Boramae Covered in Flowers, 2025 Seoul International Garden Show

On Saturday morning I finished a design I had been carrying around for days. The work was done, but my head was still circling inside it. Sitting on at the desk wasn't going to cool it down any, so I grabbed my phone and my camera and figured I might as well go for a walk in a park.

When I asked myself where to walk, the first place that came to mind was Boramae Park. A garden show had been running there for a while, people said. Where I first heard about it I can't remember. The name had drifted past me a few times in a few different places, and every time it did, I found myself thinking the same thing. Boramae is one of the biggest parks in Seoul, always trimmed and tidy, the kind of place that draws people even on weekdays — and if a park like that had dressed itself up for an entire season, what exactly would have changed, and how? I left the house.

As I was putting on my shoes in the entryway, Ongi padded out after me and sat down in front of the shoe cabinet, wearing a look that may or may not have been a send-off. Before leaving I bent down, stroked that round head a couple of times, and said, back soon. Ongi watched me from the same spot until the door closed. Mongi, asleep somewhere, never showed.

The Line 2 train was quiet that morning. Empty seats here and there, the seated passengers all looking somehow loosened, and the only people in a hurry were the ones in the transfer corridors. As it neared Sindaebang Station the train was running above ground. Sunlight poured in whole through the windows and people narrowed their eyes one by one, and when I stepped off, the platform too stood under the open sky. Going down the stairs to the street I thought about the park the entire way. What kind of undertaking is it, dressing up a whole park for a season? How many flowers would you have to plant before a park that size looked any different? Somewhere in the middle of those questions the stairs ended and the street began.

Out of the station, the park entrance was right there. A banner hung over the main gate, and every signboard set along the way carried the same name. The Seoul International Garden Show — opened on May 22 and running to November 2, an event stretching close to half a year. After passing the same name five or six times, it quietly stopped meaning anything and started to look like a pattern.

The flowers began at the outer wall. Petunias covered the face of it, purple and pink and red spilling down over the brick. The vines started at the railing above and worked their way down a few courses of brick, and I followed one of them with my eyes to see how far it had come, and lost it at the corner. This was only the entrance, and already someone's hands had reached this far. If the entrance was like this, what would the inside be like — the arithmetic did itself, and it pulled my steps forward.

Through the gate, the paths had been dressed up, but the park's day went on flowing at its usual speed. A dog went bouncing through the sun and its owner followed a few paces behind, unhurried, and the gap between them never seemed to close. A man walking with great swings of his arms passed the same spot twice, at the same speed the second time as the first. On the benches by the pond, people sat exactly as far as the willow shade reached and no farther. The edge of the shade was the edge of the seating. The June sun was already that kind of sun.

Steps that had come for the garden show and steps that had come out for the air mixed on the same path. You couldn't tell them apart by their clothes; only by their speed. The ones who stopped at the signboards, and the ones who walked on past. I had come to see gardens, and still my eyes kept going to the walkers. Because flowers don't run away, but people pass and are gone — though it took me until much later in the day to think of that.

In the Middle of the Great Lawn

I was on a path through the underbrush when a pink head taller than the trees came into view first. At first I couldn't tell what it was. With only a head floating above the treeline, the scale of the thing was simply wrong, and my feet turned toward it on their own. Only up close did I see that it was Haechi and friends, standing in the middle of the great lawn. The imaginary beast Seoul has been drawing for itself all these years had become a giant pink doll and taken over an entire plaza.

The lawn was wide. Out from under the trees the sky opened all at once, and the smell of freshly cut grass came in together with the smell of sun. And even in all that space, my eyes kept returning to the dolls.

In front of the dolls stood something you could barely call a line. People waited their turn, stepped forward, raised their arms or spread their fingers, and when the shutter clicks ended they moved aside, and the space they left was filled at once by the next person. The poses were all roughly alike, as if there were a fixed repertoire, but the sameness looked less silly than somehow dignified. Keep the order, step clear of the frame of the person ahead of you, smile when your turn comes. Strangers in the middle of a plaza, agreeing on those rules without a word.

