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| south korea |
| seoul |
| I had been planning a trip to Seoul to see all the sights for about 11 months. Finally, the weekend came. Most of these photos are from that trip in mid-September 2004, others are from various other trips to Seoul during 2003 and 2004. Seoul is a massive city (the 5th largest in the world) with a population of about 11 million people. You can ride the subway for over an hour in any direction from central Seoul and still be surrounded by skyscrapers, offices and apartment buildings. The main streets can be up to 16-lanes, with underground walkways and huge underground shoppping centres. The city is divided into 25 urban districts (gu's), each with it's own speciality, and 527 smaller neighborhoods (dong's). There are ancient palaces and temples scattered throughout Seoul, most of them are now reconstructions. First established during the Yi dynasty in 1392, the entire city was completely destroyed during the Korean War, but has recovered and is now a sprawling modern metropolis. |
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| Gyeongbokgung Palace |
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| Gyeongbokgung Palace was the hub of royal power and the royal residence in Seoul for around 200 years. It was originally composed of over 500 buildings, only about 10 of which remain today after being destoryed during several Japanese occupations. The palace is undergoing a complete renovation, started in 1995 and scheduled for completeion in 2020. It was beautiful and quite contrasted to the surrounding skyscrapers and hustle and bustle outside. The main entrance gate facing Gwanghwamun intersection, the largest in Seoul, is where three 16 lane streets meet. You've never seen anything like it. |
| This building, surrounded by a man made lake, is featured on the back of the Korean 10,000 won bill. It's the photo that everyone takes. |
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| Gwanghwamun Intersection |
| Gwanghwamun intersection is just South of Gyeongbokgung Palace. There's a statue of Admiral Yi-Sun Shin here, Korea's greatest and most famous naval war hero. He was also inventor of the undefeated Turtle War Ships of the Korean naval fleet. |
| Rain, rain, rain, all day, all weekend. |
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| Insadong |
| Insadong is by far my favorite place in Seoul. I could spend days just hanging out there under the trees and looking in all the stores. A single cobble-stone street just East of Gyeongbokgung filled with art and Buddhist relic shops. They close the street to traffic on weekends and it's usually filled with foreigners. There's granite benches and planters, filled with lilies and lotus flowers in the summer, traditional woodcarvings, paint brush and paper shops. They also stage a traditional royal procession, complete with costumes, dancers and music. |
| Glyn and Misty in Insadong. |
| A Korean food stand, brushes for sale in Insadong, an ajummah selling boiled silkworm larvae (bondegi), a supermarket near Insadong and the only Starbucks in the world with a sign in a foreign language. |
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| Buddhist statues for sale and a man making traditional Korean wood carvings. |
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| Deoksugung Palace |
| Deoksugung Palace, just beside Seoul City Hall, is also quite impressive and has a number of beautiful gardens within it's walls. There's also a changing of the guard ceremony performed here. The photo on the left is of an ajeoshi who probably spent all day sitting around, he bummed a smoke off of me and let me take his picture. The statue on the right is of King Sejong, The Great, who created Korea's unique and amazing written language, Hangeul. |
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| Seoul City Hall and Plaza |
| Seoul City Hall is located just South of Gyeongbokgung Palace near Seoul's Myeongdong shopping district. After a particularly rough Club night, the night before Glyn, Misty, Giselle and I went for the opening ceremonies of Seoul Plaza, one of the only places in this country where you can see, touch and walk on lush, green healthy grass. It was a beautiful, sunny Saturday, Misty was leaving that afternoon for Thailand. I also got some pictures of riot police in wait during a protest at City Hall in November 2003. I was meeting up with my friend Jean-Paul Keenan, who I had met a year earlier at l'Universite Ste-Anne in Nova Scotia. |
| On the left, Glyn, Misty and Giselle chilling at our favorite post-Club Night Starbucks near Sinchon in Seoul. They didn't have any damn breakfast sandwiches! Above, center, Jean-Paul at a Hof near Seoul City Hall, and on the right, Korea's National Arm-wrestling champion challenging people to fights during the opening cermeonies of Seoul Plaza. |
| Giselle, Glyn, Misty, a beautiful day, lots of green grass, Seoul Plaza! |
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| Seoul Tower and Namsan Park |
