For the entirety of my life, I have never been content with following the predictable life-path of an ordinary person in my station. The promise of a long, boring career has always been a sort of cancer, something to be avoided or inoculated against. The well of knowledge to avoid such poisonous hazards has always been found in traveling. Escaping the ordinary and finding comfort in the unfamiliar. Growing up, during my seemingly unending schooling, I would always stare out the window during class like a bird in a cage. I’d wonder when will I be paroled from this juvenile incarceration for which I found myself. When will I be free to set the my own course? Being bound to a family and a requisite education always seemed a sentence undeserving for a crime I had no knowledge of committing.
This structured existence made me an angry woman in my youth. My anger turned inward and I shut myself off to the outside world, only allowing the most deserving in, and even then, at best, guarded. At the conclusion of a mediocre university career I was finally able to break free from the chains of familial bonds and escape to the glory of willful homelessness.
As a child, I would often seek the only escape possible; books. I found myself tramping around the streets so vividly reproduced by artists the likes of William S. Burroughs and Pearl S. Buck. Now I was free to revisit these strange places to finally obtain an education worthy of having.
The vision of Seoul, Korea; the idea of an ‘exotic orient with servile women in classic garb’ and ‘bearded wise men sitting around a sparsely populated sitting room’ is no more. Indeed the shared vision of the Far East and the republic for which I occupy, is one of a mega-city lit by harsh glow of sodium vapour lamps and neon. A city densely populated, humid, and filled with beautiful, busy people driving foreign cars. Seoul is a city of conspicuous consumption. Appearing rich is the new sport of the orient.
The sickness of the West has now spread through the veins like an opiate choking the East. Capitalism and the drive to acquire has left Korea clamouring for the finest fare from abroad. It isn’t the place I read about, nor dreamt of as a child.
A country formerly weary of alien nations, the barriers of trade and culture have come crashing down. Walking through Seoul, I see only traces of its once exceptional history. Like shadows dancing on a wall, I get brief glimpses and then it’s gone. Beautiful homes and communities bulldozed and replaced with next trendy chain of restaurants offering the promise of conformity. The ancient orient, the country that I came here to see, is rapidly disappearing.
It’s not until I head south of Korea’s capital do I find the promise of Korea’s past before me. Showering off the sickness of Seoul, I find myself lost in the mountains, wandering through the valleys that run through the backbone of this country. Isolated homes and small villages reminiscent of a past that is deserving, proud, and rich. The stillness of it all allows me to escape. The stillness allows me to scrape the last remnants of humanity from under my fingernails. There – I am free.
Seoul is both a place I love and loath. From it’s inky and unending back-allies hiding impressive cultural and traditional gems, to its pervasive and disappointing bourgeois denizens. I struggle with this chic city. There is a rage within. The longing to find a promised-land of the ancient orient and like-minded travellers, with the eventual mea culpa that the tales of such places no longer exist nor may have indeed ever. The vivid creations of such exalted travel writers of my past were indeed the myths of artists who created them. Their accounts of the Far East and my hunger to see what I wanted to see led me down a fated path of disappointment.
Originally Published: SEOULfi, July 2013
Make a one-time donation
Make a monthly donation
Make a yearly donation
Choose an amount
Or enter a custom amount
Your contribution is appreciated.
Your contribution is appreciated.
Your contribution is appreciated.
DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly
I DIDN’T PLAN TO BECOME A TEACHER: The Students Who Made Me Stay
I didn’t become a teacher because I planned to. I became one because I stayed. Because I said yes often enough. Because students like Alex and Clare taught me that education is not merely academic—it is relational, fragile, and profoundly human.
RAISED BY PLACES UNSEEN: The Quiet Way Borneo Found Me
I arrived in Kota Kinabalu under a veil of night. The airport was modest, its walls carrying a patina of age that felt unexpectedly comforting. It didn’t strive to impress; it felt lived-in, a doorway used by generations of travellers before me.
PART 3 – NO PERMISSION NEEDED: What Was Once Shame Has Become Pride
What began as innocent play, the joy of dressing up and pretending, soon curdled into confusion and punishment. My parents’ gentle corrections hardened into anger, their voices faltering with something more akin to unrelenting impatience. My pleas — small, wordless, desperate — were dismissed as misbehaviour. How could I have explained, at four or five…
- I DIDN’T PLAN TO BECOME A TEACHER: The Students Who Made Me Stay
- JUSTICE ENDS WHERE POLICING BEGINS: The Shameful History of Policing The Gay and Trans Community in Canada
- RAISED BY PLACES UNSEEN: The Quiet Way Borneo Found Me
- ALONE AGAINST THE SYSTEM: Fighting Police Misconduct in Ontario Means Surviving It
- PART 3 – NO PERMISSION NEEDED: What Was Once Shame Has Become Pride
Sabrina Constance 