Only one child didn't step out when the turn came, standing tucked in behind a mother instead, looking up at Haechi. The child's gaze stayed on the doll's face a long while, and as the people behind waited, the mother pressed the child's shoulder twice, and let go. A hand too light to be called hurrying, too sure to be called soothing. In the end the child never turned around. Instead of turning away from the doll, the child was photographed facing it. It must not have been a background to the child. What stood in front of those eyes was far too large to be a background. That one doll could make this many people smile, once each — watching from where I stood, I found it strange the whole time. And I didn't mind the strangeness.

On the steps that ring the plaza, roses trained up trellises had made a tunnel of red. Under each bay of blue lattice and red bloom, people filed through. It was a tunnel you could clear in a few steps, and everyone took those few steps slowly, as if to make them last. These were stairs I would have climbed without a thought on any other day. Now people were coming to them on purpose, and stopping on them on purpose.

The roses didn't keep to one color. Reds and pinks and whites bloomed mixed in a single planter, and steps halted in front of it, and where they halted, cameras came up. Everyone was choosing the fullest bloom. A scan, a second look, a decision — and the time it took, from one person to the next, was surprisingly alike.

Past the rose planters, walking along the edge of the plaza, this time it was a smell that arrived first. Coffee, and the sweet smell of sugar browning. It was a smell I knew before I turned my head, and when I did turn, sure enough, food trucks stood in a row at the edge of the plaza, releasing it into the midday sun. The smell carried farther than the shade did. In front of the trucks a line formed and shrank and formed again all afternoon, and whether the steps had come from far away or just out of the neighborhood, they all slowed once in front of it. Mine slowed too. I breathed in a couple more lungfuls of coffee I had no intention of drinking, and then walked out of the plaza.

Toward the Hydrangeas

The sun stayed with me out of the plaza. Past noon now, it came down on the crown of the head, and I wasn't the only one picking out the shaded stretches to walk in. Someone shading their eyes with a hand, someone resetting a hat, someone unfolding a fan. As the plaza's noise faded behind me, the sounds the park makes on its own came back. Leaves brushing leaves; somewhere far off, a ball bouncing. I walked among those sounds for a while without saying anything.

Then, where the path bent, I came upon the hydrangeas. Pink and magenta, pale violet and blue-violet, swollen up in heaps all in one place, and in between them, colors I had no names for. Hydrangeas are June's flower, and this was the exact middle of June. Watching a flower in season swell with everything it has, I felt something like relief — the season doing its work properly. One color alone would have been plenty, but mixed like this, my eyes couldn't settle on where to rest.

In the middle of it all stood a pale-pink sculpture, pocked with holes, caught in mid-leap. A dog. It wore exactly the color of the flowers, and where the hydrangeas ended and the sculpture began came clear only a few steps closer. Until then I had been fooled completely, and I didn't mind the while I spent fooled.

Things Met Along the Way

Following the path, daisies grew in crowds. They had spread past their planted beds to the edge of the pavement — a plain flower, nothing but white petals and a yellow heart. To eyes that had had their fill of roses, this commonest of flowers looked new instead. Looking at them was like the bowl of plain rice porridge that comes after too many rich courses in a row. A flower that blooms anywhere and stars nowhere had been given charge of a whole stretch of path here. I stood in front of them longer than I meant to.

Off on one side of the lawn floated the Seoul Mini Moon. Floated — sat, really. In the midday light only the bumps and hollows of its surface showed, like a signboard before the light has been switched on. When the sun went down, a yellow glow would come on inside it and people would gather underneath. I sketched that scene in my head for a moment, but felt no urge to stay for it. The Boramae of night went unseen, and stayed that way.

The artists' gardens came one after another along the path. Past the gardens, woven out of grasses and low trees, the towers of the city stood blurred. While crossing one garden I would forget this was the middle of a city, and between one garden and the next, the outline of the buildings would remind me again. Forgetting and remembering, a few rounds of it, and my walking slowed and quickened to match. I started counting the gardens and gave up at six or seven.

