Jeonju: Korea in a city

Jeonju is the city of "good food." Restaurants around the country brand their dishes as "Jeonju" as in "Jeonju Bibimbap." This is an acceptable distinction, but don't get stuck on it. The food is good there -- more side dishes, fresher ingredients -- but without that distinction the city would have to devise an even further manufactured selling point. It wouldn't work. No one would come to Jeonju merely for a park, or a folk village or a mountain where a few martyrs were killed. So they say come for the food.

It is the capital of Jeollabuk-do, located at 35° 53' north and 127° 14' east. 645,000 people live in Jeonju, and at 79 square miles, that gives the city a population density of 8,101 people per square mile. On average, 15 people are born and eight people die; 10 are married and 3 divorced every day in Jeonju.

The city is surrounded by seven mountain peaks. The most noticeable is Moaksan (which is adorned with the underrated Kumsan Temple) and then, traveling outward, the horse ears of Maisan, the suspension bridge of Daedunsan and then on to Deogyusan and the resort ski town of Muju. I have visited them all on multiple occasions and they are all good for hiking, photography and a home-brewed bowl of makgeolli drank as a reward for reaching the summit.

An hour in a west-bound bus will get you to the Yellow Sea. Gyeokpo and the outlying islands are indecorous and unadorned -- rough, fishermen habitats. Daechon, where once a year the foreigners of Korea do their best to imitate swine, has cheap hotels built on the beach.

But no one comes to Korea for the beaches. We are here for many reasons, some of us more aware of those reasons than others. (Bob Dylan’s line that we’re all running from something comes to mind, which has been countered most pointedly by the friend who said that perhaps we are all running TO something.) We are here for the people and the culture, hoping for a transformative experience in some small way. We’re hoping that our travels will expose us to the world and allow it to work on us, putting into motion an act of alchemy that we can emerge from bettered. If that is indeed true, then the less like our homes our new place is the more potent the alchemy.

Compared with other, bigger Korean cities there is little Western food, few Western entertainments. Although it is quite possible to have a day nearly identical to a day in an American life -- by eating at American restaurants, shopping at American stores, watching American movies and drinking American beer -- it is not possible to have that one essential American quality of consumption: choice. You are limited to a few chain Western restaurants -- Outback, T.G.I. Fridays, and worse, McDonald’s. You laugh at eating at them when you get there -- you never did when they had them in your hometown, why start now?

After a few months you give in and for a while it’s good. But it only takes two or three undercooked and overpriced hamburgers to expose the lie. Then you begin to choose Korean. You start looking for good, Korean food. Through the food you make a bond with the culture. You learn the words for the things on the table and it feels good to order them in correct Korean. It might give you motivation to learn the language, or it might not -- what matters is that you like sitting at the table with all the side dishes and trying everything. You find the dakdoritang restaurant near Jeonbuk-dae, your friends find dak galbi restaurants that are far too spicy for your stomach, the lady that runs the hole in the wall restaurant has the best doenjang and chamchi chiggae you will ever taste.

Most importantly, don’t listen to the marketers. Don’t go to Jeonju for the bibimbap. Stay away from Lotte Department Store and the turtle ship and the paper museum and all the other ways the city tries to sell itself. No, go to Jeonju because it is KOREA in a city. It is workaday and busy; it is hard-drinking and relaxed. It is modern and historical; it is ugly and beautiful. It is a city for those who have already acquired a taste for Korea.

Go to Jeonju, where I went to great dinners at the duck restaurant near the church in Kumamdong -- 5-course meals with 15 people on their knees drinking soju. Jeonju, where I ate hanwoo with farmers and blue-collar workers in Seosindong, who were there because it was the best meat in the city. Jeonju, where I got drunk with foreigners at the great expat bar Deepin -- small and smoke-filled and the bartenders know everyone. Where I walked under the bridge on the Jeonju River, where the old men play Go-Stop and drink makgeolli, and I photographed a man in a hospital gown hooked up to an IV, smoking and gambling. Go there if you want to say you saw Korea, ate real-deal Korean food, lived liked a modern, average Korean. Go to Jeonju -- it’s Korea in a city.

It takes about three hours from Seoul. Buses run every ten minutes from the Express Bus Terminal. Cost is 11,000 to 16,000 won.

Photos by me.