Perhaps no single industry in the global marketplace has faced quite as much disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic as the aviation industry. With the ossification of national boundaries and de-facto elimination of passenger air travel between countries and within countries, commercial aviation is now looking forward to perhaps its single worst year this century, if not in its entire history. Such fiscal stress is reflected in the frenetic movements by national governments to prop up the flailing industry, with direct subsidization of major airlines a preferred measure throughout the developed world. The Moon administration in South Korea announced just one day before the critical 2020 ROK legislative elections, held on April 15th, a plan to effectuate a massive economic stimulus package with copious funds earmarked for the airline and automobile industries. The Trump administration of course announced its own gargantuan stimulus package, a hybrid mix of $25 billion in conditional loans and grants, to airlines suffering from a historically serious aircraft grounding, cash flow, and payroll problems. With the precipitous decline of leisure travel and human movement itself, governments have begun to proffer analeptic gimmicks to stimulate recreational foot traffic within their respective national demarcations. Most prominently, Japan’s “Go To Travel” and the United States’ “Explore America” proposals both feature domestic travel subsidization schemes that would be a traveler’s dream in any normal year pre-coronavirus. The former actually left the planning stage to become an actual program (and contentious social issue) in Japan starting July 22th.
However, with a tsunami of coronavirus cases inundating India and Brazil and second wave cases sweeping across Beijing, the United States, parts of Europe and South Korea, the outlook for industry recovery in the near future remains dim. Indeed, even while making grim financial prognostications and warning of the detrimental economic effects of excessive quarantine measures in ports of entry, such mainstays of the airline industry as the IATA (International Air Transport Association) expressed doubts regarding premature intercontinental travel until the end of the year, a pronouncement that bodes ominously for the timely resumption of what seemed to be air travel’s impregnable modus operandi in the global moment of the present.
The end result is a form of creeping visual surrealism taking hold in the world’s major airports, dystopian visuals of a sort that seem wholly incongruous with the usual mix of smart quotidian hustle and edgy excess that is endemic to these glorified spaces in our current society and culture. As dimensional rites of passage for many trapped in a singular experiential landscape, airports also collectively constitute an experience, and a highly personal and human experience at that. From the time of my first flights as a teenager, airports, delightfully variegated in their thematic architecture yet unified in their polished presentation, fast tempo, and energetic human flurry were manifestations of a breed of cosmopolitanism that could not be evoked in quite the same way by any other urban space. However pedestrian the experience, the resonance that people stem from the social spaces occupied by today’s airports cannot be said to be small.
If then it is true that the even the everyday occurrence of going to the airport commands such profound personal resonance, then the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see them completely divested of people would, however cacotopian, constitute a truly rare pilgrimage. In glimpsing the dystopia of the current historical moment, one would need to search for those places in which such disruption would be most acutely visible. And it was in this spirit of witnessing the current global pandemic’s idée fixe of gelid surrealism and its particular inflection in Korea’s airports that I recently traveled to both of Seoul’s two major ports of airborne entry: Incheon Internation Airport and Gimpo International Airport.
Incheon International Airport (ICN)
I arrived in Incheon International Airport on April 23rd fully expecting an out-of-body experience. Just the day before, I came across eye-popping statistics pertaining to the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea. The JTBC News segment featuring those statistics, which aired on the 22nd, focused mostly on the plight of the numerous duty-free outlets populating the terminals of Incheon International Airport, Seoul’s flagship airport situated on Yeongjongdo Island about a forty-five minute AREX (Airport Railroad Express) ride away from Seoul Station in the heart of the capital city. The report highlighted the precipitous decline in usage of the airport from a pre-coronavirus daily average of 200,000 visitors to just 5,000 visitors per day. This sharp decline in airport usage is a critical blow as Incheon Airport’s remote location and Youngjongdo Island’s underappreciated status as a tourist destination means that, other than commuting airport employees, human traffic to and from the island hub has become impossibly scant.
Given these circumstances, tax-free outlets’ revenue naturally plummeted. At the time of the report, the total worth of the stockpile of unsold duty-free items amounted to 3 trillion won. This unprecedented stockpile, which features the collective product cache of the three major South Korean duty-free conglomerates (i.e. Silla, Lotte, and Shinsegae outlets), demonstrates the ubiquitous negative economic effects of the coronavirus even outside Korea’s airports (as all three conglomerates derive much of their revenue from duty-free shops within the city of Seoul away from major ports of entry). In the case of South Korea, such sea changes in the retail landscape precipitated several rounds of fierce negotiations between the government and duty-free stores over partial rent control and an ultimately successful proposal to release discounted duty-free products onto the standard department store market.
For South Korea’s largest and busiest airport, all of this translates into a glaring visual phenomenon of vacuity. The noticeable lack of people was already evident by the time I reached Hongik University Station, my preferred transfer station to the AREX line. The line is almost always packed during and after the evening commute, up until the last train around midnight. As the meeting point of three major subway lines (the “Green” Line 2, the AREX Line, and the Gyeongui-Joongang Line) and the nexus of Seoul’s youth (centered around cluster of universities in the Sinchon, Hongdae, and Hapjeong neighborhoods), Hongik University Station is well known as one of the largest and busiest transportation termini in the area as well as a first step tourist destination for those touring western Seoul. However, perhaps due to the coronavirus or perhaps due to the still relatively early time of my visit, the station was pretty empty, much more so than during any of my other previous visits. Other signs of the current pandemic were also present, with large public notices informing passersby of the Seoul Special City government’s emergency disaster stimulus program or the latest preventive hygiene guidance from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted on the walls of the hallway immediately above the Line 2 platform. Further down towards the transfer lines, travel advertisements by major airlines, sad anachronisms from a bygone era, were adorned on the glistening chrome and glass columns leading up to the transfer decks, their saturated images of the occidental charm of the Netherlands or some other European country greeting pair after pair of callously unseeing eyes.
