Seoul searching: A world within

South Korea may not be on every traveller’s radar in Asia but as Jamie Troughton found, beneath the skyscrapers and beyond the gates lies a capital that keeps revealing more, one encounter at a time.

WORDS JAMIE TROUGHTON

It was only on the fourth day in Seoul, when we climbed 270m to the peak of Namsan Park, that we fully understood how insignificant our explorations had been.

Gazing through the haze on another warm autumn morning was a chance to retrace our steps. And there had been plenty of them; 28,000 Garmin-tracked perambulations through the intoxicating South Korean capital on the second day alone.

But our exertions, from what we could see from the summit, appeared pitiful. The ethereal Gyeongbokgung Palace, a 7,700-room 14th-century estate, appeared tiny amidst the office buildings and parks. The 18km Seoul City Wall, encompassing the old city centre and featuring four colossal main gates, seemed to weave a small and delicate thread over the hilly metropolitan terrain.

From our vantage point, everywhere we looked was teeming with city; 360 degrees of skyscrapered, multilayered population. The bit we̓d ‘conquered̓ occupied a couple of degrees of view. We’d daintily dipped a toe into the teeming city waters of Seoul. But what a dip it was.

Tastes, sights, smells, feels, textures and sensations - much about Seoul is like an ADHD delight; it's a symphony of over-stimulation.

We based ourselves in the Jung District, the smallest (less than 10km2) and least populous of Seoul’s 25 districts, but still with the population of Tauranga. Our first meal set the tone — we crossed the road from our hotel, straight into the sprawling Namdaemun Market, which has been operating continuously since 1414, and promptly got lost.

Twisting and turning from street into laneway, from laneway into alleyway, then from alleyway into impossibly crowded, narrow corridors of colour and aroma; restaurant, kitchen and path all blended into one.

We ate a medley of fried fish with gusto, crunching small bones and experiencing for the first time the culinary magnificence of banchan — small side dishes served with most Korean cuisine. From ever-present kimchi (fermented and spiced cabbage), namul (vegetables seasoned with sesame oil, garlic and chilli), danmuji (pickled radish) and gyeran-mari (rolled omelette served in slices), every mouthful was both wildly exotic and perfectly matched.

We dined on delicious Korean BBQ, and on Chimaek, probably one of Korea’s most famous culinary exports of recent years, combining fried chicken (chikin) and beer (maekju). It may have been all the walking but both went down unerringly easily.

The layers of food matched the city too. October was still hot and humid but within six weeks of our visit, temperatures had plummeted from 50°C to –19°C.

Such a wide array of temperatures needs a clever cityscape, and so much of our meanderings were done in three dimensions — vast underground shopping plazas spreading beneath, then spiralling up into the low clouds.

And amidst the concrete and steel are remarkable areas of tranquillity. A large untamed field of wildflowers, sandwiched between two busy avenues, provided an unexpected highlight when apparent masses of bumblebees turned out instead to be hummingbird hawk-moths.

Walking sections of the Seoul City Wall also dipped in and out of serene, stylish neighbourhoods, through parks and erupted into glorious city vistas.

The layered approach is evident in the culture too. Korea, both North and South, is a peninsula seemingly forever being conquered and collected by two neighbouring imperialists, China and Japan.

And while those two nations infuse much of Korean culture, the endemic traditions are rich and vibrant in their own right. Having fought hard, firstly for independence, then for democracy, South Koreans gather, celebrate and protest frequently and spontaneously.

Old news-gathering instincts kicked in hard on a Saturday morning in Seoul, when we rounded a corner to find masses of marchers shouting, trumpeting and waving banners.

Thousands upon thousands of police disembarked from buses, bedecked in riot gear, while spotters lined windows in high buildings as things seemingly built to a crescendo.

A helpful guide at a neighbourhood information kiosk chuckled at our concerns. “It happens every Saturday,” she explained. “Most weekends, the police outnumber the protestors.”

Ironically, mere weeks after our visit, President Yoon Suk Yeol was suspended after trying to impose martial law. Those same protestors were out again in force, this time in earnest, demanding they retain their right to protest and have a voice in their nation.

Meanwhile, we turned another corner during our trip, walked a block and stumbled into the midst of a Joseon dynasty celebration, where a dazzling wedge of performers twirled in traditional costumes, surreptitiously checking coiffures on latest Samsungs.

People who dress in period costume are afforded free entry into the numerous palaces and cultural sites throughout Seoul — it’s a clever way to both promote and immerse tourists and locals alike in tradition.

Those layers continue in architecture and ambience. Sejong-daero, the street that runs through part of downtown Seoul, has Gyeongbokgung Palace at one end and walls of new shimmering office steel at the other. A statue of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, who saved the country from the brink of collapse during the Japanese invasion of 1592, stands proudly on a plinth, astride both the ancient and the modern worlds.

In the famous Seoul street markets, meanwhile, this translates into a fusion of flavours.

Hangover soup, roast lobster with cheese, an array of spectacular custard-based pastries and deboned chicken claws fit seamlessly next to Zespri kiwifruit and dragon fruit smoothies.

We wandered, for hours, every side street an adventure, every staircase a portal.

Step counts bloomed, as the layers upon layers of a remarkable city unfurled before our dazed eyes.