Dumplings and pancakes at the Russian bar, Korea

We're wandering round the market in Incheon, Korea. Jean tells me that it's quiet today. The stallholders normally shout at you about how good their food is. Koreans are rather like Italians. We pass a stall loaded with dried fish - big ones staring from sunken eyes like marine mummies, tiny silver ones like metal filings in a sack.

Christine points at some microscopic shrimp. They are soaked in salt for a very long time so all the juice comes out, and the flavour is magnificent. We eat them with kimchi pancakes. I bring my face close to a bucket of clams in seawater. Semi-opaque tubes protrude from the shells; one gently breaks the surface like a periscope and shoots an arc of water at me.

The next stall sells sweets and birthday cakes made from sticky rice, decorated with turrets and vivid colours. I try a bit of the rice sweet, which is mild and sticky and dark brown. A woman feeds a pot-bellied stove with flat bread that puffs up into hollow balls when hot. Medicinal stalls sell pickled ginseng root from jars of sinister fluid, like limbs preserved in formaldehyde. Sweet pumpkin soup and sweet bean paste simmer in cauldrons.

Then we notice the Russian bar. The sign is in Cyrillic and every wall is covered in graffiti. This is the hangout of Russian and Filipino sailors. We sit down for kimchi dumplings and pancakes. The spicy fermented cabbage makes you sweat instantly. In the humid air, it's refreshing. The TV is playing a wobbly video of a Russian station. Cut to a trailer for a stunt show. A man clutches a wound on his forehead. Cut to a Lada driving off the edge of a bridge. Cut to a man in an orange boiler suit and crash helmet shouting at something. Cut to another Lada running over the man in the boiler suit. There's no Hollywood shine to disguise the brutality. A sailor with a blond crewcut stares ahead. Jean smokes a government- issue fag. I bite again, evaporating quietly.

· The writer is the lead singer with Franz Ferdinand