Ulsan, Korea Jan. 2005

Trip Report
Ulsan (Jan 2005)

Note: Photos will be added.

I spent a month in the shipyards of Ulsan, South Korea one winter. The South Korean shipyards had, at the time, sixty percent of the world’s ship building capacity and they were putting a ship, usually a freighter or a tanker, in the water every three days. Ulsan is a company town centered around the Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyards. We stayed at the Hyundai Hotel across from the Hyundai Department Store that was next door to the Hyundai Hospital.

The portion of Ulsan that we were in is separated from the main city by a short highway through a small mountain range. The terrain is quite rugged with exposed rock and weathered pine trees prominent in the landscape. The shopping area near the hotel had narrow winding streets and small shops. The streets were steep and wide enough for one car or a couple of motorcycles. Add wooden crates and tanks of fish out front of the restaurants and there wasn’t much room on the streets. There were tanks with squid, octopus, eels and those spiny inflatable fish. The restaurants were mostly seafood places with low tables and no chairs. There were a few small grocery stores and bakeries as well. The stores catering to westerners were closer to the main roads. We didn’t spend much time down there.

The hotel was a full-service hotel that catered to western travelers. They had a gym and health spa for use of guests and locals alike. The facilities looked nice and clean but I got turned off of the hot spas after my first visit. A group of naked old men filled the medium hot tub and proceeded to loofa each other. The thought of all that dead wrinkly skin floating around in the pool made me think of oatmeal and I never did go back in.

I thoroughly enjoyed the people of Ulsan and they inspired me to learn the Korean language. But, of course, I never did learn any Korean beyond how to order a beer and say thank you. Once we got out of the hotel we found that English was rarely spoken. We resorted to picking up restaurant menus and just randomly pointing at things to order. Some restaurants had picture menus but most did not. Many times the waitress would not serve us what we selected and would bring us what she thought a westerner would like, usually a pork cutlet in gravy.

We fell into a comfortable routine. The bus would pick us up at the hotel for the commute to the shipyards and bring us back in the evening. It gets dark early in February so we would walk across the street to the food court in the Hyundai department store basement. The food was good, hot and inexpensive. We could do our grocery shopping in the basement as well.

I had never seen so many people working in a department store. In a North American store you can never find anyone to assist you. In this Korean store there was a salesperson for every display bin or counter. When we bought fruit in the grocery store there was always someone to select the fruit, package it and weigh it for us. At closing time each salesperson would stand next to his or her bin, there would be a closing announcement over the PA, a bell would ring and they would all bow deeply in unison, facing the same direction, before leaving for the day.

After dinner we would cruise the streets for a while. There were several bars near the hotel that were not in the entertainment district. You took your chances entering a bar in the entertainment district. Hostesses would sit with you and expect you to buy them cocktails. I suspect the cocktails were just fruit juice or tea but they cost $20. We found a couple of bars that didn’t have hostesses and we frequented them instead. One bar, the Bull’s Eye, had satellite TV but only got the Discovery Channel in English so we watched a lot of that.

Eugene was our favorite bartender at the Bull’s Eye bar. She spoke English and was quite entertaining but mostly she left us alone. We nicknamed her assistant "One More" because that was the extent of his English. We would finish a beer and he would ask "One more?".

Eugene’s bar didn’t have a kitchen but she would go out to a nearby restaurant and pick us up something if we wanted. One evening Eugene was eating a plate of greens with little chunks of meat in it. It smelled really good so we asked her if she would go get us some. She brought us back two plates and we dug in. It was good, spicy but not hot, and the greens weren’t overcooked. The meat was a little rubbery but the sauce made it quite tasty. We were half done when our Korean host arrived. He peered at our plates, laughed and said it was an interesting choice for westerners. We asked what it was and he explained that the meat was from the digestive tract of a chicken. I asked if it was intestine and he relied that it came from lower down. There’s only one thing lower down in the digestive tract than the intestine. Just as we realized we were eating chicken assholes Eugene walked by, slapped herself on the ass and broke out laughing. But, the food was good so we finished it up.

