Sept. 17 to 22 was one of the two main holidays over here, called Chuseok. It's often described as "the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving," but it's at least a millennium and a half older than the American holiday, and while Canadians and Americans eat turkey and watch football, Koreans perform complex ritual sacrifices to their ancestors. Foreigners in Korea go urban exploring, or at least a small handful of us.
I decided after my friend gave a
talk on UE a couple months ago that we needed to have a social event. So I put together a meetup with three events: two held online, and a third in a socially distanced location. And I did a lot of exploring on my own.
1. On the first night, I went out scouting subway construction sites that are normally active 24 hours a day and expected to be empty for the holiday. On the way, I saw this banner for Hades Town, a musical based on ancient Greek myths. The imagery stayed in my head the rest of the weekend.
2. Gangnam entrance to Hades. I descended about four or five floors, found that the suicide doors were up on the station platform and the tracks already electrified, so I turned back.
3. Here's a site in central Seoul where they'er building the GTX, an underground bullet train network that will revolutionise transport around the capital region. Normally those big gates are open and there's a parade of dump trucks lined up, but not for Chuseok.
4. I had higher hopes for finding access on the other side of the mountain, in front of Seoul Station. This little shack ahead of me houses the entrance to the underworld. I found out the hard way it's alarmed.
5. But on the other side, someone left the window open.
6. Looking in, the shack was lit up like Christmas. I think all these access controls are anti-infection measures, rather than for security. But I'm unfamiliar with how strict they could be.
7. The figure on these monitors looked demonic to me. Turned out to be a sprinter in the crouching position.
8. Below the surface of the road was a massive cylindrical shaft heading down who knows how deep. They're likely building the train line very deep underground, deeper than the already very deep airport train line.
9. In front of the train station, I passed by a testing center, shut down for the night or maybe even long weekend.
10. On Sunday, we went to the Host Tunnel, a large underground river with an entrance wide enough you could taxi a 747 in, if it weren't for all the pillars.
11. I was only with two other people. The maximum group size for any activity before 6pm is four, with room for two extra vaccinated people. One of them had just received her second shot days earlier, and I wasn't to get my first one until after the holiday.
12. But there was a group of four explorers way over on the other side of the tunnel.
13. At the halfway point, about 750 meters in, we all stopped for a while within sight of each other. One of the people on the other side brought sourdough bread, but I've never eaten anything while in a drain and I didn't intend to start this day.
14. I had hauled in some firewood, and lit a campfire. There was some concern the tunnel would get smoky and surface dwellers might even see smoke rising from the sewer grates, but all it seemed to do was make the air down there smell better.
I left this exposure running for several minutes while we saw a light from deeper in the tunnel heading down toward us. Two more explorers arrived from that way.
15. So it was time for tripods to be set up for the fireworks.
16. Boom!
17. Someone from the socially distanced group on the other side of the tunnel shot off a roman candle.
18. This isn't steel wool, it was a firework.
19. The others didn't work so well.
20. 6pm was approaching, when social distancing rules change and you can't have gatherings of more than two people plus two more fully vaccinated. We went our separate ways.
21. Unlike previous visits, we had to walk over this concrete divider to get out upstream.
22. A couple days later, after I'd recovered, I went out to check on a few other sites. This is a GTX site right in the middle of downtown, now totally enclosed in this metal shack.
23. Beware of K-penguin.
24. I made an awkward U-turn and went down an unfamiliar underpass, expecting it would deposit me on the opposite side of a small stream ahead. Instead, it went down very deep, about 70 meters, and deposited me on the outskirts of town 7.5 kilometers away.
25. This is where I came out, from the tunnel on the left.
26. I was not supposed to ride a scooter through that tunnel. On the bright side, there was an abandonment right next to this side of the tunnel.
27. The smallest door I've ever seen, made by Hyundae Metal, no relation to Hyundai (and romanised better).
28. Abandoned recently enough that there were abandoned anti-infection signs.
29. I found an abandoned trophy case.
30. And a trophy for the LONGEST.
31. Next I went to a place that was simply called a "kids' school" (in phonetic English), leading me to wonder if it was worth pointing out this was not a school for adults.
32. Adult schools don't have a slide in the basement!
33. Or one of these.
34. Nice place to put an abandoned neighbourhood.