At the end of the long, barren transfer corridor, I took the elongated escalator down to the boarding platform for the AREX train. The platform itself is one of the more polished additions to the Seoul Metropolitan Area’s subway system, reflecting its status as a major destination platform for international tourists from Incheon Airport. On one side was arrayed a sleek version of the Seoul Metro’s signature full-height platform screen doors. On the opposite wall, immediately facing exiting AREX passengers, was a curious mosaic of cartoonish characters engaged in traditional, half-inebriated festivities. The vast platform space was only intermittently interrupted by the occasional commuter. After a while, the people in the station began to queue behind the glass platform screen doors, only managing to form, at most, lines of pairs.
Curiously, none of the people standing up to greet the incoming train were carrying the luggage pieces that were a ubiquitous sight on the platform just a few months prior. My suspicions were proven correct when a train that terminates before reaching Incheon Airport arrived and all the passengers waiting on the transfer deck began to board. They were not headed for Incheon Airport after all. After all the doors closed shut in unison, the train car whispered a straining noise before jolting forward, its serpentine form accelerating into a blur before exiting the blackened cavity. In its wake was left a completely empty hallway, a void stretching across hundreds of meters, from one side of the platform to the other.
The next train, this time headed all the way to Yeongjong-do and the airport, finally arrived. By this time, very few people boarded the train, which already had a handful of passengers from the previous stops and Seoul Station. Those who boarded joined the existing theme of extreme social distancing that was already dominant inside the train. People chose to sit on the opposite sides of bench rows, leaving many more empty seats in between than usual. Whole rows were completely empty. Inside the handsomely fashioned receptacle, the refrigerated air chilled everyone inside to a dormant seated hibernation.
In a flash, the black void was lifted and the train emerged into the brilliant light like a sword exiting a sheath. The young sky beamed like a turquoise timepiece, decorated every so often with whiffs of impressionistic clouds. The colors shooting into the vehicle through the cinematic windows were further burned with saturation by the glass tint, every shade donning an intense, nostalgic blue.
As the train exited the city limits and through the scintillating Han River, the surroundings began to become progressively less populated with the hyperdensity of the central city, with nature beginning to aggressively rein in the remaining urban spaces into little pockets. The topography also began to manifest wilder features. Much of Korea’s geographic features can be summed up as consisting of covered and bald hills. The covered ones are gratuitously draped with thick green foliage as if the shy hummocks are silently protesting against even an iota of penetrating sunlight.
Soon, various hilly mounds with thick foliage that looked like islands soon passed by the train car window. With an apparent low tide, the verdant peaks of these hill-islands were surrounded by sea of blunt brown, as the usual water channels were superseded by an intermittent offering of discontinuous mudflats.
In contrast to these “covered” hill-islands, Yeongjong-do donned a “balder”, more-barren exterior, featuring exposed soil and parched undergrowth. The two airport terminals located in the center of the island constitute the only readily recognizable sites in Yeongjong-do, but the island, the seventh largest in South Korea, is home to several touristy attractions and beaches as well as a sizeable population of almost ninety-thousand. Most of the island’s current expansive frame is the fruit of an ambitious land reclamation project that saw the linking of four smaller isles (Jayeondo, Yongyudo, Sanmokdo, and Shinbuldo) and the facilitation of a central plain, which was carved out from erstwhile tideland.
The name “Yeongjong” seems to have originated from a Joseon Dynasty era naval base on the largest former islet (i.e. Jayeondo) called “Yeongjongjin” 永宗鎭, the site of the infamous 1875 “Unyo Incident” clash with Imperial Japan, which precipitated in the opening of the Korea. With the antiquated “hermit kingdom” of that time superseded by a ultramodern superpower in South Korea, this region of the peninsula has been transformed from a lightning rod for foreign incursions to a transportation node for the world, a polished gateway to an international capital.
By this time, the passenger population inside the train car had repeated a process of deduction and addition stop by stop until the total number was whittled down to the few dozen who were definitely stopping at Yeongjongdo. Even then, there were practically no travel bags or luggage in sight. All of the remaining passengers also seemed to be Koreans, with no foreigners visibly present in the entire train. Most of the passengers got off at Unseo Station, which came as a shock to me. Unseo is located to the east of Incheon International Airport and constitutes the financial and retail heart of urban Yeongjongdo. I had assumed that the airline employees and workers tied to airport retail and management would make up the lion’s share of those entering Yeongjong Island. In reality, the lion’s share was made up of actual residents of the island.
The train only contained a handful of people by the time it reached a deserted Terminal 1 Station. By the time the bullet transport finally glided into the equally barren Terminal 2 Station, my entry point into Incheon International Airport, I had to look towards the opposite end of the train car to glimpse a sight of fellow humanity.
This want of humanity was to be a constant motif throughout the entire airport. For as soon as I emerged from the elevator into the main transportation terminal on the B-1 floor, the lack of people could be tangibly felt in almost a physical way. What was more acutely palpable, however, was the immediate sense of being overwhelmed by a sea of glass and steel. The man-made seemed to loom large over its masters.
