Travel around South Korea, Part 1

Hello y'all, been busy during the past month with the end of the semester and having my mother visit for two weeks. Rather than returning to America, I decided to explore my adopted home country instead.

Starting last Thursday, we rented a car and braved the roads of South Korea. Korea gets very different once you leave Seoul, going from millions of people jammed into the metro to valleys populated only by ancient apple farms.

From this:

To this:

The trip started out rather inauspiciously, stuck in the elevator of the rental car building. To make matters worse, it was Christmas morning, but we still managed to find an elevator repairmen who could get us out of there.


Our first destination was a famous mountain in Korea by the name of Seoraksan. The mountain attracts bus loads of mountain-climbing old people from all over the country. Despite it being a particularly cold time of year, we managed to get to the summit and see a great sunrise from the nearby beach.


Seoraksan is in the upper southeast corner of the country, by the end of our trip we would be as far in the southwest as possible. In between, the weather went from snowdrifts to palm trees, then, weirdly enough, back to snowdrifts on the supposedly tropical island in the south.

Seoraksan is actually part of a mountain chain that contains buddhist temples, famous waterfalls, and immense columns of rock. We were only able to see a few of the sights, but every hour spent in the open rather than in the apartments of Seoul was priceless. It's hard to realize just how closed in a city is until you finally escape it.


Finding a motel by the mountain and getting around by car was the beginning of a long period of being forced to speak Korean with strangers. The bad news about walking up to strangers was that they assumed if I could ask for directions, I could understand whatever rapidfire answer they shot back at me. The good news is that saying just a few words in Korean to people in rural areas is pretty astonishing, after saying nothing more than, "how do I get to the hotel?" you might have thought that I just recited poetry from the suprised and appreciative responses I received.

Traveling outside of cities in Korea also brought me in contact with a lot of older people and children who have seen very few white people. The kids were cute about it, staring open-mouthed and running over to their parents once they laid eyes on me. The older people were less endearing, mainly glaring at my mother in I with looks that ranged from surprise to disdain. I'm used to both reactions, but it was harder for my mother to get used to strangers being much less friendly than they are in the U.S.

I'll finish up with a shot of lakes in Korea, taken by Andong. Later on, we traveled to Yeosu, Mokpo, and Jejudo, that'll be for another post.