Trip to Seoul: Day 3 - Kpop, Namsum Tower and Jump!

New to my travelogue of Seoul, you may want to start at day one here:

So, owing to late shopping at Dongdaemun yesterday, and the 10 km walk home ofc, I hade a record late breakfast at 12.00. Yes, thats extreme, but then I'm mostly still on Swedish time ie one could argue I woke up at 3.00 in the morning. ;-) Here is my lunch:

So before going to to first must see of the day, Namsam Tower, we walked through Myengdong and Namdaemun market (again), and here I got a revelation. Well, sort of. We passed by the wonderful Ttrak of Bloo (no, not "track of blood") which is a heaven for a kpop-lover.

The thing is, before going to seoul, I had tried to distance myself from kpop fandom feelings and instead be like "yea, whatever". I mean, what is a week in the heart of kpop, eh? My defences thoguh began falling bit by bit by hearing kpop hits all the time and being surrounded by all theese small signs of kpop, kdrama and just general cultural markers you see all the time at home when you watch it. Like:

Seeing Lee Min-Jung från Big, and many others, doing ads.

And I think I saw Bae Suzy from miss A in two different ads at a TV in just one minute. She seems to be really popular. I first saw her in the above mentioned tv-series Big. I will blog about that one later on.

Anyway, Ttrak of Bloo was the obviouos end to my self-deluding, since I left that place all warm over carrying with me treasures you cant guess! CD:s? Well, yes. Hmm, well maybe that wan't to hard, but still look at what I found (and this was just a minimum choice from my side, made possible by extreme self-control...):

From left to right, up to bottom it is:

• Ga-In with her latest album, featuring the single Bloom. I actually boought this on principle, even though the tracks are good too, because the music video depicts a female sexuality beyond the male ppoint of view that pervades kpop.
• Super Junior photos, presents for home
• Gangnam Style with PSY. Well, ofc I HAD to buy one of theese. Its shaped like a box of burnable DVD's and really a nice memory of what happened to kpop in 2012 on the world stage.
• Ornage Caramel with their second mini album. Aing among other tracks. The group that brought me inte kpop.
• Sexy Love with T-ara (7th mini album). One of my favorite bands and tracks this year
• Orange Caramel again, this time with the latest Lipstick single.

Even though they are nicely packaged, the albums usually only costs roughly 14000 WOn, ie 95 SEK/14$. To be honest Im not even sure if they are compatible with my swedish CD-player, but the Books that comes with the album and just supporting the bands I have already downloaded from the internet felt right. And since I was such an enthusiastic customer (yes, I tried not to giggle or drool to much), he even threw in two free posters (orange caramel, yay!).

This was sorely tempting, signed CD's by the stars themselves, I really had to lay of them (this time).

So, if you are in Seoul and likes kpop, I warmly recommends this place. It is in the southwest end of Myengdong, you enter the market area from the Myengdong station and turn left at the first street and walk towards the distant Shinsagae department store. Close to the end of the street you find it on the left hand side of the street. Or google for this: 부루의뜨락 on Google Maps.

Dazed by this, feeling warm and cozy inside, the walk then went through Namdaemun market and then down towards Namsum Tower. Given the choice between taking a challenge or doing it the easy way, I did as usual and took the long way. Literally.

Instead of going by the cable car I thought I'd walk up to Namsam Tower, but that was quite a long and steep walk. I'm in quite OK shape, but a brisk uphill walk, though a very beutiful (certainly in spring/summer), still took me roughly 35 mins and weak in my legs. Ah, who am I kidding, I liked it!

Anyway, the tower and the view was as expected, no more or no less. The interesting thing was the tradition of couples placing locks on places they could, usually up in the tower I thought, but here they were on iron christmas trees. Nice idea:

A guy making fast food in a very effective way. Almost worth paying to see.

The hard way

Free show of traditional martial arts at the top

View towards north and downtown Seoul (well, just a small part of Seoul, actually)

Christmas locker trees

See, trees made completely out of locks, often with romantic texts on them

After Namsam tower it was evening break and then time for the Jump show. It is a kind of show popular in Seoul where you actually doesn't need to understand any korean since, beyond some basic korean sounds korresponding to "ouch","hello", and so, which you get anyway, its all about the acting (out) and the martial arts. Its a story about a family who has a break in, and combines slapstick with sound effects and great showmanship. It comes warmly recommended.

Just a snapshot before the show, I didnt dare photograph more...

Just one more comment, a general one:

After two and a half days here in Seoul using the subway I have noticed something I haven't seen an the subway, at least not nearly in the same scale, as in for example London, Beijing or Stockholm, and that is the dynamic merging of business=shopping and subway. Often you either have the subway stations contain shops on the way to the exits, or you have belowground transfer corridors (can be even kilometers!) with sopping stalls, or even stand alone shopping centers, all of these usually situated below street crossings as to serve as an alternative to pedestrian crossings. Its all very nice on makes the subway a lot more "Lived in" and comfy almost at times. And between midnight and 5:30 in the morning the entrances and first hallways are left open for homeless to sleep in, which seemed to be done in a relatively orderly fashion.

