Fun in Seoul: DMZ, Korean fried chicken and more

Many traditional Japanese companies celebrate Obon by giving their workers several days off.  This is in order to return to the family hometown and pay respects to the family’s ancestors.  As I am working for a Japanese company, I had a 4 day weekend.  Henry took 2 days vacation and we went to Seoul , South Korea .  This was my first time in Korea and Henry’s second.  It was a quick 2 hour flight from Haneda airport in Toyko (which is primarily the domestic airport for Tokyo ) to Gimpo (which is primarily the domestic airport for Seoul ).  Lots of Japanese and Chinese tourists had been visiting Korea lately because of the South Korean currency drop.  The subway was pretty easy to navigate since it was in English, Chinese and Korean and especially since we have mastered the Tokyo subway system.

We saw a couple of palaces, wandered around the touristy areas of Seoul, I had a spa treatment, did some shopping and ate lots of Korean food.  Oh!  We also had a USO tour of the DMZ.  Now I can officially say I stepped on North Korean soil and saw a North Korean solider peer at our tour group through binoculars.  Kinda freaky.  The U.S. army soldiers who were leading the tours told us stories about one guy on a tour in 2001 who actually tried to run across to the North Korean side (he didn’t make it) and about the farmers who tend the fields in the DMZ who find random land mines after a heavy rain and would stick them out on the road.  (FYI – you have to be over 80 pounds usually to trigger a land mine)  It was strangely comforting to be on a tour with mostly other Americans.  They were pretty strict about the photo taking.  We tried to take a picture of a “Mine” sign (see the red triangle sign) that dotted the road through the DMZ.  It was quite an interesting tour.

We had paejun from a late night food stall/sidewalk restaurant, kim chi mandoo (dumplings), cold buckwheat noodles, more noodles, soy crab, Korean fried chicken, traditional Korean meal with like 15 small dishes, samgeytang (ginseng and rice stuffed chicken soup), bi bim bap, bul go gi, kal bi, all the good stuff.  We really ate a lot!  The kim chi mandoo, noodles and Korean fried chicken were particularly tasty!  The soy crab was really interesting.  It’s a kind of marinated crab in soy sauce and other ingredients and you eat the crab raw.  And I believe the crab is marinated for a while, not just like overnight.  It was a bit pricey but my friend recommended it and we met him in Korea for lunch at this soy crab place.  There were two prices: one for this season’s crab and one for last season’s crab!   Needless to say, we opted for this season’s crab.

We didn’t really do much research or venture too far out of the well-known areas but all in all, Seoul was a fun city.