Korea

Chapters

1. Seoul - Part 1
2. Daejeon
3. Seoul - Part 2
4. Suncheon
5. Jeju
6. Wrapping up Daejeon
7. Short stay in Tokyo
8. Conclusion

Seoul - Part 1

When we arrived in Korea, it was still bright out. After our subway ride from Incheon to the heart of Seoul, a trip friend and I went out for a quick coffee and a walk around our Airbnb. We had some food and then went out for drinks. I was looking for makgeolli (Korean rice wine) to introduce to my friend when we came across a restaurant with some expensive bowls of it, priced at 16,000 won each (about 16 dollars). Thinking we were in for a treat, we ordered two. My first mistake was probably not realizing that this wasn't the kind of restaurant where expensive alcohol was sold. My second mistake was probably not reading the signage properly. When our bowls of makgeolli arrived, it was a disaster before we had even touched them.

These things were massive, at least a liter each. My hands are pretty small, so a hand-for-scale doesn’t do much, but the sheer size was intimidating. It was also ice-cold with chunks of ice, which definitely didn't help since the temperatures in Korea at that time of the day (8 PM) were in the teens. We could have chugged them down and been mildly cold, but unfortunately the restaurant served these as slushies, so drinking them fast just gave us a brain freeze. Ultimately, we gave up and left about 35% of each bowl. A valiant effort, I'd say.

The next day we had bibimbap for lunch and made our way toward Gwanghwamun. I couldn't recall if I had ever been inside, but if I hadn't, that was hardly surprising since Seoul isn't where I live.

Next up was Bukchon Hanok Village, located just across the street from the palace on the northeast side. We meandered quite a bit, aimlessly wandering around, entering small shops and eating snacks. We had an early dinner only because I managed to find an actual makgeolli place and, on top of that, some mulhoe (sliced raw fish and veggies in a cold spicy broth), which I had never tried myself. For dinner, I wanted to introduce my travel group to a Korean classic: kalguksu. This is a knife-cut noodle soup, typically a light and slightly seafoody dish. We were in the area that was known to be great for it (Myeong-dong), so I found a place with good reviews. I forgot to take pictures, but it was pretty good, especially for the price.

As the 9th came around, the sunny days of our trip in Korea seemed to be over. I had been planning on taking my friends to Daejeon, the place where I grew up. But because the schedule would’ve involved a lot of walking outside in the rain, I figured that taking a two-hour train down and back might be a waste of both time and money. We ended up going to the National Museum of Korea instead, which, to my surprise, was completely free. We also dropped by the Yongsan I’Park Mall, which was conveniently just a subway stop away.

Our last day in Seoul was spent mostly in Seongsu-dong, an area known for super trendy cafes, makeup, and clothing. Since I don’t really wear makeup, nor did I have the world’s "drippiest" closet (not to mention most clothing stores were for women anyway), the two guys in the group ended up scouring the place for anything that was interesting for us. We were walking around aimlessly yet again when we came across a line of JDM sports cars. I’m talking RX-7, GT-R, S2000, AE-86, Civic SiR... Wait, AE-86? That’s right, this was an Initial-D event zone. It was one of my favorite anime for its incredible street racing and adrenaline-pumping action. I had always wanted to see these cars up close, and here they were. The AE-86, in particular, was surprising since they aren't the most common today. It might look boxy and weird to some, but that ‘80s shape and design is exactly what I like about the cars from that era. It feels simple yet so bold, where each part of the design is a statement of its own.

After some delicious jokbal (braised pig trotter), we went to the ever-so-popular Korean location for relaxation: a jjimjilbang (kiln sauna). What’s cool about Korean saunas is that you go into a room that looks like a pizza oven and lay down. The floor is sometimes covered in small warm pebbles or just a towel-covered wooden floor, but the one constant is the wooden “pillows.” Another staple of Korean saunas is the snacks. Common treats to enjoy are, of course, the potato chips, shrimp crackers, and sikhye (sweet rice beverage). I was overjoyed to find beer on the menu too, so that was something we had to have.

