South Korea 3 May-1 June
- 1 day ago
- 16 min read
Yes, I made the Pilgrimage!!! Me in NERDHEAVEN! I'm the one with gray hair, btw.
I'm sitting in the airport and thinking that babies in Korea must be some of the luckiest babies in the world. I mention this because this country has one of the lowest birth rates of any country, in history (sourced from Thin Air, my AI helper, and it might be completely incorrect). So if they were fortunate enough to be born here, against declining birth rates domestically but with rising 3rd world birth rates, they have cashed in on the worldwide birth lottery. The babies I see are so surrounded by doting parents and cooing aunties and grandpas that it's a little scary - I mean these cute little monsters are going to be spoiled as hell when they get older. But they will definitely be taken care of. Like everything else in this country, the future is solid here.
More writing (a lot of it) below the pictures, in case you are so inclined...
Joseon and the Cool Cats - Who wore it better?????
Travel Pro Tip #427
Busan
Gyeongju / Jeonju
Muju - Taekwondowon
Seoul
Pyeongchang (Home of the 2018 Winter Olympics)
Pyeonchang
Olympic Ski Jump (Not on my Bucket List)
Busan
Our first Korea stop was to the SE coastal city of Busan, the second city of Korea. It was briefly the capital and base of operations during the Korean War and is now a completely modern model city. While the early May weather was still a little cool for a beach swim it was starting to turn warmer and the weather was wonderful. The city is expansive, with lots of beach areas, pedestrian malls and ports snaking along for miles. One of the most eye-catching aspects about the city, and later about the country, at least for me, was that it was so clean. No cigarettes on the ground, no gum stuck to the cement, no dog poop in inconvenient places. Every morning and evening shopkeepers would sweep out the sidewalks and streets and every night the trash crews would pick everything up. There seems to be a sense of shared responsibility among the citizens, at least to my foreign eyes, that drives people to take more responsibility or ownership or maybe it’s just pride, in their surroundings and society. For instance, when many diners finish a meal, they not only return their plates they take care to return and line up the chairs properly under the table. At a baseball game people stood in small lines taking the time to separate their different trashes, which included about six different categories. Little things like that say a lot about a country and its people.
One of the things that also reflects on a country, especially a successful one, is that they invest a lot in infrastructure. Not just the roads and bridges, busses and subways and always the trains!!! But also from everything down the line…the street cleaners, the digital signs at the bus stops that report when the bus will be there, the paid translators at the transportation hubs that help poor lost monolingual Americans find the correct train!
In multiple places during our month in Korea, locals would notice us at an exhibit or a train station, with our camera translator in hand, and ask if we needed help. Sometimes we didn’t need help - we were just enjoying being a bit lost, but it is always amazing getting to connect with a local…some wanted to help foreigners or some to practice their English. Above all, I think, they all wanted to make outsiders feel welcome, and they succeeded. Two experiences stand out during that first week. One day at the beach, while admiring the sand art (see below), a gentleman sidled up next to me and asked if I needed help. We started talking baseball, since one of the exhibits was a recreation of a full baseball game - extremely cool. It was actually far cooler than a real baseball game. He wanted to make sure that I knew some basic Korean and helped me pronounce a few words and then Lyd joined and we talked for a while about Busan and Korean culture. This same guy was a few days later at a bus station and approached us again, randomly, asking if we needed help. This time we were running tight on time so didn’t get to have a long talk, but still loved the care and friendliness he took with us. Another time a tourist assist lady at a train station offered to watch our luggage and then walked us down the street to show us her favorite pork restaurant, where I, of course, over ate. These acts of kindness were not rare in Korea and really helped make our visit wonderful.
The beach near our hotel had this amazing sand art display going on. The tractors piled up tons of sand and then they’d strap big plastic sheet retainers around it to compress everything. Once it was compacted they’d water it down, which I guess makes it more solid and then the artists would do their thing. It’s impressive what you can do with a trowel and some sand. There are a few good pics that show the scale and complexity of these things. I found myself as enthralled watching the artists work as I did with the sculptures themselves. Occasionally they’d step back 20 or so feet with a little clear acrylic palette with their design drawn into it and measure up their work. How do they get into sand art…were they pastry chefs? Architects that failed structural design class?
