The monster earthquake that rocked Japan hit while we were traveling to Seoul. It may have happened while we were on the express train, the KTX, where extra rocking would not have been noticed. Or it might have happened while our taxi was weaving from lane to lane through heavy traffic between Seoul Station and the hotel.
Either way we felt nothing. From what I have been able to determine, apart from those who monitor seismic activity stations most Koreans were unaware of the unfolding tragedy until it appeared on TV.
Friday night we watched CNN to hear what we could hear in English and to watch the video loops that played and replayed in the now familiar pattern of "breaking news."
On Saturday we went to Gyeongbokgung Palace with our friend Mi-Sook and her friend Jong Myoung, whom she brought to help us bridge her weak English and our three word Korean vocabulary.
Like the royal palaces we visited in England last fall, Gyeongbokgung Palace is both hard to describe and hard to imagine from description. I took one of the English language pamphlets with its good and useful information, but found myself taking pictures instead.
What did I like best?
Well, aside from touring with Mi-Sook, was it the architecture?
Was it the painted surfaces with colors and patterns that reminded me so much of painted wooden structures in Russia.
The attention even to otherwise forgettable areas.
Struck as I was by patterned, painted beams and posts and railings, I was particularly fond of the carvings that appeared on gate posts:
on stairways:
or roof ridgelines:
After wandering and wondering the morning away on the palace ground, we decided to move on to Insadong Market, where we could bump through the crowded streets of this traditional market to paw and ponder strange goods in little shops.
Eventually, I remembered the unfolding tragedy in Japan. For a few hours we had been far away from it. How easy it is for those of us living in peace and safety to let the pain and suffering of others disappear from sight. No wonder it has often been observed of rulers that they grow remote and removed from their people.
I remember going to that palace with Grace. Those pictures brought back memories!
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