A Portrait of a Korean Neighborhood

1

It’s loud here. Through my window I hear it all: the motorbikes, shrieking children, bellowing drunks, car horns, squabbling couples, sing-song tape loops of fruit vendors and fishmongers, cackling grannies, K-pop choruses, ringtones, cha-cha trot music, yapping dogs, wailing cats, loogie hawking, and the endless clank, buzz, and grind of a city in a perpetual state of reconstruction. Yeonsan-4-dong is a positively cacophonous place to call home.

But home it is, and has been for the last five years or so, despite the fact that there’s nothing sexy about setting up shop in this particular corner of town. It’s a tatty, working-class neighborhood situated in the bowels of this city’s big, midtown district. Sure, gentrification is beginning to rear its well-coiffed head, but Yeonsan-4-dong remains largely unscathed by that specter’s shimmering tentacles. This is a spit on the pavement, kimchi and sweet potatoes kind of place, and despite its seeming lack of coolness, allure, or fusion gastropubs, it has its own brand of charm.

We moved here because it’s cheap; we managed to get into a spacious apartment occupying the whole third floor of a building for peanuts, really. It’s old by Korean standards (what they call a “villa” here), a place that most locals, in their quest for everything brand new and sparkling, would likely turn up their noses at. But we did some renovations, spiffied it up, and made it our own.

Still, it has its issues: The wiring is old and prone to throwing the circuit breaker, especially during that key moment when cooking a meal; the water pressure is schizophrenic, so much so that the flow to the bathroom sink often disappears and then explodes in violent aquablasts, drenching you when attempting to brush your teeth or wash your hands; worst is the main bathroom drain, which sometimes belches forth gaseous bursts so foul that they smell like they’ve come from deep within Beelzebub’s rectal canal. No amount of bleach will ameliorate the reek, but, like I said, the price is right.

Anyone who spends any time in an older neighborhood in Korea will take note of the odors and aromas straight away. In the West we tend to shrink from smells; we do our best to hide or erase them entirely, whereas here they’re just a fact of life, especially in a place like Yeonsan-4-dong. Our street in particular is a cavalcade of food fragrances, owing mainly to the fact that a good half a dozen storefront takeout/delivery restaurants have set up shop. Ever since a new cluster of shiny new high-rise apartments (Lotte Castle) went up across the busy street from my ‘hood, these delivery joints have popped up like mushrooms after a rainstorm.

On the first floor of our building is a shop that does fried kimchi and pork. These guys moved in just last year and are kind of dickheads, heaping their rubbish in front and constantly smoking next to their scooters, which often block the only entrance to our humble abode. The cheap aluminum chimney of their kitchen hood juts up just below our main window, and at night the air around the place is inundated with an acrid yet strangely savory smoke. It’s sour smelling and kind of gross but still manages to make my mouth water. This, in turn, mixes with the greasy aromas of the fried chicken place across the street, which then mingles with the pizza place between it and the Japanese-style rice bowl joint at the end. All of this blends with whatever scents emerge from the raw fish/pork rice soup joint adjacent to the aforementioned kimchi/pork guys.The result is an olfactory melange, a kind of bouquet of cheap eats that saturates the immediate vicinity.

Aside from those smoking punks downstairs, this is a friendly neighborhood, especially if, like me, you’re a known figure. While I’m certainly not the only whitey in this part of town, I am the only visible waygookin in this immediate area, aside from a few Vietnamese who I run into from time to time. At one point this turned heads, but the locals have since become inured to my foreignness; most familiar faces bow or greet me out loud as I make my way through the narrow streets on my daily rounds, especially when I’ve got my dogs on leash, which often produce big grins.

Most older neighborhoods in Korea tend to house people who are also long in the tooth, and that’s certainly the case here in Yeonsan-6-dong, where the median age has got to be north of 60. There is a beauty shop two doors down that specializes in grannie perms. It opens first thing in the morning and operates seven days a week. At any given time there are five or six halmeoni sitting around with curlers and foil on their wizened heads, laughing and clucking while staring up at the news, variety shows, or dramas flashing on the wall mounted TV. Just around the corner is another gathering spot for grammas, where, when the weather is just right, they sit on plastic stools and office chairs in front of a crumbling wall next to a church, basking in the warmth of the sun. Every once in a while you see one of their ranks puffing on a cigarette, too old to even pretend to give a fuck.

