Seoul is a sort of confusing marketplace for Americans. On one hand, most of the delicious food is just dirt cheap. Yet these cans above would retail in America for like $12 (+ tax). You can buy amazing clothes for half of what you'd pay in America, although (real) brand name stuff tends to be more expensive. But fake Gucci here can be almost indistinguishable upon closest inspection. I feel like there are lots of little tricks around every corner; signs in distorted English that set my expectations low and then the place blows me away. Half the time I can't tell if I'm being ripped off, or if I'm ripping off the guy I'm dealing with. I think that I could always find something cheaper if I just walked a little farther into the marketplace, but the markets just go on forever. Everything is negotiable. There is no sales tax; it's included in the price. There are no tips whatsoever, and the service is usually superior. The people can be whimsical bordering on silly, polite and friendly yet they make New Yorkers look laid back. There are a lot of do or die types, which is pretty intense.
I was pretty surprised to stumble upon a motorcycle gang with their harleys all chromed out parked in front of a bike shop. Might be the owner's weekend warrior buddies. They were probably surprised to see me too. Peace bro.
I was equally surprised to stumble upon a Hooters restaurant. The place actually seems somewhat popular with Koreans despite the fact that the Korean version doesn't quite have the... um, curb appeal. Like maybe they just think it's a normal American restaurant and that American waitresses always dress this way. The Korean waitresses didn't seem to wear the same outfit. Koreans probably realized it's trashy to wear orange shorts with nylons and a tank top. I'd bet that no one in the place had a clue what the English name references.
Nyuk nyuk.
Mandu are Korean style dumplings that contain lots of diced veggies and meat or kimchi usually. You can put pretty much anything in them, and they always are awesome to me - I've never met a mandu I didn't like.
The fresh ones are best, of course, which is why this breakfast was particularly awesome. This place in Hong Dae (artsy college district) makes these guys almost to order. They have a pretty elaborate machine behind the counter that constantly cranks these guys out, and then they go right into the steamer when you place an order. Plus, they're cheap; each of these two orders cost about $3.25.
I wasn't at all inclined to try this ice cream. We went to Baskin Robbins instead, which I'll admit is a sellout move. But K-BR is actually much better than the USA-BR - less sugar, more flavor. Same price though. At least the employees are way friendlier.
Maybe it's just because they've got a Mr. prefix, but this band has an inexplicable stranglehold on the hearts and minds of East Asian concert-goers. They don't dare bring their "super concert" to the US; they only have a few dates in Europe and the rest are India and other East Asian countries. I guess if you're looking for a puppet show version of an American rock concert, you can go see Mr. Big. This ad really made me livid, and I had to pause and think about why for a moment. It's not only because Mr. Big really sucks and yet still gets to make money off "reunion" tours over and over again, but also because they can bring their circus to a place without the proper context of rock music and make a killing. I have to say with some sadness that I've found Korean musical taste uniformly analogous to a kid that grew up listening to nothing but stale Billboard Top 40 tapes. This ad was flying in the arts college district for crying out loud! Just take a deep breath and keep walking...
I don't think I'm into this advertisement either, and I definitely don't think pig guts are sexy.
The Korean subway system is like Star Trek compared to Chicago's CTA. There are an extra set of doors that close off the station from the tracks, which allows them to actually heat the station to a comfortable temperature. It's very quiet when in motion, and the doors between cars even open automatically. Most futuristic of all, it doesn't smell like urine anywhere in the station. The drawback to all this future world traveling is that you have to buy a transit card for each person before you even put any money on it. The cards each cost roughly the price of 2.5 rides alone, which seems a little wack to me. We even had to ask some kids for help to use the complicated computer machine. The cost of a ride is around $.80, so it's pretty sweet all in all. The subway goes everywhere; looking at a map gives me a headache. There are usually like 4 different trains you can transfer to at any station. I felt like a rat in a maze, but at least it's a clean maze.
I'm an art snob, so the Seoul Art Museum was just ok. It was interesting to see an art museum that really focused on non-western contemporary art, but from previous experience and what I saw here, non-western art tends toward conservative and design oriented work. I suppose this is a nifty staircase. There were some good works too; so I shouldn't be such a whiner.
I'm also a coffee and donut snob, so Mister Donut (of course) was a stop I couldn't resist. These guys work on display in the clean room all day making about 15 kinds of fresh donuts for your enjoyment anytime, unlike stupid dunkin (which also has many locations in Seoul) that only fries a few times per day, if that.
You can see from the above pic that there is one non-western donut here - the one that kind of looks like a baby's teething ring. It's a donut that's more like Korean duk, so it's not as sweet and is more chewy. It's not duk all the way though, so it's still bready like pizza dough. They have different variations of filling too - this one has a red bean and cream filling. I think these were actually my favorite. The other donuts were nice too, not too sweet or oily.
