Armstrong in South Korea: ‘I ate things nobody should put in their mouth’
Trying horse tartare, getting to grips with the trains and visiting a volcanic island — with his new TV series out this week, the presenter tells Cathy Adams about South Korea’s magic
Alexander Armstrong at Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul
Cathy Adams
Sunday November 06 2022, 12.01am GMT, The Sunday Times
You might not have ever touched down on that thumb of land between eastern China and Japan, but I’ll bet my last million Korean won that you haven’t escaped its cultural influence. Squid Game (terrifying), the BTS boy band (catchy), Korean fried chicken (delicious) — we’re all in the grip of the K-wave, also known as hallyu.
South Korean culture is so influential that the V&A Museum in London has just opened an exhibition about it, showcasing food, film and traditional dress; and Channel 5 has sent one of the UK’s most likeable presenters, Alexander Armstrong, to surf the K-wave across the peninsula.
In the three-part show, which premieres on Tuesday November 8, a delightfully wide-eyed and gambolling Armstrong zigzags from Seoul to volcanic Jeju Island off the south coast via the country’s second city, Busan.
Bongeunsa Temple in Seoul
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Armstrong’s brief was to find out what makes this remarkable country — the same size as Portugal and with a smaller population than the UK — tick. There are the usual culture-shock, fish-out-of-water japes — drinking coffee from a puny ceramic toilet in a poo-themed café, learning K-pop dances and marvelling at sky-high animatronics in the capital’s Gangnam district.
The programme was filmed before the events of October 29, when 156 people died in a Halloween crowd crush in Seoul. “Having got to know Seoul and the irrepressible spirit of its young people, the tragic news felt especially painful,” Armstrong says. “Our thoughts are with everyone there, especially friends and colleagues.”
This is a country used to facing — and coming back from — adversity. The Korean War of 1950 to 1953 razed most of the peninsula’s major cities and left more than three million dead. In the 1950s South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world; now it’s the tenth-biggest economy and a leader in tech. It’s a success story to rival those of Dubai and Shenzhen, yet we still think of South Korea as just half a country — defined by what it is not as much as by what it is.
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“The thing about Korean culture is that it’s basically scorched earth,” Armstrong says. “They’d had pretty much everything burned out of them. Nothing had been allowed to take root. And so what we’re witnessing now is this sort of physical hallyu — this great emergence of Korean culture that has finally been allowed to find expression. They’ve coalesced around this mad belief in themselves. And it’s not a ‘mad’ belief, it’s just crazy intense.”
Intense is a good word for it, whether that’s Armstrong on a soju-soaked night out in Gangnam, visiting shrieking witch doctors on Jeju (“a lot of things got whacked — it was great theatre”) or meeting a succession of noodle-slurping YouTubers.
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“We had masses of complaints lodged against us because we talked on the train,” he says. “That didn’t go down at all well. And if you turn up 20 minutes before breakfast finishes in your hotel, the guy who shows you to your table tells you off. It’s an affront to only allow 20 minutes for your breakfast.”
Fortunately he allowed more than 20 minutes to eat his way around Busan’s fish market, where he ate “things that nobody should put in their mouth”. There was a sea cucumber, something “known as the penis fish” and “squid that was pulled out of a bucket while they’re still very much alive and sliced up . . . You eat the tentacles of this thing while they’re still wriggling,” he grimaces.
Fish for sale at Jagalchi fish market, Busan
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Also on the menu was horse tartare, and “quite a lot of different bits of horse — like offal. This is going to get me in terrible trouble, but I have to be honest: the horse was delicious.”
Enough of the raw horse — I ask the question to which many will be desperate to know the answer: did he dance to Gangnam Style? “No. I bitterly resisted. I’ve never mastered the Psy dance,” he says. But he couldn’t ignore K-pop completely — in the first episode he gamely tried a dance routine with the girl group StayC that involved him waving his hands around like a mad uncle at a wedding. “That was great fun,” he admits. “I really fell for K-pop. It’s madly infectious, like a virus that gets right under your skin. It’s not just an earworm; it’s like an ear tapeworm.”
The K-pop group StayC
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K-pop ends up being a sort of extended metaphor for how he would translate his fortnight and a bit in South Korea to the rest of the world. “There’s something about the flavour combination that Korea gives you,” he muses. “It’s a mixture of cute, a mixture of absurd, a mixture of catchy and a mixture of slightly uncomfortable anodyne sexuality.”
Alexander Armstrong in South Korea airs at 9pm on Tuesday on Channel 5
Yakcheonsa Buddhist Temple on Jeju Island
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Three tours to South Korea
See the highlights
Good for first-timers, this private tour starts and finishes in Seoul, where its suggested itinerary includes an after-dark street food tour and a visit to the hilltop Hwaseong Fortress. In between comes Jeonju, staying in a traditional guesthouse, and the beachside city of Busan. Two transfers are by bullet train. You’ll also have a chance to try Korean archery, and shop for clothes in Seoul’s Gangnam district.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £2,384pp, including transfers and excursions (insideasiatours.com). Fly to Seoul
Food-focused adventure
Here’s another tailor-made itinerary that can be modified to your tastes. Focused on Korean cuisine, it also begins in Seoul — after a classic barbecue dinner you’ll learn to make glass noodles and cloudy rice wine. Days might then be spent browing around fish markets, buying filled pancakes from street vendors or eating the best bibimbap in Jeonju, the dish’s spiritual home. Most memorable, though, will be a breakfast with Buddhist monks after an overnight stay at a temple.
Details Thirteen nights’ B&B from £3,690pp, including flights, transfers, activities, excursions and seven other meals (bambootravel.co.uk)
Seongsan Ilchulbong Tuff Cone on Jeju Island, South Korea
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Join a bike tour
Volcanoes, river valleys and flower-lined coastal stretches, not to mention a thousand miles of dedicated bike routes, render South Korea ideal for cyclists. To capitalise the American firm Grasshopper Adventures operates small-group tours from March to May and September to October. Highlights range from hot springs and sunrise hikes to tea fields, temples and a chance to meet Jeju Island’s female free-divers, who trawl deep waters in search of seafood. You’ll need to be a reasonably experienced rider.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £2,978pp, including transfers, bike hire, excursions and 12 other meals (grasshopperadventures.com). Fly to Seoul
Richard Mellor
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