When we first came to this part of town there was an elderly woman who used to stand at the entrance to an alley leading back to a couple little houses just down from us. When I say “old,” I mean ancient. If she wasn’t a centenarian she had to have been close, and she would just hang out there, leaning on her cane, watching the day slip by. Anytime she saw me she would raise her bony hand, cock her head, and greet me with a raspy, drawn out “Helloooooooo.” I always returned the gesture, which sometimes encouraged her to open up to me even further in a creaky stream of deep Busan old lady Korean that I had no hope of even beginning to comprehend. Still, I’d smile, nod, and say “nae, nae,” thankful for the opportunity to connect with a fellow human who must have seen extraordinary things during her century (or so) on the planet.

One day I noticed that she hadn’t been around for a couple of weeks, which turned into more weeks, which then turned into years. I imagine she’s left us by now, but every time I walk by that little alley (which is nearly every day), I think of her smiling eyes and sweet, croaking “hello.”

To the right of our building is a little locksmith and stamp shop (tiny personalized ink stamps are still used as an official signature for documents here). I’ve never seen the owners make or sell either, as signature stamps are on their way out, and the need for physical metal keys is on par with that of camera film. The couple, who must be in their mid-70’s, just use the place to hang out during the day, socialize, dry various leaves, seaweed, and sticks out front, and sort through collected cardboard, which they sell to the recycling lot at the end of the street. I felt sorry for this pair until I learned, through Minhee, that they actually own a building in the neighborhood, which is where they live. They don’t have to gather cardboard, but rather do so out of some militant sense of frugality. A lot of the older generation is like that here. Once you’ve known real poverty, it’s hard to wash that taste from your mouth.

These are sweet, friendly folks, who also talk in that rough, local form of Korean that sounds like people gagging on fish bones and chewing on thumbtacks. My buddy Sam calls it “motorbike shop Korean,” and I hope to master it by the time I’m 80. They have an old crone of a dog named “Gami” that could surely be the frontrunner in any ugly canine competition — a mottled black and grey, bug-eyed, barrel-like creature with stubby legs, bat ears, and stretched-out old bitch teats that nearly drag on the ground. Her owners are old school and never had her spayed, which meant she popped out scads of puppies for years on end; owing to her unique shape, her progeny can be recognized throughout the neighborhood, including our place, which is happy home to “Allie,” the lone surviving pup of Gami’s final litter (and our precious brown-eyed girl).

My warm feelings towards Gami’s owners started soon after they took over the shop a few years back. It was around 3 a.m., the witching hour following the night of my birthday, which I had celebrated at home with a scandalous amount of lager. Deep in my cups, I stepped out for a ciggy (I am known to sneak a smoke when drunk enough). Now this was mid-January and it was cold, with a punishing, Siberian wind blowing down onto the city. I was well bundled up in my parka, but it was still too frigid to smoke on the street, so I stepped into the alcove in front of their humble little business. As I’m not a regular puffer, the rush of that cigarette went straight to my toes. Suddenly the world began to spin, and before I knew it, I lost my balance and fell straight backwards into the glass door of their shop, which detonated in a jangly shatter. I awoke on the ground, lying halfway inside, with shards all around me. Gami howled away in the room next door, and luckily, my thick winter coat protected me from getting cut up.

I somehow made it back upstairs, passed out, and awoke the next day with the cloudy memory and shame blanket of my major fuckup. I confessed to Minhee, who, with me in tow, immediately went next door to apologize, offering up a couple of fancy convenience store coffees as an olive branch, along with my bows and profuse apologies. When she explained what had happened, the old couple just shook their heads and laughed, as if this is to be expected on a man’s birthday. We of course offered to pay for the new glass door front, which I assumed would require a big wad of cash. The couple, however, elected to go with the one they had before, a basic, plastic composite that only set us back around 30 bucks. Since then the pair has had my undying devotion. I guess I come cheap.