The sheer scale of the building was also tempered somewhat, however, by the arboretum of greenery that was contained within the greenhouse-like dome. Ceiling glass panels, fashioned to fit sharply into fish-scale like panels, were collectively arrayed into a sort of artificial mackerel sky, diffusing the incoming natural light as to allow only what amount of sunlight was required to amply light the entire structure to pass through. Like other areas and floors within the terminal, the incoming sunlight and the tint of the windows played a determining role in the color temperature of the airport and the cool blue panel walls directly reflected the crystal blue skies throughout my visit.
In the inner hallway and towards the passenger terminal, large television flat-screens posted the day’s whole roster of incoming and outgoing flights. In any normal day pre-coronavirus, this electronic roster would be frenetic medley of constantly shifting LEDs, emitting a word salad of every imaginable destination across the globe. Departures were once so frequent that the four available displays would have needed to be periodically updated with fresh new panels of flights with the progression of the day. Now, with the pandemic, the whole day’s departures comfortably occupied just one single corner panel, rendering the other three screens useless. Most of the enumerated flights were to limited to destinations within East Asia, and the available non-Asian destinations numbered just five in total. Even within East Asia, next door neighbor Japan was conspicuously missing, owing largely to a blanket travel ban.
There were noticeably more incoming arrivals than outgoing departures, but the overall scope of international intercourse remained equally limited, with many of the same handful of locations in East Asia, Europe and the United States registering on the arrival roster. In addition, the number of airlines was also extremely limited, with Korean Air especially visible across all destinations. Asiana Airlines, Korea’s other major airline, had already grounded its entire fleet and did not register at all on the flight board.
At the opposite end of the hallway were the escalators and elevators leading into the main arrivals hall in the first floor and the departures hall in the third. There were some signs of life, with individual persons or sometimes pairs of people strolling through the hollow spaces, their shoes clicking smartly on the shiny marble veneer floor tiles. However, their uniform attire gave their identity as airport staff away. There were still virtually no tourists to be seen.
In the intervening space in between the transportation terminal and the escalators was an assortment of boutique restaurants. Many of these spaces, handsomely decked with interior design motifs and indoor patio spaces, would have been mini hubs of activity in any time in the past. However, most of the meticulously clean seats were now just open dishes for collecting the few iotas of dust that may have been circulating inside the virtuously pristine airport interior. In one corner of the patio a lone couple sat over some refreshments, the woman being already dressed in her Korean Air stewardess uniform.
Curiously, while one would guess quite rightly that remaining closed might actually be more cost-effective in the face of nearly non-existent demand, most restaurants in this corner of Terminal 2 remained open. Even the sprightly convenience store, positively electric in energy with its eyewatering assortment of illuminating lights, operated as before, an employee fretting impatiently while manning the counter. The jarring luminescence inside the store was not the only thing that contributed to the pyeonuijeom’s electric vibes, as the ethos was also perpetuated by the conspicuously new and full stockpile of untouched items. Rows after rows of doubleshot coffee, bottled cold brews, fruity yogurt drinks, and ice cold juices from concentrate all held their respective lines on brightly lit shelves, waiting in vain for a soliciting hand that in all likelihood was not likely to come. In the closed-door refrigerated section rows after rows of beaming energy drinks collectively grinned a chrome rainbow of saturated, overly-eager colors. From the outside, one could really appreciate the aesthetics of the current pandemic-era Incheon Airport pyeonuijeom, its lack of people and concomitant glut of stocks coming into full panoramic and allegorical view.
Upon seeing these things, I returned back to the end of the hallway and then proceeded to go up the escalators into the arrivals hall on the first floor. The arrivals hall was a singular continuous rectangular space that stretched the entire length of the north side of Terminal 2, the only intervening space being occupied by a set of elevators and the second floor walkways.
Despite the fact that this space comprised one of South Korea’s most frequented points of entry, the entire hall was almost completely empty. All available benches and resting areas were cordoned off with chain-link line dividers, not that there were any people visible who would be able to utilize them anyway. Pairs of security guards patrolled the long colonnade that comprised the hall’s sole unifying central walkway. Other guards, again in pairs, sat on designated chairs interestingly situated directly adjacent to the main restrooms, fully engaged in idle conversations. However, I was also able to spot a few people who were categorically not affiliated with airport staff and who seemed to be tourists or South Koreans awaiting incoming arrivals, a welcome sight after nearly half an hour of wandering as virtually the only obviously non-staff person on the premises.
I approached the counters towards the center of the hall. Most of the counters in this central portion were staffed. The services proffered ranged from packages for city transit tours and hotel accomodations to specialized assistance for foreign speakers and even U.S. military personnel.
However, as it turned out, the mere presence of service employees did not mean the continued availability of services. For example, although the stalls occupied by Incheon Airport’s free transit tours featured airport representatives and even a timetable of tour courses, all actual tours to and from the airport were actually cancelled due to lack of demand and concerns pertaining to the virus.
Past the center point, which was marked by a single full-moon timepiece, and in the east wing, the same mise en scène of idle counters, empty shops, and roving guards was recreated in its entirety. As in the west wing, the vendors of signature telecommunications giants like SK Telecom and KT were present, still compelled to offer essential services like SIM cards to the handful of arriving passengers. But here again no actual customers were present. Some east wing stalls were simply abandoned altogether.
In the middle section of the arrivals hall were the main glass elevators leading up to the second floor offices and the third floor departures hall. Behind the elevators, access to a central auditorium-like area meant for special events and shows was blocked off.
Unlike the first floor, the second floor is not an area that is usually marked by flocks of tourists. As the home to a large bureaucratic warren, mostly related to customs, immigration, and community services, the floor is usually populated with those seeking assistance and the office workers providing that assistance. With its open balcony design, it is also the home to an overhead view of the arrival terminal below. Looking out from this vantage point, the vacuity of the previous floor came into full view in a striking visual summary.