We quietly finished off our last night in Seoul and headed back to our Airbnb. Our group was headed back home, but my home destination was in Daejeon, and theirs was back in Canada, via Tokyo. When we booked our flights, it was cheaper to do a round-trip from Toronto to Tokyo, so while they booked their return trips for early May, I booked mine for early June. As I waved goodbye to my friends, I routed myself to Seoul station for a ride down to the city where my parents were.

Daejeon

Daejeon is frequently referred to as “no fun city,” a label which I think holds some truth. Most of the land is residential or school ground, and the shopping is quite lacking, with only a few main ‘modern’ department stores and some other shops scattered around one of them. The food scene isn’t all that bad though; there's a lot of variety and relatively lower costs due to the city not being a big tourist destination.

Speaking of food, there is one particular bakery called Sungsimdang that has become a tourist attraction itself within the past few years. "High quality and low cost" is the name of the game in Korea, and this bakery does just that. They only have six locations as of this writing, and they’re all in Daejeon, which drives the scarcity up. I was lucky enough to live pretty much across the street from one of these bakeries, so great bread was at my fingertips. Until it wasn’t. I guess the popularity of this bakery had skyrocketed in the past year, because the line out the door was stretching at least 200 meters. Last year, I used to be able to go out in the morning and grab some breakfast, but now there were people lining up before they even opened. It got better during the weekdays, but honestly not by a lot. It must have looked weird to see me, a guy buying just two small items, when everyone else was hoarding enough bread to feed a large family for a week.

While the day-to-day felt more subdued, the city was doing a lot to promote its nightlife, and there was a sizable audience yearning for it in the form of university students. To the north, there was the Hanbit tower and the Expo bridge, made for the Korea Expo of ‘93. The area in front of the tower had been upgraded to support a large crowd, usually for evening musical water fountain shows, but on occasion it was large enough to hold a small concert or festival. A large secondary zone also existed to support countless food trucks for events. The whole area was just like an entertainment district, but differed significantly in that it wasn't like the narrow, bustling streets of Seoul. Food options were plentiful, as right beside the nearby apartments, a two-story complex for just that existed. There were also two large convention centers alongside a Sungsimdang, so people from not only out of town but also from overseas showed up.

I remember going out one night for a lonely beer session. I dropped by a craft beer bar at first, but got hungry, so I walked over to a nearby beef sashimi place for some grub. I was munching away at my bowl of beef when I happened to overhear the conversation right next to me about foldable phones. Since I had one, I thought ‘why not?’, and struck up a conversation. It turned out they were two researchers from CERN. They were incredibly friendly, and also had the world’s strongest livers. At least six 750ml beer bottles, and five soju bottles had already been enjoyed between the two of them. After conversing for a bit, I learned that they were here for an international nuclear physics conference. I enjoyed listening to their experiences and got to share my own worries about the future too.

As a final note on Daejeon, I briefly wanted to go over the coffee scene there. I specifically refer to specialty coffee, since that’s what I find appealing, but this city was significantly lacking in that aspect. Out of the many cafes I tried visiting, only two stood out as anything special: Blackdesk and Toldastory roasters. I think a common issue with specialty coffees in Korea is that while the beans may be sourced from an interesting place (Ethiopia, Kenya, Yunnan, etc), all of them are roasted to medium at best. Even if cafes do sell specialty beans, only a fraction of them actually serve it. It’s incredibly sad that by having the populace be used to dark roast americanos, it’s become difficult for most to tell the difference between a 1 dollar one and a 4 dollar one, so the 1 dollar coffee eventually became the norm. In theory, this effectively pushes specialty almost entirely out of the market, making it a sort of “fine-dining” splurge type of deal. Most Koreans seem to drink coffee for caffeine and just as a regular beverage, like water, anyway, so why not go for the cheapest option? I say in theory because I think specialty is just having a more difficult time finding its footing. In fact, Seoul’s coffee scene is getting pretty big, which is a good sign that other cafes might follow suit in the coming years.

