Seoul, South Korea, May 20-May 27, 2024

Regrettably, we bought our plane ticket from Hiroshima to Seoul before we knew that we could have taken a ferry from the Nagasaki area (Fukuoka) to Busan in South Korea - Sigh, it would have been fun to see the sea and then to go overland from the southern edge of Korea up to Seoul. Another time; this time, we took the short flight from Hiroshima to Seoul. Very easy. Mostly. The immigration folks for South Korea are not joking around but they let us in, slowly and one by one (we had a similar experience getting into Panama, places that have a more intense border have matching, serious-government agents).

Easy train ride to Seoul and we made it to our little apartment which was… a somewhat big step down from our living situations in Japan.. I spent a lot of time looking for a place in Seoul and this place was on the cheaper end (but not cheap, still more than $150 a night). Ah, getting to the apartment reminded me we are not in the special place that is Japan anymore, just not as clean and tidy and dense yet serene (our neighborhood in Seoul was dense and busy!). We did have a pretty nice park nearby AND Alex had successfully carried the beloved and valued Nintendo switch video came across a border on an airplane with no damage, so the kids were excited about that! We also settled into just the vastness of Seoul; every time we looked at the map and considered a multi-site day we always checked if we could walk between two neighborhoods; heck no; Seoul is so big, we had to take trains to and between everywhere we visited. We had two tours lined up (dinner and baseball game with a Seoul local and tour of demilitarized zone [DMZ]) and were ready to switch our focus to Korean history!

Posing on this great subway train; no doors or anything between cars so you get this great view a looooong way to the end of the train.

Seoul Bears baseball game. There are about a dozen professional baseball teams in South Korea, interestingly, all closely associated with the company that sponsors the team. So, there’re the LG Twins, Samsung Lions, Kia Tigers, etc. One of the three teams in Seoul is called the Doosan Bears; we joined an Airbnb tour to see their game and enjoy some dinner. We met the guide near the stadium with 6 others (a couple from Australia and four solos travelers from Colorado, Wales, Germany, and New Zealand) and headed off to a grill it yourself place. Our guide made us all food; I was happy that Alex.and Luke embraced the build-your-lettuce-cup array and it was very fun to chat with other travelers in this environment. We learned that the CO woman biked up the east coast of Taiwan (sounds.. fun… but we were not going to do that.. :) and that the Welsh woman comes to Seoul every year to see friends and parties from Wed to Sunday until 4am each night, ha! Onward to the baseball game! Our guide mentioned some of the players on the Bears and noted that his favorite player was a very good hitter and a very handsome man - Ha, this was the first of several instances where we’d hear guides comment on male beauty in the country which I found very refreshing, especially because Korean beauty products are so popular these days, I was expecting much more focus on female beauty. This game included ~5 cheerleaders (dancing girls) + dudes on microphones leading cheers but was otherwise very much like the game we went to in Japan. Very fun, the Bears won and everyone was happy.

Enjoying grilled food in Seoul.

I had to take of photo of this GENIUS fried chicken+beer contraption; the chicken sits atop the beer with a straw poking through so you can one-handedly bite your chicken and slurp your beer!

Bear win!

DMZ tour. We kept the “fun” going by next going on a DMZ tour. To prepare for the visit, we watched a Kahn Academy short lecture on the Korean War and an interesting video secretly filmed by two Europeans in Pyongyang. So, we all knew the basics (after WWII in Japan ended, the USSR and US agreed to occupy Japan’s former colonies including Korea and they decided to meet up at the 38th parallel [USSR soldiers coming overland from China and US coming north from Japan]; USSR got to the 38th parallel first and, the US was surprised they kept their word; they stopped and waited for the US soldiers to meet there. They allowed new rulers in the North and the South to get into place, thinking the split would be temporary. USSR backed Kim Ill Sung and the US, Syngman Rhee. In 1950, Kim convinced Stalin to allow him to invade South Korea to unify the country. Mao went along with it and in an early morning attack, the North invaded and overwhelmed Seoul; within a few weeks, the well-armed military had swept through much of South Korea. Gen. Douglas MacArthur led American troops to the southeast corner of South Korea, called Busan and the US and South Korean soldiers took the fight up the coast, recaptured Seoul, pushed north and captured Pyongyang and kept going north. Fearing American soldiers appearing to wish to invade China, China got involved and pushed the Americans back to Seoul. After 3 years of war and more than 2.5 million dead, the Armistice agreement was signed and the 38th parallel remains the dividing line.

So! Back to the tour: we met dozens of other people staring at their smartphones as tour busses lined up; we were one of the last visitors to get called; I inwardly sighed in relief as we got on the bus (it’s always stressful to buy multi-hundred dollar tours and to make sure you make it on the right vehicle!). We started the +50 km drive to the border with North Korea. It was amazing to leave the giant metropolis, drive for less than an hour listening to our very enthusiastic guide, Kelly, provide a constant stream of information (“Who knows the company Hyundai? Ok, Hyundai is a South Korean company. Who knows that in 1998 the founder of Hyundai herded 1,001 cows across the DMZ as a gift to North Korean ranchers! Can you imagine 1,001 cows on this highway? He did it as repayment for his father’s cow which he took from the North to the South in 1950 when he fled to the South to start his great company!”). Great information, but what was so striking was how close the giant city is to the DMZ; an hour’s drive away from the largest standing army on the planet. Oh, and did I mention a highlight of the tour is walking down into tunnels that the North built to invade the South that were discovered in the late 1970s? The small distance in space between these adversaries/brothers is very striking.