Korean BBQ
I’ve always heard about Korean BBQ and how wonderful it is and never really bought into it back in the states. I think it was because I wanted someone ELSE to cook my stuff FOR me, not do it myself if I’m spending all the money. Plus, I also told myself that I didn’t like kimchi, which was an absolute lie because now I can’t get enough of it. What I didn’t realize before is just how fun the process is and how great it is for holding conversation with a group of people. There’s always something going on to keep your attention and make you laugh or smile or say “Oh shit - I didn’t mean to fling my meat at that other table…excuse me, can I have my pork belly back?” If you’re not familiar, a Korean BBQ restaurant has a bunch of tables with grills in the center and snaking ventilation systems all over the place, with a shiny copper or stainless steel suction tube coming down right above your grill to keep the smoke at bay. It’s really an interesting system to see - I’ve included a couple of pics for better understanding. As soon as you sit down they give you a menu listing hunks of raw meat types, and it’s frankly a bit confusing until you realize that your friend Thin Air (AI) can give you the Korean to American cut definitions so you know what you’re ordering. As soon as you order, the staff brings you a bowl of burning coals to place in your personal grill and a grill cover (either mesh or the George Foreman metal type) and some grilling utensils - tongs and scissors. And then 6 to 15 different trays, bowls or cups of different items appear, including sauces, spices, lettuces, multiple kimchi’s, vegetables and mystery accompaniments. It’s intriguing tasting all of the ‘weird’ little offerings the first couple of times - you don’t know what might make your face pucker or your lips melt or be just about the best thing you’ve ever tasted. And finally they bring the meat that you ordered, laid up on a wooden tray or draping from an elaborate rack if you bought the BIG PREMIUM package.
The first few times were a little intimidating so we watched some locals a bit to get the hang of it. Some places will cook for you but I think we enjoyed the DIY process a little better because we knew our preferred doneness levels. Plus, it's just fun to do! First, you throw the long cooking items on the grill, like garlic and onions and wait for them to accidentally fall through the grill so you have to ask for more. Then, when those replacements are looking good, you start adding on the meats, pork first as it takes longer and then the beef. There is another form of BBQ called Dakgalbi, for chicken, that is basically the same process, but I don’t remember seeing the three meats together at the same restaurant. As the meat is cooking, you take the scissors and cut it into smaller pieces, making it easier to eat with your chopsticks, and throw it back on the grill. This whole time you’re busy eating random pieces of lettuce or kimchi or testing how hot the varied sauces might be and toasting (frequently) your wonderful Korean beer and waiting for the meat to finish. Once it’s done, you start making little lettuce tacos out of everything and then you’re ready. I use the slow bite option but we noticed some locals stuffing the entire taco into their mouth. I tried it once but got more on my bib - it wasn’t graceful. And that’s Korean BBQ. I’ve never been a huge meat eater but I know I ate more meat in one month in Korea than I have in the past 16 months of this trip combined! We talked about, if we ever have our own house to remodel again, setting up a little Korean style BBQ area for communal dinners - what a wonderful dinner party environment that would be.
A note on Spa culture - it’s a thing here and a really cool thing. We went to this spa that looked like a mini-mall. It was co-ed but with separate areas for nekkid hot tubbing for men and women. Not sure I like that part as much. I try to be sensitive to other guys and my Van Damme like physique tends to make them uncomfortable, so I prefer to keep my clothes on…actually, I am just a complete prude with a Les Nessman physique and my rear is blindingly white, so it’s a bit embarrassing. The spa had about thirty different rooms with varying types of sauna, steam, sound, no-sound, starry night, SEV, Body Sound (!?!?), Roman rooms, Finnish spas, Danish spas, Turkish spas - you name it, they had it. Each room would fit 10 to 30 people and you’d just wander about trying each one. It was cute as there were young couples and old couples, local families and tourists, all wandering around with the spa uniform and a custom wrapped towel around their head that looked like a Princess Leia hat. There was a coffee shop, a cafeteria with walls of instant ramen, a room with 50 or so massage chairs, a room full of hammocks, a real massage room, a foot pool with little foot cleaning fishes, a juice bar and even a barber that knew how to shave. For me this was awesome as I learned that Korean men don’t grow facial hair and it’s ‘almost’ impossible to find a hair salon that can give a shave. If you are in Korea, I suggest trying one at least once - it was around $15 USD for a 4-hour window. Just don’t look down in the hot tub area - eyes forward always.
We loved Busan and the wonderful little single car trains and cable cars and cool beach vibe and weren’t really ready to leave after the week was up. It reminded me a bit of Durban, SA - that 2nd/3rd city feel that sets it apart from the big city…that it’s more laid back and on its own path. It was still Korea, with the black suit-white shirt-black tie sensibilities but just seemed like an easy city to approach and spend some time in. And it’s one of the cleanest cities I’ve ever been in.
