http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/Seoul-of-a-New-Machine-174966501.html
a) Using puns on Seoul in anything
b) "just finding any Koreans dressed as well as the people at this party would have been impossible back then." materialism, similar to deliverance. highest rate of suicide in the world, 50% above the #2 country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_suicide_rate
c) "the city now contains ten million people, 20 percent of the population of all South Korea."
considering that the city is connected by subways to almost every surrounding city and many people commute, i find this statistic barely accurate. 20million people are in the urban area. anecdotal evidence from subway platforms across the city suggests that the official estimate is wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population
d) "The now forgotten urban planners from decades ago should be national
heroes,” Kang tells me. “They helped lead this city from ruins to
riches. We hope the world can learn from them.”
yeah, you are right, go find those urban planners, because they are the real story. not the crap you copied down on your return flight while you were hungover, you hack.
e) "Seoul residents are some of the earliest adopters of new technology in
the world, especially cellphones and mobile computing devices, and their
immediate access to the most up-to-date information means that the
city’s hottest neighborhoods and sleepiest sections can change
overnight."
It's called a monoculture. what's cool, that's what people do, even if their lives suck as a consequence. hence the suicide rate
d)"But when builders broke ground, they discovered that a whole section of
Seoul’s ancient wall had been buried below the stadium. So instead, the
city created a park to memorialize the archaeological remains, shrinking
the footprint of the original Hadid project."
Didn't I read somewhere that there was a mayor who wanted seoul to be a fashion city who lost an election to a different mayor who wanted to make a re-elect-me-and/or-legacy project of his own so he changed it into a museum, and that the whole thing is wildly over budget?
e) "For this native New Yorker, a night out in Seoul made me think, forget NYC, Seoul is the city that never sleeps."
Soju costs a dollar a bottle.
f)"For some inexplicable reason what’s emerged organically in Seoul is that its residents are ready to live by night."
Thanks for your timeless analysis. It's probably because they have to work all day, and they can sleep at work, and if you're drunk get away with just about anything, including molesting children on a public bus.
g) "Somehow this once-sordid place has become one of the hippest addresses
in Seoul, housing cafés and cocktail bars, architecture and design
firms, not to mention a top private museum: Leeum, Samsung Museum of
Art."
You know that stuff you said in the paragraph before this about everyone thinking this neighborhood was a shit hole? That probably effected property prices. If you look at a map, you can see that Itaewon is in the center of the city, is ten minutes from two of the largest train stations in the city, an hour away from the airport, 10 minutes from a mountain park, and 10 minutes from a river park. Also, the Leeum museum was there when you were first in town six years ago.
h) “There are foreign bars and restaurants, foreign people, and that makes it an attractive place to live for returnees like me.”
Yes, but why? I'll lend you some help with vocabulary: variety, cosmopolitan, diversity, internationalist, globalization, global village, etc.
i) The paragraphs about people moving around the city and the art museum are actually insightful. Half way through is a good part to start making real remarks.
j) "But as I slurp down the last noodles, I think how strange it is for
there even to be such a thing as a North Korean specialty food, given
the past couple of decades of squalor and starvation that have
characterized life in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea."
Maybe I thought that at first. But then I looked on wikipedia and read that the city was founded in 1122BC. I'm pretty sure they had food at least a few years after that.
k) "but between them lies the demilitarized zone, the most heavily guarded frontier in the world"
this blurb is so tired. i guess the 2000 nuclear warheads the united states has aren't guarding the frontier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons
l) "Less obvious is what would happen if the North fell apart and the
South were faced not with a military foe, but the prospect of caring for
25 million people, many of them malnourished from years of famine,
unschooled in the ways of the modern world and deeply traumatized after
living under one of the most brutal dictatorships in history."
I'm sure there are plenty of chinese, american, and other countries' businessmen who'd love to come in and get rich caring for them. but hey, they're korean, so of course they'll be together forever, just like they are now.
m) "For residents of Seoul, who may even have relatives in the North that
they haven’t seen for 60 years, worries and tension persist."
Prove it.
n) " I met a professor at an educational institution called the University
of North Korean Studies, incongruously situated in one of Seoul’s most
beautiful and well-preserved precincts, an area of historic houses, lush
gardens and gentle hills."
Don't bother calling it by name, we all know its Jongno.
o) "Lee spends his life trying to understand the workings of a place he can only rarely visit."
And nobody can prove him wrong, because its mostly speculation anyways.
p) "... could start again and build an entire Korean city from scratch? What would it look like?"
you are learning! you answer your own question:
"only a small number of residents and businesses have moved in."
it would be empty, because everyone is already in the other huge city that's got everything going for it. I'm guessing there are embarrassingly few people living there, because population information isn't readily available.
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