The Loneliest Place on Earth

It's the loneliest place on earth: an outdoor subway platform on the Orange Line near Yoido Island in Seoul, South Korea.

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In the early hours of a typical Sunday morning I awake in my barracks well before anyone else is stirring and stumble around in the dark trying to put on clothes without disturbing my roommates. They are sleeping off hangovers and will not arise until some time around noon.  I shove a few Korean Won and all of the coins I can find into a small pouch that I wear around my neck as well as snacks into a cargo pocket for the journey ahead.

I have to layer my clothes against the chill of the morning, but the amount of walking done over the course of the day will require a shedding process and then a reversal as evening approaches and I have to make my way back north to this Army base near the small town of Dongducheon.  It is the home of the US Army's 2nd Infantry Division, situated half way between Seoul and the border with North Korea, described as a "speed bump" to slow the advance of the North Koreans in the case of an invasion.

The halls are quiet and no one is aware of my movements, not even the soldier on CQ duty sitting at his desk after a long night of fighting to stay awake, watching pirated VHS tapes and smoking cigarettes.  It is too early for the bus or a taxi and so I walk the almost two klicks to the base entrance.

The Katusa soldier checks my military ID at the front gate.  I travel light and have no bag for him to inspect and so he waves me through.  The small town greets me with its shuttered shop windows and potent smells unrecognizable to my nonKorean nose.  The train station is still another klick or two away and the walk a lonely one, twisting and turning through quiet streets, the air moist and cold, like walking through a cloud of lost memories.

The tickets to Seoul cost practically pennies.  I find my subway destination on a board on the wall and tell the station attendant where I want to go.  He gives me a train ticket to the next town south and a subway ticket to the final destination from there. The bench is cold and hard as I sit looking down the tracks, lost in thought.  It's like I'm in a movie about an earlier time, waiting for the train to arrive and hearing the odd bird awaken to sing its morning song.

The station in Euijongbu connects the train to the northernmost reach of the Seoul subway system. When I arrive, the transfer occurs across a platform, train on one side and subway car on the other. The wait isn't long, but one of many pauses on the journey.  I watch a man slurp down a bowl of udon noodles with chopsticks, steam floating lazily into the air.  A book in my cargo pocket starts to itch and so I peel back page one to pass the time,

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."

I have traveled to every corner of Seoul, a city of 12 million people, by myself and with various Korean friends for various reasons.  It has become such a part of my experience that I oftentimes help these friends navigate it, finding the shortest distance from A to B, which they find humorous like some kind of magic trick.  On one particular trip to Seoul I scribbled down the time it took to get from station to station in a notebook, trying to make my travels more efficient so that I could arrive on time to planned meet ups.  I was always on time, but invariably the Korean friend was thirty minutes to an hour late.  They insisted it was a cultural thing.

But there were missteps.  Once I ran out of money and was on the opposite side of Seoul from where I was staying at the time.  I walked for almost a full day, nonstop, using subway stations as landmarks to eventually find the neighborhood.  Another time an announcement was made over the subway car speaker to exit the train which I did not understand.  The train moved to a side tunnel and cleaning ladies entered the train with mops and buckets, surprised to find a lone foreigner with a book.  I turned to put my feet up on the bench and continued to read as if nothing was wrong.

There were lonely places and lonely times in abundance, but the loneliest was Sunday mornings on the last transfer station to get me to church on Yoido Island.  Yoido sits near the south bank of the Han River which cuts a wide watery path through Seoul.  The station is on the Orange Line, an above ground station that overlooks a wide overgrown expanse that used to be where the Han River flowed around Yoido as a kind of tributary of the main waterway.

This transfer spot is not well traveled, especially on early Sunday mornings.  There are times I sit on this empty platform in the sun, in the rain, and in the snow waiting for the next subway train to come through, the longest pause of the journey.  It is quiet here and makes me feel like I am the only person in the city, maybe the only person on the planet.  It's a recurring existential timeout that has me bobbing on a sea of melancholy.

When the subway car finally arrives, it transports me to a station on the south bank of the river, across from Yoido Island.  Just outside the station is a small newspaper stand that sells a brand of tiramisu flavored chocolates that I love.  They are a quick pick-me-up for the long walk over the bridge and the kilometer or so still left to go before reaching my destination on the eastern most tip of the island.  I arrive on the steps of the church a few hours from the time I awoke, tired but happy.