Seriously, do we need to deface this "green belt" in southern Seoul, known as Umyŏnsan (우면산, or Umyeonsan, shown above), just to accommodate a group of foreigners who can't be bothered to learn Korean or live amongst people who don't speak English like them?I'd hoped that when they razed the Namsan Village or whatever it was called across from the Seoul Grand Hyatt, that this kind of thing was a thing of the past. I mean, I don't mind if people who don't speak Korean much or at all (which is most foreign residents) feel the need to coalesce in neighborhoods where goods and services are offered in their native tongue, especially since model that works so well back in the United States, but do we have to destroy Seoul's greenery in order to do it?
UPDATE:
Here is nb's trip to Umyŏnsan.
I hiked 우면산 a month ago. You can walk through the mountain and come out in Kyunngi-do. It is a really cool mountain and it is a great place to run. There are pill boxes all over the mountain and a few trenches. When I was there, there were very few people and several of them greated me, which was suprising. I hope they leave that mountain alone, but unlike many Korean mountains, this one has a lot of gentle slopes (not sharply up and down).
ReplyDeleteNamsan! Don't get me started on that shithole. They paved over half the f$#^king mountain. It is a MOUNTAIN! It should have dirt trails. But noooooooooooooooooo! They needed to pave it.
Kushi, I will post on my last trek to 우면산 on my blog tomorrow. I took alot of pictures.
" don't mind if people who don't speak Korean much or at all (which is most foreign residents)"
ReplyDeleteDon't the largest share of foreign residents hail from China, about half of whom are ethnic Korean? Since not many Koreans speak Chinese fluently, I would guess that many of the non-ethnic Korean Chinese learn Korean by necessity.
Although the 우면산 apartments are really not for the Chosônjok, I still stand by what I said. The crux of our disagreement may be in the definition of "not speaking much Korean," which is a category the "highly functional" (i.e., not fluent) Kushibo puts himself in.
ReplyDeleteMost Asian immigrants my age in the US, I believe, do speak English better than I do Korean. Those Chosônjok of which you speak tend to congregate around one another for many reasons, including linguistic convenience, not unlike Anglophones. And thank goodness for that, because if it weren't for my ability to provide cultural and linguistic translation, there wouldn't have been as many White girls in Korea willing to date the non-blond, non-tall, non-superbuff Kushibo.
nb wrote:
ReplyDeleteNamsan! Don't get me started on that shithole. They paved over half the f$#^king mountain. It is a MOUNTAIN! It should have dirt trails. But noooooooooooooooooo! They needed to pave it.
Actually, there is at least one fairly large section (and I think there is a second) that is full of "dirt" trails going through primarily undeveloped areas. The section I'm thinking of is accessible from the road that goes up from Namsan Library one one end or from that park along the road near the Hyatt on the other end. The section is almost a kilometer long and doesn't get much foot traffic.
Kushi, I will post on my last trek to 우면산 on my blog tomorrow. I took alot of pictures.
I look forward to that.