2

Yeonsan-4-dong is a twenty block swath of alleys and side streets, penned in by the stony rise of Mt. Baesan on one side and the boulevard known as World Cup Dae-ro on the other. At the top end lies Yeonsan Station — one of the city’s main transportation hubs — along with a neon-lit entertainment district of restaurants, bars, karaoke joints, and love motels that I like to call “Ajeossi Disneyland.” This is a place where some serious eating and boozing goes down, as well as many levels of backroom whoring. You just gotta be careful where you step after dark, as the “kimchi flowers” (puke puddles of red cabbage, rice, and half-digested pork) are known to bloom in profusion.

Adjacent to this hotbed of nightlife vice is Yeonil Market, a covered street bazaar where I purchase most of our fruit, veggies, meat, and banchan (side dishes). Minhee sends me there because the local vendors always give me the white man hook up. We figured out early on that, not only do I enjoy better service, but I often receive 10–20% more of any product than she does. Sure, it’s racism, but the good kind.

This is one of many traditional street markets in the city, and while I wander its arcade almost daily, I never tire of the place. Each time I soak up its raw energy, and the whirlwind of colors, smells, and sounds never fails to hit me in my sweet spot. Despite some recent xenophobic bad press in the West concerning “wet markets” (which are just a places where they sell produce, meat, and seafood — such a loaded term), they remain among some of my favorite places in the world. Wherever I travel, I attempt to embrace the Bourdainian notion of hitting the local markets straight off the bat: there’s no better way to get a feel for what makes a culture tick than witnessing what they’re selling and buying for the dinner table, firsthand.

Because I’m one of maybe two Western regulars at the market, I’ve become somewhat of a celebrity, or at least well-known to the vendors and workers. My vegetable lady sets up shop at the end, where she hawks the freshest greens, peppers, and onions, along with packs of smokes. She’s not exactly bubbly, performing her job with a world weariness you’d expect from someone manning a stall for years on end, but every once in a while she’ll give me just a hint of a smile, which never fails to make my day.

My meat guy is the opposite, chopping and slicing and selling with a spirited, infectious cheer. He takes great pride in his work and greets almost everybody who walks by his immaculate shop with a full-throated “Annyeonghaseyo?,” which is always good for morale.

Next to him is the market’s biggest fruit stand, manned by a sour, morose family that will also hook you up with some ciggies to go with your strawberries. The gramma that used to do most of the selling was one of the grumpiest old gals I’ve come across in Busan, and that’s saying something. She’d sit there on her stool, scowling away, watching market life unfold with a poisonous eye. She’s since thrown in the towel and her daughter — who’s a bit nicer and even takes a mild interest in my dogs — has taken over, but in twenty years she’ll probably be as mean as her baseball mitt of a mom. Being a general fan of kindness and gratitude, I usually shop for fruit elsewhere, but their stand always has the freshest stuff in the neighborhood, even if they’re light years away from service with a smile.

The people who staff Yeonil Market are like one big tribe. They feed one another and help man each other’s stalls when the other owner steps out to pee or have a smoke. There’s a ragtag sense of camaraderie to the place, and even though they’re often competing for customers and frequently argue and complain, they really take care of each other, especially the more vulnerable members of their posse, of which there’s no shortage.

There’s the meat guy at the front of the market who’s usually so soju hammered that he just passes out in his own sad little shop, midday. One time I walked by and saw that he was sitting on his bench, butt naked, interdimensionally drunk and oblivious.

There’s the other ajeossi who owns a one-room space where he sells bizarre-looking, inedible berries, piles of tree bark, thorny sticks, and medicinal tinctures. He never fails to inquire into the whereabouts of my dogs, always calling them “koshi,” which I learned is just a made-up word that probably translates as “nosers.” I don’t know if he’s always intoxicated or just touched, but his pants are often unzipped and the elevator doesn’t seem to go to the top floor.

And then there’s that gnarly, essence-of-gruff woman with a rosy-cheeked, slab of a face. who collects the cardboard and helps tidy up the place. She sports a tight little perm, and always wears baggy ajumma clown pants. While surely mentally challenged, she’s not one of those sweet, huggy types, and once berated Minhee and her friend Jee in a cascade of raw profanity because they were in her way on the crowded sidewalk. Ever since then Minhee has been afraid of the woman, who looks like a Mongolian prison lesbian who was probably kicked in the head by a mule at some point.

I do some of my solo drinking in the vicinity of the market, which can be tricky in Korea, since knocking back booze is almost always a group effort, involving packs of people and expensive side dishes. The idea of rocking up alone, Western-style, is still somewhat of an alien concept here, though in recent years the notion has begun to catch on.

