A year in Saudi Arabia, two in Hawaii, and three in Texas left me ill-prepared for Korea. Thin of blood and body after a year in Jeddah, I'd reached Seoul in late October 1983—enjoying a few days of autumn before winter arrived from Siberia. I soon learned why Koreans have rosy cheeks.
Six days weekly work at the Korea Herald newspaper required a daily half-hour bus commute from my bachelor's flat south of the Han River, which circles Seoul like a necklace. The return trip was worse because by the time I finished work, winter's pale sun was long gone.
I waited each frigid night at an unshielded bus stop five minutes from the Herald. It was located at the mouth of a tunnel through Mount Nam, a mole of a mountain on Seoul's downtown face. Winds accelerate over it and howl down the bus stop's building-lined street like buckshot through a gun barrel. Would-be bus riders stamp cold feet and press tight against shuttered buildings, keen to avoid Siberia's breath. Tundra-slit eyes scan arriving bus numbers for the one that'll get them home.
A goose-down jacket warmed me from waist to gander neck as Irish eyes watered and Celtic beak glowed radioactive red. Being single, vain and dumb, I shunned hats and long johns because style dominated sense. Siberian winds extracted payment for vanity nightly at that cruel bus stop.
Airy boots designed for Vietnam's jungles offered scant protection for skinny feet. Nor were threadbare cord jeans and skimpy briefs a match for Korean winters. From waist to toes I was desperately in need of trapdoor jammies. To add to the dead-of-winter effect, the gunbarrel street was barely lit by dim lamps—just enough to silhouette wind-driven snowflakes. Hunched against the cold like a sparrow on an icy twig, I saw my plight as Fate's payback for two lush years I'd spent in Hawaii as a grad student.
Nothing to do while waiting except glare at lucky souls boarding homebound buses. Boarders entered from the front door to deposit fares; those exiting a bus did so from its midship door. Sadism required that I focus on those joining me in the cold to balance envy of those boarding.
Apple Cheeks
