Travelogue: Incheon

Three different times during the past year I flew into the International Airport at Incheon, and twice I left from there. It's a fabulous airport - spacious, with many friendly helpful people around to guide you and answer questions, directions clearly marked (and of course in English), wonderful restaurants and shops, a spa, a culture center where you can make Korean handicrafts, a museum, lounges, a hotel... but, that's not what I want to write about.

Away from the airport, completely out of sight and earshot of the airplanes, is the town of Incheon. Twice I spent a day there with my friend Cheng Min - once in the fall, and again with my brother and sister-in law during our trip in June. It just takes an hour to get there by subway. It's where MacArthur landed with the Marines in 1950 (there is a statue of MacArthur there.) It's now a relatively quiet spot away from the hustle and bustle of Seoul.

Some highlights:

The Sudoguksan Museum of Housing and Living is a recreated village, totally encased inside the relatively small museum, depicting the life of the poor people of Incheon in the years following the Korean War. It is interactive; you can walk through all the rooms and try out various tools and furniture and clothing (and, of course, go to the gift shop):

There is a Chinatown in Incheon, supposedly the largest (and some say the only) Chinatown in Korea. If you sound out the Korean spelling of the word on the wall behind the big plate of food in the picture below, it says Cha - i - na - ta - un, or "Chinatown."

Actually, after WWII, and especially after anti-Chinese repressions by Korean dictators in the 70's, most of the Chinese from this area either left or were living in poverty. Then the Korean government saw tourist possibilities here and put in money to revitalize the area. Apparently most of the merchants now are Chinese who bought in from the mainland - or Koreans! Anyway, it's colorful. The big plate of food in the picture is jajangmyeon, noodles covered with a black bean sauce, which Koreans call a Chinese dish but is actually a Korean - and very popular - version of a Chinese dish. (In fact, the dish is so popular and well-known we had to memorize the name of this dish in our Korean class at Yonsei.) Apparently the dish originated here in Incheon. Cheng Min and I had a great meal of it on my first visit.

Wolmido is a seafront area of Incheon, very "vacation-y" with a promenade, nature park, amusement park, ferry docks, and many seafood restaurants. We had a HUGE seafood lunch at a restaurant with a window seat overlooking the harbor:

So we took a couple of ferry rides, and ended up at Jagyak Island (or Jagyakdo). There are no cars on this island. No roads, no houses, no hotels or restaurants - just an island you can walk around, or walk over, and lots of shoreline where you can fall asleep, or play games, or set up a barbecue and have a good time as a number of Korean groups were doing. We mostly walked around and over the island:

Visiting these sights in Incheon, I feel a stronger sense of some particular aspects of Korea - its long and ambivalent relationship with China, the effects of the war tragedies engulfing Korea in the past century, and the strong influence of sea coast and island life on the culture of Korea in particular. I really enjoyed all I saw and learned there, and really thank Cheng Min for her help in getting us around, finding interesting spots to visit, and sharing her Korean insight with us.