Camping it up
BY JL COPELAND
Do people go camping in Korea in 2026 ?
Yes, they do. Although glamping is more popular.
JL and Glamping, Korean Style. What could go wrong? What couldn’t?
The end of summer family camping trip. Joy of joys.
It doesn’t begin well. The campsite admin told us our quadrant was number 2. Turns out they’d made a mistake, we were supposed to be in number 5.
I suppose a 2 looks like a 5.
Hell, my handwriting is so poor my numbers don’t even look like numbers anymore. Guy Fawkes’ signature after they’d played Stretch Armstrong with him is Copperplate compared to my atrocious scrawl.
But it meant that after we’d unloaded all our things, moved them inside, squabbled about who was sleeping where and arranged all the kids’ tat, we had to pack it all up again and repeat.
There was a Korean family waiting, watching our progress, checking that the pink barbarian was not messing up their place. It was hot, and it had been a long, bladder-busting drive, so it irked me.
I thought about living up to their expectations and taking a quick pee in a corner, but I’ve already done enough damage to the reputation of British gentlemen abroad, so I let it slide.
This was not camping, but glamping. Which, on our budget, bought us a dilapidated shed with some canvas nailed over the top. There was also a zip instead of a door, so I guess we could legitimately say we’re in the great outdoors.
To add to the ‘glamour’ and drag it into the category above the tent-dwelling plebs, there was also a sink that smelled of rancid fat and despair. The open cutlery drawer beside it revealed three chopsticks, two potato peelers and a ladle.
Good job we’d brought our fingers.
I used the ladle to eat my cereal the next morning. The kids sat holding their bowls of Cocoa Pops, watching me. They claimed I was ‘greedy.’
Whatever.
Good luck with those chopsticks, kids.
As a bonus, the campsite had also thrown in a fridge with three settings: warm, warmer and lightly browned.
Fortunately, the flavour of Korean beer is not affected by temperature. At 32 degrees Celsius, it still tastes like tomcat spray.
The highlight of the first night was trying to identify the clouds of insects swarming around the lamp hanging at the entrance. The beasties included an eight-inch moth, which The Girl made a picture of:
The next morning, I rose early, desperate to escape the fug in the tent.
The gas they used in the trenches in World War One would seem like Febreze compared to what my kids produce after a dozen kimchi dumplings for dinner.
The campsite had what can only be described as a ‘makeshift’ pool.
I strolled around the perimeter before it opened. It was populated by numerous exhausted frogs, bamboozled by the smooth sides. I watched their futile efforts at escape.
My first thought was,
‘I’m right there with you, froggies.’
A man arrived in waders with a bag and a net. He strode around inside the pool and collected the frogs. For companionship? For breakfast? Guess I’ll never know.
My next thought was,
‘Who is going to come and collect me?’
His task complete, the man climbed out with his sack of lucky—or luckless, depending on his intentions—leapers.
I took a sip of lukewarm tea, and my final thought on the spectacle was,
‘Fool. I would have paid extra to swim with them.’
Closest I’ll ever get to dolphins.
What do Koreans eat when they go camping?
Aside from being eaten alive by mosquitoes and your neighbours playing the most face-punching 70s Korean Polka Pop past 1 AM, the other bucket-list experience on a Korean camping trip is having a pork barbecue.
I waited until the second night to attempt it. My appeals to buy a more civilized sweet potato pizza fell on deaf ears, and I was out of excuses.
I’m a man—apparently—so it’s my role—apparently—to make fire, which—apparently—can be made without gasoline and a Zippo. I know, it all sounds like the realms of fantasy.
There was a bag of charcoal and this little black thing with holes in that Google informed me was a briquette.
My first thought was that it sounds like a brick’s girlfriend, but that thought was not going to help me make fire.
My wife was standing, arms folded, foot tapping, painfully aware of the other Koreans who were starting to take an interest in the barbarian’s struggle to make man’s red flower.
I’d show them.
I placed brick’s floozy in the metal wok-thing and dumped the bag of charcoal on top.
They’d also provided a gas canister with a mini blowtorch on the top. This felt like cheating. If they’d given me a blowtorch, they might as well have given me the gasoline, too.
Anyway, I blasted Miss Brick. A few sparks rose.
I blasted it again.
More sparks.
I sensed people smiling at me. I wondered how many years I’d get in a Seoul correctional facility if I blasted them.
But wait, one of the pieces of charcoal had caught.
WITNESS MY POWER. I HAVE MADE FIRE.
The other pieces of charcoal wouldn’t catch, no matter how much I blasted them. But the kids were hungry, and the fire felt warm. I figured you could cook on that… probably.
Luckily, we’d brought our own meat, so we didn’t have to rely on the fare the campsite was offering, which looked suspiciously amphibian.
I dusted the flakes of ash and a stray maggot off the hunk of dead pig and slung it on the grill.
I sat for an hour watching the pork turn grey, trying to think up a witty portmanteau to express my disdain for glamping. The best I could do was shamping.
Give me a break; it’s not like I’m a writer or something.
‘Glamping’ doesn’t even work in the local lingo as ‘Glamour’ in Korean means a sexy body i.e. big bazookas, for want of a less cancellable phrase (I’m too tired to think of one).
Then a very young woman wandered over, and I tried not to think of big bazookas. It turned out she was the owner’s daughter, and a concerned neighbour had notified her of our ‘distress.’
She removed the grill, and after five minutes of rattling and blasting, she had a fair blaze going.
The meat was eventually cooked-ish.
We ate it, and I don’t know how my family fared, but I only managed to ruin the one pair of boxer shorts the next day.
We won’t be going back.
At least until next year.
Speak soon,
JL
PS: As an obsessed Aliens fan and to coincide with the release of Alien: Earth, I knocked out a tribute to the movie and Hollywood’s favourite panic merchant on. Read ‘A Love Letter to Private Hudson’ HERE.
PPS: Are you a writer struggling with the craft as much as I clearly am? Check out the first of my five top tips for newish writers HERE.
For a bit of randomness, check out the time Princess Diana confessed all to me HERE.
Or if you’re just into dark shit, check out the first of the series about the murder cases I worked on HERE.
More freebies, weird tales, writing-life ramblings, and the general chaos of a forty-something Brit marooned in Korea, trying to tunnel out one word at a time: