Mother Nature's little vacuum cleaners

My twice weekly, 20 minute stroll over to the Korean government buildings was not up to its usual level of pleasure this morning.
"So", you may well ask, "what is so pleasurable about walking to work in the world's third (after Bangladesh and Taiwan) most densely populated country? Especially when, as an experienced hedonist, you should be sleeping in and avoiding work altogether!"

Well subconscious 'you', I shall attend to your enquiries in the course of this monologue, so, please, just relax.

It's at around this time of the year that the dreaded yellow dust from the north should have abated, leaving Koreans & foreign workers like my good self to enjoy the wonderous colours of Spring. Without the aid of a dustmask!

Gwacheon is a very pleasant part of the southern peninsula. Mount Gwanaksan reaches up and away 600 metres skyward behind the impressive government complex. I often fluff around looking for old trails in its deep rutted valleys, only to uncover 700 year old religious monuments and 6 month old hiker's lunch trash quietly coinciding in unspectacular peace.
On the other side of town is Mount Chongye, home to some Korean airforce trainees and some reasonable single trail mountain biking. Central Seoul is just on 40 minutes subway ride from my apartment door.

Back to the point, disappointment in fact, that this morning's green, green mountain and fruity blossom display wasn't exactly what I had ordered.
It got me thinking about images I've seen from the 1950's during the fighting against the nasty northerners. The entire peninsula looked levelled and bare. Not too much evidence of the green greenery, but plenty of haze. The story of South Korean reforestation since then parallels the country's emergence as a high-tech middleweight fighting above its weight-class in the industralized zone.

While I work here, as a means of a) seeing more of the broader asian countryside and culture, and b) saving enough dosh to study for 18 months in eastern europe in 2005, I only hope that ecological sanity can prevail in the long run.
Check out what I hope to dream about tonight, James's world seems a long way from mine right now.
sway on
in the breezes that we change,
keep on
cleaning our mess,
sway on