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I’ve uploaded all the photos I have of the APEC Korea trip here, though I’ll soon have more from the APEC hosts and the other koreans.

The Arirang TV interview is available online in streaming form here but you need to log in with the VOD site first - Arirang News 17 Nov 2005 2200h. The segment is around 26:30 to 29:00. Of course I was completely unprepared for a television interview and messed it up. The Korea Times article is available here, but they only have the picture of the first prize winners.

My second visit to Korea must come to an end. I’m at Incheon airport waiting for my departure gate to open.

Yesterday I woke up early and left the resort for Busan station, where I got on the KTX train to Seoul. The reason why I took the KTX was to see the korean countryside, but I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before so I ended up falling asleep on the ride there. Rationalizing taking the train - cheaper, new experience, and both airports are so much further from the city centers that the time saved on a flight tends to get eaten up by commuting.

Anyway I got to Seoul station at about 10am, and made my way to Dongdaemun to drop my stuff at the hotel. It was a pretty dodgy hotel, and I would have went to the YMCA again to stay but it’s under renovation till next year. I made my way to Seoul National University station and met Gueyon, and we took a bus to the SNU campus. SNU has this really funky school gate. We had lunch at the canteen and I got an SNU collar pin from the gift shop. Gueyon took me back to the subway station, where I met Sandra/Yeonhee - who came all the way from her school which is so far away. We went for coffee at Java City, and later met Boran around Hyehwa for tea. Boran changed her hairstyle and looks prettier than before, which is to say she has transcended mortal aesthetic limits and become a goddess of beauty. Plus she got a job at Samsung HR, way to go Boran! She had to go for a homecoming party(?) where she was homecoming queen(?), so Sandra took me to City Hall where I met EJ. We went to this stream that got renovated and I pretty much froze to death walking by it. We then went to Sinchun(?) and I got to look at Ewha Woman’s University - insert ‘my sassy girl’ nostalgia here - and went for dinner.

I woke up late today and made Haeree wait for half an hour before meeting her at Myungdong, where we went to Coffee Bean. She got me a notebook, which is really useful since I’ve run out of notebooks and have been meaning to get one. After which, I met Jinny nearby and we went to Mr. Pizza for lunch. Jinny is going to the US in 2 weeks! She beat me there already. After lunch, I got my stuff from the hotel and found the airport bus point, and made my way to Incheon airport, where I am now. Thus ends my second visit to Seoul - but it won’t be the last.

I feel really bad that I didn’t have time to meet all my other korean friends, especially Cindy, Siyeona, Hyunjun.. Rationalizing: I’ll be back soon (hopefully) and we still have plenty of time to catch up. This was, after all, an unplanned trip, made possible by a combination of wishing, hoping, praying, and dreaming, and I am thankful for everything I got to do and see in Seoul/Busan. In the words of the governator, I’ll be back.

Can’t believe I have to go back to work tomorrow.

It’s really late so this post will be short: I attended the official dinner with all the APEC leaders - dubya et al. There were 902 guests and I was number 902… basically the most unimportant VIP, I suppose. I was seated all the way at the back, so I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself to PM Lee. Oh well, there goes my chance at the OMS.

Highlight of the evening: Seeing BoA live (OMGWTFBBQ!1!) for free. She performed ‘No.1′. A close second is sipping korean wine while listening to an aria. Third would be being in the same room with world leaders, even though they were on the other side of the ballroom.

So I got up and met my handlers Hyun-jung, Eun-hyun, and Shin-hye at the lobby of the resort, and I also met the first prize winner, Kirill from Russia, who is in the foreign service and speaks berhasa(!). We went to the BEXCO, where I got to meet the Korean prizewinners and tour the APEC media center - unfortunately I didn’t have time to swing by the Bloomberg office to say hi to Joe. Neither did I see a Channel Newsasia presence… gee go figure.

Interestingly, one of the Korean prizewinners I met is Soo-min from the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, who knows Joanne - apparently more well than I do because I had no idea she was married. I didn’t notice any ring the last time I saw her, so it must be really recent. I can’t imagine any of my older friends getting married… maybe NWT haha. Bets are on that in my batch, Chris will be the first to get hitched.

Anyway, I was interviewed by Arirang TV and the Korea Herald(?) at the media center, so I guess I might have been on Korean television for a minute or two today. Of course I was completely unprepared and messed it up, which proves that I’m probably not cut out for any leadership position. I should’ve worked harder at debate. We walked around the BEXCO IT fair, and then went for lunch which was BBQ. After which, we had coffee and parted ways.

Some observations: BEXCO security is watertight. The place is completely blocked off. So is every other place that APEC official events are taking place - around the Busan Lotte Hotel, where the APEC CEO Summit is, there are police squads all over the place with bulletproof shields. At every street corner, every subway exit. And they carry these riot weapons that look like a blunt two-handed broadsword. Not your average truncheon.

