Big in Korea: And the Rain Came From the Sea

Being the ongoing adventures of a geek on the far side of the world…

This was the week the monsoon came to Changwon, carried by a soaked wind off the Pacific, and as a city boy from Ohio it was certainly a new experience for me. A few weeks back we had a rain of more usual proportions, and rather than wrangle an umbrella I decided to wear a waterproof jacket and head to work as usual. During the school day one of the local English teachers took me aside, her face very serious. “You need to get an umbrella,” she said. “The monsoon is coming.” The look on her face told me something like, “If you don’t, you will die.” This would have been an exaggeration, of course, but her point was valid.

The rains arrived late this year, but arrive they did. It started in the middle of the night and kept going all day and beyond. I’ve never been in a hurricane, so the hardest rains I’ve ever seen were generally part of a “cloudburst,” burning themselves out after a few minutes. This was about on that level, only for fifteen hours straight. The humidity reached levels beyond my experience and the school’s hard dirt playing field turned into a muddy, rectangular lake. Changwon always has a tendency to smell like fish, and for whatever reason the monsoon only exacerbated this effect.

Changwon and the schoolyard under threatening skies.

On every sensory level, Korea is very different from where I grew up. The best time to notice this is after a rain. Korea after the rain is like a painting. Bright green hills rise up from seas of multi-colored roofs. These peaks are easily hike-able, but their tops are habitually wreathed in mist in any case, as if they hid a mythical Lost World on their far side. Water droplets fall from the broad leaves of the trees lining the streets onto the pedestrians below, though they hardly notice because no one goes without their umbrella here even in a slight drizzle. Unfamiliar smells and sounds whisper to the outsider, as if trickling between the bricks of the street.

Of course, this makes the country sound far too much a fantasy, a far eastern impressionist painting. It doesn’t take into account the garbage strewn everywhere in the streets: to the Westerner Korea permanently looks like there’s a garbage strike going on, but that’s just how it is here. Of course this causes a problem in the rain. It doesn’t tell you about the unchained, yipping trio of soaked dogs blocking the sidewalk in front of the appliance store. Or the way the locals don’t budge no matter how many times you say “excuse me” while trying to get to the exit of the bus, a task only made harder when everyone’s carrying a used umbrella. And of course that romantic mist around the mountaintops isn’t limited to days when there’s rain. Its real cause, after all, is pollution. There aren’t very many non-hazy days around here.

The weather is a product of being so close to the ocean. It’s a different experience, one I’m not used to. Changwon itself is mostly cut off from the sea by its surrounding hills, but if you keep driving down the main street you’ll eventually get to Masan and its “Dream Bay” (I don’t think there’s anywhere in this country that’s not plastered with its tourist marketing slogan), and from there you can see the opening to the ocean. About forty minutes in the other direction is Busan, with its popular beaches lined with modern skyscrapers. There’s also a truly massive harbor, one of the world’s busiest with a famous fish market. You can pick out your dinner downstairs while its still swimming around and they’ll take it upstairs to prepare for you. Just expect to get yelled at by a bunch of elderly women in the process (“Sashimi! Eat! Sashimi I make for you!”). This wasn’t just a harbor for show… the place was lined with industrial-level ships, all crawling with fishermen. This was a place for those who make their living at sea. There’s a whole other world out there.

The other week, in very different weather, I rode a boat of my own out on that ocean. It was a modern ferry, its engines loud, its windows dirty. It came late while a hundred or so people crowded on a forlorn dock. But when we got going, we swept past mountainous green and rocky islets, rising from the sea like something out of a novel. There was something undeniably romantic in that, leaving a white wake in a clear blue ocean.

The Dragon's Neck on Yeonhwa-Do disappears into the sea.

Our destination was an island maybe forty minutes off the coast, a place called Yeonhwa-Do. It’s not a big place. I could walk from one end to the other and back in four hours easily, and that included climbing a mountain. The main town reminded me of something you’d find on a Greek island, or maybe in the Caribbean: white-washed one floor buildings, a few stepped lettuce farms leading up into the mountain-sides. There’s a little harbor area, piers covered in fishing nets. There you’ll find a few mostly-outdoor restaurants ready to sell raw fish and soju (or, as Americans would call it, “moonshine”) to the daytrippers who take the daily ferries from the mainland. The concrete outside these places was covered in black seaweed drying in the sun. Seaweed soup is common dish in our school cafeteria.

Atop the peak I found a rather forlorn pagoda. From that spot you can get views of the “Dragon’s Neck,” a series of rocks disappearing gradually into the sea. Beyond that, only water. Somewhere in that expanse are giant squid, blue whales, great white sharks. Atop it sailed James Cook, Ferdinand Magellan, and Zhong He, unaware of their varying fates and legacies. Though we can cross the entirety of the Pacific in less than a day in our airplanes these days, we still know relatively little of its depths. Who knows what mysteries are still lurk there? From the shore we feel we can almost reach out and touch something unknowable.

And above the unbroken sea roll clouds of incredible power, clouds that can destroy cities when they have a mind to. I, raised in a Midwestern town full of strip malls and freeway exits, found a certain kind of awe just lying in bed and listening to the sound of the unrelenting rain of a relatively routine storm rattling the roof of my house. It felt like scant protection from a great and powerful force over which I had no control. Meanwhile, the street turns into a garbage-strewn river and life goes on beneath the mist-capped green hills of Changwon.

About Dan

Dan Joslyn grew up in Ohio but now lives in Las Vegas, NV with his lovely ginger girlfriend, Tiarra, where he works as an office monkey. He enjoys reviewing movies and television for the site, and over-analyzing such things. He may be the Chosen One… but he probably isn’t.

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