Nevertheless, while the arrivals hall during my visit was indeed a vacuous space, the second floor was a black hole. It was exceedingly difficult to catch a glimpse of anyone, even of airport staff, in the outer corridors of the floor. Towards the inside, however, there were some offices that were still operating as usual. One central reception center in particular contained reception windows and a waiting area for guests. While some of the windows were staffed, most counters pertaining to community police and customs were presumably closed, with no staff present and the lights dimmed. Further inside an inner hallway, there were more offices pertaining this time to . The immigration office was still open, with two or three staff in total.
Finally, I ascended triumphantly into the Elysian crown piece of the entire north side of Incheon Airport, the superlunary third level departures hall. Unlike all of the levels directly below it, the hall’s penthouse position endows the entire space with the luxury of partially transparent roof, with glass panels peeking in strips through the usual oblique melded framework. These “strips” of light were forced through another layer of grill-like panels, with the effect of producing positively magical avenues of interchanging darkness and light. The hall’s clever play on lighting continued with three outer walls, which were completely made up of glass. Glass was a recurring subject in the interior as well with elevators, railways, and entrances all sporting the same transparent composition, tinged ever so slightly blue to match the airport’s color scheme. This omnipresent lighting scheme mixed with the glary white light outside limned a certain bleached turquoise throughout the hall. These aquatic colors seemed intentional, as the building’s ceiling was fashioned into a series of wave-like crests and ripples. Looking at the fluid formation from below felt something like looking at the inside of a burgeoning wave in suspended animation from a sea floor. The fluid volatility of this design was amplified greatly into vast thalassic echoes by the hall’s breathtaking scale, by far the most gargantuan in the entire terminal.
Though the experience of the previous halls numbed my shock a little bit, I could not help but be flabbergasted at how empty the departures hall was. By far the most busiest areas in the airport during any time of the year, Incheon Airport’s departure halls have always been packed with a plethora of people, luggage carts, and even service robots. Unending, serpentine lines had always graced each section of check-in counters (in this case from sections A to H), adding selectively to the prospective traveler’s anticipation and exhaustion. Even during my early-morning flights, I was always in the good company of hundreds of airport stopover sleepers, early-morning arrivals, and even homeless dwellers, who as a group ensured that there would be almost no vacant bench or chair left in the airport from midnight right through dawn.
However, although it was already midday, I now could not find a single operating airline counter or queue of travelers anywhere. Every check-in counter in sight was vacant, with the screens directly above the counters displaying the generic message “This is Passenger Terminal 2” in Korean instead of the names of individual airline fleets. The automated self check-in booths likewise merely blinked alternating messages regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and related travel restrictions into the void.
The benches were all empty. Though there were a few people scattered around the massive hallways and inside the various shops and restaurants, most of them could be identified as airport staff by their nametags. Towards the center of the terminal were two glass receptacles comprising a bakery and a coffee shop. Through the completely transparent exterior one could lucidly make out the employees absently going about their tasks serving the one or two customers present in the ethereal space.
I strolled first through the east wing of the hall and then through the inner and outer hallways. The wings of the departure hall are populated with an essential variety of information, luggage, tax-refund, and travel insurance booths, most of which were still operational during my visit (albeit with no users). There were also no shortage of airport staff, which filled the departure hall adequately enough to make my loitering presence in the vacuous airport less conspicuous. The overall emptiness was nevertheless striking as I passed through row after row of abandoned counters and line dividers partitioning nothing but hollow spaces. Every so often, the an intermittent announcement regarding the coronavirus would break the tranquil quiet now seemingly endemic to this space. Other than that, the only other sound present in this part of the hall stemmed from the rhythmic splashing of several voluminous water fountains of visually bathymetric depth.
After strolling through the east wing of the airport and the outer and inner hallways, I proceeded towards the outside of the terminal. By outside, I mean the elevated platform for incoming traffic appended to the third floor of the north side of the building. The front facade was buttressed by a row of branching columns and was topped by the large ceiling piece, which jutted out into a giant hanging eave. The underside of this parasol eave was frilled, continuing the grill motifs present in the terminal interior.
Immediately outside of the exit, my eyes met the turtle back-shaped roof of the transportation hall, my original entry point of entry. Everything in the distance seemed to be blanched white by the unusually bright sunlight, in sharp contrast with the moister hues present in the shade of the roof eave. On the far end of that shade, a few buses started to leave with a few passengers. On the other extremity, new buses arrived to pick up those awaiting on the sidewalk. However, as was the case in throughout the actual terminal itself, there were no lines and almost no people. The only human presence was made up mostly of staff who only came outside to smoke cigarettes in designated outdoor smoking lounges. The few non-staff people outside seemed to be waiting for the platform’s main transportation feature: a free shuttle bus service for those commuting to Incheon Airport’s Terminal 1 towards the south.
For now, I returned inside Terminal 2 in order to catch a lunch break. Before eating lunch, however, I decided to explore the fourth floor before entering the observation deck on the fifth. On the way, I peeked down at the three floors down below. Even around noon, all three were still empty.
And so was the fifth floor as it turned out. Indeed, the entrance to that floor and the observation deck was cut off, with a sign stating that the deck had been closed since the end of February due to COVID-19. Indeed, most museums or any indoor space of exhibitive use in the capital area had been closed since around the month of February (including unfortunately such personal favorites as the National Museum of Korea). It was no surprise that this tourist magnet of a space would be an obvious target for temporary closure.
