Monday, Oct. 3, 2022 –We spent a few afternoon hours today holed up in our hotel while tens of thousands of conservative political supporters, corralled by thousands of cops in fluorescent green rain jackets carrying batons and riot shields, held a loud, though peaceful, demonstration in the streets just below us, the rain pounding down most of the day.

As the demonstration was breaking up, we caught a cab and headed for Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), the famous neofuturist building designed by Zaha Hadid. Along the way our cabbie kept up a steady one-way conversation in Korean, which only our friend, Asma, could partially interpret, and after about fifteen minutes, at times sternly correcting our broken Korean, finally got around to what he wanted to know, asking about the relationship between me, the man the in the front seat next to him, and the two women in the back.

After this long, short drive, we finally made it to the DDP. The building is difficult to describe, but from the outside it looks something like a massive shimmery silver mushroom made of aluminum panels, steel and concrete. We arrived shortly after dark, and the swooping, soaring building glowed with low white lighting. There’s no “front” or “back” to the building, just different levels of ramps that lead inside from all directions. We walked inside on an upper ramp and found ourselves in an entirely white, totally empty, eeriely silent, corridor that circled around the highest levels of the building, climbing higher all the time. We walked alone for about ten minutes, feeling like we were in either an absurdist French film or a perhaps an alien horror film, before finally reaching an entry for some kind of design exhibit called Inside Outside or Indoor Outdoor, which we couldn’t see into, and some young women – the first humans we had seen in a while – seemed to be expecting us and tried to herd us into a short line to see it, but we smiled and backed away slowly and managed to escape on up the winding the corridor.

We’d read that there would be a special light show, “Seoul Lights,” at the DDP at 7:30, and so we spent another half hour or so peeking into a few of the cool design shops – the display floors of one was covered with white stones and clothing was hung next to fake trees – trying to stay out of the rain. Finally, they flashed a message on one outside wall of the building that said only, “COSMO WALKER.” We and a few dozen other damp people waited with growing anticipation. Ten minutes later, the show was on.

Up on the swelling silver side of the building appeared a large disjointed figure, maybe 60 feet tall, “walking,” gyrating, dancing or something, his feet disconnected, to the throb of pounding music. We watched for a few minutes, and the Cosmo Walker changed clothes a few times, and shoes, but appeared to be ready to walk endlessly for the show’s next 2.5 hour run. We didn’t stay for the end, or maybe we did, to be honest I’m just not sure. We later read that the work “depicts the image of humanity walking in search of the possibilities of cosmic life.” Aren’t we all?

Then we walked out into the rain. Our destination was the famous Gwangjang Market, a food alley that is said to have some of the best street food in Korea, if not all of Asia. Maybe it was the rain, the enormous lunch that we’d had, or the fact that we badly underestimated the distance between the DDP and the market, which turned out to be a half hour trudge in a steady downpour, past the beautiful Dongdaemun Gate, and block after block of a massive wholesale clothing market (it was closed, but we could peek inside and see spaces filled with hats, thousands of hats). We had planned to walk along the beautiful urban stream, Cheonggycheon, but the rain – and potentially rising waters – meant the streamside walk was closed. There is a famous scene in the Korean movie Parasite when heavy rains lead to heavy and disastrous flooding, and Asma commented that we were having our Parasite moment. We finally arrived at the street alley, soaked and mildly disoriented, and were faced with aisle after aisle, booth after booth, filled with endless mounds of mungbean pancakes, tteboekki and kimbap. Not knowing which might be best, we rolled the dice at a stall that had free bench seating, yet still had a few Korean couples eating at it, hoping this might be the ticket. Unfortunately, we made a poor guess – looks are deceiving, since we had had some pretty amazing mung bean pancakes back at Namdaemun market, which had looked much less promising.

We ate, and took the subway back to the hotel, only a few stops, but it gave us one last challenge – a lengthy labyrinthine transfer ending with a sprint down the final stairs to catch a departing train just as the doors were closing. It was a nice rush of adrenaline to at the end of a long, long day, and then the Cosmic Walkers, sweaty, soaked with rain, with sore feet after a long, unforgettable day, finally limped to their rooms.