So we’re trying to get out of Busan on a bus or a train, anything with four wheels, whatever, on the way to Geyongju and Google maps was giving us 14 different ways to get there and it seemed that all of them were confusing as hell. It turns out that, while you can use normal US based mapping programs in Korea you can’t get detailed directions on them. They would often have the train and bus schedules available, but getting driving or walking directions is impossible - the little directional line for trains wouldn’t show routes but instead was just a curvy red parabola floating on top of the city. And it wouldn’t offer any directions for walking or driving. It’s to do with govt rulings on outside mapping agencies giving sensitive geospatial info away - the war is still real here and that crazy neighbor to the north is always watching, I guess. If you go to Korea, download one of their local mapping apps for better details.
Gyeongju / Jeonju
Next stops were to Gyeongju and then Jeonju, two mid-sized ancient cities that were instrumental in the last Korean dynasty (Joseon). Both cities have maintained their heritage sites beautifully and deserve to be Unesco cities. Gyeongju had a beautiful temple and an amazing museum facility that are both worth the trip. I would add to my earlier comments about successful countries in that the smartest tend to manage and display their history and heritage well. Korea’s museums, from an architectural standpoint, are on par with any I’ve seen around the world. While they don’t have the classic fine art collections of a major museum, they punch above their weight in sheer beauty and coolness of their museum facilities. They really make the experience fun, through VR presentations, electronic displays and simply beautiful displays and buildings. Jeonju had a superb museum system showcasing their ancient burial mounds and royal palaces. Their small Modern Art museum, although I didn’t love the collection (not always a modern art fan) was simply a beautiful and clean facility it was worth the hour long visit. Jeonju is also notable for it’s historic village areas that have maintained much of their original structure. The traditional buildings, with their pagoda roofs made of beautiful black ceramic tiles have been wonderfully restored and maintained. While the villages are picturesque and picture worthy, many of the areas have been overrun with carnival gamers and Instagrammers dressed up in period costumes looking for that perfect shot, which is unfortunate, as they mostly hog the views and don’t actually look at the scenery, just their mirrors and make-up.
Nerdville (Taekwondowon)
I’m on my second bus this morning to get to the town of Muju and Taekwondowon, along with Kukkiwon in Seoul, the Mecca of Taekwondo. If you’re not a dork or weren’t bullied a long time ago, TKD is a martial art that uses odd punches and flailing hands and flying kicks and weird yells that are meant to beat back your aggressor by shocking them into laughing fits. Sort of like Jazzercise but with cooler uniforms. The bus is driving through the countryside and it looks just like middle America, except the signs are in Korean and the wheat fields are replaced by rice fields. This is my first solo venture in over a year and a half, which is odd since we’re full-time venturers now. I’m taking a two day trip from our temporary base in Jeonju to go visit the world Taekwondo museum and Demo Team training grounds. It was developed years ago when TKD was first introduced as an Olympic sport. My close friend and long time training partner and teacher, Master Roland Murdock, came here years ago with our organization and said it was his favorite part of the trip to Korea, but then he broke some ribs and didn’t have much fun after that.
In addition to the excitement, I’ve been nervous about this. This is sort of like going to Wembley or Camp Nou if you’re a soccer fan...this is where all the greats go to train. I’m nervous because I really want to train and throw a few punches and kicks but my old ass body might not allow that at this point in our trip. I haven’t kicked since we left America, except in a few pools here and there, so I’m really terrified of having an old guy injury. I won’t be stupid enough to spar the kids…old age has given me at least a bit of wisdom, but it would be fun to hit a bag once or twice! Also I’m nervous because I’ve been practicing for a lot of years and have been able to progress through the ranks…in America. They do things a bit differently over here so I’m a bit nervous that I'll be snickered at.
The facility is amazing - akin to a US University football program, really. There is a modern new arena dedicated to competitions that seats 5K people and holds a huge theater where the demo teams perform daily. The museum displays 75 years of TKD memorabilia and VR displays and some truly awesome bits of martial arts history. There is even a state of the art library with thousands of martial arts books. In addition to a hotel the facility also has a funicular that takes you to a mountain lookout. I remember the founder of our organization in the US explaining that he moved the headquarters to Arkansas because it reminded him of his home in Korea, and could see why. The surrounding countryside of the Korean hills was beautiful.
I didn't get to train with the demo team but I did get to see two of their performances. Holy hell these kids are amazing. The precision and acrobatics they manage is stunning - it's also scary to think what their knees and backs are going to be feeling when they are my age, but oh, to be able to jump and kick like that....(written with a LOT of jealousy)! The tricks and breaks they are working on defy my feeble comprehension - think of jumping 15 feet in the air and doing three rotations and THEN breaking a board!
