A trip homeland in July

Sitting in a cart bar and drinking a glass of soju made me feel better and I missed my home country where everything worked out. Suddenly, I have a job to go to Seoul.

Even if there is no reason to go is my homeland where I make to go. I found a hotel and there was no room in mid-July. High season is also high season, but it was difficult to book two days ahead. It's where I lived, so I just got on the plane.

Since I don't have any reserved accommodation, I took an airport bus heading toward Jongno. Then I went to Cheongjin-dong Haejangguk house.  I ordered soju and special Haejangguk. The soju, which I drank in the early morning, shook my stomach wildly, pushing food I ate on the plane. It was not bad to see me stretched out in a completely different environment than yesterday when I was struggling in New York.

I got drunk and I walked along Jongno Street. As I walked, I saw YMCA building that was in and out when I was college. Most of the streets have changed and I don't know where, but the YMCA building is still waiting for me. The hotel is on the eighth floor.  There are vacancies and moreover, I got a 20 percent discount. As I was tired of cooking in the kitchen, I wanted to eat food that other people do. As there were many restaurants around the alley in Insadong, I felt good from the first day in Korea.

The next day, after seeing an urgent business at Dongbu Ichon-dong, I sat at a wooden shade bus station and waited for a bus to Yongsan Station. How loud is the sound of the cicada pouring from the tree. When I was a child, I lay down on the rural daecheong floor and looked up at the trees as if I was counting the bright orange persimmons on the backyard persimmon tree.

At Yongsan Station, I went to Mokpo in three hours by express train. Sitting on the pavilion at Dalseong Park, I looked down at Mokpo City and felt like I had seen all of my country's land. The wind from all sides was as welcoming me, just as if my home country embraced me.

A drunken man and a taxi driver who were leaving a restaurant on the corner of Mount Nojeokbong Rock got into a fight. It was a fight about the drunker wanted a U-turn but the driver couldn't make a U-turn. The fight that began with words led to the fight against each other, tangled up and rolled down the street. The driver, who thought he was stronger than drunker, looked down on the drunker and tried to attack him, but he was discouraged and reconciled. The two raised their voices one more time, climbed into a taxi together, made a U-turn and disappeared. It's as if I was looking at an interesting piece of hell.

The freshness of so many Koreans who are good at fighting and good at getting angry stimulated my throat. I looked around to see if there was any place to drink soju, thinking that soju needs in on empty stomachs. I heard a deep Jeolla accent sound. A woman with dark red lips said, "Come in here."

I went to Hongdo by speedboat. When I was in college, I went to Mokpo to go to Hongdo Island, but I couldn't go because of the storm. Where I should have come again someday, the ship carrying me, full of anticipation, reached the dock past the picturesque islands on the water. The dock, which was seen from above the deck, even before getting off, could feel the creepy and disorderly thing pulling me into the deep dark lake.

It was due to trash piled up and scattered among the round natural stones around the beach at the dock, and the dirty marks of people everywhere.  Accommodation was also poor. It is understandable that the hotel cannot be built without permission to protect the landscape. But couldn't residents clean up? The sorry thought of did irritate my throat again.

Sitting at the pier, I soaked deeply the urchin into the red pepper paste and into my mouth and slowly chewed. And drank one shot of soju while looking at the distant sea. The mess and dirty scene gradually faded away from my eyes.