Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

In some ways Korea is a very modern and efficient country and in other ways it seems to be stuck in a time warp.

Everywhere you look there are cell phone stores, often 6-10 on a block. Everyone has a cell phone, children run around with them at about the age of 4. Video games are huge. The internet connections are some of the best in the world. Our new favourite store, Home Plus, has shopping carts that you have to put a 100 won coin (about a dime) in before you can release it from the chain so that people don’t leave the carts all over the place. You can’t get the coin back until you attach it back to the other carts. The store is a 4 level box store with everything from groceries to computers. Instead of escalators they have moving ramps that when you put your cart on the wheels lock so it won’t roll away. Inside the stores they have people who sit there all day and clean the escalator railings. Everything is spotless – I mentioned before the revolving plastic wrap on the toilet seats. And if that’s not enough to convince you, McDonald’s delivers. Yup, that’s right, McDelivery.

All of this is exactly what I expected. However, for every way that they’ve thought of new, more efficient ways to do things, they still seem to be stuck a few decades back. The main source for fresh vegetables and meat in the district we’re in is a traditional Korean market. At first this sounded great to me, I’m picturing the farmer’s market. Well was I wrong. Everyday these people cart their vegetables and fruit and fish and live eels from who knows where, sit it on the side of the road in the 30 degree heat and try and sell it. Old women sit there hour upon hour peeling green onions to sell for about $1/lb.

They are doing some construction to the police station just down the road. The building stands open with no supervision, no warning tape, and 3 workers. They’ve built their own scaffolding out of metal pipes that are strung together and just sit on the uneven pavement. To fix the power lines they hoist some poor sucker up in a cherry picker and just keep driving while he ties the new power line into the existing ones. We saw someone washing windows today who was at least 30 storeys up just hanging out. No scaffolding. No nothing. Just a rope, a bucket and a squeegee.

It is amazing to me how some parts of the country can be so advanced while others stay stuck in the stone age. I think I’d trade the state of the art cell phone for the refrigerated meat if I had my way though.