More on Yeouido

I think if I'm going to claim 여의도/Yeouido as my new hometown I should know something about it...and by extension you should too. I've got a little more to add to my background on it thus far.

As you may know, ~do can mean two things in Korean. One is: province, such as 경기도/Kyunggi-do. The other is island, such as 제주도/Jeju-do (also spelled Cheju-do, depending on what era the map or publication was edited in...things changed in 2002, just in time to confuse the heck out of tourists coming here for the World Cup). Since Yeouido (also spelled Youido, Yoido and Yeoido) is pretty tiny and part of 영등포구/Youngdeungpo-ku (ku is like a ward or borough such as Queen's or The Bronx) the ~do here signifies that it's an island. I had no idea that its ~do was 'island' because it looks as though they've filled in or paved over much of the water that once separated Yeouido from the mainland.

Anyways, way back when Yeouido used to be on the outskirts of Seoul and it housed the countries first real airport. (Later Gimpo/Kimpo Airport was built in the new outskirts of Seoul and now, since the city is not getting any smaller, Incheon Airport is the new International airport for Seoul; although Kimpo still handles much of the domestic traffic.) In fact, Yeouido Park, which until 1996 or so was a slab of pavement instead of the picturesque park that it is, was the runway of that airport! So, here in West Yeouido, near the park, is where the streets are named 양말산/Yang-mal-san or 'sock mountain'. I got to thinking why it would be called sock mountain...there wasn't a sock factory here to my knowledge and I hadn't heard a story about removing one's socks for any reason (although I wouldn't dismiss it if I heard it; there are so many different traditions here). When I heard about the airport I came up with this theory: sock mountain is the hill (here they call a mountain what we in Vancouver would call a knoll, I find) where the windsock was placed. Make sense?

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