squalor were particularly overwhelming. Naively I expected South Korea to be similar... I couldnt have been more wrong.
The 14 hour direct flight from JFK pushes the limits of the 747 only 800km short of its maximum range. Apparently every once in a while they have to land the flight in Anchorage Alaska to refuel. Luckily I had driven the whole way up to NYC so I was pretty tired and managed to sleep until over the Kamchatka peninsula of Russia (and i thought it only existed as a territory in RISK)
I hadnt realized it but time had been doing funny things. It already gotten dark when we took off... (7pm) and just never got light again. We landed at 4am in Seoul and it had never gotten light... longest night of my life! Our bodies think it is sometime mid afternoon but the skies tell a different story. In my mind I all of a sudden visualize the globe, and my place on it is nowhere near usual.
The airport is actually in Incheon a new city created on an island 30 minutes outside of Seoul. We drive into the city with the first pre-dawn light filtering down. And we drive, and drive and drive. At first on gleaming highways, and then forever through town. My ignorance is starting to show, and later will realize that the 10 million population (23 in the metro area) is much much larger than NYC.
My first sunrise over Seoul.
In the center of a town there is a pretty large hill with a TV tower / public attraction on top. Taking pictures at 6 am it catches my attention.
We have one day to adjust before we start work. Speaking of which... why am I even here along with some of the most talented people at work? A little history may be in order. Many people think of East Asia as a continuous homogeneous mass. Can I tell the difference between a person from China? Korea? Japan? This is certainly not a great mix and the cultures are quite different. WWII did not start with our entry in Pearl Harbor, or even the Bltizkreig in Europe. Japan, with imperial intentions, had been relentlessly attacking mainland China and Korea throughout the 20s and 30s. This was a particularly brutal war, with such atrocities as Nanking in China where 250,000 were killed in a systematic massacre. There were similar events in South Korea. In Seoul itself the royal palace was almost completely burned to the ground. Though the palace has been 70% rebuilt there only remains one original royal building. It was this building that we were going to be scanning.
Harry and I cant sleep, so we partake of the all you can eat breakfast and go to check out the site. We are scanning an original palace and it is quite beautiful, traditional with the rice paper rooms and intricate woodwork. We sure will have our work cut out for us.
On the same campus lies the national history museum where Harry shows his cultural literacy by matching shapes to shapes.
We catch up with our co workers for an afternoon hike. We ride the amazing metro system out to Bukhansan national park which literally encircles the northern half of the city. The whole city is in fact surrounded with beautiful mountains with gleaming 500-1000 foot granite slabs. I could learn to like it here.
Not a great picture, but that is 1000 feet of rock just lying within site of 10 million people. And this is just one of hundreds of such formations.
After some initial wrong turns we make manage to get a nice hike up past some temples.
A neat map at the trailhead.
The fun is over however and we settle into a 12 days straight of scanning 10-12 hours a day and processing 6 hours a night. Not much time for anything but work and a little sleeping.
However first impressions of Korea are of a gleaming modern city. Bustly and with a certain pressing imperative to get what needs to be down quickly and efficiently. This is not an idle city.... I like it already.
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