Field note: adapted from a short Korean diary entry I wrote on 17 October 2024 about an afternoon on 12 October. The original ran to a few lines and a handful of photographs, and this is not much longer.
The air had finally turned. That is the point in the Korean autumn when everyone I know starts saying the word camping, and I would normally have agreed with all of them. Our daughter was not yet 150 days old. Pitching a tent and staying out overnight with her was not a plan, it was a fantasy with a night feed attached.
So the plan shrank into something that fit: a blanket by the Han River, in the afternoon, with people I like. And my husband keeping the baby at home, which is the entire reason the rest of this happened. Thank you, again, in writing.
My ambitions for the day, stated in advance and in full: let me drink something, let somebody feed my kid her milk, and then let me go home.
Check one, in full sun
We arrived while the light was still hard and bright, put everything down, and stayed in that one spot until night. At some point I opened the camera. She was fine.
The middle checks, as the sun went down
The afternoon slid sideways into evening. We talked, laughed and ate, exactly as I described it in the original note.
Somewhere in that stretch I opened the camera again. Then again. I missed her in the middle of the afternoon away that I had wanted.
I noticed I was not the only one. Every so often somebody else on the blanket would go quiet, look at their phone for a moment, and put it away again. Then the same person would say how good it was to be out.
The last checks, in the dark
By night the riverside was crowded, and somehow that made it quieter. All those people, all that noise, and inside it a small pocket of calm where I could hear myself. That was the part I had not expected and the part I kept.
I opened the camera about thirteen times in total. I wrote that down at the time as a confession, and I do not think it needs one. The missing ran alongside the afternoon rather than spoiling it.
Then I asked for another one, in writing, in the tone of someone who is joking and is not joking at all. Next time, please. Are you reading this?
Sources checked
Last reviewed August 29, 2026.
- Original Korean diary – an autumn afternoon of jabu time — banggujin Naver Blog
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