Trip to Seoul: Day 1: Rain and markets

I’m going to tell you of my seven day trip to Seoul, Capital of Korea. It’s work related, but I understand from my visitors statistics that that part mostly interests my closest relatives and friends, so I will not say much on that account than that it has to do with my PhD studies and a long time plan of going here again. I will know more of that next spring/summer. Enough said about that

Privately, then, what meaning does Korea hold for me? Well, I have been following the ”korean wave”, kpop, kdrama, and so on since that day roughly two years ago when I stumbled on Orange Caramel and their music video on Youtube, Magic Girl. Slowly I have branched out to reading about all and everything Korean, as you can see from my blogroll on the left side. As a side note, and as you may already know, the Korean presidential election will be coming to an end the last day of my stay her, the 19th of December. This Thursday it was almost a dead run between the two main candidates and it will be interesting to follow. I have seen some signs on the streets, but nothing extreme as of yet.

I have been preparing for Seoul and Korea specifically by learning to translate Korean letters to Latin (romanizing), which isn’t as complicated as you may think. Rather it is quite easy compared to for example Chinese or even Japanese. They have an easy system where each symbol is a syllable containing a central vocal (sound) surrounded by 0-3 consonants, with a total number of building blocks not much more then what we have in the west. Pronouncing and understanding the, well, that’s quite another matter. I’d say that part is easier than Chinese but harder than Japanese. Here is how “hello” is contructed (that really more formally is said “Annyeong Haseyo”)

I have also printed a number of maps of places I have planned to go to, mainly in relation to subway stations and exits. You can get really good maps at the airport information, but with the Korean Tourist information on the net you can really zoom in so that you can see the exits in detail. Add some arrows and text and you are set to go.

The Hotel. I always see to it that I carefully map the way there, its GPS coordinates, alternative routes, and so on, just to be sure I get there. When you have your room, you have a home base to retreat to if something happens or you just need to recuperate. As it was, some problem with the booking and payment had happened so they needed four hours until it was fixed. Next time I will mail ahead also. Don’t assume sites at home you think is of “world reknown”. In Namibia earlier this year I met teenagers who had never heard of McDonalds. Gives hope to humanity, but also makes it worth to plan ahead. Well anyway, that gave me time to kill, which I jetlagged as I was used to visit quickly three markets and a Harrods-type mall. Let me first just remark that Seoul is *big* and that even its central circle line (no 2, green) takes more than an hour to circle.

Arriving at Incheon I knew everything would be alright ;-)

Tips: Buy a M-Pass at exit 5/10 of the airport for your stay. You can even use it for the regular (not express) train from the airport and all the lines on the subway map, up to 20 rides a day. One week cost 59000 + desposit and small fee = 64500 Won (430 SEK/65 $). They also inlcude some small discounts on stuff like Namsam tower.

The subway system, which I will talk more later days, is fresh and safe, and all of relevance is texted also in latin letters, and spoken in english on the trains, even if you learn to manage even without that rather quickly. They only thing you have to keep being slightly aware of is the obvious going in the right direction. ^_^ As long as you have done your homework and checked your maps beforehand its all right.

Market number 1, Gwangjang. A whole neighborhood stuffed with fabrics and traditional clothing like hanbok and clothing made for usage not style (as in fashion), intersected with corridors of street food.

I bought two "cakes" of something looking like potato fritters which cost almost nothing (2000 Won each ie 14 SEK/2$). You could sit on benches where they cooked, but I was a bit chicken and will have to come back and try the pig feet for example.

Market number two: Myeongdong. Moore of the kind of big city shopping district you would expect. If you love free samples of beaty stuff you would love this. You just enter one of the stores with a saleswomen at the front and she gives you a carrying basket and a free sample. I know men here use lots of stuff like BB samples, and really has nothing against it, but I didn't dare try enter with my non-existant language and make-up skills

Did I say it rained arrows at my arrival? I managed to buy a umbrella at my arrival from a street vendor, and later here at Myeongdong a actually found a place with black tea. Even though it had a faint taste of fish.

Funny hat store

As the Japanese would say: Kawaiii.

"Hats on"

After that I went to the Harrods lookalike Shinsaegae, with luxorious/delicious foodstuff at the ground floor and then luxorious brands five-six stories above, which I found quite uninteresting actually. Why go all the way to Korea for brands I can find at home to roughly thesame price also?

Mushrooms and more mushrooms

Koreans arent at all afraid of meat, with mouthwatering bacon spreads of tasty bacon. And much like it from all kinds of meats and cooking.

Funny thing at many larger stores: umbrella-wrapper. But it in and you get a plastic pretictive shell to stop dripping, which you then throw away when you exit.

Market number 3: Namdaemun. More small street, cheaper stuff and more throngs of people, at least closer packed together. Bought some funny clothes for my two oldest. 

Ginseng roots pickled like vegetables where you then drink the stuff. I saw a young hip guy once sipping from a bottle with a rot and yellow muddy liquid in it. They treasure it somewhat like we treasure whiskey it seems. 

Last and maybe least, the hotel. Alpha Guest House. Close to the Inner Circle Line, No 2, wifi, and safe and warm. All I need in winter.