Sundays were a day off and a good opportunity to roam around the area. One Sunday we climbed the mountain behind the hotel. There is a series of hiking trails that finish up at a pagoda on the mountain top. The trails ranged from wide gravel paths to steep climbs over boulders. We spent over an hour scrambling up the mountain and arrived at the top completely out of breath and worn out. There were twenty or so older Koreans exercising on the mountain top. They looked like they were in their eighties mostly and were doing sit ups, pushups and what looked like tai-chi. We felt totally bushed after the climb but and these elderly people had energy to go through an exercise routine.

From the top of the mountain you could see north to the City of Ulsan with the downtown core. You could also look down into the Hyundai shipyards and see the tankers that were under construction. Three LNG tankers with their distinctive domed tanks were being built and were so large that we could easily make them out from the mountain top.

The shipyards were a fascinating place to hang out for a month. During the short time we were there we were able to watch them build tankers in an assembly line fashion. There were three tankers on the pier. The one closest to the water was almost complete. Beside it was the second tanker with most of the hull complete. Third from the water was a tanker keel, just the bottom of the ship. Pieces of the double-hulled tankers were welded into large sections scattered all over the yard. The double walls of the tankers are over a meter apart and there is room between them for welders to crawl inside to do their work. Crawlers would move the tanker sections over to the assembly area and the cranes would lift the pieces into place. The most impressive lift we saw was the 1500 ton crane placing the deck in one piece onto the hull of the tanker. The deck was easily the size of a football field.

Once the tanker closest to the water was ready to sail they would bring a submersible barge next to the pier. Polished steel rails extended along the ground from under the ships onto the barge. Small compressible pillars sat on the rails and supported the ships. Frozen nitrogen was pumped under high pressure into the cylinders and the nitrogen would seep out the bottom of the cylinder onto the polished rails. This created an almost frictionless surface between the pillar and the rail that allowed the ship to be easily pushed along the rails onto the submersible barge. The ballasting of the barge was a little tricky as they have to keep the barge and the pier even as the barge accepts the weight of the ship. Once the ship was on the barge they submerged the barge and the ship would remain floating on the surface. The other two ships would be moved over closer to the water and a new keel would be laid in the third spot.

There was always something interesting going on in the yards from the early morning exercise routines of the welding crews to the construction of an offshore oil-loading platform.

The first birthday is a big event in Korean life. Celebrations usually include a dinner for all of the family’s relatives and friends. We were invited to our host’s son’s birthday dinner and it was quite an event. The family wore traditional Korean clothes. Speeches were made by senior members of the family and there was a lot of toasting with beer and soju. A full buffet dinner loaded with traditional Korean food was also provided. One of the young men at our table translated for us and filled us on some of the local traditions. One of the final events was a game in which the young child predicts his future. Items were placed on the floor around the boy and whichever one he selected first gave a clue to his future. If he picked the coins he would be wealthy, a ball indicates an athletic life and a roll of wool meant he would be a tailor. He selected the pencil and now looks forward to a life as an intellectual.

Our host took us out for seafood dinner one evening as our tour was coming to an end. He explained that it wasn’t a restaurant to which they would normally take westerners as the food was a little more exotic than usual but he had decided to take us there on the night he saw us eating the chicken assholes. Our party was placed in a private room with a low table. There were back rests that made sitting on the floor a little more comfortable. The meal started off with gruel which was followed by an endless parade of seafood dishes. There were whole fish that were salted and smoked, fish heads in a spicy sauce and fish organs both cooked and raw. There were shell fish, regular fish, octopus, shark, eel, abalone and others that I could not recognize. Most of the dishes were small and the plates were quickly emptied and replaced. I tried everything except for the raw fish intestines and I thoroughly enjoyed everything I ate. The meal took a couple of hours to finish and my hosts were polite enough to look away as I struggled to stand up. Grace has never been my strong suit and my legs had fallen asleep sometime early in the meal.

After a month of Ulsan it was time to head back north. I traveled through Korea on my way to Russia several times in the next couple of years but never did get to spend as much quality time there again as I did in Ulsan.