Yangdong Market

Korea is deeply infected by Modernity. The cities are concrete wonderlands full of neon signs where no non-temple buildings are older than fifty years. Humans scurry to and fro to a soundtrack of advertisement songs and traffic noise. Cellphones are advanced enough not only to play music, but also to act as portable TV's, so people are able to constantly sprinkle themselves with entertainment wherever they are. And they do it with ardour. Life feels like an LP played at 45rpm.

Yangdong Market has resisted. The most prominent sound is that of rain dropping on the canvas roof. Sometimes it is disrupted by the laughter of market-women when one of them has shared a joke. They sell all imaginable staples of food: mountains of Chinese cabbage, edible grass, pig heads, peppers, live duck or duck roasted by a flamethrower. Their customers stroll along the stands in graceful pace, the median age is well above 40. Most of them grew up when Korea was still a Third World country. Yangdong Market seems like an anachronistic island in the middle of this ultramodern city, a sort of reservation for the last pre-modern generation.

Yangong Market