Seoul Railroad Station and About
Seoul Railroad Station has been a reminder of all things Korean: its identity as a homogenous nation, its national shame as a colony of the Japanese Empire, its grand cohesive power as a big national family and its ceaseless efforts toward human dignity with freedom, democracy and human rights. (Down with the dictator!)
The railroad station has recently made drastic renovations and refurbishments in honor of the grand opening of KTX (Korea Train Express). Floors of lounges are glistening white and spacious enough to lounge about the place. Ceilings of lounges are sky-limit, allowing watchers to feel themselves , even for the moment, dwarfed.
The landscape of the station has made a great shift from the real to the surreal. Hookers in hot pants at the station plaza are no longer in sight. (The plaza is no hot any more. Where are they gone?) Country oldies, with their backs stooped burdened with heavy packs full of all kinds of fruits, grains and rice cakes for their grand kids, have become a rare sight, too.
Narrow sidewalks on the periphery of the station plaza are literally expropriated, from time to time, by down-and-outs. Out of jobs and uprooted from their homes, squatters are found sprawled on the pavement. (Are they dreaming of their wives and offspring back home?) The miasma of urinal odor and filth is in the air.
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