Two friends from different continents are headed to Seoul this week, so as I was sweeping off the dust bunnies from long-forgotten image folders I stumbled across these photos from our old neighborhood in Seoul. Though it’s been almost 19 months since I was last in Korea, a flood of memories came back from my days perusing our local Shijang (market) in search of whatever fruits, veggies and treats were on special that day.
There was the fruit lady, whose bookkeeping was based on a plastic pail full of that day’s sales income; Won bills of all shapes, odors and condition lay in the bucket. A hand would enter, my change would come out of its visually impermeable innards.
Then there was the fish and butcher areas of the market, tucked away off the main strolling path. And from there you can see basically what happens. Basically, pig comes in, chops and bacon out. Not too surprising, really. Carve or starve, eh? The head seems to be the hardest part of these self-sacrificing swine. Pig heads anyone?
The world renounces Koreans for eating dog. Now it is one of those cultural traits that produce westerners to take up tag board-ridden protests to rescue these downtrodden doggies from the stew pot. So if you want to see dogs for sale for non-pet purposes, well have a subway ride on down to Moran Market, where old Korea comes to admire the area’s modernity and trade their wares, brought in at 5-day cycles. It is one of the biggest traditional markets I’ve seen, anywhere. And hey, how often can you boast to friends back home that you shopped at the moran market?
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