The seasons in Korea are never gradual. They like to lure you into a false sense of comfort, and then in the span of a few hours, the weather will change in a moments notice, slapping you in the face with a whole new world of discomfort. The natural response to this weather change is normally to crawl under your desk, table, or bed and wait out the next few months. The season following has to be better, right?
Right?
I thought that when I lived in Canada, I knew winter. (And I do. I still like telling stories from winters when I was a child. Snow drifts over a story tall, winters where it dipped almost as low as -50, and eyes freezing closed… Good times!) And I thought that after living in Japan, I knew rainy season.
Some how though, the seasons in South Korea all seem brutal. There is no really nice time where I step outside and go “Oh wow, this is the most perfect weather ever!” Winter is cold, and the buildings aren’t insulated. Spring means rain. Summer means humidity of death. Fall means more rain. And then we’re back at winter.
As much as I hate the rain (I’m like a cat, and become completely useless in rain) and as much as I suffer through humidity (I can get heat stroke easily so have to be really careful in head) I find the winters in Korea the worst. I’m not sure what it is. Part of it might be that it’s so difficult to predict. Through most of November and December, when I’m used to it getting colder, I don’t normally find the weather cold. Even if we’ve had snow, it doesn’t feel particularly wintery. And then all of a sudden, we go from what feels like fall to sudden winter.
And then if you wait a week, it goes away, leaving everyone thinking it might be over. But it’s never over.
That could be the hard part. There’s no getting used to the cold. It comes and goes as it pleases. It doesn’t settle in like a harsh Canadian winter, where you know it’s going to be -20 for the next three months and you better just deal.
The other part about winter in Korea that is difficult to deal with is the chance that I might fall off the sidewalk and die. You laugh, but, it’s a legitimate fear of mine. The sidewalks are icy, and as you can see in the photo, they’re not paved. For many sidewalks in Korea, the sidewalks are interlocking bricks, on top of sand. There is nothing holding them together, and so the sidewalks can get in very rough shape in the winter. I can remember learning about how a pothole is formed when I lived in Canada. Water gets into the cracks in pavement, freezes and expands. When it melts later, it retracts, leaving a gap in the road. Sometimes, the melting water can erode away rocks, and a pothole is formed!
Now, let’s go back and review sidewalks in Korea: Bricks laid together, with nothing between them, and sand underneath. Obviously, the snow and water gets between every crack, freezes and melts, expands and contracts, and that sand gets pushed away pretty quickly. The sidewalks by the end of the winter are more appropriate for an off-road terrain or mountain biking. Already, I’ve gone over my ankle a few times this winter.
For me, there’s no getting used to winter in Korea. Living in the city, there are few winter joys, like snow-covered trees, snowmen and skiing. If I want that, I have to leave the city. And that’s just far too much effort. Instead, I’m just going to stay with my electric blanket and my skyrocketing gas bill, and wait for the spring and its impending rainy season.