The People’s Train

You won’t meet a guy like Rex Song on the KTX, because you won’t meet anyone on the KTX. If you so much as speak above a whisper, you are getting dirty looks from your fellow passengers. More than likely someone will ask you to be quiet. You’ll get to Busan in two hours and 36 minutes, and you’ll get there in silence. The KTX is high-class traveling, and the folks who pay KTX prices for a ticket want a quiet ride.

You’ll have to slum it on the Mugunghwa to meet a guy like Rex Song. Hell, you might even meet Rex Song.

We did recently on a five-and-a-half hour ride to Busan on the Mugunghwa. The Rose of Sharon, Rose of the Rails. The People’s Train.

The Mugunghwa is how people got around Korea before the KTX (usurper) came along in 2004. When you compare the two side by side, the Mugunghwa has more dents than the KTX, more rusty spots. Its orange and red color scheme seems dated. “Mugung” means eternity in Korean, and true, sometimes a trip on the Mugunghwa can seem to go on forever. But there are tricks to riding the Rose. If you can unlock its potential a trip on the Mugunghwa is more rewarding than a short, quiet and boring ride on the KTX. And the windows on the Mugunghwa are way bigger.

The dining car of the train is its heart. It’s a common area, decorated in a style from a past era. The wallpaper inside is yellow and green and brown and looks like a slime monster screaming out as he is being destroyed.

We met Rex there about two-thirds into a trip from Seoul to Busan. He was wearing a slate-grey suit and had that slightly disheveled glow that ajoshis always have after a few soju shots. His hair was swept over, and he had little gold polar bears on his socks. He approached us and began talking; anticipating a drunk fellow wanting to practice his English, we cringed a little. Clammed up. He asked where we were going and what we were doing.

“We’re in a club,” I said. “The YAC.”

“The YAC? What’s that?”

“It stands for Young and Clever.”

“Ah, young and clever.”

I was laying it on thick, feeding Rex fibs to amuse my two traveling companions. Mike, one of my buddies, joined in immediately. We couldn’t keep our faces straight. I looked away so Rex wouldn’t see my grin. 

But he had a grin on his face, too. A knowing grin. We asked him what he was doing. He gave us vague answers, kept talking about the “guys on the street.” We soon realized he was toying with us; he was in control of the conversation. The more talked, the less we knew about him. 

“My job is to take care of the guys on the street. Tonight, I’m taking care of the guys on the train.”

Taking care of them? Taking care of who? It was obvious he was either a native English speaker or had spent a lot of time overseas. He peppered his speech with “man” and spoke with a slow cadence.

“See I saw a bunch of guys on the street in Mexico. And I flew to a very different country from Mexico. Puerto Rico.”

God knows why he was in Puerto Rico. He wouldn’t tell us; the more questions we asked, the more vague his answers became. The darkness passed behind the mustard-yellow drapes of the dining car, and Rex’s mystique grew. We found out he lived in L.A. for a while. We tried to find out who the guys on the street were.

“The guys who need help out there on the street are the guys who need help, period. I’m not talking about the guys in houses or buildings. I’m talking about the guys on the street.”

Yellow and white lights streaked by the window, and we could hear the echoing rattle of the track. ketty-whump ketty-whump ketty-whump.

We bought a round of beers and gave Rex one. Mike kept pushing him, trying to pin him down, and Rex kept dancing. Mike flat out asked him what do you do on a typical day.

“You’re getting very specific.”

Howl of laughter from Rex.

“You are not going to like it. You are not going to like this. But that is what I’m doing.”

We went on talking to Rex, and the Rose rumbled on toward Busan.

We had seats but opted to stand in the dining car for most of the trip drinking beers and shots of ginseng-infused soju out of a leather bag Mike brought. That helps the time pass. You can be as loud as you want on the Mugunghwa, especially in the dining car. There’s a noraebang room plus two arcade games. Even if you don’t want to play, you can spend a good 20 minutes watching the elaborate intro to Tekken 5. Who knew Heihachi had died and come back as a demon?

When Chris and I got on the train in Seoul we flipped our row of seats around so we were facing two other seats. That’s another trick of the Mugunghwa that the KTX can’t match – there’s a pedal at the bottom of every row of seats, and when you step on it you can spin the whole row around. Every group of seats can be a four-seat party square. We had about five minutes of chatting face-to-face before a woman came on and told us to turn the seats back around the right way, that one of them was hers. Most if not all the people on the train kept their seats facing the normal direction. That’s when we moved to the dining train. There are plenty of seats in the dining train and like I said, you can be as loud as you want.

By 10:37, still an hour from Busan, the train was mostly empty. It started out full in Seoul and had slowly been emptying. I strolled through the cars taking notes on the people still on. One guy was between cars, bent over at a 90-degree angle, the top half of his body resting on a handrail, his legs still straight up. There were only about 15 people on each car, and they were all pretty subdued. A few years ago I was riding the Mugunghwa and the old man next to me got a phone call and started wailing. I can only guess that someone he loved had died, because he wailed for a long time. But tonight it was quiet.

Rex got off at Daegu. By this time we were friends, and he was saying maybe he’d ride back with us to Seoul on Sunday and we’d drink the whole way and have a good time. Before he got off the train we swapped phone numbers and he said more vague and intriguing things.

“I got some guys down there in Busan… uh… let me know if you guys need anything down there.”

We thought maybe he was a high-ranking government official, a mafioso, or even a celestial being. The whole weekend we joked about Rex, saying we’d call him and have all kinds of favors done.

Rex did call at one point during the weekend, but when I answered he hung up. I guess either he woke up in the morning and didn’t recognize the new names in his phone or he had accidentally misdialed the number. In any case, it was out of character for Rex. Maybe he was just testing us.

By the time our train was nearing Busan, the dining car had cleared out and even the pudgy guy selling snacks had disappeared into the noraebang room. A big picture above his snack bar looked like an ice-cream sundae made of sandwiches. We paced around the dining car joking and acting like three men who had had a good train trip and had a whole weekend to look forward to.

The KTX does have its place and it is nice to travel the length of the country in two and a half hours. We took the KTX back from Busan; we were in different spirits on the way back and a short, quiet trip was fine for us. But if you have the time, why not take the long way down? You can buy two Mugunghwa tickets for the price of one on the KTX –three if you’re willing to stand. With that extra cash you can hang out in the dining car, eat chestnuts and drink Cass and meet some folks. Rex knew and appreciated the spirit of the Mugunghwa. He told us so.

“You did not take the KTX,” he said. “You took this train. You know why – because you wanted to enjoy it.”