Underground Seoul

There's an amazing amount of life here in Seoul which occurs underground. The subway system is quite extensive and provides excellent service. It serves as the base for a huge number of stores, including some quite large malls, in the underground area. In addition to the typical shopping there also appear to be specialty areas. I just happened upon a whole corridor of what seemed to be office equipment sales and repair shops. There must have been more than 15 or 20 small individual cubicles advertising different brands and types of office equipment. There were even some old electric typewriters in the window of one shop; I'm not sure the reason, but it was interesting.

Pedestrian traffic is increased for these underground shopping areas since many of the large streets cannot be crossed on the surface but require taking a tunnel under the street just to get to the other side. Sometimes the pedestrian tunnels are directly related to the subway system; sometimes they're just for the purpose of crossing the street. I was in one of the latter on Sunday, wondering if it was being used for storage since there were large cardboard boxes lining both walls and down the center in the spaces between pillars. Only when I saw a couple of bodies fast asleep in sleeping bags inside one of the boxes did I realize this was a Korean Hooverville. Apparently most of the homeless were outside for the day, having left the area well organized and divided. I felt a little weird, as if I were walking through someone's home uninvited, but I didn't feel at all threatened.

All the up and down to get across streets and to/from the subway provides a lot of exercise. From the street to the subway platform at "my" station is 98 steps. That is almost as many steps as climbing up to my apartment in St. Paul from the street twice. With luck, that should take off some pounds -- or at least prevent more from being added as I eat too much delicious Korean food.

As I'm hauling myself up those stairs (after 85 I'm definitely straining), I wonder how the physically handicapped get around. In some locations there are ways to get a wheelchair down to the subway (and most of the train cars are accessible), but there don't seem to be many options, and I don't think they're well marked or necessarily convenient. Even the availability of curb cuts is haphazard. On the way home from the subway I walk across a street on which one side has a curb cut but there's not one on the other side for more than a block (and the curb is high). Guess you'd just wheel yourself in the street, dangerous in general and almost suicidal with Korean drivers. I saw a woman walking with a heavily-laden cart doing just that this morning.