South Korea: Top 5 Ways Seoul's Residents Deal With Population Density

Seoul and its surrounding conurbation is home to over 24 million people who live packed cheek-to-cheek in an area almost eight times more crowded than New York. How do residents living in the developed world's densest city cope with everyday life in this bustling metropolis and its suburbs? How does everyone refrain from killing each other? Here is a countdown of the five most important ways Seoul and its residents try to make it all work.

5. Urban Oases : People here have various opportunities to escape the crushing weight of humanity found within Greater Seoul. Dark dens of clanking keyboards, PC bangs (PC방) are the top destination for many of Seoul’s younger generations. Teens and young adults immerse themselves in virtual worlds where lonely heroes roam the open plains. Others seek out the multi-tiered bathhouse/lounge called the jim-jil-bang (찜질방 or 사우나), which were aptly described by a friend as "adult day-care".  The typical jim-jil-bang contains different saunas, hot and cold tubs, a fitness room, comic book library, sleeping nooks, big screen TVs as well as a cafeteria and their very own PC room. At any hour, people of all ages come and pay the affordable fees in order to relax. The Great Outdoors do exist as most neighbourhoods are close to a mountain where people can get away from the summer heat or omnipresent rumble of traffic. The mountains are covered with trails of varying difficulty, outdoor gyms with interesting machinery (i.e. spinning a big captain's wheel or inverted situps) and picnic areas. Popular ways to kick back away from the masses also include kicking out the jams at private karaoke rooms, hitting the links in virtual golf rooms, and visiting beauty spas or hair salons for a perm beloved by Koreans of all ages.


4. Innovative Space-saving Ideas: Seoul, like many East Asian cities, operates on several vertical planes, and its residents are creative in their use of cramped quarters. Hectares of retail space fill the subterranean walkways that perforate the city like an anthill. With urban fairways few and far between, driving ranges dot the golf-crazed cityscape. These green mesh monsters sit overtop crowded parking lots everywhere. Underneath the nylon netting and booming drivers, Hyundai drivers play an oversize game of Tetris. Cars in packed parking lots are left double-parked in neutral with their owner's phone number in the windshield. One  can push the neutral cars out of the way or call the owner to come and move them.This trust in the benevolence of strangers also comes to fore in the final tactic.

3. Mixed-use Residential and Commercial Space:
Though waning in popularity with developers, Greater Seoul has an abundance of mixed use properties when compared to most North American cities. In and around Seoul you can find restaurants, bars, karaoke rooms, hair salons, grocery stores and boutiques all under stories of single family apartments. You could live your life almost exclusively within a four block radius of your apartment and never have to brave the snaking kilometres of congested highways or teeming subway cars. Judging by certain people's winter footwear, they do just that.

2. Dominating New Space: When existing space is getting too crowded vast tracts of peripheral land are bulldozed to create New Towns out of thin air. Through public-private partnerships the federal government plans to construct 300,000 homes in and around Seoul by 2017. Dominance over nature is a common theme of modern South Korean development and it remains to be seen how the government's recent "green policy paradigm shift" will change things. Still, these New Towns are more livable, vastly safer and less environmentally damaging than North American suburbia's thousands of hectares of single family dwellings. Whether reunification will one day open up prime suburban real estate to the north before spatial limits are reached south of the DMZ is another matter all together.

1. The Acceptance of Zero Personal Space: You are not unique or special, and unless you are very old you do not warrant any extra space. In this homogeneous society friends are referred to as siblings and the physical discomfort caused by compatriots is written off as unintentional. Use the city's public transport and you will witness this unwritten code that excuses even the most vicious of elbows or blatant line-cutting. No need for an "I'm sorry," or "Hey pal, watch it," shake it off and keep going. Yet, the majority of commuters are quiet and conscientious and this translates to the roadways as well. The absence of road rage is incredible considering the snaking kilometers of daily traffic found within Greater Seoul. Drivers wait patiently for long periods. With their hands off their horns, they remain calmly in their lanes and let merging traffic in graciously. This zen-like acceptance is something that can be hard for foreign residents to get used to, but once they adopt this code everyday life here is much less stressful.

Do you have any methods of coping? Feel free to share them below...

Losing your Gringocity

(Ed. Note: This article appeared in the October 20th issue of The Santiago Times.)


El Camino Cierto Para los Gringos Viajando en Latinoamérica.


grin-go-cit-y [grin-gaw-sit-ee]
-noun.

1. (in Latin America) the often ignorant way foreigners, esp. of North American or European descent, act towards the peoples and cultures of Latin America : his gringocity stopped him from enjoying the local delicacies.
2. can describe the amount of foreigners present somewhere in Latin America: the were high levels of gringocity during the week of the festival.

If English is your native language, or you are light-skinned, to most Latin Americans you are a gringo.

Despite all that history has taught us, there are more positive ways a gringo can engage Latin America than supporting dictators, buying drugs or visiting your own little all-inclusive slice of paradise. This article will give you definite ways to lower your gringocity, enjoy yourself and have a positive impact on the people and places you visit.

Before leaving, people may warn you about the many dangers in these far-off lands where the rule of law is non-existent and people will shoot you for a couple hundred pesos. These same xenophobic people live in constant fear of the “bad guys” fed to them during the nightly news. Do not accept this derivative “us verses them” worldview. To quiet these fear-mongers, reassure them that there are no terrorists who hate our freedom in Latin America (Chavez and friends merely want an end to Western economic imperialism) and that you'll stay far enough away from the bad barrios.