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| The view from the hike up to the Namsan Park Cable Car. |
| The entrance to Seoul Tower. |
| The views were terrible because it was raining, but I could see far enough to realize how large Seoul really is. The tower stands 483m above sea-level on the top of Namsan mountain near Central Seoul. One of the posts on the observation deck listed the distances from that point to my two homes. Gangneung, South Korea was 170km awa, while Vancouver, BC, Canada, was 8,169km! Namsan Park surrounding the tower was beautiful.I took the cable car up to the peak. |
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| Namsan Botanical Gardens |
| At the base of the mountain, just a short walk from the cable cars, was Namsan Botanical Gardens. They were very nice and well kept, hundreds of species of tropical ferns and cacti lead you to a small outdoor zoo featuring many types of birds and a group of very human-like Macaque monkeys. |
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| Jongno District |
| My dad visited Seoul on a stop-over to India near the end of January 2004. We met up and went for dinner in the Jongno district, just South of Insadong. It's streets are filled with glowing neon signs, electronic music blaring from speakers above restaurants and all kinds of shopping. Below is a picture of the Jongno-3 (sam) ga subway station. They've covered the walls in fibreglass to give the impression that you're in a cave. |
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| Changgyeonggung Palace and The Jongmyo Royal Shrine |
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| Just East of Insadong, I found Changgyeonggung Palace one day. I had seen enough of (and taken enough pictures of) palaces that all basically looked the same already, so I didn't take too many photos here. The palace was built as a summer home for the royals in 1104. During the Japanese Occupation of Korea, a botanical garden and zoo was moved here. The zoo was later relocated to Seoul Grand Park, but the Botanical gardens were pretty impressive. There was also a really beautiful lake in the center of the palace grounds. One weird thing that Misty and I found was a Placental Burial Ground hidden in the forest. I guess it was were the placentas from royal births were ceremonially buried. I didn't get too see anything as cool as a half decomposed royal placenta, all that was left was a weird statue of a turtle. |
| The palace is connected to the Jogmyo Royal Shrine by way of a footbridge over a busy downtown street. It was built to enshrine the ancestral tablets of all 27 Yi kings (whatever that means). There wasn't much to see there, so Misty and I moved on and out of the Shrine. |
| Just outside we found a small park, filled with several old Korean men (ajeoshi) smoking, playing Baduk, eating fried chicken and practicing calligraphy. I guess this was where they came to get away from it all as there weren't any old Korean women (ajummah) to be seen. |
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| Seodaemun Prison History Hall |
| About a five minute subway ride from Gyeongbokgung is Seodaemun Prison History Hall in Dongnip Park. This former prison was were patriotic Koreans were martyred during the Japanese Occupation of 1910-1945. Several Japanese-era buildings still stand including the execution chamber. There was lots of wax and animatronic recreations of torture methods, even some you could try out for yourself (you'll have to go to understand what I mean). It was a bit haunting and creepy and fairly deserted when I went. The creaky door hinges and the paint chipping off the walls added to the effect. |
| This tree just outside the execution chamber (for hangings) was called the "Wailing Tree." According to former prisoners and guards, inmates would grasp the trunk and scream out for one minute before entering the execution chamber to let their friends in the cells know they were about to die. There's another tree just around the corner from here that hasn't grown any larger in 50 years. It's said that this is because of all the troubled souls still lingering around the execution chamber grounds. After hanging, the body was dropped below the floor of the building through a specially designed hatch. There was a door and staircase on the side of the building through which the prison guards would remove the corpse. Just behind the building was a small tunnel that lead to a graveyard. The body was carried through the tunnel secretly and buried. |
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| Yeouido Island and The KLI 63 Building |
| A fifteen minute subway ride from Central Seoul takes you to Yeouido Island, apparently compared by Seoulites with New York's Manhattan. There's not too much to see here, other than a really nice park and some cool buildings. It's also home to Korea's tallest building the KLI 63 building. Actually, it's only 60 stories high, but they count the three sub-ground basement floors to make it sound taller. There's an IMAX theatre, aquarium, observation deck, mall, food court and several offices inside. |
