“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” – Susan Sontag

March 19-24, 2024

South Korea wasn’t originally on my list of places to visit, but I had almost a week between my tours in Japan and in China, so why not. I may not come this way again. I only had three days to explore so my observations are limited. I choose to stay in Busan rather than Seoul, which is on the south-east coast of Korea, as there seemed to be a lot of historical and cultural sites here. The internet toted the DMZ as the big tourist attraction in Seoul and I had no interest in going there. Though like any large city, I am sure I would have found plenty to do.

I spent one day visiting sites related to the Silla Dynasty – one of the Three Kingdoms, that existed from the first century BC to 935. It was known for its advanced culture, governance, and diplomacy during its rule. One location was a large and beautiful Buddhist compound. During that time, the country was mainly Buddhist, but today 50% don’t follow any religion, 32% are Christian, 16% Buddhist and 2% other. At another, there were these huge burial mounds, reminiscent of the Native American mounds found across the US, but much larger and domed shaped. Inside, one king was laid to rest with gold shoes, crowns, breastplates and other adornments. A casket and chest of objects in a big wooden tomb were put on a carefully constructed area made of rocks, then more rocks covered the crypt and everything was then covered with a big mound of dirt. The Woljeonggyo Bridge was built to connect Wolseong and Namsan during the Silla period. Our guide said, a princess wanted it so she could more easily see her lover/boyfriend. Not a historical fact, me thinks. The bridge was burned down during the next dynasty and rebuilt from the ruins, 1,000 years later.

Another day I went to the sea side. It was a beautiful sunny day and the temperature reached almost 70 degrees. The weather wasn’t the only advertisement for spring, but also the hills covered in daffodils – which I love. I’ve also seen a lot of bushes with bright blossoms that I think are camellias. The blue line park has these cute, little train cars that run along the coast, providing beautiful views of the Sea of Japan, Busan, and the ships that are drawn to this sea port. We did two skywalks – platforms built over the ocean with glass floors. I didn’t find it to be terribly thrilling, but it was fun to watch others as they gathered the courage to step onto the glass. The shrieks and shouts as they looked down to the water some 30 to 50 feet below showed their excitement.

On both days, I visited cultural villages. I’m not exactly sure what the designation means. The first was Yangdong, the ancestral home of the Kim and Soon families for the last 500 years. Though now, only a few elders remain. The village has been preserved and it was interesting to see the homes. The houses are built as a compound or in three sections depending on the size, with one portion for the head of the household, another for the family and a third for the servants. Oftentimes there was a courtyard in the middle with a tree growing in it. Somewhere on the property was the family temple. The temple was painted in bright colors while the homes were wooden and if painted, coated with plain dark colors. The houses were heated by a fireplace attached to a pipe system under the floors. Taking your shoes off when entering the house, not only kept your floor clean, but allowed you to appreciate the heated platform. For 500 year old houses, they looked pretty good, so they must have been well constructed, especially for wooden structures. The roofs traditionally were made from the stalks of the rice they harvested and replaced every year or two, but now many have of them are tile.

It was less clear why the other two areas have the designation of cultural villages. One, was built to house manual laborers near to the city but not too close. It became a slum. Then the government decided it should be an art colony and I guess invested some money into it. Now, it is a tourist site with small shops, some art, cafes and restaurants and a lot of references to the Little Prince in murals and souvenirs. The Koreans love The Petit Prince, just like me. The bright colors and art make it a fun area to walk through-one street is open to tourists. I am not sure it alleviated the poverty in the area. The other was a neighborhood where refuges from the war, between North and South Korea, settled. It’s set on a low cliff overlooking the sea and is called the Santorini of Korea. I think it has a long way to go to live up to the title. It too has cafes and restaurants and a few shops, but not many. The pictures I saw on line were much more fun than the actual site. At several of these sites, young women dressed up in the historical dress of the Silla period. Like Japan, they were very colorful and fun.