Maybe it’s just the whole APEC thing, but the people here are really hospitable and accomodating. My korean vocabulary is limited to maybe 10 phrases, and almost every time someone speaks to me my reply is something like a confused grin and ‘mian heyo’ (sorry), but they all try really hard to give me directions in english+gestures. Also, for 10k won you can eat like a full BBQ dinner. Unlimited supply of side dishes. Compare that to the meager fare KH and I got when we went to Tanjong Pagar to find a korean restaurant. I will probably need to go on a diet when I get home.

To get to my hotel from the airport I got on an airport shuttle bus, which was supposed to take one hour. Halfway through the journey I saw fireworks in the sky - there were so many they lit up the horizon a pale green and the reflections in the clouds made them shimmer. It was pretty nice until I realized that traffic had come to a complete standstill - I think the police must have blocked off the roads or something for the VIPs to leave - and it seemed like the whole of Busan started streaming out of the area.

Fortunately in the delay I got to meet Nam-soon, the restaurant manager of Pizza Hut here, and Joe Sobcyzk from Bloomberg, who were on the same bus. After about an hour of waiting at that spot, we decided to get off the bus and take the subway. So we got off the bus with our luggage (Nam-soon had a lot of luggage) and made our way through the crowd of people only to find that the queue for the subway extended all the way up onto the street.

Eventually, with Nam-soon’s help, we managed to get onto the subway and went to a station closer to our hotels. They don’t have escalators, which made carrying the luggage up really difficult. However, so did everyone else, so we couldn’t get a taxi. Nam-soon had to call her sister to come and pick us up. She really saved us, so Nam-soon, if you’re reading this, you deserve an award.

To all my friends: A quick update from Gimpo International Airport, which is about 30 minutes from Incheon International Airport. It’s pretty cold here at night and it gets dark quickly too. I would write more but my domestic connection flight is boarding in five minutes.

First point of interest - The Innocent Steps girl is in all these cell phone adverts and they’re all over the place. Everywhere I look there is some sort of ‘rotating widescreen’ cell phone ad with her on it. It’s even more ubiquitous than all the APEC 2005 posters.

I don’t remember every conversation though I now wish I had written them all down. Some gems I can recall are:

(At a bar around Hyehwa Stn with some backpackers)
German: So how long is your military service?
Me: Two and a half years.
German: Two and a half years? You have so many enemies?

(At the Parktel Canadians’ room on their last night)
Steve: I can’t do this anymore.
Me: It’s your last night in Korea, man.
Steve: It’s been my last night in Korea for the past eight days.

(Outside Mr. Pizza at Myeungdong)
Hyung Jun’s girlfriend: I think the best way to learn Korean is to get a Korean girlfriend.
Daniel: Then it’s a chicken and egg issue…
Me: Or it could be a virtuous circle. Learn a little Korean, get a Korean girlfriend, learn more Korean, get a hotter Korean girlfriend…
See: I think you have some causal link problems there.

Daniel has some quotes here, but they’re not as golden. Also, the conversation with John the Young Republican didn’t go like that - it was more about the constitutional protection of private enterprise between consenting adults.

I’ve uploaded my pictures and you can see them here. Roughly chronological and categorized by event, they are:

Opening Ceremony
Hyundai Sungwoo Resort
Team 10 pictures
Cultural Night
DDR/Pump
Folk Village
LotteWorld
Closing Ceremony
Postconference
Engrish

Other photo albums:
Gueyon
Grace
Tracy
Kokheng - da playa =)

I cried just a little on the way back.

Words fail to convey the full intensity of the shared experience. No one besides us will know how much fun we had within those two weeks. No one will understand how it feels to return to the mundane rhythms of daily life. It is like waking from a dream into a nightmare. All that is left are the memories and the souvenirs scattered on my bedroom floor - neoprints, keychains, hairbands, photographs - paltry evidence of something ephemeral. Freedom, perhaps.

All good things must come to an end.

I suppose my antisocial nature inevitably comes out after a stressful extended period of cheerfulness and enthusiasm. Another characteristic that must be stopped.

V told me that it’s strange how people you’ve only known for a week or so can become so close to you. I replied that this isn’t really new to me - it’s a phenomenon I’ve seen many times through the various CAP camps and the SYC host delegation, among others. It does not appear in more formal events like WSIS and the GYR, which is what I expected this trip to be like. I wasn’t prepared for this kind of social environment. It’s the intensity of the experience and contact with these people that forces intimacy, and if it doesn’t, you’re expected to at least pretend. So everyone is trying their best to be really sociable and make great friends - and many do.

What this experience has taught me is to be one of those people. To become one of those people - having the social skills and character traits that enable it - is what the bildungsroman is all about.