The area around the railroad tracks, stretching from Shinchon Station to the iron bridge in front of Yonsei University, was my childhood playground. It was a perfect place for kids to spend the whole day. Nature provided us with snacks like wild strawberries, snake berries, black nightshades, and acorns, while foxtails and balsams served as our toys—and even as makeup for the girls to dye their fingernails.
At Shinchon Station, we used to place large metal nails on the tracks, wet them well with our spit, and wait for the train to come. After the train passed over them, the nails would transform into flat, sharp pieces of metal, becoming perfect tools for our games of “land-grabbing” or nail-striking. Meanwhile, the iron bridge in front of Yonsei University was a testing ground for the boys’ courage. I, however, was always just a bystander during those competitions to see who could cross the bridge first right before the train arrived.
As I grew a bit older, sneaking onto the trains without a ticket to travel between Shinchon Station and Susaek or Neunggok Station became our new game. It wasn’t until I entered high school that I actually bought train tickets at Shinchon Station to take the suburban line for day trips to places like Songchu, Iryeong, and Byeokje.
By the time the cheap tavern bars with hostesses near Shinchon Station caught my eye on the way toward Ewha Womans University, I was already in my twenties. But after one particular night, Shinchon Station and the railroad tracks faded from my life. It was after a day at the labor market in front of the station, where a man—having failed to find work for the day and shouting out his frustrations after drinking rice wine on an empty stomach—was arrested for violating the Anti-Communist Law. I ended up spending the night in a police holding cell alongside him, and that world moved away from me.
I also have memories of embarking on a fairly long train journey. It was during the summer vacation of my sophomore year in high school. It was a trip on the Jungang Line that took over ten hours from Cheongyangri to Bukpyeong on the east coast. Early that autumn, I ended up in the hospital with a severe case of pneumonia, and the sound of the trains I heard from my hospital room stayed in my memory for a long time. That winter, I stepped out of my house alone for the first time and boarded the Gyeongbu Line.
From the summer I turned eighteen, every summer and winter, I would pack a backpack with just some rice and a single blanket and board a train. I wandered along the mountains, rivers, and seas, riding the Gyeongbu, Honam, Jeolla, Janghang, and Jungang Lines.
After taking a few trips to Jeju Island by train and boat, and traveling to Ulleungdo Island on a boat ride that took over ten hours, I eventually forgot the sound of the trains. By then, I was already in my thirties, bound to the routines of daily life.
I wonder how many years have passed since then—my memory of recent events seems to fade, even as memories of the distant past vividly return, likely due to my age. But I remember riding the Gyeongbu Line KTX in Korea once. Today, that day feels like an experience from a foreign country, belonging neither to the Korea of my childhood memories nor to the America where I live now.
Back when I didn’t know anything about the internet, a day trip to New York by train was a luxury I treated myself to during my life as an immigrant. It was a short trip, just long enough to enjoy a couple of cans of beer, but on the days I could find newly published Korean books at a Manhattan bookstore and enjoy the luxury of a warm bowl of seolleongtang (ox bone soup) or haejangguk (hangover soup) that suited my taste, it felt as though this place was Shinchon all over again.
With the world changing so rapidly, it has been quite a while since I forgot even these small pleasures. In today’s world, for the price of a round-trip train ticket and a single meal, I can easily buy five or six books while sitting right in my own room. Or perhaps it is simply because I have reached an age where the journey itself has become too cumbersome. Yet, fortunately, under the pretext of visiting my daughter who lives in New York, my train journeys still continue from time to time.
Behind my shop, where I have renewed five-year leases eight consecutive times, run the Amtrak tracks that connect the northeastern United States. Several times a day, the trains pass by, blowing their horns. Hearing that sound, I always held onto a vague dream. It was the dream of one day taking a train trip across the entire American continent.
And that summer, though it was only half the journey, I finally boarded a train to take the first step toward fulfilling that dream.
“Before we get any older…” my wife had said inside the train. And after the journey was over, my ninety-year-old mother offered these words when I stopped by to greet her: “Of course, you should travel while you’re still young!”
At the end of that summer train ride in 2016, I realized I was standing right there—in that space between “before we get any older” and “while you’re still young.”
As always, time flows either too fast or too slow.
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