Yesterday I went to the Sindang market in Seoul, which is near Dongdaemun, with some GW friends. On Sundays the Dongdaemun market stretches into Sindang, so they're pretty close together. We got off the subway after a short ride and immediately see street vendors. Fairly small-time stuff, sweatpants, shoes, Chinese toys. The usual. Then we get to some more serious stuff as we walk along the sidewalk. The tents and stands intertwine to block out the sun, it was now a hardcore market going on in Seoul. There was a traditional Korean spice and nut vendor, a street food cart, a HUGE shoe and watch display, and a military surplus tent. The guy had a "Surprise Cockfags!" patch on his arm. I laughed out loud at that.
We walked further down the street and saw a bunch of fish restaurants with their tanks outside. One had octopus which was clinging to the glass like a facehugger from Alien. The next tank had squid which were darting around all over the place, and the next tank had a few big fish in it, one of which was clearly dead.
As we progressed further, our group split off. My friend Shawn and I decided to follow the street sign to the "Seoul Folk Market" while the others went to a coffee shop. It said the market was 900 meters down the street, but we knew it when we saw it. Just a sea of people, like any street fair. Except instead of booths selling goods you would want to buy, these booths sold a little bit of... everything. And that's putting it lightly.
At the beginning the vendors sold some practical things: socks, sweatpants, the occasional rack full of jackets, and shoes. Then things got weird. I mean really weird. The first sign was the old 1950s sewing machine... and the 6 others of different colors next to it. Then came the stand with just tons of VHS tapes. Then one with CRT TVs, a full sound mixing board, a blender, and and old army field telephone. This isn't all these stands had, just the highlight reel. One stand sold rusty tools. Old rusty power drills, some beat up drill presses, an air compressor and a jackhammer. This was getting pretty weird pretty fast. Every now and then there would be a cart selling Beondegi, silk worm pupae. The smell to me is sickening. It just smells like boiling hot bug, the same smell when you toast one with a magnifying glass. Not appetizing.
As we progressed through the market, we started to see some niche shops sprinkled in. Some sold fishing equipment, DVDs, military surplus (lots of German and US army surplus), but our favorite was this one antique shop. They had some large statues and a big open gate, so we decided to walk in. We walked past the statues and the path gets narrower. There's a large print of a Korean woman with a bob haircut, and a carved wooden sea turtle. Then, just like the rest of this market, it started to get weird. The storefront was actually a pathway to a much larger semi-covered room full of antique statues. Some were wood, others stone, most were TERRIFYING. First: it was dead quiet inside. There was a bustling market not 15 meters behind us, and we couldn't hear any of it. The next scary thing was how utterly off-putting the statues were. One had a mother with a regular looking face carrying two demonic looking children on her back. Their faces were twisted in an angry scream. Next to that was an enormous cow sculpture with large wide set eyes, an open mouth, and big teeth. The weirdest statues were across from the cow. It was this group of statues depicting some weird Korean bacchanal; there was a really fat guy with his shirt half off, surrounded by young boys, naked women, and livestock. Everyone looked really animated, but all of these statues made the perfect storm for us getting sucked into some Korean island of misfit toys/demon statues. However, this place did have some neat looking antique diving helmets.
We then crossed a bridge to a different part of the market. By different, we mean even sketchier. The first stand we came across had an enormous box of illegal pornography. The fully explicit covers let us know that the box was ALL porn too. Next, we walked past a stand with just a box of unmarked cassette tapes and beat up LG batteries. Our favorite was the table that had 2 broken guns and a blunderbuss on it. Yup. A blunderbuss. There was a revolver without a hammer and a pistol missing the slide. But the blunderbuss took the cake. We explored a little more, some some actual heaps of clothing on the sidewalk that people were selling, and decided to call it a day.
The day started off fun, got sketchy in an exciting/adventurous way, and then got pretty sad. People were selling what amounted to garbage. Seoul is a beautiful metropolitan city in an amazing new country, but nowhere is perfect.
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