Spring is best time of year to visit Seoul

Spring is the best time to visit this Asian megacity, population 26.5 million.

The winter is cold and windy, the wind cutting like razors. Summer is hot and smelly. Greenery dies in the fall.

But Korean azaleas bloom in the spring, the envy of gardeners everywhere. It’s when I visited recently and from where I send these postcards.

•••

It’s said that U.S. military serving in the Korean War brought Western pop culture to this country: Rock n’ roll music, baseball and Spam.

Sixty-five years later, pop culture here is all grown up and it’s heading back to the U.S.

Korean popular culture — or K-pop — is Korea’s hoped-for chief “soft” export. The export of ships, cars, televisions and phones will always count for more, but Korea is counting on music, drama and games to build Korea’s brand as “cool.” Exports of K-pop accounted for $5 billion last year and Korea hopes to double that by 2020.

Two billion-plus viewers have seen Psy’s music video, “Gangnam Style,” but he’s uncharacteristic of Korean popular music, and not what Korea’s music industry has in mind for the West.

Rather, the Korean music industry hopes your pre-teen daughters and sons will be tuning in to — or more likely streaming — idol bands like Bigbang, BTS, Mamamoo, G.Soul and Rain — just as they do now in China, Japan and much of south Asia.

A media economist in Seoul, whom I interviewed with journalist Soo Young Shin, told us the goal is for the U.S. to rank third, behind China and Japan. How’s it going? Billboard says the U.S. already ranks third in one key indicator: the number of K-pop bands performing here.

Oh, and about baseball and Spam? Korean players are so good they are recruited by Major League Baseball and make it to the All-Star Game — three are on the ballot this year.

Only Americans eat more Spam than Koreans, according to the New York Times. U.S. soldiers left behind a dish called “army base stew,” a mixture of hotdogs and Spam. It’s sold today across Korea by the name “budae jjigae.” When I asked an audience I spoke to in Gwangju, in the south of the country, if they had ever eaten it, everyone raised his hand.

•••

The Korean azaleas don’t seem to be affected by the air pollutant, “yellow dust,” but humans are, including tourists.

The dust comes from deserts in western China and southern Mongolia, experts say, becoming toxic as it passes through China’s polluted industrial areas before drifting over Japan and Korea.

The dust isn’t new: it was noticed first in Korea two thousand years ago. What’s new is the particulate matter from burning coal that mixes with the dust. Inhaling high concentrations of yellow dust is associated with asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory diseases.

Yellow dust is worst in spring when I was there.

So many Koreans in Seoul wear masks while outdoors, one hardly notices after a day or two. But I couldn’t help but notice a photo of fashion-forward teenagers in designer masks in the city’s beauty district, Myeong-dong. One was a smiley face, the other a frowny.

•••

The Korean War was the first to be fought under the auspices of an international organization — the United Nations. The U.S. military wasn’t at war, per se. Rather, the U.S. (and 21 other countries) supplied troops to the U.N. at war.

Perhaps this explains why the War Memorial in Seoul is so different from other war memorials I’ve visited, especially those in the U.S.

The War Memorial in Seoul, by contrast, is mostly about the role of other countries.

A particularly touching exhibit is a video of veterans in their 80s revisiting a Korean War battlefield. At the end, they’re in in a line, arm-in-arm — Canadians, Australians, Americans, Brits, singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

•••

Cultural institutions in Seoul are closed on Mondays. Plan accordingly.

•••

Seoul’s 25.6 million people make it the world’s fourth most-populous city.

Yet, it is the least-congested city I’ve visited in travels to 26 countries on five continents. I attribute this to the public-transportation system, especially the subways.

Just one example:

I was staying in central Seoul, across the street from City Hall. I had to be Dongducheon, a village in the far northwest of the city. It would be a 30-stop subway ride at rush hour. A South Korean journalist I was working with checked a subway-system app on her mobile device.

“That’ll take 72 minutes at that time of day,” she said.

Unbelieving, I allowed for 90 minutes. Arrived in 73.

•••

A key to the Korean character, writes Daniel Tudor of The Economist, is a belief in the power of political protest.

My hotel was across from Seoul’s city hall and there was one or more protests there every day. Down the boulevard, platoons of riot police surround the U.S. Embassy, often a target of protestors.

But take a day trip south to the city of Gwangju, home of the most important protest in Korea’s history. It was here, in 1980, that students and faculty took to the streets in what became known as Korea’s “Gwangju Uprising.”

Post-war Korea was ruled by autocrats — some prefer the term dictators — who were supported by the U.S. and who produced the economic and military strength Koreans rely on even to today. But the military coup that followed the assassination of long-time president Park Chung-hee was too much.

As many as 606 protestors died over nine days, as troops sent by the government open fire with machine guns, spurring similar protests around the country, and eventually democratic rule.

Visit Gwangju for the cemeteries where protestors are buried. At the old, traditional cemetery, grave mounds are marked with photographs and memorabilia. Korean families bring young children to honor the dead and learn the story.

A newer cemetery nearby is more of a built memorial with a tower, sculpture, a photo gallery and museum.

Today, Korea has the most robust democracy in Asia, The Economist’s Tudor asserts.

(Note: I was guided in Gwangju by Gyonggu Shin, a retired professor of linguistics at Chonnam National University, and the city’s leading authority on the uprising. Professor K. Seon Jeon, a linguistics professor at Columbus State University and Professor Shin’s former student, introduced me. Thanks to both.)

This story was originally published May 15, 2016 at 3:19 PM with the headline "Spring is best time of year to visit Seoul."