Scenes from the Seoul Metro
Today, in the subway, I stood beside a young woman who thought it would be a good idea to place her caramel macchiato in the overhead compartment. Predictably, the cup fell over and spilled its sticky java contents all over two men wearing fairly nice looking suits. One of them quickly gave the girl a used tissue, demanding that she wipe off the coffee from his back. Nosey ajumas (older Korean women) on the other side of the train, dressed in their best hiking outfits, reached over to provide the humiliated young lady with a seemingly endless supply of tissues and moist towelettes. At first, judging by their stern faces, it seemed like the ajumas wanted the young woman to know that they were disappointed in her. As she set about the arduous task of cleaning up her mess, though, the old ladies smirked.
It was just another day in the Seoul subway, the best place in the city to watch the interaction of everyday Koreans of various ages and social classes. Seoul’s subway system is one of the most extensive in the world. It consists of eight lines, spanning 287 kilometres, connecting virtually all neighbourhoods within this massive metropolis of over 20 million people. There are currently 266 metro stations, from the Incheon International Airport near the coast of the Yellow Sea, to the distant northern suburb of Uijeongbu, down to the posh “new cities” of Gangnam (the district south of the Han River) and then out east to a rusty, Soviet-like area called Sangil-dong.
