Monday, September 10th was Seoul’s second annual “Car-free day” (차 없는날). Jongno road, which runs through downtown, was closed except to public transportation and a parade of bicycles, buses were free until 9 a.m., and citizens were widely encouraged to take public transportation. Excited by the prospect of seeing the city without cars, I set out to capture the morning commute while walking my son to school.

First I scoped out the parking lot. It was surprisingly empty. Our apartment complex was built in the 1980s, when most people didn’t own cars, so the lots are small in comparison with the number of people who live here. The cars parallel-parked are left in neutral, so that if you should need to take your car out you can just push them around. There are rocks and bricks available in case the lot is at all sloped. The lot completely fills up at night, with three lines of parallel-parked cars. When we first moved here this daily parking lot puzzle provided a lot of cheap entertainment.

The number of cars in this city has a number of interesting consequences. The grammar of space is different here; we even park on the sidewalk. Cars here also meet slightly different functional needs, including foldable side mirrors and proximity sensors on the bumper.

And the human population gets mobilized in various ways to herd and monitor all the cars. Security guards direct parking and traffic flow, moms volunteer as school crossing guards, valet parking is increasingly becoming standard (at most restaurants, at the hospital, and even at Starbucks — the valets can pack more cars in the lots than regular people can), and you can call someone to drive you and your car home if you’ve been drinking.

Finally we made it to the road. I was disappointed to see that the traffic looked as heavy as usual. This line of cars is coming in from the satellite city Bundang. This street is so congested during the day that if I want to have a phone conversation at home I need to close the windows to shut out the sound of the traffic. I don’t even want to think about the air pollution.

We then cut through the river near our apartment. Seoul has patches of these great walking spaces. Just being a little below the line of traffic shelters the space from all the noise and smog. We run down the hill to the river and cross over the rock bridge to the other side. It is an artificially natural place (bombarded periodically with insecticide to keep the mosquitos to a minimum) but a welcome retreat from the congestion of the city.

Now we run into the pedestrian traffic in front of the school: middle school kids in uniform, elementary school kids not. I really like having my son walk to school. We live out of district so he has about a 15- minute walk (we walk fast) but he needs to move around that much in order to be able to sit down for a few hours.

After dropping him off the rhythm of my feet on the pavement called forth all the thoughts simmering in my brain. Much like my 7-year old, movement helps me think. The buses looked crowded. I hadn’t yet seen much difference in car traffic but wanted to check out the subway.

The subway platform was also surprisingly empty. Perhaps everyone was taking the bus, taking advantage of the free fares?

I boarded the train and rode one stop back towards my apartment.

When I was pregnant with my second child boarding the subway each morning was like walking into a wall of Korean Breath — all garlic and kimchee — so I can sympathize with S L Kim’s olfactory issues with public transportation. But in my non-pregnant state I can say without exaggeration that I love riding the bus and subway here in Seoul. There is something wonderful about the egalitarian pretensions of such a space. Young and old, fashionable and nerdy, starving artists and businessmen in Armani suits — I find them all fascinating. I take my kids on public transportation so that they can observe themselves as part of this wider, heterogeneous community. And I admit to some glee over the mastery of the mechanics of movement in these spaces — from knowing by heart all the stops on the orange line from Dogok to Kyungbokkung to knowing exactly where to board the train so that it stops right in front of the correct transfer point.

Shortly after 9 I got on the bus. Again, it was surprisingly empty — usually at that time I can barely find a place to stand. Perhaps they all went to work early? Perhaps everyone is at some secret party? I don’t live near the center of Seoul, but on the south side of the Han River, where traffic is often the worst.

Well, the day didn’t go quite the way that I had hoped. I had been, perhaps, titillated by the idea of having a campaign (one that involves more than wearing a bracelet or signing a petition), particularly a campaign with the goal of disrupting old habits; perhaps I should have been alive during the 1960s. I already ride public transportation or walk most of the time (I drive perhaps once a week) so this one particular day didn’t alter my normal behavior. But it did give me the opportunity to think about the ways in which we spend our time, interact with each other and our environments, experience the world, and organize our activities are shaped by cars. What would a true car free day look like?

The freedom and comfort offered by driving in the U.S. don’t apply here — driving in Seoul (for me, at least) is stressful, intimidating, and tiring. Public transportation is (as lwan pointed out) cheap, reliable, comfortable, and in many cases faster than driving.

But S L Kim’s post made me reflect on the meaning of my commute as well. Part of the reason for my pleasure in riding public transportation here is that my ability to ride is a mark of my participation in this society — my ability to “get around” (in both logistical and social senses). One of the reasons I like living in Korea (and like raising my kids in Korea) is that we interact so much more with people from all social classes. Raised in the suburban U.S., chauffeured from place to place by my parents, I was largely sheltered from interactions with strangers until I started to drive, and then most of the interactions I did have were consumer interactions, divided spatially by a cash register or checkout surface and speeded along by the lines of customers and largely scripted process of buying. Being out in the world, sometimes just watching others, sometimes ignoring them, and sometimes speaking or communicating with them indirectly, is both difficult and exhilarating for me, requiring a different kind of sense of myself and the environment. Commuting is, for me, a lesson in being less shy, an opportunity to read others, and a time to indulge in my sometimes fantastical speculations about the way others live.