Seoul Kiss (Good-bye)

This could be a street scene along Sambong-ro.
Hard to tell for sure as street-naming in Seoul does not follow American street-naming conventions,
as streets change names at intersections and side streets perpendicular to the main street get the sane name as the main street.

Last half-day in Seoul.  And I got to say:  what a great city.  I wish I had spent more time here than one full and two partial days I scheduled.  I didn't know.  Why didn't somebody tell me?

This is a series of random observations on my way out of town.  First of all, the cleanliness.

Seoul is a very clean city.  There is no litter anywhere.  But just try and find a trash can.  How does a city stay so clean when there are like, two trash cans total on the streets of a city of several million.  Las Vegas does not have nearly enough trash cans and we pay the price in litter everywhere.  Not Seoul. 

Second observation.  This is fast food in Seoul:

Street food.  I hardly saw any fast food.  There was a Burger King near my hotel.

Home of the whopper, you say?  Not just any Whopper.  This one is Home of the Bulgogi Whopper.  I had to try one.  The city does have all the international coffee chains (Starbucks, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf), and the donut franchises (Dunkin, Krispy Kreme), but I did not see a McDonald's or a Wendy's or any of the bland pizza chains.  I did see a Tim Horton's.  And a Jimmy John's.  But this is not a fast food town.

I did wander over to Gwanghwamun to pay a last visit to King Sejong:

But there was a political demonstration of some sort happening:

Lots of South Korean and U.S. flags being waved.  But amplified voices that sounded really really angry, which is rarely a good scene.  The crowd even held placards with an English language slogan familiar to many of us:  Stop the Steal.  I am guessing had to do with recent events whereby the South Korean president declared martial law and then was impeached by the legislature, unanimously, I believe.  But I don't know.  I just that when a U.S. tourist sees a political demonstration in a foreign country:  get away from it.

And where did I get away to?  Lunch!

This was an outlet of the same Korean restaurant at which I ate in the upscale shopping mall in Dongdaemun Design Plaza the previous night.  With the untranslatable name.  This is basically a Korean diner, serving the Korean equivalent of diner food.  So what did I have?

In the orange dish are the Korean essentials:  kim chi and pickled Korean radish.  The radish was excellent.  The kim chi?  It's an acquired taste that I am still in the process of acquiring.  This was a bit on the fresh side as it has not fermented into full funkiness yet.  In the red basket, deep-fried seaweed rolls.  Filled with rice.  The main course was pork cutlet, known to you eaters of Japanese food as tonkatsu.  Only this was tonkatsu with a twist.  And the twist was a bit of Wisconsin.  Gooey melty cheese!  Almost like a pork parmigiana, only with tonkatsu sauce and not marinara.  And in the front was a cole slaw with a dressing that tasted a lot like Marzetti's.  And Marzetti's is the best slaw dressing in the world.

What's my final verdict on Seoul?  I want to come back.  This is not really a sightseeing city, although there are sights to see.  It's more of an "absorb the atmosphere" city.  And there's more to absorb.  Off to my next destination.

As Eisenhower Said: "I Shall Go To Korea": And Here I Am

The Statue of Brothers at the War Memorial of Korea

The other stop on my one full day in Korea was the War Memorial of Korea. Well worth the visit.

The War Memorial of Korea was just a metro stop north of the National Museum.  The National Museum is a little north of the Han River, which cuts through Seoul (and was a critical locale in the communist invasion of South Korea in 1950). The War Memorial of Korea is north of that, moving toward the heart of Northern Seoul.

It was definitely staying wintry in the walk from the Metro.

Soon, however, once I started walking in the correct direction from the Metro, I reached the massive grounds of the War Memorial of Korea.

Massive.  Outdoor statues.  Outdoor military vehicles, aircraft, and other war materiel.  And a giant museum building.  Starting with the Statue of Brothers, which depicts a scene from the Korean War where two brothers meet on the battlefield, one fighting for the North/communism, one fight for the South/freedom.

I think the brothers-on-the-battlefield is a common myth associated with civil wars.  There certainly were stories of brothers meeting on the battlefield in the American Civil War, with one blue, fighting for the North/Union, and one grey, fighting for the South/Confederacy.

Inside the hemisphere upon which the statue stands:

Is the story of brothers fighting for opposite sides, meeting on the battlefield, myth?  Reality?  A little of both?  Is it true?  Loosely true?  Or just a metaphor for the intra-familial nature of civil wars?  All of the above?

That is a question best left unanswered.

Then you come to the Tower of the Korean War:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the split in the Tower is symbolic of the split of Korea into two halves.  If you dream of a unified Korea -- which I am guessing most people on the Korean Peninsula still do to this day -- judging by what I've seen in the various museums I've visited here -- then you might prefer this view of the Tower of the Korean War:

Can't see the divide.

The Tower is ringed by a combination of soldiers and civilians affected by the War.

I believe the above side is the Republic of Korea and the below side represents the communists:

Another view:

It seems very appropriate to be visiting the War Memorial of Korea on such a cold, snowy day, since my image of the Korean War is a war being fought in bitter cold weather.  Here is the museum building at the memorial site:

But before going inside, let's look at the war materiel on display outside the museum:

That stela is not war materiel.  It's a particularly large stela from Korea's ancient past.  Speaking of ancient past:  a B-52 bomber!

 

Dwarfing this aircraft:

Dry dock:

Tanks.  In the snow.

More aircraft:

 

Rocket.  Pointing toward the Rocket Man in the North?

