Over the weekend Amanda and I took a merry jaunt to Shinae the downtown area of Cheongju to grab some lunch and check out a Buddhist temple we had seen when on the bus going past the area before. We grabbed a healthy and delicious lunch at McDonalds and then walked around for a little to get us ready because we had planned on walking out way home the 3 to 4 mile stretch. Now like most cities the main stretches of cities in Korea are very glamorous with lots of flashing lights, loud music playing from shops, and tons of small markets to peruse, filled with life and very shiny. Things are well maintained because frankly that is how to attract business and tourists and make those silly waygooks feel comfortable (not that the entire thing should revolve around foreigners).
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| Two blocks from the main strip |
When you get off the main drag however a new story is painted by a modern city. This is really the case in every city, but I thought it was interesting since we are in a very different region. Abandoned buildings, decaying ruins of once prosperous spots just left to rot. Lots that are sometimes completely filled with garbage and overgrown with weeds. The actual decay of the buildings is interesting to me specifically, while these buildings are certainly not new, they can't be more than 10-20 years old. I was told by a foreign teacher named Dylan that it is normal for buildings to be build and be torn down in a few years. Much like the Korean lifestyle in general houses and other buildings live fast and die young, unless they are a historic landmark obviously.
For example there are apartments being built behind/in front/ right next to and all around our school. They are being built frightfully fast, in a matter of two months a building has been torn down, and a four story apartment building has been thrown up. Right now they are working on bricking the exterior of the building, if I am correct in my thinking it should be open by summer. They are doing that with at least four buildings all around, and making amazing progress. The building materials have been extremely sparse, only really a bit of wood, a lot of concrete, and a bunch of Styrofoam for insulation.
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| The windows on the second floor were all broken/missing |
\It is just part of the modern city experience I guess, but what seems to shock me is that people actually live in these houses. The places that look so rundown, and some that have broken/missing windows have people living inside them, even during the freezing winter. There is a house across from our school which looked abandoned when we first came to Korea, but we noticed lights on in the evening and a well taken care of dog that was in the yard.
Now I can venture to guess that it is the older generation that lives in these houses, while the younger generation are all probably in apartments instead of family homes like these. It still shocks me though that people would live in these dilapidated houses even if that is just my privileged American speaking I can't imagine it is comfortable living without windows. Although humans are used to living in harsher conditions than this, and I am sure there are people in rural areas probably worse off even here in Korea. Still it was something that made me think on the quick weekend walk.
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| One cool thing is these businesses used small bridges to make a 2nd story shop |
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