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| Two cats glance at each other in front of a protest sign in Cheongnyangni 588, a former red-light district in northeastern Seoul. According to a security guard, 40 cats lived here post-eviction. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun |
By Ron Bandun
The major holidays are an ideal time to go urban exploring in Korea. Seoul clears out twice a year as everyone goes to their hometowns for Lunar New Year and Chuseok. These holidays are also when animal abandonment peaks, so I pledged to always have some cat food in my trespassing kit.
I'm not sure feeding stray cats does any real good, only delaying the inevitable or growing the stray population, but it helps keep them still for a photo. Maybe I can tide a hungry runaway's appetite over until its owners can rescue it. I've also probably served a few abandoned cats their last meal. Discarded cats unable to fend for themselves haunt abandoned neighborhoods, and I'm unsure where they go after demolition; I probably don't want to know.
Last Lunar New Year, I visited a few abandoned sites in northeastern Seoul with Isaiah, another explorer who runs his own column in the monthly Gwangju News. We left my last can of cat food for a heavily pregnant cat on the roof of an abandoned apartment, and then below we found a male cat lounging in a pile of smashed bricks, so close to death he didn't even bother running from us.
After that, we headed for Cheongnyangni 588, one of Seoul's red-light districts, where we met another friend. Most of the area has been razed, but at that time a few blocks remained. There was one such space, hidden behind a green striped curtain strung across a roadway, leading into an alley lined with traditional hanok houses on both sides, all abandoned.
I'd been here a few times before, passing through the shattered glass windows behind which prostitutes sat enticing johns, slipping into the darkened hallways behind leading to private rooms where the sex trade was consummated. I'd previously been chased out of the red-light district in front of Yongsan Station, so I was wary of being caught back here.
Then a man, maybe in his late 50s, appeared at the striped curtain alley entrance yelling at us. He was blocking our only way out, so rather than try to run, we came over and cooperated.
He demanded to know what we were doing there, and rather than explain my perversion for endangered architecture, I told him we were looking for a cat. Er, cats, to feed.
He said he'd seen us on CCTV, pointing out a camera overlooking the alley entrance, and led us away angrily. We thought about bailing, but I was honestly curious to see what he had in store, confident we could talk our way out of any trouble.
He led us on and out onto the main road and then into another restricted area. Just when we were wondering about his intentions, he led us into the courtyard of one beautiful hanok. He showed us where he'd left out a bowl of cat food.
Then he brought us back to his guard shack, set up in one section that had been totally destroyed. A large building had been removed here, creating a three-level-deep pit flooded at the bottom. He pointed to all the little shelters made out of blankets and cardboard, and more cat food bowls. We suddenly discovered we were on a whirlwind tour of all the places in 588 the conventional pedestrian couldn't see.
He told us there were 40 cats in the area, introducing us to one beautiful female black cat he said had been spayed by the city and released, and now had many boyfriends in the area. I reached out to pet her and she withdrew; he told me she only lets him touch her. Cats are fastidious judges of character. He had a storage space full of cat food, apparently supplied by the district office.
I thanked him wholeheartedly and reached out a hand, and in an interestingly Korean move he took off his glove to shake my hand properly.
I returned to the former red-light district on June 18, to find demolition complete and construction vehicles driving through. A black cat watched me but kept her distance. I wondered if this was the same cat the guard had introduced me to, and I wondered where that guard was now, if he had moved on to some other doomed area to give the cats there some respite.
The writer is a self-described "anarchaeologist."
