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Seoul, South Korea
And out along the towers there were guards with heavy arms, I guess there was some tension with the neighbors
This was my first time in Seoul, so before I left, I researched, read, watched YouTube videos and asked friends about things to see in Seoul, even though I already knew going in that there was just no way I would be able to see everything with the time I had. One of the top sights, perhaps even the very top sight, recommended by (almost) everyone to see in Seoul was not in Seoul at all. They (almost) all recommended a guided tour to the DMZ, the demilitarized zone at the North Korea border. It turns out that there are many different things to see there, but after catching up on all things DMZ, the only thing that really interested me was the JSA. That’s the Joint Security Area where both North and South Korea come together literally face to face. A lot of tours visit the DMZ, but not that many visit the JSA, so (initially at least) booking it became a priority. I regularly checked sites for upcoming availability (tickets were to be released “soon”), and even changed my browser’s home page to one of the tour’s ticketing pages. Unfortunately (or, perhaps fortunately, more on that later), about a month and a half before my trip, an American soldier took the same JSA tour and used that opportunity to run into North Korea in an ill guided attempt to defect, and suddenly new restrictions on all JSA tours caused all future tickets to be put on hold.
Initially I was disappointed, but this hold gave me time to think. I had limited time (as always), and did I really want to spend all day on a bus to see the JSA? The answer went from “damn straight I do” to “probably” to “I’m sure I’ll be back in South Korea at some point, and considering the trajectory of North Korean politics, that DMZ isn’t going anywhere.” The biggest factor was that the more I read and researched and watched about Seoul, the more things I wanted to do in the city, and the less time I wanted to burn up outside the city on any type of tour bus. I soon changed my browser’s home page back to something non JSA related, confident that skipping the tour was the right decision, Hell, it probably would have been damn near impossible to get the tickets on Chuseok anyway, if they were even running them then.
So instead of seeing pictures of (probably) angry North Korean soldiers at the current border, we’re going to instead see pictures of (probably) much happier South Koreans at the Seoul City Wall, which was (probably) effective when built but today does nothing more than look pretty in the middle of the city.
If the previous page was all about contemporary architecture in Seoul (and it kind of was), then this page is all about the deep history there. We’ll continue in that vein with a visit to Gyeongbokgung Palace, right in the heart of the city. Normally at Gyeongbokgung Palace, you can enter for free if you get dressed up in hanbok, a traditional Korean outfit. But since it was a holiday, all those people dressed up in hanboks for nothing because it was free for everyone, hanbok or no hanbok.
Up in the hills within walking distance of Gyeongbokgung is the Bukchon Hanok Village, an absolutely beautiful neighborhood of traditionally designed Korean homes where, and I’m not sure I can emphasize this enough, people actually live. How they do this remains a mystery, it would be somewhat analogous to living in a storefront in Main Street USA at Walt Disney World, with massive, annoying crowds of people (like me) standing in front of your house taking selfies at all times.
The Seoul slideshow rolls on after this quick stopover at my hotel in Dongdaemun, where the sunset view from my generous balcony looks right at Nansam Mountain where, before you know it, we’ll be visiting that little tower on top.
I’m sure it’s always busy, but on a national holiday weekend, visiting the N Tower on Namsan Mountain was an exercise in patience. First from the hotel it was a quick subway ride to the Myeongdong station, and then a totally out of the way walking route (thanks Naver Maps!) to a funicular. After realizing the slow moving line would add hours to my trip, I skipped the funicular, walked up to the cable car station and waited in very long line for a very long time until I eventually got to the summit. The observation tower was thankfully not quite as busy, and the spectacular, impossible to beat 360 degree views of the city from such a central location seemed worth all the trouble.
Instead of using the second part of my round trip ticket to take the cable car back down to Myeongdong, I decided instead to walk down the mountain’s south side, despite knowing how sketchy Naver Maps’ walking directions had proven time and time and time again. Naver Maps continued that tradition by sending me down a hiking trail, causing me to miss a lot of turns since a lot of the trails and intersections weren’t marked on the maps, but, eventually getting me there as I cursed them just about all of the way down.
Waiting for me at the bottom of that trail was Leeum (or Lemur as autocorrect keeps trying to call it), the Samsung Museum of Art, a terrific museum and building and a great reward for all those missed Naver Maps turns on the way down. The museum has buildings designed by Mario Botta, Rem Koolhaas and Jean Nouvel, with some top notch art, a fun Olafur installation inside and some terrific (and shiny) Anish Kapoor pieces out front.
We’re continuing with our museum tour by stopping at the MMCA, the National Korean Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. While it certainly wasn’t Leeum, it was still a good building with a good collection, not much more to say. And like Leeum, it was also free for the holidays.
I bounced around a lot on subways in Seoul, which are easy to use once you’ve taken one or two, although the instructional videos they play in the cars of CGI disasters featuring frightened passengers and a mascot with a sideways subway car for a head can be… distracting… at times. It’s a good thing that Seoul has a good subway system because the place is huge- population wise it’s bigger than Mexico City, land wise it’s about the size of New York if you take out Staten Island (sorry, Staten Island). The subway took me everywhere and even took me on some long rides like the one to here, the Lotte World Tower, the tallest building in Korea and sixth tallest building in the world.
I planned on going in the morning on Chuseok but there was a haze all morning where you could barely see a few blocks away, this finally burned off by midday. When I finally got to the tower by 4pm, I found all of those people who were hiding from me all day. The line to get up the tower took over two hours, but once you got up there the view was pretty nice. And I actually somehow inadvertently timed the wait just right- I got up to the observation deck level by sunset, which explains these pictures.
I was not in Seoul long enough, though I rarely ever am regardless of where I go. I travel with a philosophy that it’s better to visit somewhere, see what you can, and plan on returning to see even more one day in the future. It’s always better to want to return somewhere than feeling like you’ve exhausted a place and never need to go back.
These last pictures are chronologically logical (an unnecessary rarity in this slideshow), taken on my last night ahead of another travel day. To end things right, I took another long subway ride and headed all the way to Banpo Hanang Park and the banks of the Han River. Seoul runs a light show with water jets off a bridge, which are (kind of) synced with Korean pop songs, or, as they’re called in Seoul, pop songs. It felt like the entire city was there on the Sunday night of Chuseok weekend with me, so it was easy to say goodbye to everyone before I headed off to my next destination.
