Seoul

Seoul might be just another Asian city, with bright lights and shopping streets and bobbing, shiny black hair-cuts, but it also has markets, street food, and city smells that give it a bit grittier feel. My 4-day weekend whirlwind trip was a perfect sampling of what Seoul had to offer, leaving me satisfied but not opposed to a return venture.

Lindsey (Luther College grad!) and I took the bus from the airport into downtown. I always love that trip from the outskirts to the heart of the city, even though I know I shouldn’t. I’m never dressed for the weather, my teeth are usually fuzzy,  my bags and I are often wedged into uncomfortable positions….and I inevitably have to pee.

But it’s a good introduction to a place to watch the scenery shift and change, to glimpse areas for exploration, and take in the fact that you are now on an adventure in a new place.

This ride was no exception, as we wove through busy streets and crossed a wide river, mountains jutting up from apartment blocks.

We jumped off at what happened to be the perfect stop at the head of ‘our’ street: Insadong-il, a pedestrian street thronging with Saturday strollers taking in the shops, art galleries, cafes, and street snacks… seranaded by street performers, of course.

After checking into our cheap-and-clean-but-nothing-fancy hotel, it was off for temple and palace explorations. Jongmyo  shrine was shady and pleasant, with paths of stone and tile-roofed buildings scattered about.  The sound of loud chanting led us to the large, open courtyard in front of one of the main buildings.  The long hall, shuttered behind red doors, houses spirit tablets believed to be the resting place for the spirits of the departed. Today, the courtyard was the setting for a re-enactment of a royal wedding, which entailed much chanting, bowing, uncomfortable-looking dresses, and a brightly dressed honor guard standing at attention. A mysterious female voice explained the goings-on in several languages, as shutterbugs clicked and dragonflies flit about through the sunshine. 

Destination #2 was Changgeong-yung palace, which has been rebuilt on a much smaller scale than the massive original, but gets the idea across with large open courtyards surrounded by covered porticoes, and various residences and temples, all sporting colorful designs in blue and green above the now-familiar rusty-red wood.  After a quick spin through the gardens we headed to an exit… to yet another palace! They feel rather desolate now, but back when they were populated with royalty I suppose the open spaces were filled with ladies strolling, servants bustling, scholars thinking…

Back in Insadong we discovered a 3-story mecca of kitsch and cute, with a place to sit on the rooftop and watch people stream by, where wooden hearts hung with messages of love and two giraffes grazed on the sky.

Dinner that night was delicious – after meeting up with Luther grad #3, (Anne, just finishing up her student-teaching) we had a feast – a giant spring onion pancake, spicy tofu soup, grilled pork, bimimbap in a sizzling stone bowl, and (my favorite feature of korean food) an assortment of side dishes – spicy kimchee and small mounds of vegetables in various stages of pickling. 

Day #2 I got up early and headed on a little solo adventure to Ingwansang, a sacred mountain in the heart of the city, a holy place for Buddhists as well as Shamanists. It was early on a Sunday, so things were barely stirring as I hiked up the road from the station and passed some colorful shrines and a scattering of homes before coming across the Seon-bawi, a sacred rock that (with a bit of imagination) looks likes two hooded monks. A woman next to me prostrated three times in succession on her small mat, as a voice began chanting as if from nowhere. Inrigued, I looked behind the wall to see a Shamanist women seated on the ground, chanting as she followed along from a book, her voice rising and falling. 

I continued up the mountain, wandering past multiple places that were clearly for these same sort of ritual – flat and swept clean, tucked into corners and down small trails.

There are several fascinating rock formations on the mountain, and combined with the ever-expanding views of the city, it was an interesting climb. The final stretch was along the old (but now re-built) city wall, and my climbing was rewarded with views of the city stretching away to the horizon, the river shimmering and the beige high-rises in stark contrast to green hills.

I didn’t dawdle on my way down, because it was time for the DMZ tour!

We met up with Timmy and Karl, also in town from ASIJ, and the rest of our tour group, heading north along the river for a mere 40 minutes before stopping to check in at the checkpoint. It was bizarre, here just minutes from the miliary zone, to encounter an amusement park in full weekend swing, kids screaming delightedly and kites flying in the breeze. We loaded up with other groups into our ‘official, military-approved’ bus, which was a decked-out coach bus that was the complete opposite of the bare-bones prisoner bus I was expecting, and passed into the South Korean Military Zone.  We saw lots of signs warning of land mines, the 3^rd Infiltration Tunnel (discovered before it could be used to actually infiltrate), a birds-eye view of the actual DMZ and North Korea (complete with propoganda villages on both sides of the 38^th parallel, sporting flagpoles that defy the imagination in an effort to be the tallest), and a train station with tracks to nowhere (built when things were looking up and people thought they would need to get to Pyeongyang.).

It was an interesting tour and eye-opening to realize that distrust is still so prevalent and tensions still high.  (It also made me wonder if north-korean tourists were looking at us through their high-power binoculars.)

Day#3,  Lindsey and I headed south to Suwang, an ancient walled city that is now a modern city surrounded by a new version of the wall. The bus droppped us in a massive roundabout, with cars and exhaust and shops and people…and then we walked one block away and calm enveloped us, the back streets populated by a few bicycles and retired men sitting in the park, and the wall climbing the ridge in front of us.  It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed walking up and along the fortress wall, stopping at guard-posts along the way to admire the view, before descending back into the rush of modern life, checking out some markets and a lovely canal before heading back into Seoul.

 We caught the sun-set from N. Seoul Tower, perched high upon a hill overlooking the city, before heading down into Nandaemun market, whose myriad buildings we barely scratched the surface of, opting for  a wander through the outdoor stalls, and a spring-onion pancake eaten perched on plastic stools, watching seafood cooked in a beautiful mess of hissing steam and sauces before being served up alongside cold beer pulled from the cooler. 

The last day was spent with some more wanderings: through markets and temples and hill-top neighborhoods, soaking up what we could before heading to the airport. 

Want to see all the pictures? Click here!