Jessica's Travelogue

One of the craziest experiences I ever had in Korea was monsoon season in 2022. On August 8th, 2022, I experienced the biggest torrential rain downpour ever. I was in Seoul for a dance class at Play The Urban Dance Academy. One of the choreographers that I admired was having classes so I went there to take his class. I finished at around 8PM. I remember going up to my dance teacher to thank him for the fun class, and him asking me, in shock, if I was going home. I said, yes. He told me to get home safely and to be careful out. I knew it would rain but I didn’t know it would pour as much as it did.

By the time I got to the closest station, I was already soaking wet. I ended up changing out of my sweatpants at a subway bathroom because they were soaked. My umbrella had no way of protecting me from the rain and there were big puddles on the streets.

Finally, I arrived at Sadang Station, where I had to transfer to a bus to take home. Since the bus travels long distance, there is usually only 1 every hour. I had just missed one so I had to wait a little over 1 hour for the next bus. I decided to get out of the rain and head into a Paris Baguette that was nearby. I had a salad for dinner and waited for my bus to arrive. An hour passed. An hour and 30 minutes passed. But there was no bus showing up. The time on my Kakao Map kept refreshing and showing 1 hour before the next bus will come. So I kept waiting. Finally, I got tired of waiting at Paris Baguette and decided to go out and wait at the bus stop.

When I got out, the streets were completely flooded. I was standing in waters that were above my ankles. Surprisingly, a lot of people were out and about. I don’t know if other people were just used to Korean monsoon season or if they were also caught, unprepared for how bad the storm would actually get. But anyways, there was a lot of people out and about. For a moment, I thought of taking the train to Suwon Station then transferring to a bus to get home since I have been waiting

At some point of the night, I think an emergency was alerted and city officials came to unclog the drainage. I am not sure if this is a person who works for the city or not, but he was the first person to come and unclog the drain. Later, another man came as well as someone with a neon orange construction vest on. The unclogging of the drain helped but then as soon as he left to unclog another drain, they would get clogged again.

I think due to this event, and the prediction that there will be more of these severe weather events, helped Seoul decide to do some construction. That’s one of the things that I love about Korea. They are fast when it comes to implementing changes. A couple of months later, this bus stop would have construction to help the drainage and build a new bus stop. When I left Korea, this bus stop was completely renovated.

Due to the traffic, flooding, and construction, the bus took a long time to arrive. I waited over two hours before the bus finally came. The line grew a lot after the bus started getting closer. I think a lot of people were waiting indoors in the station or at a coffee shop. I didn’t get on the bus until 10:44PM. And by this time, my fingers were wrinkled up from being exposed to rain for so long.

We finally left the bus stop at around 11PM. There were still a lot of traffic on the road as there was construction up ahead (a landslide due the heavy rains) and the flooding made all vehicles drive slow. On the bus, I took a video of outside. I was surprised to see people standing in the doorways of stores. I saw others fighting the water as they tried to wade through the waters. As I was in Sadang, the outskirts of Seoul, I wasn’t able to see the worst of the

flooding. One of the areas most impacted by the flooding was Gangnam (where the photo above and to the side was from). The waters were hitting waist high in some area of the roads. The man on the car actually became the meme and icon representing the event. He was a a man who got stranded during the flood. He sat on top of his car and took a photo of himself on the hood of his car, stranded in the flood waters. This photo was trending on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc. and later was used in many news articles talking about this event.

Sadly, not everyone had a happy ending. Many people lost their lives or disappeared that night. This event also led to stricter housing regulations as many half basement housing (called the “banjiha”) would be submerged underwater during heavy rainfalls.

Although I got on the bus at around 11PM, we were stuck in Sadang for a long long time. I was still in Seoul at 1:30AM! I felt so bad for my bus driver who was navigating through the flood waters, traffic, and construction. At 3:10 AM, I was still on the bus with a handful of people. My bus driver also had to navigate around some flooded streets when we got closer to my town so some people had to get off and walk through the flood waters as the bus wasn’t allowed to go through it (the traffic patrol police wouldn’t allow it).

And finally, at around 3:30AM I made it home. I was so thankful for the bus driver who was still driving and dropping people off. And I am so thankful for the Korean public transportation for being so reliable and still having public transportation running during these emergencies. I don’t know what I would have done if I was stranded in Seoul.