De Vermis Ttukseomis

Last time I crossed the Han river by the Yeongdong Bridge, checking how the Ttukseom Resort renovation went, I had a strange feeling but couldn't quite nail it.

The answer came this morning as I opened the JoongAng Ilbo : the journalist started his article on Hangang Renaissance* by a description of the new observation deck as a "giant inchworm".

That was it. When I saw the long tube circling around bridge piles, I had in mind a huge concrete tube slide, but deep in its own rotten jelly, my brain clearly saw a giant warm, which struck it as both monstruous and totally normal. The monstruosity didn't come from the worm itself but by the fact that fiction had somehow snaked out into reality : I happen to have written a short story on Seoul giant worms a few years ago ("de Vermis Seoulis", recently republished along with other "dragedies"). My worms love concrete dust, and the biggest ones use to go down to the riversides to die, like old elephants, but this 240 m fella is made of concrete, and yet to be born...

Anyway, the article delivered other insights about Hangang Renaissance in Ttukseom, Yeouido, and Nanji (near Seoul's main camping site), and many other sites are still under renovation or construction. and I recently noticed the ballet of trucks on Hangang Bridge, where a Sydney style opera will be erected on the small island of Nodeul-do.

More food for my beloved worms.

Seoul Village 2009


* "Renaissance by the riverside" (Limb Jae-un - JoongAng Daily 20091030)