Seoul - Part 2

I woke up to a rather rainy Friday. It wasn't the best weather to have since I was about to head out to Seoul for the next few days. I noticed I had a few more blemishes while washing my face, which was unfortunate because I was about to meet some overseas friends and my cousin, who I hadn't seen in at least a decade.

My first stop was Gwangjang Market. Supposedly the first permanent market in Korea, it definitely showed its age. It felt authentically Korean, from the grandmothers toiling away at their food to the utensils strewn across the tables, the cheap clothing, and even the storefront fonts. I think some kind of convergent evolution happened here because almost all of the food vendors sold the same few items: bindaetteok (mung bean pancakes), tteokbokki, hotteok, and soondae. You don't have to walk around much looking for other food because that's pretty much all you'll find. After soaking in the chaos of Gwangjang Market, we sought a different kind of atmosphere at Bukchon Hanok Village.

I was here just a couple weeks back, but this time we stayed closer to Samcheong-dong to check out a lot of the hip and trendy stores and cafes. The rain didn’t let up, coming and going as it pleased, barely drizzling one minute and then a torrential downpour the next. We made our way to Seongsu-dong next, where I had the misfortune of attempting to follow my girl friends around the stores until they were done. I gave up 20 minutes in and left to grab myself a coffee. The “cafe” was actually a cosmetics store with a small shop in the back. After sitting down with my warm cup of joe, I instantly wanted to leave; the place was so cold. Korean people love setting their AC to be freezing, and on a cold, rainy day like this? It was the worst thing ever. Of course, this was the one day I hadn’t brought my jacket.

After an afternoon of looking at skincare products, we got some hearty gukbap (rice in hot soup) for dinner and parted ways. When I got to my hotel, I was getting ready to shower when I noticed something was very off. What I thought was just a case of acne had actually worsened throughout the day and become a full-fledged skin condition. To this day I still have no idea what it was. The doctor I ended up seeing a couple of days later told me it looked like chickenpox (despite the fact I had gotten shots for it), but the onset time and rate of healing suggested it wasn’t.

This was terrible. Not only did my entire face feel weird and bumpy, but my whole body was covered in these things. The only thing I could think of that might have caused it was eating raw shrimp sashimi the day before I left for Seoul, but I had eaten raw shrimp before, so it couldn't have been allergies. It was extra terrible because I wanted to look like I normally do when I meet my cousin, but now my skin must have looked like the surface of the Earth during the Permian-Triassic extinction.

I had hoped I would wake up the next day and be better, but I was sorely disappointed. I was so embarrassed that I even wore a mask. Despite this, I had a great time catching up with my cousin, seeing what she was up to, going to a trendy coffee spot, and even a board game cafe (which is all the rage with the younger generation these days). After I got back home, I had to wait until Monday to see a doctor. He prescribed me some medicine which thankfully did quick work to settle things down.

By the time I had gotten a lot better a week later, I was preparing to visit Seoul once more. This time, I was meeting friends I had met in Canada but had since moved to Korea for various reasons. I arrived in Seoul just after lunchtime, so I took some time to walk around the city and near the Airbnb.

After we all met up, we had dinner at a spicy hotpot noodle place, went to a board game cafe, and finally finished off with some karaoke.

The next day was exciting. The first thing on the schedule was a shooting range. I had never shot a real firearm before, so I was pretty nervous going in. What would the recoil be like? Would I be able to hit the target accurately, if at all? We were given the option to shoot 10 rounds from 3 pistols of our choice. I opted to fire a Taurus 66 (.357 Magnum, a single-action revolver), a Glock 19 Gen4 (9mm), and a Desert Eagle (.50 AE). I fully expected the 9mm to have the least amount of recoil and the .50 AE to have the most. Considering the .50 AE is considered one of the most powerful pistol cartridges out there, this logic made sense.