Both of my tours were large groups, close to 40 people, with half speaking Chinese and the rest English. The English contingent hailed from many ports – Germany, Romania, Russia, the US and more. The English speaking guides did a good job, though the younger woman was much more fluent. The other people I interacted with in stores and restaurants did not converse much in English. If someone wasn’t nearby to translate, I made do with gestures or hoping to find a word here or there that they recognized. It is amazing really, how much can be accomplished even if you don’t speak the same language.

I stayed in an area called Nambo, near the central business district. The area was filled with Korean BBQ and seafood restaurants, pizza and burger joints and a street filled with high end as well as moderately priced clothing stores. I thought I might update my jeans as my skinny jeans have run their course fashion wise. But after visiting a few shops, I determined it doesn’t make sense for someone of my stature to try to buy clothes in a country where the people are much smaller than you are. I’ll just have to wait until I come home to catch up with the current style. From a park that overlooked the area, I went up in the Skytower for 360 degree views of the city. A saw lot of huge apartment blocks as they squeeze their population of 3.5 million people in between the mountains and the sea. As in many cities I have visited, the grocery store was in the basement of the mall, along with many restaurants. A mall was just a few blocks away, though I had to walk a circuitous route to get there- there were low fences along the road, so you couldn’t get to the other side and crosswalks were only at major intersections, often 6 to 8 blocks apart.

As I’m still detoxing from Japan and I had access to a small cooktop and microwave in my condo, I cooked most of my meals. The first night I went to the grocery store, thanks to the young lady at a nearby French bakery who directed me. To say the least I was a little overwhelmed at the market. Maybe because it was late and I was tired and hungry. I wanted to buy some frozen meals or things I could cook easily but nothing was in English. I spent 20 minutes, I think, going down one long aisle trying to find something with just veggies. Sometimes you could just tell by looking at the package that it was filled with meat, other times it wasn’t as obvious. And my translation app wasn’t helpful. I finally found a clerk and asked if anything was vegetarian and she said no. I am not entirely sure she understood my question. The same thing happened with the soups, although I did eventually find foil packets of potato soup and pumpkin soup, but only after searching several aisles. Finding black beans was just as hard. A very helpful clerk took me to canned kidney beans, then dried black beans and finally a vacuumed sealed pouch of black beans. They were a little weird – not very soft and had a sweet and salty flavor, but I ate them anyhow. After that I just went to the produce section and filled up my cart, the rest of the store was too much to handle.

I did have bimbambop twice for lunch the days I was out on tours- it’s their standard vegetarian meal. Basically, it’s 5 or 6 kinds of veggies in a big bowl with an egg on top. You add in a dish of rice and some hot sauce and mix it all together. Almost like a power bowl. The veggies varied from one day to the next and one was definitely tastier than the other. I think the brown stringy vegetable in one added an unpleasant flavor. A variety of side dishes were served with it, such as edamame, sweet corn, sprouts, seaweed, kimchi, marinated lotus root, and pumpkin salad- think potato salad. I also had ten bread, which is a style of grilled cheese on a stick. It was made in something akin to a waffle iron and shaped like a coin. The dough was a little sweet. There were others similar to it, but stamped with a fish and filled with chocolate, Nutella or red bean paste.

Google maps did not work here. Every time I asked for directions it would only display public transit routes, even if my destination was less than a mile away. So I got a general idea of where I was going before I left the building. I never went far so it worked. And if I didn’t have WiFi access, I was unable to ‘Google’ anything. One day, my tour dropped me off at the end point around 10 pm and it was raining pretty hard. I thought an Uber was just what I needed, but I never could connect to the app, so I walked the 20 minutes back to the condo. A little soaked but otherwise fine. And my ATM card only worked at cash machines in the 7/11’s. I’m not sure why. Luckily, my credit cards worked everywhere. I thought I might have these issues in China but I didn’t expect them in Korea. I’ve written this mostly on my phone due to connectivity issues here in China, so I apologize if there are more errors than usual.

Book List:

Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim

Next stop: China