Some of you are already aware I made a trip recently to one of my favorite spots on the planet, and certainly here in Korea. A location of great historical significance combined with incredible natural beauty, far from the craziness that can otherwise color a “normal” urban existence in this country. My kind of place, certainly, yet this time my experience at Namhansanseong was different, for reasons that are worth exploring.
For those of you who don’t already know, Namhansanseong is an expansive fortification just southeast of the capital of Seoul. The site itself has hosted a fortification of one type or another since the 6th Century A.D. when the Kingdom of Silla first built adjoining walls atop a series of very steep slopes.
Later, following the Imjin War (1592-98) the Kingdom of Joseon constructed the expansive works visible today encompassing over 12 kilometers of stone walls. It was meant to be a place large enough for the royal court to withdraw when threatened and was constructed with all the amenities such a purpose would suggest.
The fortress was completed in time to be used in exactly that manner during the Manchu invasion of 1636 when King Injo and some 18,000 men attempted to hold out against 60,000 veteran Manchu troops. The protracted siege, and multiple failed assaults which punctuated it, ended with the surrender of the Joseon king in 1637 just north of the fortress, near the Han River where the Manchus had crossed.
The fortress played a further historical role as haven for anti-Japanese guerrillas during the time of colonialization and annexation. And now, following extensive restoration work that took place over the course of thirty years, it is one of Korea’s most incredible UNESCO Heritage sites.
My first visit to the fortress took place around 2002, some 1400 years after the natural defenses of those mountains in Gyeonggi Province were first improved upon. Then, visiting on a relatively warm winter day, I found large sections of the wall yet to be restored, but fell completely in love with the scale and elegance of the long, flowing walls and stately gates. Due to the incompleteness of the work, I only wandered a few miles that day, but vowed to return, doing so about ten years later to find the renovations complete, making circumvallation of the works a possibility that I accomplished several times before departing Korea in 2012.
Now, having returned to Korea, I decided to revisit my favorite location, specifically while the hills were afire with the incredible hues of a Korean Autumn. No longer restricted from owning a car—that’s an old-timer story for you younger folks—we drove out to the site to make it easier to follow our own timeline. Yet we encountered our first of two surprises that day on the long, steep drive up to the Southern Gate. Traffic!
Yes indeed, it soon became apparent that every car owner on the Korean Peninsula had the same idea, and we were all lined up on the winding, three kilometer stretch of road which enters the fortress. It took over an hour to drive that last three kilometers, a mere two miles for my American brothers and sisters out there. Since I normally hike at a six mile per hour pace…that meant it took us three times as long to drive as it would have to hike the final ascent to the fortress.
Okay. Disappointing? Yes. Ruinous? No. We soldiered on, even though halfway up the hill I decided the Dr. Pepper I’d imbibed along the way—to say nothing of the two cups of coffee that morning—was perhaps a life-altering mistake!
Anyway, we finally passed through the tunnel and into the “inside” bowl of the fortress only to find an unexpected scene. The large parking spaces once set amid peripheral restaurants serving acorn-based fare had been overrun by businesses, and there was simply no place left to park. At all! It seemed that most of the space previously given over to visitors to park, hike the trails and walls, and enjoy a unique meal, had been sold or developed one-by-one until only the businesses remained, serviced by a couple large, yet way-too-small, lots. It was insane, and I’ve yet to find traffic so congested even in the middle of Seoul itself to rival what I found within the walls of the fortress. That was surprise number two…and it took another half hour to finally find someplace to park our car.
This was my fifth visit to Namhansanseong, and my expectations, once we reached the wall itself were fully met. Yet the entire environment had changed with the rampant commercialization in evidence within. Somewhere I have a picture of the area within the walls from when I first visited, and it was mostly trees. Nothing of the sort remains now, though the range and quality of food to be found there is incredible. To the degree that there are people going there to eat, I imagine, virtually unaware of the incredible history present on and around the site. It seems to have become that much of a food mecca.
Driving home—much easier and faster than entering the fortress—I couldn’t help but make a few observations. Number one…should’ve taken the bus. But more importantly, nothing really remains unchanged, does it? Nothing stays exactly as it was. Things are—and always have been—in a constant state of flux to the degree that one can find wisdom in the Adam Galdamez line that “The only real constant is change.”
Is it a bad thing that restaurants have penetrated walls that held a mighty Manchu army at bay? No, not really. In fact, from a certain point of view, one can easily imagine that more people are willing to make a day of visiting the historic site precisely because they won’t need to go far afterward to find a bite to eat. And make no mistake, after hiking Namhansanseong, you WILL be hungry! Yet it would be easy for me to take the discomfort this caused me personally as a negative and to cast the area’s development in a negative light.
Could I have checked to see if the place I knew and loved had remained the same? I not only could have, I should have. Heck, a quick look at Google Maps would have told me everything I needed to know about the commercial sprawl within those storied walls. But I didn’t. I relied upon my memories—and my feelings upon visiting that site on multiple occasions—to guide my way back to a place that was no longer exactly as I’d remembered. It’s instructive, and reminds me once again that human memory is not only faulty, it may not even be relevant sometimes given the constantly changing nature of the world around us.
So, even at the age of fifty (seriously?!?) I find that I continue to learn and relearn life’s lessons, and personal pain often drives those lessons home to us best, doesn’t it? I’ll be more careful in the future, as there are many places from my younger days in-country to which I’d like to return. I’ll approach those trips in a different light having now been lapped on the slopes of Namhan Mountain by an asthmatic old lady with a walker.
Life’s full of lessons and grasping the forever changing nature of the world around us is one of the most important. We see in video but remember, it seems, in still snapshots that convey a sense of finality, of permanence. Yet nothing around us is ever truly complete and everything has the potential to change.
It’s good to be reminded of that sometimes, especially when the way ahead seems dark. Things are always subject to change.
M. G. Haynes