My first spot is “Hero Salon,” a “small beer” pub, one of many that sprouted up all over the country seven or eight years back. These kinds of places are common in Japan, which, unlike its more collectivist neighbor, has embraced a culture in which there is no shame in drinking and dining alone. This cozy, superhero-themed joint serves only cheap Korean beer on tap along with a few bottles of imports, and offers up a handful of booths and tables where customers can sit and imbibe. The main selling point, however, is its outdoor seating — a few stools which allow patrons to drink while watching the night melt away. This is especially great in the muggy, languid, sweat-a-thon of the Korean summer, where an ice cold glass of lager just makes sense.

My other go to is “Basake,” which, like Hero Salon, is located right on the edge of Yeonil Market. This little bar/street food stall opens at 11 in the morning, making it one of the few bars in town where day drinking is an option. Beaming, bespectacled proprietor Kyeong-seob never fails to greet me with a loud shout and smiling bow every time I walk by the place, and always sorts me out when I nip in for a cold one and a crunchy side dish of deep friend chicken, peppers, or squid. He also gives me a 500 won “regular discount” on my beer, making him the cheapest mug of draft in town. The gravitational pull of Basake is so great that I sometimes find myself purposely avoiding that alley for fear of getting sucked by its unfailing goodness.

A central street extends from Yeonil Market towards our place into the guts of the neighborhood; this is the area’s main pedestrian concourse and how I usually walk home. Myriad small businesses line the route, including hair and nail salons, scores of dry cleaners, a couple of barbecue restaurants, chicken joints, fruit sellers, soju bars, noodle houses, flower shops, clothing boutiques, a liquor warehouse, study rooms, two kindergartens, hardware stores, construction shops, movers, delivery services, one sauna, and some grocery stores, culminating in “Ooyoo Mart,” an old-school Korean convenience store just a half block from my house.

“Ooyoo” means “milk” in Korean. This part of the neighborhood was once one of the city’s big milk distribution centers, so I guess the name stuck, and it must be said that over the years I have bought a lot of milk there. Ooyoo Mart is one of those stuffed-to-the-gills shops that reeks of dried squid and seaweed. The owner is a chubby ajumma who sits there 11 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week, staring at the TV across from her register, sometimes never taking her eyes off of the action during the entire transaction. If I ever needed someone on a trivia team who knew their way around K-dramas and variety shows, she’d be my first round pick. Her well has gotta run deep.

Ooyoo Mart is so crowded with goods that it’s hard to even move around the space. When I first arrived in the neighborhood I was a frequent customer, but once a 7–11, CU, and a modern mid-sized mart opened up nearby, I found myself rarely heading to ol’ Ooyoo. After all, she only carries your basic Korean beers, while the other shops stock cheap cans of imports. If I have to choose between Stella and Hite, you can guess where I’m going nine times out of ten.

The central walking route through Yeonsan-6-dong is wider than the claustrophobic alleys that make up most of the area. Still, it’s not a big road, nor one served by signs, lights, or speed bumps. Pedestrians are forced to share the way with vehicles of all stripes, and while most drivers circumvent this street by taking the speedier surface roads bordering the neighborhood, there are always a few local cars, vans, and trucks rattling down the pavement.

While most of them are respectful of the walkers, there are always a few ballbags who barrell down the unregulated corridor like total crackheads, stomping on the gas and laying on the horn with not even a whiff of consideration anyone or anything outside of the protected frame of their metal death machine. Or just not paying sufficient attention, even when driving slowly.

The result had been several dogs and cats killed by trundling cars, as well as a human toll. Two years ago I was ambling up the road on the way home one afternoon and noticed a small crowd of people standing around a flatbed truck next to Ooyoo Mart. As I approached, I took in the form of an old woman lying on the pavement behind it. The truck’s young driver stood to the side with his head in his hands, while a growing pool of blood spilled from her head.

Not wishing to gawk, I went home, returning to Ooyoo Mart an hour or so later, after the ambulance had come and gone. The chubby owner was standing outside the shop, one of the few times I’ve seen her away from the hypnotic glare of her TV.

“Is the grandmother okay?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “The grandmother passed away.”