I'll take another pause to raise the point that I made in the boonshik post. It's the quality and efficiency of this operation that really makes it work. The idea was nothing special - coffee and donuts served in a place decorated like an American donut shop. The prices aren't cheap - I spent about $8.50 for everything in the photo above. But you get quite obviously fresh donuts served on ceramic dishes with a very clean presentation all around. Even the coffee was good. This was the only "real" coffee I've had, unlike all the other Koffee. I wish I had a Mr. Donut near where I live - if for no other reason than I have no idea what Mr. Dunkin is up to in that back room.
Wandering through the markets, we stumbled upon a little booth with a gaunt little lady sitting inside. This mystical lady has the power to tell you your life's entire forecast based only on your birthdate and time. She's not really mystical - the Korean art of saju (fortune) is an interpretation of all the data that come from a tome based on your lunar birth time. You also don't get to hear the whole story unless you pay for it, but you can pick the areas of your saju that you'd like to hear. I chose career and relationships, and watched the saju lady draw all kinds of symbols from the book with lines around them. In the end, I didn't really hear anything I didn't already know. But I was told that my saju was pretty good, and that things would get better for me in the next few years. My wife messed up and gave her wrong birthdate, so she was bummed to hear that her saju was kinda lousy. Hey, wrong birthdate, wrong saju right? I'd really hate to be the guy that walks in and gets told that you've got nothing to live for. You still have to pay for that one! Some light entertainment for roughly $18.50; makes a great date activity if you're willing to grin and bear it.
Mr. Pizza is one of the top pizza chains in Korea, along with Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, etc. All of them offer pizza with wacky toppings you don't see in the US. Most of the "supreme" pizzas involve corn, spam, potatoes, and other nasties. Pizza Hut is now offering a coconut shrimp pizza, bleh. Part of me feels like Koreans are mocking American pizza, which is really a bastardization of Italian pizza anyway. It's kind of funny to see what a second generation spin off looks like. But I guess that Koreans have their own palate, and need to explore the boundaries of pizza toppings that Americans are too scared to confront. CPK won't even touch this stuff. Neither will I; I just took a photo to gag on.
Every Korean drag that has a bunch of shops is called a "rodeo". This is probably a reference to Rodeo Drive in LA, but I'm only guessing. This guy's job is to get people off the street into the store. I much preferred the stores that employed girls that would dance in unison while a speaker blasted K-pop. At least I had a clear idea of what these girls were selling.
Since Koreans think male genitalia is a cute symbol of good health, it follows that mannequins with stuffed underwear makes for an acceptable store display. This may even fool one into thinking that this underwear will increase your stamina. Or maybe I just thought it was funny because I have an adolescent's sense of humor.
This truck was loading up the drums that were played previously in the afternoon near the old Seoul palace. Sadly, I didn't get to see a performance using them. Koreans have a few different styles of traditional music, but the most popular one domestically and internationally is based on samulnori. The word samulnori means four players, but modern samulnori performances can involve more than four players. Pure samulnori is based on four different percussion instruments, two of which are the drums you can see in the photo. The other two are a small and large gong-type cymbals. The performance that used these drums was likely more of a large ensemble or parade that I spotted earlier (but couldn't get any good pictures of).
I heard about Mr. Wow's awesome sausages from Mr. Seoulfoodyo so when I passed a stand I had to get one. As Mr. Seoulfoodyo says, there are two options: with or without the bun. I went without, since I wasn't terribly hungry at that point.
Mr. Wow is a bit expensive compared to other Korean food. You pay about $2.25 for the sausage on a stick, and it's $.45 more for the bun with some cabbage. Still, it's like half a meal, so you could reasonably fill up on junk food for under $5. Easily beats McDonalds or even Portillo's. I liked that the sausages are grilled freshly and have large chunks of gochu (peppers) in them. Yum.
King Sejong ruled from 1418-1450 and was personally involved in the creation of the modern Korean alphabet. Before he mandated its use, Koreans had to use the complicated Chinese writing system. Thanks to Sejong, learning Korean is actually possible for me. The Korean government just unveiled this statue with a lot of fanfare a few days ago. It's symbolically (but perhaps anachronistically) located about 300m behind the statue of Yi Soon Shin- who I'll discuss in a bit. There are lots of statues of this guy around Korea, but this one is right where all the action is. To me, it's also a contemporary symbol to keep Korean government in Seoul, as opposed to a recent plan to move the capital further south in order to avoid all the traffic and complexities of Seoul. This plan was launched by the last president, Noh Moo Hyun, whose policies are now out of favor with the current conservative president, Lee Myun Bak.
