The Seoul Underground is the largest and most complicated I have traveled
I visited South Korea little over a decade ago to visit Samsung’s headquarters near Suwon.
Serendipity struck in that an old friend and former colleague from Durban circa 1995, who had moved to Hong Kong, happened to be in the capital Seoul at the time.
So I took the 94 minute journey from Suwon to the world famous Shilla Duty Free in Seoul. A convivial reunion ensued with an abundance of bulgogi washed down with soju.
All might have ended well at this point had we not decided to finish off the inebriated evening with a brace of chocolate martinis before I boarded the underground back to Samsung Digital City .
I woke up much later to find myself on an empty row of seats while seated across the aisle from me were a group of locals, looking at me with some alarm. I greeted them as politely as I could, mainly by hand gestures, and they looked even more alarmed.
At this point, I realized that (a) I did not have a clue where I was and (b) my fellow passengers were clearly not used to encountering people of my hue and physiognomy. In any event, it was clear that my questions in English, Italian, Afrikaans, and Tamil fell on uncomprehending ears.
The train stopped at a station, and I looked out the window. I realized at that point that my assumption that the underground had bilingual signs in English and Korean (as had been the case in Seoul) was really misplaced.
(Yes, I had a phone. Yes, it was dead. Don’t interrupt me.)
So, I did the only possible thing I could think of at that point; I got off at the next station, noting the number of the train I was on. I crossed to the opposite platform, waited for a train with the same number to come from the opposite direction and headed back the way I came. I watched out the window, bleary-eyed, as we passed station after station, until I finally saw a platform sign in both Korean and English.
I hopped out, worked my way across to a subway map on the wall, and sure enough, there was an English version too! I plotted my way back to Suwon and staggered into my hotel room at around 3h30.
Yes, my friends, functional illiteracy sucks. But I needed to travel to experience that first hand.
