Locked Up Love
Like people in cultures everywhere, Koreans latch onto cute fads or focus on the trivial with a kind of in-joke mock seriousness. If some action is quirky and cute, like a dance style in a pop video or a mannerism from a soap opera, people begin to mimic it. It takes on a life of its own and is soon quoted in other media.
Recently a comedian wore a towel in a jim jill bang (spa house) in a funny way. He’d curved both ends in a circle and rolled them to the middle, leaving a gap to fit on his head, like a cap. When he wore it, it gave him a kind of Princess Leia look. Pretty soon, people were showing up everywhere on TV wearing towels the same way.
And here is another example of a quirky craze in Seoul, seen on the observation deck of Namson Seoul Tower. These are called “love locks,” and they’re just the kind of thing Koreans love—not just cute and quirky, but romantic, too.
The love lock idea is nothing new, but in recent times it has taken off around the world. The craze gained in popularity after lovers in Rome started hanging padlocks around a lamp post on Rome’s oldest bridge, the Ponte Milvio, in imitation of events in an Italian romance novel. That was over a year ago. Perhaps every country by now—probably every big city—has its own love lock locale.
In Seoul, it’s the Namsan Tower. Hundreds of people have bought up all kinds of padlocks, written messages on them and left them locked on the tower’s observation deck. Rome’s youth throw their keys in the river, so maybe at Namsan Tower lovers throw theirs over the side and down the hill.
The locks are so prolific now, it’s hard to get a good view overlooking Seoul, especially for shorter people. On the day I was there, so many people were in the way, I couldn’t get a long shot of the fencing. But trust me, it’s like this all the way around it.
Cute, quirky and romantic—that’s all you need to start a phenomenon in Korea.