A Republic of Korea plane:

An air boat!

I remember these from the "Gentle Ben" TV series, where Dennis Weaver (and others) explored the Florida Everglades in these air boats.  I did not know they were used in the Korean War.

Time to head into the museum.  But first:

There is a ring of displays honoring each of the nations that fought for the Republic of Korea under U.N. auspices.  This is one of the nations that really sacrificed for the cause:  the United States.

Out of the snow and into the museum:

The Heroes of the Songaksan Battle.  This was a battle early in the war, when the communist North completely over-ran an ill-prepared Republic of Korea.  These soldiers fought to slow down the advance.

This is symbolic:

The symbolism was lost on me, as it was written in Korean Hangul, the Korean alphabet created by ... wait for it ... King Sejong The Great!

More war materiel indoors:

The displays about the war itself were fascinating, but more in the sense of the story being told than in the sense of imagery making for great pictures.  Basically the story is this:  the communist North overruns the southern half of the Korean Peninsula in a surprise attack in the summer of 1950.  The South Korean infantry was routed easily although the South Korean navy performed admirably.  U.N. troops, led primarily by the United States stage a counterattack and push the communist North all the way to Chinese border.  At which point the Communist Chinese enter the war on behalf of the Communist North, at which point three years of deadly stalemate ensues.

It all ends when Stalin ends and Eisenhower is elected U.S. president on the promise of "I shall go to Korea," meaning he will be personally involved in ending the war.  And he was.

Contrast the two personal vehicles of the two Korean leaders at the time.  Syngman Rhee of the Republic of Korea had a tricked-out Cadillac.  Kim Il Sung had a stodgy Soviet vehicle for his personal limousine.

I would choose:

The 1950s Cadillac, of course.

And, in honor of the South Korean Navy acquitting itself very well in the early days of the Korean War:

No.  No.  No.  No.  They did not use wooden ships with a dragon head as the figurehead.  Cool as that would have been.  Could you imagine if the navy of the Republic of Korea, 1950, used one of these to sink a North Korean troop transport?

Next it was off to the Dongdaemun Design Plaza to check out this retrofuturistic building:

It reminded me of this building that I saw in Mexico City back in 2021:

The Museo Soumaya.  Superficially similar.  Different architects.  Both working in the "shapeless blob" style.

The main point of this neighborhood was to go to another jjimjilbang to thaw myself out and, maybe, to eat dinner after being appropriately thawed.

 

The street food looked good.

But I opted for something indoors and sit-down:

Can't translate the name of this restaurant inside the Dongdaemun Design Plaza shopping center.  But I could translate this:

Hot spicy baby octopus on rice.  It was so hot ... spice-wise ... that I could barely eat it.  But it was very delicious.  It tasted a lot like the Hot & Spicy Squid from my favorite Korean restaurant back in Newport News, Virginia, in the mid 80s.  And speaking of squid.

Fried squid appetizer.  Only it came after the main meal, so it was more of a fried squid dessert.  Finally, I have eaten Korean food in Korea.

The One Full Day in Korea: Starting at the National Museum

A pagoda in the snow. And in front of the National Museum of Korea

Three days in wintry Seoul, but only one of those days is a full 24-hour day.  This is it.

Other than sleeping in to get caught up from the jet lag, there were only two items on the agenda.  First up was the National Museum of Korea.  This meant taking the Seoul Metro to the Yongsan stop.  I probably should have gone to the Ichon stop instead, but that was a different subway line so I didn't think to take it.  The area around the Yongsan stop was interesting.

The Seoul Metro is not that difficult to navigate.  I was able to figure it out in a couple of rides.  Which is one of the reasons I like to travel to solo:  you don't have to explain to someone you're traveling with when you are still trying to learn to navigate the subway system.

This was a weird looking whatever:

It said it was a spa.  It had the over-the-top flamboyance of a casino, but it appeared not to be that.  But it did have a Christmas tree, which was appropriately on a snowy day.

And then:  another Christmas tree!

And then: a railroad crossing.

You can see that the snow is starting to pick up the pace:

Soon as I was at the snowy grounds of the National Museum:

Lots of schoolchildren outside.  Even more inside.

Let's go check out the pagoda.

And of course that is what a bridge to a pagoda would have to look like.

And this is what the pagoda looks like.

A pagoda in the snow.  With child.

I, of course, meant that there was a child in the photo with the pagoda.  Not that the pagoda was pregnant.  The sign call this:  Cheongjajeong.  I don't know if that is the name of the pagoda, the builder of the pagoda, or the Korean word for pagoda.  Some mysteries are unsolved even on travel.

Enough of the pagoda.  It's museum time.

Even better:  it's time to go inside the museum.

The museum does go back into Korean history.

And here is one of those chimes instruments that we saw at Gwanghwamun Square.

Here is Emperor Gojong, founder of the Joseon Dynasty.

The Joseon Dynasty ruled the Korean Peninsula until the Japanese conquest and subjugation of Korea in the late 19th/early 20th Century.  One nugget learned in the National Museum of Korea:  Japan became a great an international power in the early 20th Century because of the wealth it stole from Korea.  That's the Korean side of the story and they are sticking with it.

And here's a tower with a robot:

The robot is in the middle.

The standard wall of pottery:

I've traveled enough to know this:  Every national museum has a wall of pottery.

And a man on a horse.

I learned a lot about Korean history, specifically from the Korean perspective.  And, from touring two museums, I've learned this about Korea:  they're still not over the whole subjugation at the hands of Japan thing.