As we proceeded into the DMZ, a soldier boarded the bus to check our passports while our guide mentioned that all males must serve 18 months service in South Korea (she said in the North all men must serve 10 years and all women must serve 7 years in the military). As our solider checked passports, she mentioned most soldiers are young and some are as handsome as this man, haha, so handsome! She later mentioned the special requirements that South Korean soldiers must meet in order to be assigned to the highly-visible location inside the DMZ, where South and North soldiers stand next to each other and where the two countries leaders can meet [last such meeting was in 2018] - they are: be very tall and be very handsome so that the North Koreas can see, we are taller and better looking! Ha, we decided our guide really would be happy with a South Korean soldier boyfriend.

Other mind-blowing parts of the tour included: Standing on the viewing platform that overlooks the North and South villages located in the DMZ (both countries erected flagpoles and jockeyed a bit for whose flag would fly taller; the North erected what were were told was the tallest flagpole in the world. The South were content with their regular sized flagpole. Also, heading deep (about 250 feet underground) into one of the tunnels that the North had dug for a potential invasion; very creepy; the South have discovered 4 such tunnels but the North Korean defector who alerted the government to their existence said there are likely several more that have not been found yet. No pictures allowed in the tunnels but a very memorable walk down and back up. And finally, the strange mixture of enthusiasm and fun-trip vibe (complete with colorful DMZ-photo taking location) in a place that is visibly under threat.

Alex and Luke and the rest of the group listening to our guide describe different areas of the DMZ commemorating the families separated during the war. She mentioned that South Korean TV ran programs for months where kids separated from parents and grandparents would come on the show and describe how they got lost, with many kids reunited with family through the programming (many were not

Because all the tour busses are assigned different times to visit the DMZ lookout and tunnels, the tour companies have this killing time short hike to a small waterfall..

.. and to a long suspension bridge that really wiggles when you walk on it, suspended high above the canyon.

Looking down on the suspension bridge we had just walked on.

Goofiness on the hiking trail.

Looking to North Korea.

.. How it looked, sort of, through the sighting binoculars. You can make out the

very tall North Korean flag.

DMZ and North Korea behind us.

We skipped waiting in line to pose with the DMZ letters and just YMCA'ed it.

Seoul National Museum of Korea. This museum was very enjoyable. Granted, I am generally impressed and enjoy museums in BIG and interesting buildings like this one; just walking up to it makes my mind sort of salivate, like a juicy piece of chicken is on the grill. The museum took us through Korean history from early human civilizations through its current democracy and included a very cool modern times room with headphones and videos highlighting Korean-cultural spread worldwide and the "K-" branding (K-pop, K-drama, K-beauty, etc).

Katie and Luke as we approached the museum.

.. and the view back down to the first level.

Luke and Alex inside.

…And me taking a picture of Scott taking a picture of Katie with a celadon glazed pottery piece (the kids had just read a book about a Korean man and boy making beautiful celadon pottery, called A Single Shard).

Changdeokgung Palace and Secret Garden were built during the Josen dynasty in the 1300s and in use for hundreds of years and then restored beginning in the 1990s. We wandered around the palace grounds which were a bit interesting but didn’t have a lot of info so the site was a bit hard to interpret. What was most enjoyable though was the tour of the garden; you must buy a guided tour of the garden and the guide was very good, considering she had a group of like 100 people to herd around a big garden. Best of all, we all entered the gate of eternal youth so our longevity is fully protected!

At the gate to Changdeokgung Palace.

Walking with our group, the girls on the right are wearing traditional hanbok dresses

which allows the wearer to enter Seoul palaces for free. Such a double plus, they get in free and get great pictures while other visitors enjoy walking around historic buildings with people in traditional dress nearby!

In the secret garden.

Walking through the Gate of Eternal Youth.

Front of the palace.

Korean War Memorial. The Korean War Memorial and museum was very interesting. The building is surrounded by flags from all of the countries that helped South Korea in the war and notes how may people from each country fought (and died or were injured) or how many medical workers came to help. It’s like a giant “thank you, please help again if needed” to other nations. Inside, the building includes in depth information on how the 3+ year war was waged.

Alex in front of the Korean War Memorial; you can just see the flags of nations who assisted South Korea on one side of the plaza.

All things “K”. During one visit to a museum, there was one installation on how South Korea has branded their exports as “K-“ very effectively, K-pop of course is the most famous but we also read about K-beauty, K-drama, K-fashion, etc.

Wall with the handprints of famous K-pop singers.

Fun art piece nearby commemorating the a G20 summit in Seoul.

Giant screen nearby.

Yes, we showed the children the Gangnam Style video during this trip.

Another pose. Also, I loved the building behind them. It’s called the Tangent and, you can’t quite see it, but there is the an architectural feature (ok, a big line!) that just touches the circle and it.. is… a.. tangent!

Every single Olive Young I went into was very crowded which I suppose was not strange for a popular and economical K-beauty store. I can tell you all about the face masks, feet “masks”, anti-wrinkle tape, and other serums I purchased, but that would be weird.

In this mall, THIS was the first two-level escalator I had ever ridden and I just found it amazing :)

Lovely garden in the big city, on the way to the Korea Folk Museum.

At the Folk Museum and no, you cannot walk up the faux-temple stairs.

Super-fun random encounter: While we were hitting up sights on our last full day in Seoul, we came upon this “contest”. Participants must “do nothing” on these yoga mats. No looking at electronics, books, sleeping, singing, or doing anything to entertain oneself. The contest is to do nothing (meditate and marinate with one’s thoughts).