Capsule Tour

Location: Seoul, Korea The last day I was in Korea, I went sightseeing. I got back to my hostel in the evening, and arrived at what appeared to be an Okinawan cultural heritage festival. A group of maybe 20 people had just arrived from Okinawa and they were singing, dancing, and wearing traditional garb in the hostel's common area. I asked what was going on. They were very excited to talk with me, specifically because I'm an American. I learned that they were an activist group, protesting the presence of the US military in Okinawa. Their ultimate goal was to travel to the US to protest. I felt bad for them that they had only managed to travel a few hundred miles, and it was in the wrong direction. As an American, I had been taught in school that the US had installed military bases all over the world, that the bases existed to protect foreign countries, and that the people in those foreign countries were grateful for said protection. It was jarring to run into a group of people

Location: Joint Security Area, Korea I went on a tour of the DMZ in Korea. Part of the tour was to walk through a tunnel that had been dug by North Koreans in the 70s in order to sneak into South Korea. The tunnel was only about 5'6 tall and I'm over 6' tall. I had to hunch over to fit. Hunching and walking becomes very uncomfortable very quickly. We had to wear hard hats, which reduced clearance even more. I guess North Koreans were not tall people in the 70s. (I doubt they are now, either.) When the tunnel was discovered, the North Koreans claimed that they were mining for coal and had gotten lost, and that they were definitely not trying to invade South Korea. As proof that the tunnel was for coal mining, they had smeared some streaks of soot on the walls. The evidence was so flimsy that it was laugh-out-loud funny. Our tour guide told us that most South Koreans hope for reunification with North Korea and believe it can happen because of how East Germany was able to reun

When I was in Korea, learning English was very popular. You could stand almost anywhere in Seoul, look around, and spot a private English school. Korea's economy was growing exponentially, per-capita income was increasing, and Koreans wanted to travel internationally. There were 70% more outbound tourism departures from Korea in 2007 than in 2003. So... English. Location: Seoul, Korea I flew into Incheon and took a train to Seoul. I had to take the subway to my hostel. I walked into the subway station and saw a huge map of the subway system printed on a wall. I stopped in front of it and started to plan my route. About 30 feet down the corridor, there was a group of teenage schoolgirls, in schoolgirl uniforms. They saw me and giggled. After some discussion, they literally pushed one of the girls towards me. She asked me if I needed any help. Her English was very good. I politely declined. She ran back to her friends. They were all still giggling. Location: Seoul, Korea I went to th

Location: Busan, Korea I went to the beach city of Busan in the middle of winter, which was a stupid idea. I was there for one night. I walked along Haeundae beach in the evening. The temperature was literally freezing and nobody was on the beach or in the nearby bars, restaurants, etc. I needed somewhere to spend the night. Before leaving for Busan, several people had recommended that I spend the night in a Korean spa ("Jjimjilbang"). I'm told they're cheap, clean, comfortable, and that it's common for patrons to spend the night sleeping on the wooden floors. So in the back of my mind, I had planned to stay at a Jjimjilbang. But when push came to shove, I didn't have any idea how to find a Jjimjilbang, nor was I excited about sleeping on a wooden floor with a bunch of strangers. I started looking for a hotel on the beach. The Korean writing system is phonetic, and I knew enough to sound out the Korean word for hotel, which (lucky for me) is "hotel."

Location: Busan, Korea I was walking along Haeundae beach and popped into a restaurant for dinner. The waitstaff didn't speak any English, but the menu had pictures. The restaurant offered a lot of stews. Korean stews are often an angry red color, and these were no exception. The pictures were a bit too small for me to tell what was in each stew. I picked a stew, essentially at random. The waiter looked nervous and motioned for me to wait a second. He came back with one of the cooks, who had obviously been in the middle of cooking something. The waiter asked the cook to translate something. The cook struggled, and came up with: "This... soup... not... for... white people." I have no idea what they were trying to communicate, but I assured them that it was fine and that I still wanted the stew. The stew arrived boiling hot, so I did have to wait a couple minutes for it to cool down. It was very spicy, but not unbearably so. I think the meat was chicken. It was a bit tricky

Location: Seoul, Korea My friend Amie took me to see Namdaemun one night. It's a big gate that was part of Seoul's city wall roughly 550 years ago. It was the first thing to be designated a "National Treasure of South Korea." An arsonist set fire to the gate only three months after we saw it. The fire destroyed a large portion of the gate. It took three years and $21 million to restore it. I'm glad I was able to see it before the fire. Location: Seoul, Korea At one point, I was walking along the Han river. I was on a pedestrian trail that had signs posted about the history of the river. One of the signs had a large black-and-white photograph, taken in the 1960s, from the same location as the sign. It showed dozens of Korean women squatting at the edge of the river, washing clothes by hand. Behind them, there were dozens of wooden shacks with corrugated tin roofs. The standard of living was remarkably low. I looked up from the sign. Across the perfectly-manicured e

Location: Seoul, Korea If you're in the US and you suggest that Koreans eat dog meat, people are quick to tell you that that's an inaccurate and offensive racist stereotype. But it turns out that Koreans have eaten dog meat for millennia. It's controversial now, but a small percentage of Koreans today still eat dog meat, and it's available at a small number of butcher shops. At one point, I was walking around downtown Seoul with my friend Claire. We passed by a butcher shop. She gestured at it and said, dejectedly, "you still see that sometimes." I didn't know what she was talking about. She had to back up and point directly at the skinned dog in the display window. It was at ground level, probably so that it wouldn't attract too much attention. The meat was the same color as all the other red meat in the display window. There's no way I would have noticed it if she hadn't pointed it out. Location: Seoul, Korea Seoul has a bunch of street food

Location: Seoul, Korea My hostel in Seoul was located in Insadong. Insadong is known for being a historic (old) neighborhood with narrow streets, and it didn't disappoint. Small Korean-brand work vans barrel down alleyways at speed, with only a few inches to spare on either side. While on foot in Insadong, I had to back out of several side streets to avoid being run over. I arrived at the hostel, checked in, and used the bathroom. I flushed some toilet paper down the toilet and it clogged the plumbing immediately. I told the guy at the front desk. He was upset, and told me that the plumbing in Insadong is not robust enough to handle toilet paper, as if I should have know that already. It's expected that people put soiled toilet paper in the small wastepaper bins that are located next to toilets, which is as gross as it sounds. My room had four beds and a small TV. I flipped through the TV channels. There were about a dozen, two of which were devoted to StarCraft. Watching them