MORNING CALM TALES A journey back through time in Jamsil
As I emerged from the subway station, the old neighborhood hardly looked how I remembered it. Gone was the housing complex I once called home, along with the shopping center catty-corner across the street — even the subway station had changed, though only in name. However, as my eyes landed on Lotte World, still gleaming with its familiar whimsy and the aging apartment complex across the street, there was no mistaking that I was on familiar ground. The sight was a mix of the old and new, an apt metaphor for Korea itself — constantly transforming yet somehow holding onto fragments of its past. It had been 34 years since I first arrived in southeastern Seoul's Jamsil neighborhood, not far from the Olympic Sports Complex. Fresh from the airport in 1990, I was wide-eyed and eager to begin a new chapter in a country that was at once unfamiliar and magnetic. My time there provided the foundation for a deeper connection, almost as if I were discovering my roots in Korea. Over time, that connection grew, woven through memories of my time in the neighborhood and the extraordinary changes I
Jan 30, 2025By Jeffrey Miller
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