Shivering in Seoul
- Jan 16, 2019
- 7 min read
We had a great day in freezing Seoul, the top temperature for the day was -1 but when we left the hotel this morning it was -11, which was just a little chilly. I know it was cold because I had my coat on all day (except when we were on the train or inside).
We started the day in Gangnam, which was an easy place to get to (one stop on line 6 to Sindang where we changed to line 2 and got off at Samseong station.)
Our first stop was to take a photo in front of the statue of Psy's hands and of course we had to do a performance of "Gangnam Style", thankfully the only other people around were tourists doing the same thing. It is funny how this business district is synonymous with a K-Pop song with hundreds of millions of youtube views, but there is a lot more to the area than meets the eye and you need to take the time to explore it. (and I know there is more for me to see like Samneung Park which has the mausoleum to King Seongjong the 9th which looks like it would be a sanctuary in the middle of the city,)
Gangnam is also the home to a couple of huge entertainment companies one of them being SM (artists like SuperJunior.
Exo and Shinee to name just a few that I like) and they have the SMTown Museum which we wandered through. There are six levels full of all things SM and you only have to pay for entry to the top two levels which I believe are quite interactive and although I really enjoy some of the bands and their music wandering the other four floors was enough for me to get a little K-Pop fix and I think all SM fans would be happy to pay to see more of their idols.
After this we went to the huge shopping complex the Starfield COEX Mall, which is said to be the largest shopping mall in Asia but we only wandered around the bottom floor and were totally overwhelmed by the size of it. Again it was one of those places that if I had more time I would have wandered around a bit more but I don't like shopping malls at home and I am not one for wandering around shops just for the sake of it (give me a market and I will explore for hours but a shopping mall is a shopping mall is a shopping mall even if it does have a library, aquarium and casino attached to it!!!!)
The best place was the bookstore and Jenna was thrilled to pick up a Hangul version of Harry Potter (and I have a feeling that she is going to have a lot of different language versions of Harry Potter on her shelves) We thought about eating at the food court here but it was so busy and we couldn't find a seat so we headed into the arctic weather and found a coffee shop Tom & Toms which provided us with warmth, sustenance and a souvenir to take home (Jenna and I got a branded mason jar that we had had our sweet potato lattes in). It was in a great spot on the corner and our seats on the second floor gave us a chance to just sit and watch the world go by while we defrosted.
When you are in Gangnam you could seriously be in any big city with it's banks and high class shops and some big department stores, the only difference is the street signs with Hangul on them and the huge 'Gangnam Style' hands which are unique to South Korea. There are some wonderful sculptures and some amazing buildings but you could be in any big city in the world when you are wandering around in some parts of Gangnam.
However tucked in the middle of the skyscrapers is Bongeunsa Temple, a Buddhist temple which was built in 794 and unfortunately like many buildings in South Korea it has gone through a lot of renovations and rebuilding due to war, fire and relocation. The temple grew out of favour when Confucianism became popular in the Joseon dynasty but regained it's place when Buddhism was revived under Queen Munjeong. This temple is home to 3479 Buddhist scriptures which reside in the oldest remaining building on the temple complex, the library.
It is an understated temple but had a real feeling of peace in the middle of the metropolis and I would like to venture here early in the morning or in the afternoon for a percussion
ceremony which uses four instruments and is performed by the monks of the temple. This ceremony is meant to save and awaken beings on the ground using the drum, beings underwater using the wooden fish, beings in the sky using the cloud drum, and beings under the ground using the gong and I think it would be amazing to be part of it, but not in the middle of winter.
We then headed towards Apgujeong Rodeo were there was supposed to be a good shopping area and is also home to K_Star Rd which has some cute representations of KPop idols all over the place. I should have guessed with the Rodeo in the name that the shopping was upmarket (think Rodeo in LA) and if you can afford Luis Vuitton and Chanel or Burberry it would have been fabulous but as all of our bank accounts are sadly lacking the shopping didn't happen (and window shopping just didn't satisfy us so after another warming coffee we set off to a place that set us shivering in another way. While here it made me think of the hardships so many Koreans went through and why to this day some of those lingering sentiments of anger are still there to survivors of the Japanese invasion).
Walking through Seodaemun Prison Hall and Independence Park is a chilling experience and more than a little overwhelming as it was the site of the prison used during the Japanese occupation to imprison, torture and kill Korean patriots who were fighting for independence. The prison was home to 500 prisoners in the beginning of Japanese occupation but steadily rose and at the end of the war there were nearly 3000 political prisoners within the prison, most had been tortured, starved and beaten during their incarceration.
As we wandered through the cells and buildings
the weather outside had turned even colder as the sun had slipped behind the clouds and it helped give us a sense of what people would have dealing with, the biting cold and the dismal surroundings and as I shivered in my coat and boots all I could think of was what conditions would have been like and how people managed to survive (or didn't as the case might be)There are 90 known dissidents who died in this period but it is estimated that more than 600 unnamed persons died from torture, malnutrition, execution or disease. One of the most chilling places was the room with hundreds of names and photos of Korean patriots who had been imprisoned within the walls of Seodauemun Prison.
Seven of fifteen buildings remain as testimony to the tortures that went on in the prison, including the execution building and the tunnel that was used to move the dead bodies out of the prison.
One of the many poignant things in the yard was the Wailing Poplar which was planted at the same time as the execution building was being built and patriots being dragged to their execution were said to have grabbed the tree and 'wailed with deep resentment for their unachieved independence.'
The cell block buildings contain the stories of the liberation activists and what happened during this period (1910-1945) and it wasn't pretty. The stories were heartbreaking, from people who fought, to those who refused to give up their language and culture, to anyone who challenged the Japanese rule. I can understand the deep resentment that the older Koreans have who experienced life under Japanese rule or whose family may have been affected by those experiences.
We moved on to the Korean War Memorial and Museum, and because we had spent longer at Seondaemun than we thought we would by the time we got to the museum it was about to close so we made do with just looking at the exhibits on the outside of the building. I want to come back and look through the museum because it wasn't built to glorify war but to educate about the effects of war and I have a feeling that the tears I cried in Busan would have multiplied if I went through the Memorial Hall (which I found out has ALL the names inscribed on it of those Korean soldiers that have died in conflict since the Korean war and I would hate to think how many names are up on those walls.)
If you are interested in the machines of war; tanks, artillery, planes and helicopters then you will find plenty here to look at and I know Linda enjoyed this because her eldest son is in the armed forces and she probably has a lot more knowledge on this subject than the rest of us. There are some amazing sculptures here to, the most poignant being a statue of a the two brothers-one from the South and one from the North which represents the 10 million families still separated by the war and like everyone else who has ever been to South Korea I hope that one day I will be able to come back to a reunited Korea. As we wandered back to the train station we found a little restaurant that had a 'set menu' with pork cooking in front of us, soup that stopped the shivering, sides for miles and as much rice as we could eat.
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