Seoul

South Korea's entertainment industry has blown up in the past thirty years. I don't understand the appeal of K-pop or K-dramas, but I've seen South Korean indie films that were incredible. Korean car design has also improved considerably over the same period. With so much creativity being exported, I expected to witness a vibrantly artistic culture rivaling Japan. I can't really say I've found that here.

I can see how Seoul might be a beautiful city in the spring or the fall, but it's quite bleak during the winter months. In addition to bleak visual landscape of bare trees, grey buildings, grey skies, and everyone dressing in black, there's a looming sense of dread that hangs over the population. Every train car plays videos preparing citizens for attacks from bombs or biological weapons. You're never far away from a sign advertising the nearest bomb shelter or disaster supply cabinet.

When I was walking around Dongdaemun on my second night in town, I was approached by two young women who said they were students at the Maitreya Temple and asked a few questions about where I was from. They didn't speak much English, but they invited me to come to a temple with them. My most interesting travel experiences have all started out a bit like this, so I accepted credulously without feeling a need for any additional information. We took a train across town and they talked about what they'd be doing at the temple—something about wearing traditional clothing and praying for ancestors. Instead of arriving anything that looked to me like a temple, though, we went to an apartment with no furniture except a little altar.

There were a few other women inside and we sat and attempted a conversation while the two who led me in changed into hanboks, a type of traditional dress. One of the women explained the ritual by drawing some stuff on a notepad filled with pages of similar drawings. I still had some vague notion that we would be leaving and going to a temple, but they led me into the room with the altar and demonstrated some choreography for a bunch of standing, kneeling, and bowing. I was given my own hanbok which I wore over my clothing.

The ritual lasted half an hour. The two women did a lot of chanting, lighting incense, and pouring spirits into a bowl, and we all did a lot of bowing. The bowing required standing up and kneeling down at an awful quick pace, but I noticed that only I was required to do the full standing. It was a bit like a long set of burpees. I made a real effort at getting something out of it. I focused prayers on each of the "ancestors" I know about like my parents and grandparents, then extended it to ancestors I've only heard about, then further to all of my family members and all of my friends.

After the ritual, a few of the women carved up some of the fruit used in the ritual and made some tea. I offered to make a donation to cover the cost of the supplies used during the ceremony, and they were pleased to receive it. We sat, ate, and talked for a few hours. One of the women spoke much better English than the rest and spent a lot of time translating. Because of the Maitreya temple comment, I had vaguely ascertained that they were Buddhists, so I told them a bit about my time at the monastery in Thailand. We had a pleasant conversation about spirituality, but I did most of the talking. Someone proposed that we meet again for lunch the next day and I agreed. It was only when I got back to my hotel that evening that I wondered what I just been a part of.

I met up the next day and had lunch in another apartment with no furniture. Three of the original women were there, but another four women were around hanging out in the other rooms and only occasionally peeking out to wave. I asked a few clarifying questions to establish what religion they practiced or what their group was called, but I got very cagey answers. They wanted to have lunch first and talk about that later.

I was starting to get weirded out by the fact that there were zero men around when I noticed that among the few items in the room were boxes of gauze and medical supplies. Just in case they planned on sedating me and harvesting my organs, I texted my friend Hannah who always has my location and has the law enforcement and investigation knowledge to be able to put the pieces together if something awful went down. I suddenly acknowledged that I was most likely being recruited to some kind of cult, but I was just too interested in the situation to leave.

After lunch, I received another notebook sketch lesson, this time about their belief system. They struggled to translate and I spent a lot of time waiting for them to figure out what they wanted to say. Again, the notebook had the same sketches on prior pages, but all of those were written in Korean. I assume those people got a tighter pitch.

The core of their message was simple enough: all of the good people who have ever lived were trapped on the way to heaven because of resentment and bad karma, so we need to perform a ritual (that they had already performed with me; you're welcome) to open the gate to release my ancestors from this sort of purgatory. To actually flush everyone through the gate, I would need to join them in cultivating good karma through good deeds. And we need to do it fast because we're living in the end times.

The lesson included a lot of spurious correlations between the messages of Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus. They said all three had predicted another enlightened person who would be born in Korea. When I asked about who taught this story of trapped ancestors and a future Korean prophet, they were very confused. They said no one had taught it; it was just true. It was an agonizing effort to extract any information about where their beliefs came from. Eventually they told me that the prophet had already lived and died, so I asked about his name. They said there was "no translation," but they wrote down a name in Korean.

Later I was able to look up the name they wrote down and get some information about Kang Jeungsan, the prophet founder of their religion. Apparently his followers split into several factions shortly following his death. They don't appear to have enough numbers to warrant much public information about their faith, but they did give me a website that discusses it in Korean.

I've since learned that there are huge numbers of religious cults in Korea. I'd prefer to use a less disparaging term than "cult" because I'm not alleging any abuse or misconduct and it's not my place to call anyone's faith illegitimate, but "cults" in Korea are widely reported. Nearly all of them are premised around us living in the end times. I have to wonder how much of that stems from the fear of nuclear annihilation by their neighbor.

South Korea doesn't feel like a place where anything is possible and the future is bright. I can't square the creativity I see exported from the vibe I get in Seoul. Unlike Southeast Asia, there aren't any kids here. There aren't many young adults, either. It's a noticeably old population.

I was a little disappointed when I didn't see tons of beautiful people out in public. Koreans on the train don't look like Koreans in the media. I was actually disappointed at how rare beauty is in public—I've gotten used to places like Thailand or Vietnam where the stars on TV look kind of ordinary but there are absolutely stunning beauties selling fruit on a street corner.

Korea is becoming famous for male beauty, but there's a big difference between good looking men in public and good looking men in media. There are plenty of handsome, tall, masculine men out in public, but the stars are frequently effeminate pretty boys. These celebrities are worshipped in a way I've never noticed with American celebrities. (Or maybe there's no difference and I simply haven't been paying attention.) I've seen older women on the train staring at photos of young K-pop stars. Not merely glancing, but staring. Soul gazing. Not only are normal Korean men not lacking in masculinity, a lot of the older men seem a little overly rough and serious. I wonder if these older ladies have a fantasy that young pretty boys would be gentle and sensitive.

Gyeongbokgung Palace

The Gyeongbokgung Palace was built by the Joseon Dynasty at the end of the 14th century, but the majority of the palace was destroyed by Japanese occupying forces in the 19th century. Reconstruction and restoration efforts started in 1990. I suspect the bulk of what's visible on the tour was built in the last few decades.