Author in fake horse tourist trap by Pio Nono bridge in Santiago de Chile.
In terms of crime, there is not much to worry about; in most places, you can just as easily get shot or stabbed in your home countries. I got robbed once on my last trip, during an impromptu late-night bodysurfing session on Rio's Copacabana beach. It happened after I blurted in my best portuñol (a mish-mash of Spanish and Portuguese) at a kid to guard our clothes, "Clothes! You! Money!" He then did what anyone in his position would have: waited till we swam far enough out, rifled through our clothes, took the few crumpled cachaça-soaked bills and sprinted off. Crime should not be a big problem to anyone relatively intelligent, however, things like hour-long taxi rides at Moscovian rates and costly visa runs are inevitable.

It is useful to learn self-deprecating phrases like, "Sorry, I am just a huge gringo*." as well as, "I love your country and if you rob me, then I can't get back to my home and spread the word to my fellow countrymen about you and the brutal situation here*!" These sentences should help negate any perceived air of cultural superiority that is the impetus for many conflicts.

Still, these sentences are not fail-safe and if you are serious about going, the most important thing you can do before leaving is to actually learn the lingo. Meet with a friend who speaks, download some lessons, join Livemocha, take a night class or do some self-study more demanding than watching Dora the Explorer. Be it español, Quechua (an indigenous language of the Andean people), português or Chile's slang-laden version of Spanish, you're not going to get far without some basic understanding of the language. Nobody likes a boludo who assumes their imperial tongue is understood, and in this digital day and age there is no excuse for a total lack of knowledge of either the countries or their languages.

No matter how cunning the linguist, the best way for anyone to kick-start their trip is to spend a week, or several, living with a local family. This usually costs a little more than staying at a hostel or budget hotel, but brings boundless benefits. A home-stay almost guarantees that you will be fattened up with delicious meals and get to do things like beat the crap out of your little sister's birthday piñata or play dominoes with dad. These gracious hosts can be hooked up through language schools which offer customized lessons for several hours a day; in most cases they are one-on-one which forces you to do some serious book learning. Schools are offered in virtually every country and are the finest and fastest way to get the hang of the language. Book a few weeks before and a great welcome will await you.

Most language schools also have options or contacts for you to help out some people in the city or town where you are studying. Assist in building a house (a two room pre-fabricated operation) for a needy family one weekend, or teach local kids English - even just a few phrases to help them sell goods to tourists. To truly engage highly polarized Latin American cultures is to identify with the struggle that so many have faced and still continue to face as they try to better themselves and their communities. Google the School of the Americas (SOA), Oliver North or browse through Mike Davis' Planet of Slums and you will know that your efforts are appropriate. A reputable resource for finding a profound project is the Directory of Development Organization’s Latin American and the Caribbean online portal.

Playing "keep the box up" with kids of San Rafael, Copan Ruinas, Honduras.


Do not over plan your trip; no guidebook will prep you for falling out of one of Maradona's favorite clubs and helping a Peruvian dude haul a new front door 20 blocks to his family's tiny apartment in Buenos Aires' morning heat. Take a good hard look at the photos and blurbs of the travel writers inside the cover of your guidebook and ask yourself. “Are these the type of people I’d want to sit next to on a two day bus trip?” A lot of things in Central America and the Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil) can be booked beforehand online or once you are on the ground. That guidebook is of use if you get to places like Venezuela or Suriname. A gringo trying to get a bus out of Caracas involves driving around for three hours in one of the world's most congested cities, the whole time trying to figure out how bad your driver is cheating you.

If you treat people and their cultures with respect and dignity you should encounter few problems, but be aware that, though cognisant of your gringocity, you are bound to garner resentment in some places. It is a common Argentinian joke that prior to the collapse of their economy at the start of the decade you could walk down the street in Buenos Aires’ swanky Recoleta neighborhood and actually see a real Argentinian. Gringos spending like they would never be able to back in their homeland can stir up animosity anywhere in Latin America. However, most places need your tourist pesos and you will find people friendly as hell and very happy to show gringos around their jungle, concrete or natural.

Whether an ice cold açaí na tigela(delicious Amazonian fruitshake) at a juice stand in Ipanema, anticucho (grilled cow heart-kabob) on a dusty Lima street, pastel del choclo (corn and meat pie) in a hip Santiago eatery, tacos al pastor at Cuernavaca’s homegrown taco chain or aguardiente at an afterparty in Medellin - never shy away from the special local food and drink. Even though many down there love "MacDonal", a surefire way to get to know the average person is to share with them a bit of their native food or drink. And let's be honest, there will be times you just have to embrace your gringocity and ditch the salsa/samba/cumbia/merengue/tango to cut rug the only way you know how: ridiculously.

Useful Phrases-
* Sorry, I’m just a huge gringo. - Perdonamé, soy un gringo gigante.

* I love your country and if you rob me, then I can't get back to my home and tell my fellow countrymen about you and the brutal situation here! - ¡Amo tu país, y si me robas, no podr regresar a mi estado y contar todos de tu brutal ésituación socioeconómico!

By Mike Hager