On one side of the path stood an old rose tunnel. Not something newly dressed for the show — a vine the park had been raising for a long time, and the knots along its thickened canes said as much. Even on those old branches the red came in heavy, sagging down between the poplars. Among all the newly planted gardens, this was the one thing that had been through the seasons more than once. It looked like the host standing quietly among the guests at his own party, and I gave it something like a nod as I went past.

And then I stood under the vines a moment. Of the seasons this tunnel has been through, I know not one. There would have been years the bloom came in thick, and years it came up short. There would have been umbrellas passing under it, and school uniforms, and strollers. I saw none of those days, and having seen this one day, I couldn't claim to know this park. But this one day, at least, I'm taking with me.

The fallen petals had covered the path below it in pink. Across them a magpie went walking in quick small steps. The feet treading the petals never once paused. No sightseeing, no admiring — a walk with business in it. In the middle of a place people had labored over, that one bird alone was working. Longer than the gardens, it was that walk that stayed in my eyes.

A little farther on, a garden of stacked stone. Out of the gaps between the black stones, mist was rising. No sound of water — just white vapor climbing soundlessly, wrapping the stones and spreading low. Something like the steam off the soil under a lifted flowerpot in summer, but far cooler. The air was different in that one spot. It took a little while for the sweat on my forearms to cool, and while it cooled I thought about nothing at all. On a path I had been walking with my eyes alone, it was the one place that crossed over, briefly, into skin.

Past the stone garden I sat down on a bench nearby. Only after I had taken the water from my bag and drunk did I realize I had walked half the day without a rest. Sitting, the park became another speed again. The things that had been background while I walked came forward one by one. A stroller went by, a bicycle went by, and a dog that looked like the one from the entrance went by, once more a few steps ahead of its owner. The gap between them wasn't closing here either. I sat like that for ten minutes or so, put the empty bottle back in my bag, and stood up.

In the shade stood a park cart, with no one near it. Lunchtime, maybe, or no work now until the next early morning. All these flowers had not bloomed on their own — they had bloomed on someone's borrowed dawns, and once I had thought that, one parked cart was no longer a thing I could simply walk past. I passed the cart and walked on toward the next garden.

A Place Tied Together in Purple

Walking on, I came to people standing in line. I had thought lines in this park formed only in front of food trucks, but here one stretched long under an arch wound with vines and lanterns. On the arch was written a name: Ditto Garden. I had come for flowers; Pokémon was not something I had seen coming. More than half the line were grown-ups. Some had a child by the hand, and not a few had come without one. The line went down fast.

In among the purple hydrangeas sat one Ditto after another, each puffed up round in exactly the pale violet of the flowers, each wearing a different face. One whole bed of flowers belonged entirely to them. Turning into whatever it sees is supposed to be the creature's whole talent, and here they sat looking like they had set out to become hydrangeas and stopped halfway — and that halfwayness was exactly what suited them to a seat among the flowers. A garden that had held nothing but flowers had let characters move in, and bound together by that single color, strangely, nothing about it looked out of place. The way the dog among the hydrangeas had been, earlier.

Following the Pawprints

On my way out, a small track caught my eye. A path laid down just for dogs, it said. Yellow pawprints stamped into a purple surface, running in a circle, and at that moment there was no dog on it. I followed the prints of the empty track around, twice. It was a small ring, a few dozen adult paces to the lap. The first lap I walked without noticing; the second lap I walked knowing.

A park that had always been near at hand, no distance to speak of — and it had taken the whole of a day.

The way out ran back along the way in. The sun had begun to lie down, laying out long shadows that had not been there in the morning, and though it was the same path, it felt like walking somewhere slightly different. From the direction of the great lawn the shutter clicks were still going. The dolls would be standing there wearing the same faces into the night.

Passing out through the main gate, I passed the outer wall again. In the morning I had seen only the flowers covering it; leaving, I saw the fallen petals on the pavement below the brick, trodden, their color smeared. The vine I had followed with my eyes that morning and lost at the corner — where it ended, I never did find out. I left what was lost lost, and took the stairs up into the station. Climbing them, the violet was still there on the inside of my eyes, not yet wiped away. Which of the things I saw today will stay long, I can't yet tell. Such things are always decided much later, and all of a sudden.