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| So big, in fact, it even has it's own street! |
| King Sejong in Yeouido Park and a very big flagpole. |
| Lots of great architecture and artwork all over the island. |
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| The Seoul War Memorial Museum |
| This huge mausoleum-style building near the US Military base in Yongsan, Seoul is quite a site to behold. You could easily spend an entire day or two just within the museum. It traces Korea's war history from the Three Kinngdoms Period to the Korean War. The outside of the museum is surrounded by 30 or so real-life tanks, missles, and a huge collection of maybe 15 or 20 planes, jet fighters and helicopters. There are also several giganitc statues and memorials. It was a lot to take in. |
| I was overwhelmed by the number of exhibits. There were huge battle scenes that played out with moving models and animatronics before my eyes (unfortunately all in Korean) but interesting nonetheless. They must have had hundreds of uniforms and weapons and examples of war propaganda as well as exhibits of military memorabilia from around the world. The museum is said to house over 13,000 war artifacts; it even has a full sized replica of a Korean Turtle Ship and maybe 10 or 12 small attack aircraft hanging from the ceiling in a huge hall. There was one room, in the center of which was a small pool of water. At a certain time of day, on a certain day of the year, light from the sun passes directly over a small round window in the ceiling and illuminates the room from above; straight out of Indiana Jones. |
| Above, a scene depicting Korea after the war and to the right...bring it on, Kim Jong-Il! |
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| Itaewon |
| By far my least favourite place in the country. Itaewon is home to the US military base in Seoul and attracts a lot of expatriates. The sidewalks are crowded with ajummahs selling fake Gucci and Prada gear and the stores are stuffed with FUBU, Adidas, Nike etc, blasting hip-hop onto the streets. You're attacked from every angle by hordes of gangster military men and skanky looking girls and prostitutes. There's a whole row of "Custom Tailors" and Itaewon is probably the best place to get a cheap custom-made suit in the country. It does have it's charms though as almost anyone you meet will speak English and you can dine at some of the finest American chains this side of the Pacific: Outback Steakhouse, Subway, Burger King or MacDonalds, just to name a few. There's a lot of fun clubs that make you feel like you're in some sort of teenage gangster movie with sets dressed up like Compton. |
| Get a little of the ol' in and out, 24 hours a day! |
| Jennifer and Elzane in Itaewon on my first trip to Seoul. |
| Make your way South down the main strip to Hooker Hill and find back-to-back massage parlors and "Gentlemen's Clubs." At night this area is crawling with prostitutes, hanging around doorways, calling people into the clubs. There's also a lot of MP's around checking military IDs after curfew which is a weird experience. It can be fun when you're tanked and heading to Polly's Kettle, and I've had some good times there, but it really is as far away from Korea as you can get and still be in the country. Unfortunately, it's usually a stop I have to make on any trip to Seoul, to pick up a phone card, some English reading material or Western-style food. |
| Above, Korea's only mosque and to the right, a rare find, traditional Korean charm in Itaewon. |
| Random Photos of Seoul |
| Giselle and Glyn at The World Beer House near Insadong. |
| Flowers for sale in the Gangnam Underground Shopping Centre. |
| A skybridge in the Lotte Hotel, Central Seoul. |
| Huge Aloe plants for sale near the Jongno District. |
| A pretty good example of Konglish at the Jongnowon Motel near Insadong. |
| Candles at the Jogyesa Buddhist Temple, the largest of it's kind, in Seoul. |
| Somebody's gotta be getting free cable, Itaewon. |
| A traditional Korean hanbok for sale in Insadong. |
| A three story traditional restaurant near Yaksu Station in Seoul. |
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| I met a group of travelling artists who were having a show at COEX for the next week. Unfortunately, I didn't have any time to check it out, but I did hang out with them in the common room of the hotel and drink beer late into the night. The pictures above were sketched by a very, very drunk Dr. Suchart Vongthong. He currently lives, works and teaches at a university in Bangkok, Thailand. He had had way too much to drink by the time I met him and I could hardly understand what he was saying most of the time. His friends continued to give him more beer. He was quite a character when I could understand him, but I'm sure he had a few acid flashbacks during our talks as he would suddenly blurt out things like "Airplanes are very fast, I see one," or "Cheese grows faster than trees, you know that, all right, you know that." Here's a link to one of his works, called "Red Fortune." |