She went on to explain that the truck had overshot the intersection, and backed up to make the turn. The driver didn’t see the old woman approaching, and knocked her to the ground with the butt of his flatbed, killing her instantly.

The bloodstain remained until they repaved the road, a year down the line.

3

The first time I ran into Babydoll Lady was on the subway. I noticed her sitting opposite me, one bench down. She kept leaning forward in an attempt to make eye contact, accompanied by little cutesy waves of the hand. I responded by burrowing into the safety of my smartphone. If handheld tech has given us anything, it’s the ability to feign distraction when we wish to avoid skin crawling social encounters.

Assured that my rebuff was successful, l slipped my phone into my pocket and got up to exit at Mulmangol Station, which serves the deeper, more hardscrabble innards of Yeonsan-4-dong that I call home. The train slowed, entered the gleaming station, and came to a stop. The brakes hissed, the automatic doors slid open, and a bright, slightly stern voice came over the P.A., admonishing us all to “mind the gap” in the most polite form of Korean. As I stepped over the threshold and went to make my way to the nearby set of escalators (Mulmangol is deeply dug), I was stopped by a woman’s voice.

“HELLO!”

It was her. She stood next to me, beaming up, boring a hole through my head with her “I love Jesus” eyes.

“Uh, hello.”

“WHERE ARE YOU FROM?”

“I’m from the U.S.A.”

“YOU ARE VERY HANDSOME!”

“Thank you.”

“DO YOU WANT TO COME HOME WITH ME?”

She cocked her head back and forth like a drugged puppy.

“Uh, sorry. I can’t. Have a good night.”

I gave her the shallowest of bows before skedaddling towards the escalator in an attempt to put as much distance as possible between the two of us; I still had a long way to the surface, requiring three more sets of moving stairs. When I glanced back over my shoulder, I saw that she was on my tail, waving frantically and shouting, “I LOVE YOU!”

I cruised up one set of escalators, shuffled across the tiled floor to the next, and then turned around once more to see Babydoll Lady cresting that first rise.

“I LOVE YOU!!!” She yelled again. Her sharp, desperate voice ricocheted off the walls of the empty station.

Babydoll Lady is probably in her mid 50’s. She wears her hair in crude pigtails and always sports a skirt or shorts with knee-high socks. She suffocates her face under a mudslide of white pancake makeup, accentuated by swaths of blue eyeliner and the twin apples of garish cheek rouge. She speaks some English and always carries along an actual little plastic baby doll, a kind of avatar for the infantile persona she’s projecting. Any Western male within her orbit becomes the immediate target of her affections; I know this because friends of mine have reported getting cornered by her in other parts of town. The sum of this is a woman who is obviously lonely and broken.

I ran into Babydoll Lady many times after then, always in the cavernous environs of Mulmangol Station. She never failed to greet me with her frenetic wave, shouts of devotion, and speedfreak glare. But it wasn’t until I was out walking my dogs that I found out where she lived.

“HELLO!” she quacked, scurrying up to me as I purchased some tomatoes from a local vendor. I was trapped.

“Oh, hello.” This time I thought I’d engage her a bit instead of pulling my usual duck and dodge. After all, it was broad daylight and, despite her eccentricities, she was a harmless, middle-aged woman. “How are you today?”

“I BOUGHT SOME BREAD,” she said, raising up a half-loaf of white slices bundled in the shitty. thin, black plastic bags ubiquitous to stores here.

“Oh, looks, delicious.”

“I NEED A HUSBAND!” She feigned a pout, stomped the ground with her dirty white sneakers, and flirtatiously thumped my shoulder with her one free hand.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, pointing to my wedding band. “I wish I could help, but I’m married.”

I said goodbye and continued down the road, and once again, she followed, This time I had two dogs on the lead — canines who love to stop every ten feet to sniff, pee, or poop — so it was slow going and there no telling how long Babydoll Lady was going to tail me. I kept checking back, and there she was, ambling along with her dopey smile, clownish getup, and sad little doll, until, after just a couple of minutes, she shouted “GOODBYE!.” I turned once more and watched her head to the front door of a five or six-story apartment building.

“Goodbye!” I said, somehow smiling.

“SEE YOU SOON!” She disappeared into the complex, perhaps confident in the fact that she would see me soon. We were neighbors, after all.

