Bansong-dong, Busan, South Korea : a photo essay

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Bansong is alive with children, and most of them are on wheels. Heaven only knows how they stop on the hills, or climb them.	You see little conferences of children everywhere. Some game is absorbing them.	Tiny-tot video games are crowded in front of every mom&pop shop. Oddly, the screen instructions for murder and mahem are all in English. Very educational.	The bicuit lady makes her wares on the spot, and whatever she puts in them, kids find them irresistable. A crowd is always gathered around her.
In winter, especially, you see whole families crowded around these game machines, which are everywhere. You have to fish for a furry animal with a kind of claw.	One cluster of lanes is edged with a straggle of produce stalls under makeshift coverings. This passes for "the market".	This market seems to survive by the shopping habits of housewives. It is no cheaper than the supermarket. Bargaining is not usual.	Fruit and vegetables may be sold by weight or number, but often also by the "basinfull".
Ajumas have half a dozen stalls of thawing fish scattered through the suburb.	Even at the very back of the town, by the hillside, someone is trying to sell stuff. Blue one ton trucks also edge through these lanes constantly, anouncing their wares over loudspeakers.	Music CD & cassette stall. Technology may be passing this business by.	Urbanized they may be, but the old folk prefer to scratch a bit of hillside to grow a few vegetables.
A short walk from the busiest shops, you can find unobtrusive paths leading up into the hills.	Anything to sell? Most of these notices have fringes of telephone numbers to tear off. Free advertising newspapers are also common.	Want to change the world? It may not be beautiful, but this seems to be Bansong's nearest approach to a "democracy wall".	Bansong is crammed with cottage industries. Through many a doorway you can see busy sewing machines. These mills make a mini food factory.