Untitled Document

17 February 2001

Seoul on Ice

I was contemplating the fitness center of the Shilla Hotel in a whole new way. It was immaculate, as befits a facility in the hotel the American President calls home when he is in Seoul. The machines gleam, the running track in spotless and the treadmills all have televisions so you can get updates from CNN business while you exercise.

It was all on the ceiling, or rather I saw it that way because I was hanging from my heels like a bat. There was a bit of a challenge going in the delegation, since Val had found the machine the day before. It was a rack with large iron ankle shackles that lay flat on the floor. The drill is that you lie down after fastening the irons around your feet and program a time- say five minutes. Then you push a button and you are slowly dragged upward until you are hanging upside down, freely suspended four feet above the floor. Kahm sa-hamnida! Thanks!

It gives you a unique perspective. The big plate windows have a haze of frost on the inside where the wind hits and the spire of the Seoul TV tower points straight down from the inverted Namsan Mountain. We had done the treadmills, done the curls and crunches, played with the free-weights. Now we had a STAFFDEL challenge for hanging inverted. I was going for the record.

We had the time for such amusements because Sunday was a down day. No briefings. No vu-graphs. No significant issues. We were on our own for the day in Seoul, and what you do in Seoul when you are not working or sleeping is shop. But getting around the town was a bit of a challenge. In addition to the sheet ice and snow, the traffic was horrible.

Transit from on-post at Yongsan to this side of town was once a dream- five minutes, tops, from the bottom of Itaewan hill. There are three major tunnels through the mountain, which make transit from the downtown to other districts remarkably swift, but they are all closed now. One tunnel popped you right out at the gate to the Shilla Hotel.

But not now. Some major project is going on, as it has been since the subway was started in the mid-80s. And the subway continues to crawl outward. Now it is under the Itaewan shopping district. But it the torn sidewalks and tunnel braces seem to have been there for years. Between the congestion, and the ice, travel in town is a plain and simple mess. And we have to orbit Namsan Mountain each time we leave the hotel.

We made a foray into Itaewan the second night. We had been on post all morning, and then at the Embassy downtown through the afternoon. The wind cut hard through my trench coat and suit. Slid along the icy hill, over construction barriers and mounds of hard-pack snow.

We dined at the Manhattan Club, a second-story eatery and night club which had known several incarnations over the last couple decades. It featured a giant mural of the Cosmos on the back wall, wildly colored planets whirling around and we tried to identify the name of the tenant with which that décor had been associated. Outside I noticed large billboards in Russian.

When we last visited here four years ago, I noticed the Farsi signs. There was clearly something happening, something emerging on the Peninsula. And it clearly didn't have much to do with the Americans. The blondes on the street were not G.I.s, I realized. They were Russians. Fifty years ago, the pilots of the 5th Air Army concealed their identities as they flew North Korean MiGs against our F-86's. Now they are here as tourists. The world is a wondrous place.

It was bizarre. Talking to the Americans in town, they seemed fixated on what was happening on the other side of the DMZ. The concern of North Korean forces moved forward, of the three major attack axes. Essentially no different that when I loved in the hooch at Yongsan twenty years ago.

The Koreans had definitely moved on. They seemed to be thinking of the post-unification era, when they would again be a united peninsula, and determined to forge some sort of regional relationships with the powers who had so often rolled over them like a speed-bump on the way to Japan. I am uncertain as to where the American place in in this regional context. I am sure that Secretary Powell is going to take a briefing on the issue. I hope it is sooner, rather than later.

The staff was solicitous at the Manhattan, and we had the bul-gogi- tender strips of beef broiled sauce and served on a scalding-hot metal plate. Clear rice noodles rounded out the plate, and there was plenty of kim-chi, the fabulously hot pickled cabbage dish that is the national pastime. We washed it all down with icy-cold OB Korean beer (mek-ju). It was delicious, and cheap. "Ahji-ma! Mek-ju, Chu say-o!" (Aunt, may we please have more beer?)

A hell of a lot cheaper than the forty dollar hamburger that Jack ordered the night we got in. We arrived at the Shilla from the airport disoriented and cold. It was ten o'clock. Too late to hit town and we had no wheels- at least it was too late for the middle aged.

It wouldn't have stopped us twenty years ago but the need for loud music now was less urgent. In the haze of travel I had forgotten the prime rule of the Shilla: don't touch anything or do anything in the hotel because it is five times more expensive than anywhere else in town.

I was still astonished that the health club was free- only the sauna was a la carte. Sitting in the lounge with Linda and Val and Jack I squinted at the menu. 33,000 won for the hamburger. 38,000 won for the double hamburger. Jack ordered the double and we all had a drink before it came.

I had begun to do the math in my head- hey, wait a minute- I just ordered a hamburger and fries for nearly thirty bucks- and Jack's, when it came in all its splendor, with drink, was a forty dollar snack. And in the Shilla, a double hamburger meant there were two of them. Land of the Not Quite Right. Jack's $40 burger ensured that we didn't do anything else in the hotel for the rest of the time we stayed there.

When the President was here, the Shilla was the place to be. I often wonder what the travel claims looked like. I know one thing. The taxpayers bought a lot of double cheeseburgers….