However, most spaces in the fourth floor seemed operational. This included some restaurants that seemed to operate in a regular fashion with a smattering of customers, all seemingly impervious to their dystopian surroundings. Although the overall lack of people in the airport could have been properly modified as dystopian, the stunning views of the departures hall proffered by this vantage point on the fourth floor were categorically breathtaking. Every design motif of the hall below seemed to mesh into one, painting a beautifully contradictory picture; one which, like nature itself, managed to be both riotous and harmonious at once.
After lunch (and a nap on one of the large empty rest areas), I briefly explored the west end of the terminal (which was every bit as vacuous as the east wing) before returning to the center of the hall and heading out. I boarded the free shuttle bus along with a few people who seemed to be heading in the same direction as me (i.e. towards Terminal 1).
The bus ride followed a surprisingly long circuit route which featured an extended excursion into the inner areas of Yeongjongdo Island. At the far end of the platform, after the glass wall of Terminal 2 had been brushed aside like a curtain, the airport runways and the grounded fleets of the various airlines still operating in Incheon International came into view. Korean Air’s sky blue vessels comprised by far the majority contingent in this sedentary armada, but there was also some presence from other major South Korean players in the industry, including a few aircraft from Asiana and Jeju Airlines. After the bus had already dipped into the main highway onto ground level, the terminal came out of view and was replaced by a collection of auxiliary buildings. A sole plane incised the skies in a jutting angle, apparently having just taken off, a photogenic reminder that the airport still successfully serviced a handful of flights per day even amidst the pandemic.
The road produced an intersection towards the northern extremity of the island. The bus veered left towards the north-west corner of Yeongjongdo, the area comprising former Yongyudo Island. As in other areas of the island’s beachy peripheries, the Yongyudo section is home to numerous lodges, so-called “pensions” (basically a French loanword used in Korea to refer to a holiday home), and hotels of all shapes and sizes.
Unfortunately, the shuttle circuit did not pass through any beachside autostradas. However, those of us inside the bus were treated to views of the “West Sea” 서해 (as native Koreans call the body of water west of the peninsula itself) which was seemingly corralled into a sizeable inlet. Across the scintillating ripples of water, Yongyudo loomed in the distance, looking almost like a completely separate island rather than a mere extension of Yeongjongdo.
As the bus continued on its circuit, a few impressive looking buildings began to be visible in the distance. This urban oasis turned out to be a group of top of the line luxury hotels, providing convenient lodging for travelers who wished to straddle closely to the airport (the more pedestrian accomodations are concentrated a bit farther off at Unseo or even mainland Incheon-si). A few people got off at the stop adjacent to these hotel resorts immediately to the south of Terminal 1. The area also featured a cluster of corporate buildings housing the Incheon International Airport Corporation, and those who were alighting from the shuttle seemed to be in those affiliated either with the airport company or with the hospitality industry.
Soon afterwards, the bus entered into the elevated platform leading into Terminal 1. Perhaps in the expectation that most of those using the shuttle bus service would be departing tourists, the bus stopped next to the third floor of the main building, which houses Terminal One’s main check-in counters.
Crossing over the bridge into the departures hall, I was greeted by another elongated space with a tent-like canopy. Except this time, most of the ceiling was opaque and rocked a different design of intersecting, jutting, and connecting steel bars, with limited sunlight incising through intermittent glass runways. Immediately facing me, the check-in counters were arrayed in the same standard fashion, with lettered columns from A to . However, like Terminal 2, none were occupied by any actual airlines. Naturally, there were no lines behind the line dividers or the self check-in booths. Everything seemed to mirror exactly the scene in the north side. The travelers here were just as scarce, with the few individuals who were obviously tourists walking around in a daze in the massive yet empty hall. Finding an active check-in booth in this place seemed was indeed a daunting task. The employees present in the hall, although by now having certainly adapted to their post-coronavirus reality, still shuffled about in their respective booths or cafe outlets as if there were actual queues of customers waiting to be served. There was a strange energy of anticipation and energy at least among the staff inside the hall, as if all this was a venue of a planned event or exposition and the guests were yet to arrive. It seemed that there were still some flight related activity occurring in the vacant receptacle.
The evidence for this soon materialized, as I came across a departures board posted above one of the nearby information desks. There were still a good handful of flights spotting the dark blue of the displays. Granted, there were far fewer flights than usual, but it still gave me a measure of comfort that there were still operating check-in counters located somewhere in this gargantuan warren of glass, steel, and LED displays.
As I was in the far end of the hall, I started to walk my way east towards the terminal’s center. On the trek east, I came across a giant makeshift structure that initially struck me as being a some sort of quarantine facility related to the virus. However, although many of the signs alluded to the virus (such as notices prohibiting the mass transport of masks not for personal use through the airport), a central notice in Korean stated clearly that the structure was meant to conceal a large interior renovation project. Nevertheless, the presence of haphazard panel walls, plastic tarp, and masked employees and workers entering in and out of a tent-like structure with security locks was certainly a sinister sight, especially when seen through the apocalyptic tint of the current pandemic.
The center of the Terminal 1 departures hall is usually one of my preferred spots to relax in before catching flights. It is perpetually the haunt of a host of snacking, napping, and slouching prospective globetrotters, each dark-circle warrior soliciting sleep and empty caloric intake in equal measure. These periorbital panda bears made their presence felt on the day of my visit as well, with four or five specimens lounging with luggage on the seated benches. Seeing those luggage carriers again made the entire space feel somewhat like an airport again and not some awkwardly empty expo chamber.
