A land of extremes
September 23rd, 2002
The first thing anyone will notice coming to Korea is that it is a land marked by extremes. Extreme beauty and extreme dedication. Extreme competition and extreme image.
Where to begin in describing this to someone who has never been here is difficult, but maybe I can start by giving some examples.
In Korea, the first extreme is the number of people densely packed into this small pennisula, less than a third of the size of California. California has some 30 million people–so does Korea. By the sheer number of people always shoulder to shouler, elbow to elbow walking down the streets, it’s hard not to be come more aware of the differences between life in California.. or rather, Los Angeles and Seoul. They are smack in front of your face. About as densely pack as the people are the stores. There are 3 types of shops in Seoul. KTF — the Verizon of Korea; the Hofs — the life of every college town; the Coffee shops — always busy — all 6 floors of them. Now, I’d like to say that there are tons of restaurants.. and there are. But their numbers are really dwarfed by the top three.
So.. KTF is the largest mobile phone company here in Korea. In a busy city like Sinchon, you will find 1 store within eye site of another store — either just a few doors down or across the street.
The Hoffs are stacked back to back, all on top of eachother. Their signs are obnoxious and usually blare beeps and bleeps techno music, or one of TWO groups: Cool or G.O.D. The outside of almost every place is quite trashy, but once you enter you will very often find an interior decor that would be found only in the most trendy of Hollywood or Sunset night clubs. They are very big on taking English words as names, and it’s not uncommon to find a place called the “Roxy” or a mispelled “House of Blue”. There’s this once place I went to called “Oh’charlies..” Sounded like a nice Irsih pub or something. But once you enter, you find something of a more Eastern European decor. It gave me quite the laugh.
The coffee shops are as slick as the bars, often with wonderfully comfortable sofas and modern-classical furnature. The exceptions are the very boring American coffee chain stores like Coffee Bean, Seatle’s Best Coffee, and Starbucks. They are very boring inside and usually offer nice hard wooden chairs to sit on, not much to compare against the personal lounge chair all the other places offer. Starbucks can sometimes have some big locations in the states, but nothing in comparison to what you will find here. Imagine the largest Starbucks you have ever been to. Now, multiply that by 5 floors and you have one Starbucks. Coffee Bean has the same arrangement, along with many other local coffee shop chains or novelties.
Posted by e at 2002-09-23 05:38:00
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