Street Food

Korean Markets are not always about buying food for later or other random shtuff.  They also have a plethora of food vendors offering up quick eats for people on the go.  These are usually cheap and attached to sticks or steamed in big pans bursting out in front of you.  Here is a photo from my local Nam Hang Dong Market on Yeongdo in Busan of a lady tucking into some Odaeng.  Odaeng is a bit of fish sausage on a stick that has been cooked in a oniony broth that is also slurped along with your food out of trowels that are always on the ready for your use.  A long rectangular rice cake is also cooked in the same fashion alongside of it and is also popular.

Haeundae Market

I had the day off in mid December for Korean Presidential Elections so a friend and I decided to walk through Haeundae Market and snapped some pictures.  I got a lot of really great ones and I believe she did too although I haven't seen any!!  Bug her about it over on Flickr for me.  I will be posting some of the shots I did too so stay tuned.

Tools of the Trade

This blog is sort of a project to not only to post stuff about neighbourhood markets, but also for me to improve my photography through a nice little project and get to know my new old cameras better.  I have a Yashica Electro 35 Gen as well as a Fed 5 that will be handling the film side of things.  Other than that my trusty nikon coolpix s8100, which took over for my other little digital point and shoot that died in tragic Thailand cavecrawling accident, and my sony xperia arc crammed full of apps will take care of the digital end of things.  For now at least...

The trusty little camera

Nam Hang Dong Snaps

I was waiting for my gimbap at my favourite spot in the market for such things when I snapped this on the old phone.

Some Snaps Of Nam Hang Dong Market

Nam Hang Market is locsted in Nam Hang Dong straight down a few blocks from Yeongdo Bridge.  To get there, take the subway to Nampo Station and take exit six.  Grab one of thw many buses that take you to the large post office.  Walk past the Daiso and hang a right.  You can then walk right into the action. 

The Markets of Busan

(above: old lady at Bongnae Market, Yeongdo, Busan, South Korea)

Upon first arriving to Korea back in 2009, I like many other expats instantly began worrying about food. Do they have the same things I like back home? Where can I buy peanut butter? Is it easy to get it? What's a Home Plus? I was led by the hand by a kindly co-teacher to a large shopping emporium deep within the bowels of Sasang-gu. Seconds later, I was hit by a Walmart on steroids burst of lights, yelling, people, and all the stuff I thought I would ever need to feed, cook, and perhaps wage war. It was my first Home Plus.

Today, many Koreans and expats a like make the daily trek to the big gleaming multi tiered and multi-leveled supermarket to get their daily necessities, but it hasn't always been this way. O many streets and in many neighbourhoods through out the city lurks the originals; the neighbourhood markets. They don't gleam, they rattle, with tattered old tarps, clackety windows and concrete arches. They don't yell, they buzz, with the rush of older people in and around little booths. There are the sights, the sounds, and the smells. Fish piled high in buckets of ice, meat on hooks, walls of cabbage and garlic bushels, and fruit stacked upon fruit and vegetable.

The neighbourhood market is a raw relic of Korea past, frozen in a time out of time and staffed and shopped by withering ghosts. There are no young people here. Just the old and the older continuing about amongst the wreckage of boxes and edible things. Ten years from now, it is easy to see them slipping away into history.

I moved into Yeongdo in early 2012 and soon found myself in a little one and a half room apartment just around the corner from Nam Hang Dong Market. I had never lived so close to one of these neighbourhood markets and although I had been to them before, they were always so far away. I dove right in without thinking. I have been there practically every day since.

There are many markets through out the city. Nam Hang Dong is probably one of the lesser known ones, but there are others that appear on tourist brochures, but hardly ever appear on a tourist's itinerary, let alone someone who actually lives by them. Jalgachi of course is famous for its fish, but just up the road is the twin colossuses that are the Gukje and Bupyeong Markets. Both overflow with kitsch, food, brick-a-brac and other oddities. There is also the Bujeon Market, crowded around the Bujeon Subway and Train Stations in a scatter and flurry of tarps and stumbling seniors. Infamously of course, there is also the dog market of Gupo where dogs are bought and sold not as pets, but as your dinner meal.

Over the coming months I will be posting photos from these markets around Busan, my home away from home. I also encourage anyone who reads this to share stories, photos, or whatever about in Korea. Very soon, these places overflowing with culture, colour, and activity will be gone, so hopefully this will serve as perhaps a small insignificant way to preserving some of their splendour and fun.