The east side and back hallway of the departures hall housed several outlets, most of which were still operating as usual. In this place as well, however, I could not spot a single customer or non-staff person in most operating businesses. As was the case in Terminal 2, most support booths were left bereft of any real users, with ATMs, information desks, and currency exchange counters mostly operational and staffed but otherwise completely abandoned. On my way up to the fourth floor, I stopped by a small pharmacy which was no more bigger than a information booth or donut stand but was fully staffed with eager pharmacists. I bought two KF-94 masks (some of the best anti-aerosol masks on the Korean market) by showing my ARC card (per government mask allotment measures that allowed each citizen and registered alien access to purchase two of such masks at a pharmacy each week).
The fourth floor is a space reserved for recreational and hospitality services (e.g. cafes and restaurants). The whole floor features a design language that comports mostly to Korean traditional architecture, an elegant inclusion of Hanok’s array of natural hues ranging from warm pine wood and charcoal tiles in an otherwise monolingual design space of gelid glass and steel. The floor includes leisure space within the departures hall that overlooks the awesomely large cavity down below. But most of the floor is located past the departures, occupying the space directly above the concourse level containing the boarding gates for actual travelers. This space contains a mini-museum of Korean historical artifacts that would have been the main point of interest for me on any other day. However, I was now mostly fixated on the revealing views through all glass exhibit windows into the inner sanctum of the concourse hall down below. It was obviously an area that I could not directly visit without a ticket and a boarding pass, but all of that no longer mattered as I was treated to full views of nearly the entire inner space (boarding gates, shopping outlets and all) from this upstairs vantage point.
True to the news segments I had been watching, the entire boarding hall was nearly completely empty. Icy light filtered through the glass panels on the roof providing illumination to what was otherwise a hall that seemed more dimly lit than usual. The same luxury brands populated the space from one visually unending wing to the other. They were noticeably all open for business, and one felt almost a pitying admiration for this level of bravado, as it was obvious that all must be operating at a huge deficit at this point.
After checking out the bottom floor and an arrivals board with the day’s roster of arriving flights, I moved towards the inner most part of the floor before resting in a hanok-style pavilion for about an hour or so. Some more views of the floor below.
After my rest and subsequent stroll through the rest of the floor, I emerged outside into the departures hall again. Past the open balcony, the third floor was laid out in its entirety like a giant scroll, a metropolis of steel structures and lights stretching as far as the eye can see.
I took the elevator down to the arrivals hall. Most of the scene here mirrored the arrivals hall in Terminal 2. There were some more activity though, and the bench areas were not cordoned off. There were also a bit more employees in the upper level of offices, the balcony of which was visible from the arrivals hall below. Still, most of the hall was remarkably empty, with employees languishing on seats and benches, idly waiting for the next occasional arrival.
I descended another floor, to the level leading to the AREX line (my intended exit). Most of the shops at this time (around 5 p.m. in the evening) were closed, something that should be considered an anomaly given the relatively early time. Whole corners occupied by once-lively cafes were dimmed out. Other outlets were open, however, and, to be fair, there were a handful of people sauntering about on this base floor.
After a while, I reached the open dome-like hall connected to the main entrance/exit hall connected to the AREX lines. As a main
Gimpo International Airport (GMP)
I visited Gimpo International Airport in Gangseo District on May 7, around two weeks after my excursion to Yeongjongdo. My idea to visit there was not sparked by any one particular news segment. Rather, that I would have to visit Incheon International’s eastern counterpart in Seoul in order to gain a full picture of the pandemic’s effect on Korea’s airports was a fait accompli. As the capital city and the larger Sudogwon’s (“capital area” referring to the entire extended Seoul metro spanning Seoul Special City, Incheon Metropolitan City, and Gyeonggi Province) second major port of air transport, Gimpo Airport is now seen within Korea as the domestic flight counterpart to Incheon International Airport (although GMP also possesses a large international terminal). It was therefore necessary to visit Gimpo Airport in order to gauge the level of demand for domestic travel within Korea in an age of coronavirus. This is important, as regional transmission and containment of the virus are important topics in South Korea’s battle against COVID.
Despite its current secondary status, Gimpo is the much more conveniently located point of entry, as it is situated in an area now within the demarcations of the immediate city of Seoul. It also boasts longer history than its island successor, having served as Seoul’s flagship international port of entry for more than four decades before being superseded in 2001. When my mother, aunt, and maternal grandmother all left Seoul and immigrated to America in 1973, their port of exit was a newly expanded Gimpo International Airport.
This time, I arrived in Hongik University Station a little after 6 p.m., around the time of the evening commute. I chose this late juncture deliberately, as Gimpo Airport’s subway station is infamous within Korea for its heavy foot traffic during the evening, as the western station links most links four major rail lines and is a nexus for commuter traffic among the cities of Incheon, Gimpo (with the advent of the new Gimpo Metro), and Seoul. Not surprisingly, even with the coronavirus, the lines to take the next AREX train were long. Everything contrasted sharply with the frigid vacuity that dominated the space during my last visit, the humidity inside the hall waxing from continual human respiration and perspiration.
By the time the train finally pulled up to the bursting platform, the queues stretched in perfect order to the back wall of the hall. In total, many hundreds looked ready to enter the train cars, but the vehicle itself was already brimming with abundant human life. This aggressive vivacity ripened to full fruition inside the train car itself, with a bursting sardine can of human beings forming a compact phalanx, each constituent collectively aping the same default smartphone slouch position. The train moved on fearlessly, ripping through the verdant exurbs with its hive-mind colony of thousands, fully captured by the world of the six-inch LED display, mindlessly in stow. Outside, unbeknownst to hunched masses, nature continually changed guises, revealing itself to those with eyes to see in the form of a troop of trees, serpentine river, or in the elegantly muted sunset.