Seoul
Seoul is one of the great cities we've visited along the way. It has everything, cutting edge tech, modern everything but sitting next to a beautiful mountain range with tons of green space and parks throughout the city. If I had it over to do again, I'd turn it into multiple trips, changing areas every few days to get feels of different parts of this huge city. The highlight for me was in the center of the city, with Mt. Namsan and the iconic M Tower, visible from nearly all parts of the city. I hiked it a couple times, along with thousands of other people (many drove or took the cable car up) and the views from the top are wonderful.
One of the things we get asked a bunch is healthcare. What do we plan to do without "Western" insurance or medical professionals? The answer is always easy, as the rest of the world has similar, if not better, healthcare than we were used to, except when Dr. Devy was involved. You can't get better healthcare than our landlord. While the doctors are similar, the bureaucracy and costs are minimal compared with the US system. Case in point, wife had a frozen shoulder for the last month or so so she went to see a doctor in Seoul. She went in a day after making the reservation and they performed a consult, x-rays, multiple injections, treatment, medicines and PT sessions (all in the same two hour original appt) for less than $200 USD. She was able to go back for PT twice more in the week, all for less than a few hundred bucks total! And now the shoulder is working again...so she can carry her own luggage - it's a WIN for Chris!!!
I'm not the biggest baseball fan. The joke/truth was always that when we moved to St. Louis, Lyd had to explain the rules to me. But if you ever want to see baseball at its finest, go to a pro game in Korea. Not sure what other cities are like but it's amazing in Seoul. They have cheerleaders and cheering sections and great food and people separate their trash. Oh, and Doritoes, also. The action from the cheering section is literally non-stop - they don't stop at all for 9 innings. And then when the game is over, both teams line up on the base lines and bow to their fans - completely classy. Even better, good seats were only around $25 USD each, so it's really affordable.
I've been fascinated with the DMZ forever. The line that still separates two warring countries for the better part of the last 75 years, just 60 miles from Seoul, was a daytrip I looked forward to. Unfortunately, some dumbass American a few years ago decided to run across the border, causing an international incident, so now we can't even take pictures of the North Korean side of the border. But the hillside viewing platform offered a lot of "spy-scopes" so we could watch the North Korean farmers, like dots in the horizon, wandering around their rice field in a group, carrying a flag. Riveting stuff. But it did put a face on the struggle that has divided the two countries for so long. We also got to go down a long tunnel that the South built to say "hello" to one of the the tunnels that the North had built back in the 70's in preparation for an invasion. It was a cool story but was really just a long walk down a deep tunnel that resulted in a couple of bonked heads against low ceilings and sore calves the next day.
Wife and I discussed this a lot during our visit, but I feel that the Koreans are some of the most fit people on the planet, or at least in the parts that we have seen so far. I suspect this is due, in part, to the fact that there is required military service for all men in the country, leading to at least 18 months of time preparing the body for potential conflict. They are also some of the prettiest people I have seen, but this leads to my biggest, and possibly only, gripe with the country. And this is just Chris' uneducated view from the tourist seat, so grain of salt time, but I haven't ever seen a country full of so much vanity. We were constantly amazed at the amount of people fully engaged in their phone cameras, in window reflections in mirrors, in anything reflective, constantly primping and posing and checking themselves out. It got annoying often as people were more more engaged with their reflections than they were with their walking along a street, often walking into you on the sidewalk as they primped and preened. Women spent more time looking at themselves and performing makeup triage at a restaurant table than they did talking with their companions. After a point it simply became comical and then sad to watch. I suspect this is why you find more dermatologists and reconstructive surgery facilities than anywhere in the world. Like hair transplants in Turkey, I guess, if you need vanity reconstructive work done or some cutting edge moisturizer, you should come to Seoul.
Pyeongchang
The final few days of the trip were spent in Peyongchang, (the home of the 2018 Winter Olympics), because we really needed a vacation from city life - haha!!! Located about an hour fast train from Seoul, it's a local ski resort about the elevation of Denver. It was a beautiful region and gave us some great hiking opportunities and let us see some of the Olympic facilities up close. Most fascinating to me was the ski jump. There's NO way in hell you could ever get me to try that. It combines three of my greatest fears - heights, skiing and death. And it's done in the snow. The only thing I like that is cold is Ice Cream. I wonder what happens to a person that makes them say "I think I'd like to slide down a really tall ramp on a mountain in the cold and hurtle off it" ??? Look Ice Icarus, you're nuts!!! Aside from cave rescuers and astronauts and grade school bus drivers these have to be the bravest/craziest people in the world. Anyway, standing (only standing) on top of the ski jump, with 30 MPH winds, is exhilarating. Beautiful but really scary!
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