Six observations about South Korea

in Pyeongchang There is almost no graffiti in this country.

On a two-hour plus train ride from Seoul to the Pyeongchang area, on countless bus rides between Pyeongchang and Gangneung on the coast, past the walls and industrial buildings and through the tunnels that are the traditional hunting ground for taggers and artists all over the world, I have seen one (1) small splash of graffiti.

Blessedly, it contained none of the usual badly drawn male anatomy regularly featured in such displays. South Korea is very wired and superconnected.

At a little bar near the Phoenix media village in the mountains, for instance, there is always the following going on: Several large-screen TVs, a DJ playing music, a pool table, two dart boards and several air-hockey-like table games.

Even on the buses that ferry the media around, there is always a big-screen TV at the front, and of course omnipresent free wi-fi. However terrific this may be sometimes (to watch live Olympic events), it isn’t always (as when, early in the morning or late at night, one is instead treated to endless Korean soaps, which are very weepy).

And it means that anyone who wants to pay attention — to where you’re going, to those who may be with you, to someone sitting beside you — is up against it. It takes a monumental effort in this country to, as the athletes say, be in the moment or even to lift your head from a screen long enough to notice you are in glorious mountains. High-rise apartments are where most South Koreans now live, and there are so many of them that they almost all bear giant numbers on the tops, presumably so if you get lost and forget which of the seven or 17 lookalike buildings in any given complex is yours, you can find out by looking way up. The buildings are also grouped by the development name.

Thus if you live at Ghastly Towers, the sign at the top of the buildings would read GT 101-GT 112. It is of course a whopping generalization, but if the Russians at Sochi were usually on the dour side, and the Brazilians in Rio on the vivacious side, Koreans are on the giggly side. This is a very giggly culture — both genders — and it’s surprisingly charming. Hotel and condominium lobbies aren’t the welcoming places here that they are elsewhere.

For one thing, they aren’t heated. And they’re cold enough that front-desk staff are attired in parkas. Nor are common hallways heated.

This makes great economic and environmental sense, of course, but feels vaguely anti-social. It may offer a glimpse of the green future, perhaps, where we can all feel very Good about what we do for the environment, but will feel Good in splendid isolation because everyone buggers off to their rooms, where it’s at least warm. This is a shockingly homogenous society. Remember that “Rainbow Choir” of children who performed at the opening ceremonies? They’re the products of daring “international marriages”. But nothing captures the sameness of Korea, the relentless uniformity of race and culture, better than the Korean women’s curling team. I was discussing this with my Postmedia colleague Ted Wyman. He’s been writing a lot of curling, and he pointed to the lineup for the Korean team — there was EunJung Kim (pictured), KyeongAe Kim, SeonYeong Kim, YeongMi Kim, and alternate Chohi Kim— who were up next and who in fact proceeded to kick some serious Swiss butt. His point, though, was that this is such a homogenous society that you could have a whole team with the same last name and none were related; Wyman had done some asking around and that’s what he was told by some fans. When I checked it out further, I learned that the third and the lead are, in fact, sisters — that’s YeongMi and KyeongAe. Two other pairs know one another from school, and all have the same home town — Uiseong — because that’s where the country’s first curling centre was. It was founded by a wealthy man named Kim. And all this was told to me by the Team Kim (they are called Team Kim) coach, who is, of course, another Kim — MinJung.