It only took about fifteen minutes for the train to rush triumphantly into the Gimpo Airport station (hence the airport’s reputation for convenient transport). Less fortunately, the station’s other reputation of hellish commutes also seemed well deserved. As the train car I rode in got ready to depart to its next station in Incheon, a comical number of people marched straight into the vehicle, which miraculously seemed to evade overcapacity. On the opposite side, another army, made up this time of commuters to Seoul, was amassing, inching anxiously towards the automatic doors.
The subway station was of a truly massive scale. Throughout the multi-story complex, it was manifestly clear that commuters and users of the subway station far outnumbered any actual tourists or domestic travelers seeking to use airport terminals. Some of the spaces were so enormous as to dwarf even the sizeable crowd of people that was bustling through the station.
The airport itself was located on either side of a long transfer hall near the top of the station. The domestic and international terminals were separated, with the lane to the left leading the domestic terminal and the right lane to the international terminal. Having come mostly to check out the domestic flight situation within Korea, I chose to go to the domestic terminal first. Past an intervening entrance, a rather long hallway featuring a seemingly never ending travelator led to the actual terminal itself. By this time, the frenetic crowds of people had been whittled down to a few dozen people, and there were large gaping spaces between people on the autowalk.
Upon reaching the end of the hallway, I perused the departures and arrivals board displaying the latest flights. Most of the listed flights were to and from places with large-scale airport terminals, including Jeju Island and Busan Metropolitan City (which both feature international airports). In fact, all of the listed departure flights were to either Jeju International Airport or to Gimhae International Airport in Busan. There were far more arrivals, with most of the country represented. Daegu International Airport was conspicuously missing, perhaps because the region in May was still perceived as a regional hotspot for the coronavirus (the Sincheonji cult outbreak having centered around the so-called “TK” area comprising Daegu Metropolitan City and North Gyeongsang Province). Every flight listed on the departures and arrivals boards featured a Korean airline.
Despite the plentiful array of arrival flights, there were relatively few people inside of the actual terminal. To be fair, there was a decent showing of people inside the various coffee shops and restaurants lining the peripheral areas of the arrivals hall. There were also a few dozen people buzzing through the interior hallways and the bus platforms visible outside. Indeed, this was a world away from the visceral surrealism enveloping Incheon International Airport and Yeongjongdo Island. But overall turnout at Korea’s firstborn of airports was still seemed significantly depressed.
Indeed, the overall number of people in the airport might not have been much more than the number occupying Incheon International. However, the space was also significantly smaller in scale, meaning that population density was a factor in making Gimpo look like the “fuller” airport despite the parity in raw numbers of people in both airports.
There were still many incoming arrivals listed near the exit gate in the arrivals hall, however. And every once in a while, the exit gate doors would slide open, with a dozen or so travelers filing out into the main hall.
Despite its smaller size, the design of Gimpo’s domestic terminal was far from dull, featuring a grill ceiling design similar to the one in Incheon Airport’s Terminal Two. However, unlike the latter, the ridges in the Gimpo terminal did not emanate in a parallel fashion from the back wall like its Incheon counterpart, instead pointing towards the back side of the arrivals hall and focusing one’s attention onto the uniquely designed exit gate (see above pictures). The overall design code seemed to at once sport both a polished modern look and a distinctively retro feel. Grays, cream whites, and matte yellows made up the color palette completing this look.
This color spectrum continued to the exterior of the building, where it was complimented by the paleness of the overcast evening sky. Looking from the outside through the tinted windows, the interior seemed to give off an artificial yellow glow, adding zest to an otherwise pedestrian exterior. The outside area was comprised mostly of parking spaces for the airport and the adjacent Lotte Mall. The platform immediately outside the terminal was a waiting space for those who were to be picked up by cars and Gimpo’s shuttle buses. Like the inside, there was a decent showing of people in this outer platform, with a few dozen lining the main sidewalk. There were also many more cars when compared with Incheon International. Given the airport’s relatively urban location, city architecture, including apartment buildings were visible just past the parking lot.
Back inside, I explored the first floor in earnest. Unlike Incheon Airport, the benches and seating areas inside the arrivals hall were not cordoned off. All outlets and restaurants, including even a small food court, were open. Some features, however, including the airport limousines, were not operating at the time of my visit. In addition, many spaces, including so-called “meeting points” for travel agencies, were completely empty. In the age of coronavirus, the very term “meeting point” had assumed a dubious ring, sounding much like a distant anachronism.
The second floor was the check-in area for airline departures. As previewed by the various departure boards, all of the airlines present in this floor seemed to be domestic Korean brands. Despite the presence of Asiana Airlines, the vast majority of these brands were budget airliners that focused on providing South Koreans with inexpensive access to areas within the country and its immediate East Asian neighbors. Despite the substantial employee presence and endless row of staffed counters, the actual number of people were extremely limited, with only one or two airline counters actually having lines of any sort. Nevertheless, the very fact that nearly every counter had active staff was a stark contrast with Incheon Airport, and there were quite a few people walking about in the hallways or sitting on benches. The difference in relation to Incheon Airport was not just quantitative but also visceral, as the hall just felt more occupied than the void landmarks I had strolled through two weeks prior. However, given my previous experiences traveling Korea, where even local bus stations nestled in small provincial cities are bustling hubs of human proliferation, the space felt like a lucanae of the breed of bustling energy that seems ubiquitously and quintessentially endemic to Korea.
