Post II: The Case of The Missing Bike

I live in a section of Wonju called Usandong. Usandong is on the north side of Wonju (to get more perspective, I live in the southern inland tip of a province -Kangwon do- that borders North Korea. I'm in the northeast half of South Korea. The province I live in is literally split in half by the northern border). Usanddong has a fair amount of greenery for urban Korea, an abundance of machine shops and light industry, and is as of now kinda Wonju's ghetto. Up until either a year or two ago the bus terminal was in this bureau. Well, it moved to an area of town called Dong-ee-tech-shi and took a good amount of the business with it.

In the American mindset, poverty=higher rates of theft and burglary. This isn't quite the pattern over here, though. I suggest a good book that my girlfriend lent me, Confucius Live Next Door by journalist T.R. Reid. I could make this entire blog about the different patterns of crime between modern Confucian and modern Liberal nations, but I won't. I'll consider touching on those differences in another post or two. Point is, check out this book if you want a good intro for understanding the differences between East Asia and Western Europe/The Americas.

Anyway, I got a bike when I got here. No, that's not quite right. The teacher who lived in my apartment before me had a bike, was going to sell it to one of her friends and I instead bought that bike from said friend. A New Zealander in Yeoju.

It's a Pascal 300. I love triangles! Clearly a sign that this bike was meant for me.

But then one day I couldn't find it. Did I leave it in the stairwell? By the bakery? By that bar that has a mural with Ghandi, Jim Carrey, and Sinead O'Connor on the ceiling? My memory was hazy. I would stop and stare at bikes I'd find on the street. This made a few locals nervous, so I figured I'd just end my search.

After little deliberation, I gave into that Franco complaceny that we in Louisiana are so good at, and bought a bike from a friend.I was happy with my new bike. I figured someone stole the old one; my collegues thought that was possible given the youth of Usandong.

But then last week I decided to go down to the river by my apartment. I was passing a junkyard and -lo and behold- there it is, the Pascal 300. But we must be careful with such things. That it has a similar security lock (placed over the handle bars and not bolting it to anything) and description does not mean it is mine. My visual memory is very, very bad. So I decided to stake out the place. I'd pass by and give the bike a little smile. I'd like to think it remembered me, if I lived in some alternate world where bicycles have cognition. After three days of this, I decided to take the bike.

The bike is now back in my possession  and I'm trying to sell it. I'm going to need the key for the lock, but I left that in America. Hopefully that'll arrive soon.

In all likelihood I probably forgot the bike somewhere and some civil servant put the bike outside the junk yard. Of course, given I don't have yet have the key to confirm that this is indeed my bike, it may well be that the only bike thief in Usandong is myself.