This is very close to the modern Korean alphabet that was created under Sejong's supervision. It's rightfully placed on the side of his statue since it's his greatest accomplishment. He wasn't exactly popular with the ruling class when he mandated this alphabet, since it obviously would give far more power to common classes. This alphabet is studied by linguists around the world for its elegant simplicity. It's really quite easy to learn; see http://www.lifeinkorea.com/language/Graphics/hangul.gif for a pronunciation guide.
Yi Soon Shin was a naval commander later in the Joseon dynasty, about 100 years after SeJong's death. He was successfully able to repel one of many Japanese invasions using a ship he designed called the Turtle Ship. It had a spiked roof that prevented Japanese soldiers from easily boarding it, plus a bunch of cannons.
It's a worthwhile pause here to point out that the Koreans and Japanese have historically not gotten along so well due to the fact that the Japanese have repeatedly invaded Korea with ambition to conquer its people and other areas of East Asia. This culminated in 1910 when the Japanese defeated the last of the Korean Joseon dynasty and officially added Korea to the Empire of Japan. Korea wasn't really an independent country again until the end of World War II, and even then it was on the brink of civil war against communist North Korea during the Korean War. As I've mentioned previously, South Korean men have been subject to mandatory conscription since the end of the Korean War due to the threats that exist on all sides. Historians have marveled at how Korea has kept its language and culture from being completely overrun throughout the ages. Understandably, Korean culture is infused with a great sense of nationalism and pride in this achievement. It's also interesting to note that recorded history shows Korea has never launched an invasion of any kind into another people's territory.
These tourists are near a Korean wartime photography exhibit sponsored by the conservative Chosun newspaper. Nationalism at its best. Lots of pictures of MacArthur and whatnot.
At the end of this row of statues lies the the seat of power for South Korea. The Blue House is right in the heart of old downtown, near all the western style but Korean hotels and old school Korean offices like Chosun-Ilbo, LG, and a bunch of other places that look like office megaplexes. The mountain that the Blue House sits on is supposed to have tons of chi (life energy) according to feng shui. When the Japanese took over Korea in 1910, one of the first things they set out to do was block that chi from the mountain so it wouldn't rouse up the conquered masses. They drove hundreds of large iron rods into the mountain around this site which, according to feng shui, blocked the chi. Seems silly enough to me, but the Koreans took it seriously. When they won back their independence, the first thing that they did was dig up all those darn iron rods. The story should continue with somebody getting their powers back and finishing off the evil emperor, restoring peace and prosperity to the land.
After conferring with all these political superheroes, it was time for a snack. As I've mentioned, East Asians love squid. It seems like it's really easy to harvest these guys en masse, so they're everywhere. You can get squid chips and squid soup and raw squid, but the street food favorite is undoubtedly roasted dried squid. The vendor will buy dried squid like the ones I showed in my Sokcho post, then run them through a shredder and sauce them up with some spicy and slightly sweet marinade. Then they get roasted in a mini steam roller when you buy one. It's very tender because of the spicy marinade, and I find them pretty tasty. Sometimes it's a bit too sweet for me. It costs like $.90 for a whole lot of squid. Love it.
We went for a traditional Korean dinner with a friend and got an obscene amount of banchan (side dishes). The restaurant is somewhat fancy, but these banchan come with the meal. So it's pretty inexpensive to eat here if you order some cheap main dishes. We went with some simple roasted fish, and it was great.
This is included to show a typical Seoul street at night. There is always a lot of bright light signage and people walk mostly within these marketplaces. There are tons of places to eat and drink in each market, and there are probably thousands of these markets around the city. So there's a lot of activity, especially on a weekend.
We hung out at this bar after meeting up with a friend. He commented that he thought the people who ran the place had never been to Chicago. I think he was right- they didn't even have PBR.
Our friend knew a promoter here, so he was able to get us in for free. He told us that the place was previously shut down, and it was re-opening tonight for the first time as a new club. I asked why it had been shut down, and he said that some lewd pictures had circulated the internet from the previous place. He said it was never really like that, but those photos got the place busted. Of course, the rep stuck and we ended up with the hottest ticket in town.
Paul Van Dyk is a world famous trance DJ from Germany. I didn't know he was DJing until we got in, but it was a pleasant surprise to see a familiar name. His set was pretty good, we didn't stay for all of it. Korean bars and clubs still allow smoking inside, which set my tolerance for these places pretty low. I read in a news article that Korean superstar, Bi (Rain), was there too. Too bad we didn't get to dance with him; he just chilled in the VIP room the whole time.
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