The next floor, visible in peeks from the check-in hall below, featured a crystalline plafond, descending down in a gentle slant from the storied back wall. The ceiling’s lucent visuals were creatively crafted using glaring white backlights and scalene triangle panels. While glaringly lit, the hall itself, with its departure gates, was moderately toom. A few people buzzed past the departures entrances, with the staff mostly puttering behind line dividers and machinery in front of the main gates. The signs in front of this maze of line-dividers proclaimed the use of temperature checks on prospective travelers. There were quite a few people seated on the fourth floor balcony, though, which loomed over the entire slow scene below.
The fourth floor comprised the main food court in the entire terminal, proffering everything from hamburgers to Korean street food. The floor plan centered around a main thoroughfare, hence the food court’s “food avenue” theme. Quite a few people, including families, were dining in the court, presumably enjoying a late dinner before an impending flight.
The innermost part of the court was entirely lined on one side with glass windows, showcasing neat views of the concourse level down below. My surmise of depressed turnout proved to be correct. Very few people were in the largely vacant space below.
Leaving the “Food Avenue” behind, I sailed down to the previous floors, intending to return back to the subway station and to cross over into the international terminal. On the way, I passed by a few shops that were closed down completely, perhaps due to slow business. By the time I exited the departures hall completely, the time registering on the departures and arrivals board was a quarter to eight o’clock.
Back at the subway station, I picked up some Korean-style chewy sesame-seed bread as a snack at a bakery outlet before heading into the international terminal. The layout on this opposite side was a mirror image of the domestic flight wing, with a long automated people mover preceding the actual terminal itself.
Before I even reached the APM, however, I froze in my tracks. Something was vaguely amiss. Unlike the opposite wing leading to the domestic terminal, the hall leading to the international terminal was completely vacant. I looked back. All human traffic stopped a few dozen meters behind me back where people were continuing to transfer rail lines. In contrast to the commotion behind me, the next few dozen meters in front of me were marked by an eerie almost ominous stillness. Considering the fact that this was the main passageway into the international terminal of one of South Korea’s largest airports (and also a sizeable Lotte Mall), the emptiness suggested extraordinary circumstances.
My premonitions proved to be correct. I entered the main terminal hallway to find everything closed. The monorail was shut down and gated off. A small sign blocking the monorail entrance referred to a “nationwide” campaign to conserve energy as the reason for the closure. However, considering the fact that an equally long autowalk was parasitically slaking energy in the opposite wing, the message seemed dubious. My suspicions were exacerbated by the fact that the arrival and departure displays were all turned off. The terminal itself seemed to have been closed down.
I pondered whether to advance further. Going further into a completely empty hallway felt not only spooky but also a bit inappropriate, as if I was committing a peccadillo for not getting the message and turning back. After a few moments, however, I was able to hear some footsteps coming towards me from within the hall. My ears registered the sound with alacrity. There were people using the hallway after all. I then remembered that this was also the entrance of a major shopping mall. I made up my mind to press forward.
After a while, I reached a split in the path, the hallway to my right being the entrance of the Lotte Mall complex and the other hallway leading to the international terminal. I decided to head for the terminal first.
At the end of the road, I reached another hallway with escalators on the ends of both sides. These escalators led directly to the terminal on the second floor. Even while I was gliding up the escalator, I could tell . I still was compelled to freeze in silence. I can safely say that the space that greeted me was by far the deadest space I had ever found myself in during my excursions to Incheon and Gimpo International Airports. A complete lacuna of human activity, the space was as lifeless as an abandoned shopping mall. It was also dim, in a highly suspect and outré manner that did not quite register properly in the pictures I took. The most striking addition were the escalators leading up to the upper floor, which were not operating. The upper floor itself was completely dark and obviously closed. I asked the woman behind the information desk the reason for the emptiness, and received the surprising answer that there were no flights (a claim supported by the blank flight rosters in the hall). There was an arrivals gate, but the lights in the area behind the closed glass doors seemed to have been turned off. It did not look as if any arrivals would be forthcoming.
I quickly left the terminal, as the awkwardness of loitering around alone became unbearable. My final destination was the Lotte Mall appended to Gimpo International Airport. Th
Grounded: Aviation’s Historical Moment in South Korea
The scenes unfolding in South Korea’s airports are but a snapshot in what will hopefully be a transient epoch in the modern experience. I use the word “transient” simply in recognition of the fact that it is impossible for the status-quo to remain in perpetuity. Time always is a catalyst for change regardless of the circumstances. Indeed, change has already started brewing in Seoul’s major airports during the intervening time since my visits and the writing of this blog. Already, South Korea is entering into negotiations with its East Asian neighbors (especially with China and Japan) that would hasten the revival of short distance travel within East Asia (of the kind that would have a facilitating effect for the regional airliners seen in Gimpo and Incheon). Such trends would are in line with the subtle rumblings towards reopening of international travel occurring across the globe.
This is not to say that things will necessarily return to the pre-coronavirus norm, as there is strong evidence that this coronavirus crisis, unlike previous pandemics in this century and in the last, constitutes a truly permanent zeitgeist shift, rendering a laissez-faire attitude towards public hygiene, international exchanges, or social interactions in general a thing of the past. In addition, “Generation Pandemic” as distilled so bluntly by a recent Time Magazine cover has become instilled in the modern experience, through excessive hours of self-quarantine and distancing, to become a truly global social phenomenon. Indeed, in this world of closed borders, the shared experience of overcoming the silent menace of the coronavirus stands as one facet that can be said to be truly global in scope. In my time in Korea, many images, all no less striking and determinative than a magazine cover, have been seared into my mind throughout the duration of this invisible war. Ultimately, however, the most memorable visual distillation of my entire COVID-19 experience here in Korea would have to be that of Seoul’s empty airports, of a world truly grounded in a momentary pause.