The streets of Yeonsan-4-dong are teeming with ghosts. How many people have walked these alleys, paths, or fields over the past 5,000 years? When I’m out I can feel the history hum underfoot; I can sense the memories that occupy the pavement, soil, and stone, until they’re washed away by the hidden, dark waters flowing and percolating beneath.

This neighborhood creaks and groans with sounds both known and unknown, especially at night, where the putter of delivery scooters is soon overtaken by the wail of wind blowing down from the mountain, scouring the rooftops with shudders and clacks. The sonic spasms of Yeonsan-4-dong are cocooned by the continual hiss of the greater city around us. It’s a whirlwind of noises punctuated by rare, yet profound silences, which only happen after the sun plunges below the ridge.

Strolling this shittily-lit rabbit warren after dark always quickens my pulse. It’s not that I fear for my physical safety, but rather the spirits within; anything from a screeching cat to a far off cherry of an old man’s smoke to a hooded girl dressed rounding the corner in haste can make my skin jump. But none has jolted my bones more than the Elephant Man of Yeonsan.

I realize that “Elephant Man” is at best an indelicate term, one that I probably shouldn’t employ in this age of more specific, considerate language, but it works as a cultural touchstone. You know, of course, that I’m talking about John Merrick, the 19th century English sideshow act who went on to become a celebrity in his day, inspiring the book and subsequent film. Whether it was neurofibromatosis or the much rarer Proteus syndrome, Merrick suffered from a disorder that caused tissue to keep growing in his head and torso, resulting in horrible deformities.

Whatever it was, this guy has got it too, and the first time I came face to face with him was near midnight, popping out of the door of my local 7/11 with four cans of beer. This little store sits at an intersection of sidestreets, and suddenly, out of the darkest branch, came shambling a man whose face hung down to his stomach. The flesh swung in the cold night air like meaty pendulums, and as I took him in, my arteries turned to ice. Worse than that is the fact that I’m sure my face registered the horror; once, a second or two later, after I realized he was just a fellow human with a terrible physical affliction, it was too late. I had already recoiled from just a glance and judged him. He witnessed my visceral repulsion eye to eye, and there is no way to ever rewind such a thing.

I’ve run across the Elephant Man of Yeonsan-dong several times since, always in the deep hours of the night. Each time my blood has frozen in its veins before I could offer him even a glimmer of empathy. Each time he’s seen me seize up and try to retrieve the ripped air from my lungs. Each time he’s witnessed me behave just like they all do, and he’s never even shrugged, because I’m sure he’s used to it by now.

I came to this neighborhood by accident, and I suppose it was a happy one, because I can honestly say it has enriched my life. Sure, I could live closer to the beach, in a place populated by many more of my kind, replete with Western-style pubs, brunch joints, and the LED, high-tech, capped-tooth glimmer that is the face Korea presents to the world. And to be fair, I like this new Korea. I like the fact that I rarely have to walk more than 300 meters in this city to get a good cup of coffee. I like that people are now coming around to the fact that dogs and cats are best loved and taken care of. I stare and stammer in the face of those silver, glimmering high rises of Centum, Donbaek, Haeundae, and Dalmaji. They’re awesome in the pure sense of the word. This is all part of the city I love, but it’s not the whole city.

These days I see old neighborhood after old neighborhood smashed to pebbles by the wrecking ball, only to be swept away, scoured, and replaced with overpriced, generic towers. The splendid, winding alleys of Busan are getting crushed under the steel-toed, jackboot of commerce. Sure they may be louder, dirtier, and sometimes smell like cheap cigarettes and grandpa pee, but they’re the heart of this city, aren’t they?

One great plus to living in this rough and tumble building is the roof, which, like many in town, is painted green, and home to a handful of kimchi pots and a very sturdy clothesline. Lately I spend a lot of time up there, looking out at that little mountain that stands sentinel over the gulleys of carved out streets, hopeless tangles of electrical wire, and uneven, janky-toothed buildings that make up this exquisitely plain neighborhood. And when I listen deeply, when I hear the echo of two old drunks roaring at each other somewhere below, the loudspeaker warble of a man selling cockles from his flatbed truck, or, especially, the sound of the breeze whisking in from the nearby ocean, I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.