I was quite wrong. The lowest amount of recoil was the .357 Magnum. This was within expectations since revolvers don’t auto-chamber the next round, so there’s no backward movement to create that extra “felt” recoil. The Glock was a true surprise; the recoil felt even more than the .50 AE, even though the 9mm round is much smaller. This makes sense as the Glock's body is made of a nylon-based polymer, not metal. This makes the gun lightweight, but that decrease in mass transfers more energy into your hands than into the body of the gun. This also explains why the Desert Eagle felt nicer to shoot; the comically large size and weight of the gun soaks up more energy, and the extra length of the barrel helps keep the muzzle from rising. Overall, it was a great experience, and maybe next time I’m at a shooting range I’ll try a rifle instead.

The next thing on the itinerary was a baseball game. I'm about 99% sure I had been to one when I was younger, but I couldn’t remember anything about it other than that it was a Blue Jays game. This game was in the Korean Baseball League (KBO), with the two teams being the Doosan Bears and the LG Twins. The Doosan Bears are a Seoul team, so a lot of Bears fans were in sight, as was my friend. Sadly, though, the Bears are one of the worst teams in the league, so it was a little sad to see the crowd's energy slowly reduce throughout the span of the match.

We needed to head back to our Airbnb, but we ended up spending too much time meandering around and had to drop by a supermarket to get ourselves some ingredients to cook with.

After eating, we met up with a friend from the day before to go out drinking. Yonsei University had just wrapped up their “Akaraka,” a music festival where many K-pop idols show up to perform. I felt very out of place walking around with my friends in the nightlife district. Not only was I not in Yonsei garb or colors (white and blue), but I wasn’t even the best at Korean. I had the joyous opportunity to stand around awkwardly as my friend’s younger 1st-year cousin was introduced to my friend (a 4th-year). I knew seniority was a thing, but this seemed next level, and apparently, Yonsei is extra about it. I'm not sure how my friend went from being in Canada until grade 12 to fitting right into Korean society like this. I don’t think I would’ve made it out alive. Kudos to her. I wrapped up my final Seoul trip with an early lunch with the same group of friends.

Suncheon

Suncheon is a city on Korea’s southern border, ever so slightly west of the middle. As part of a trip to Jeju Island, we stopped by the city for its national park but also because the port for the ferry that would take us to the island was there. The park is laid out in such a way that walking around the whole area gives you a consistently fresh view, with spiral hills, flower gardens, various country-themed gardens, and even a small zoo.

Suncheon Bay is also a coastal wetland, which lends itself to having a unique attraction: a long plankway amongst the reeds. These reeds have also been strategically planted so that in seasons when these plants are in different stages of their yearly cycle, smooth flowing patterns can be observed.

At the end of the path, a steep but short hike to the peak of the mountain presents itself. At dusk, the colors of the wetland were hard to observe and also capture, but the view was no less stunning. The sun’s golden rays reflecting off the rice paddies was a nice treat.

The next day we paid a visit to Boseong Green Tea Field. It’s about 60km (~45 min driving) down the coast towards the west from Suncheon National Park. Boseong County is also referred to as “The Green Tea Capital of Korea,” producing over 40% of the country’s green tea. While it’s one of the rainiest places in Korea, it was remarkably sunny that day, which gave me a perfect photo opportunity.

To be honest, I was a little disappointed with my ability for composition and capturing skills here. The location itself was astounding, but I just had a really difficult time finding any composition I liked. On top of this, I wasn’t really happy with the colors that resulted in the raw JPGs (this one's also on me, due to my lack of experience and understanding of my camera). While post-processing this photo it quickly came to me that this was unintentionally a really nice photo. I’ve been reading The Photographer’s Eye by Michael Freeman, which explores the traditional approaches to composition and design, but also addresses the new digital technique of shooting. One particular section on the role of lines was that by trying to give focus to a human subject alongside a large background subject, you can reduce the human subject to insignificance. Using lines created by the rows of green tea bushes, a natural “eye path” can be made towards an otherwise oddly placed human figure. While unintentional in my photo, I think this works out beautifully with the green tea hedges all converging onto the person with the blue umbrella. If I had known this before, increasing the distance between the bottom of the frame and the subject might have been more comfortable for visual purposes.

