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.