Alternate worlds

1. Mini Forbidden Palace, 2. Mini Versailles, Korea

I'm inordinately fascinated by mini theme parks. We've been to one in Jeju-do, and just two weeks ago, one in Bucheon (a few subway stops from Incheon). I think Gavin comes with me to humor me. I like to see just how detailed the artists make each replica, and I like to imagine being one inch tall and walking through a garden of plaster trees.

When my nieces and nephews were a little younger, I used to entertain them with conversation starters like "If you were only one inch tall, how would eat dinner with us?" ("Well, first, I'd have to climb up the leg of the table, and it would take HOURS, and THEN the broccoli would look like a tree and I'd only eat one little tiny bite of it and I'd be FULL....") "What would you do if you met a spider?" ("I'd run for my life!")

When we went to Aiins World (the mini theme park in Bucheon) it was raining. I kept imagining that if I were one inch tall, the raindrops would be huge and lethal.


1. Furs, 2. Stamps

About 200 meters from Aiins World is Fantastic Studios. Gavin saw an article about it in the JoongAng Daily and somehow knew I'd want to go. Sure enough, the words "dusty," "abandoned," and "ghost town" caught my eye, so on a perfectly dreary and rainy day, we went.

Fantastic Studios is an open-air film set built to look like a colonial-era downtown Seoul. Signs for teahouses and movie theaters have been painted in the old style. The architecture is anachronistic, ranging from pre-colonial hanoks to the brick buildings of the Japanese occupation era.

You can see a replica of the Cheongyecheon stream, BEFORE it was paved over with highway and subsequently unearthed. You can see an old trolley on Jongno road, and a replica of the Bosingak bell, which still exists. The weird thing about it is that everything seems to be scaled down a little bit -- about 75% of their actual size. And the building facades are are only about 1 meter thick, so when you look at the in profile you can see that they're fake.

Movies or music videos that call for street scenes from the 40's, 50's or 60's are still sometimes shot here, although not as frequently as before. I guess that whenever a production needs a certain backdrop, they renovate just that one section. So some buildings look well-kept while others are falling apart.

It was strange to realize that here, miles outside of Seoul, was a little piece of old Seoul, somewhat inaccurately replicated so that you can catch some glimpses of it in a movie or a TV commercial. Meanwhile, back in the big city, developers are still steadily erasing the architectural remnants of the past as if they are all a bad memory...