Jeju

We arrived just around dinner time, so we headed towards the one thing you have to try when in Jeju: black pork belly. The slices are typically 5 layers compared to the typical 3 layers of sam-gyeopsal (三), due to the inclusion of the pork skin, which adds another layer of flavor and texture. I made sure to eat a lot and also get a good soak in the hotel’s hot tub to prepare for my second Mount Hallasan hike the next day.

Two years ago I went on the Seongpanak trail on the far east side. This is the one that takes you to the very top of the mountain, giving you a view of the lake in the volcano’s crater. This time around we went up the Yeongsil trail, the southwestern one. This one’s a little shorter, but not by all that much. Upon reaching the Witse-oreum shelter, the second part begins, which is to fork right and head towards the South Cliff Fork. This spot is a common point to reach, as it provides one of the best views of, you guessed it, the southern cliff of Mount Hallasan.

Around the Witse-oreum shelter, something interesting happens: the elevation remains relatively steady, making it an easy hike all the way to the South Cliff Fork. The only thing that made it difficult was that I seemed to have forgotten that even on a bright and sunny day, the tops of mountains are cold, especially at only 8 a.m. Thankfully, I had the foresight to pack an athletic jacket, but that still wasn’t good enough to face the 10-13°C winds. It was pretty unbearable for 30 minutes, but as the sun kept on rising, the warmer it got. Even the winds died down, so it became a very comfortable 15-18°C.

Along the way to the Fork, the atmosphere swallowed up the areas just off the sides of the mountain, giving the impression that I was on flat ground. Even the peak of the mountain, which is supposed to have an altitude of 1950m, looked like a small standalone mountain.

Review: 10/10 hike, would do again. Maybe next time I’ll take a slightly thicker jacket for the way up. The whole hike roundtrip took my dad and I about 5.5 hours, which was just a tad faster than the estimate of 6 to 6.5 hours.

The remaining time was spent going on long walks, taking in the views, and eating well.

Food:

Wrapping up Daejeon

When I found myself back in Daejeon, I only had four days to relax and pack my stuff. In between frustratingly trying to find any half-decent cafes, I took my final days slowly. I sat down to enjoy what seemed to be someone’s first time busking, and then got a beer and some snacks to appreciate a few professional artists as well. I even went back to the beef sashimi place with my dad, who suggested I bring the sake I had bought in Kyoto, which was an excellent idea.

One of my favourite meals was a chicken curry place. I loved the inclusion of the veggies and the spice and depth of the curry was out of this world. I was really surprised to find out that the chicken just fell off the bone too.

Short stay in Tokyo

I had just about two days before my flight back to Canada, so I spent the time revisiting my favorite parts of Japan. First was the beer. Boy did I drink a lot of beer in just two nights. When I went out for yakitori, an ice-cold nama biru was a must. After downing two of these, I went to downtown Shinjuku as I was still hungry. It was getting pretty late, though, so most restaurants were closed. I managed to find a yakizakana (grilled fish) place. Nothing outstanding, but the cheap prices and also cheap beer made it a thumbs up for me.

The next day, I tried to find an ogura toast place, but I only managed to find buttered toast, tomato soup, and drip coffee. I figured I could probably make ogura toast back home, so I wasn’t too disappointed.

I really just spent the whole day walking around aimlessly, browsing through shops and department stores I otherwise would’ve skipped right past. By the time evening came around, I realized I had forgotten to go to the Ginza Lion Beer Hall. It’s apparently the oldest beer hall in Japan. I wish I had taken photos of the interior, as it was beautiful. There are plenty of photos online, though, so my photos might have been just a drop of dirty water in a lake. I should consider myself lucky because I was leaving to go to my next beer destination when I found out that Yebisu Bar was just a few floors up from the Lion Beer Hall.

Yebisu on tap really hits different. This was top-notch stuff. They had a lot of variety like their Premium, Black, an IPA, and even a beer cocktail, all of which I had. The beer cocktail was what I had last: a Nagano white peach amber.