Greater Seoul in Winter

Seoul is an endless expanse of high rises, with a few parks, primarily the mountains and old palaces.  They have recently restored one stream in the center of the city and the Han River has a lot going on.   We did the USO tour to Panmunjom one day and saw White-necked Cranes and some roe deer along with other things that I couldn't identify through frosted bus windows at 50 mph. Another day we took the high-speed train to Taejeon (the first stop, about an hour) and then went out to the local national park at the advice of the tourist information office at the train station.  It was beautiful; saw a temple complex, a few birds and probably a weasel.  We had made contact with an expat birder before arriving in Seoul and went out with him two different days; once to the National Arboretum on a beautiful morning after a snowfall and saw a lot of dickybirds, Varied Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker, Japanese Waxwing, Pallas's Rosefinch, Yellowfaced Bunting, some Solitary Snipe and Cinereous Vultures and a Chinese Water Deer.  Another day we took a rental car to Seosan and saw a lot of geese, Bean Geese and Greater White-fronted, ducks including Spot-billed, Common Teal, Eurasian Widgeon, Common Goldeneye, Pochard as well as Mallard.  We also  saw a lot of Whooper Swans and a few Eurasian Spoonbill along with coots, grebes, Grey Herons and egrets, including an Intermediate Egret that was new to me.

Since we haven't spent that much time in East Asia, it was interesting to just wander the streets and shopping areas of Seoul and see what was going on.   It was below freezing all except the last couple of days but with the subway system (very straightforward to use) and lots of underground shopping areas, we didn't have to stay outdoors when we didn't want to.  We blundered into a college graduation at the Olympic Stadium #2 (indoor), and a couple of weddings, including one at a traditional folk village on Mt. Namsan where the bridal party and most of the female guests were in gorgeous hanbok (traditional Korean dress) but some of the guests (I think they were guests) were wearing kimono!.  Beautiful brocade winter kimono with fur collars. Hope the pictures came out.  We also ran into the start of the Seoul Marathon and some sort of ceremony with court costumes at the Deoksugung Palace that seems to have had something to do with the New Year.

Incredible variety of seafood; the stacks and stacks of dried octopus at all the snack stands are very sad.  We saw an area of seafood restaurants in Dongdaemun market where several restaurants had tanks full of lamprey outside, proudly displayed.  Another restaurant had a tank of Urechis; Bruce's web searches suggest that they are considered very good for restoring male vigor.  there were smaller tanks of tunicates, among other seafood, at other places. We did the National Museum, the Olympic Museum, an exhibition of "Cubism in

Asia" that was actually fascinating, the National War Memorial which

includes a huge museum that was also very interesting but ranked right up

there with the Louvre and Hermitage in terms of exhaustion and "museum feet"

and an aquarium at the COEX shopping mall that was actually quite nice; lots

of Korean freshwater fish and an adorable group of small-clawed (South

American) otters.

One of the things that came to fascinate us was the department store (Lotte) next to our hotel; it's a huge (and expensive) place that has everything the way department stores used to, a food floor in the basement, along with a food court, then the normal things up to housewares on 6, furniture on 7, bridal shop on 8 and restaurants on 9 and 10.  Korean bridal shops are very extensive with lots of fabric for bridal hanbok and stacks of quilts and dishes, etc. that must be part of a bride's hope chest, or dowry?? The food floor was incredible; besides lots of Korean delicacies, they also had the most expensive fruit I have ever seen; 10,000 won for an orange (about $10); $5 for an apple (individually wrapped and beautifully polished).  The entrance to the parking ramp at the store was very well staffed; the traffic "police" directing traffic outside the ramp are all Lotte employees, with a variety of uniforms that we couldn't really figure out.  There were tall young men in the classic doorman type uniform with fur hats; guys in gold jackets with whistles, and young ladies in plum-colored winter suits and high-heeled boots, with headsets.  Their job seemed to be to bow to each car as it entered or left the ramp.  Department stores like this are the exception rather than the rule and are mostly pretty expensive.  Most people prefer to shop in markets, often in high rises, which are like antique malls, lots and lots of little booths all selling approximately the same thing, each with 1-4 salespeople and the price is negotiable.  How they all manage to survive economically is a mystery to us.  They do this for dried cephalopods, electronics, whatever; everyone selling that item is concentrated in an area but divided into individual little booths.  They must all work on commission but there can't be that many customers.  Very strange.  One thing, they all seem pretty young and may still live with their parents, but what do they go on to do?  Even workers in menial jobs seem to be Korean although I understand that there are some immigrant workers in things like agriculture.

Seoul is the largest city (within city limits) in the world, according to one source, and it is surrounded by "new cities" which consist of huge Soviet-style clusters of high rises which apparently all contain their own shopping, businesses, schools, etc  Some of these house several hundred thousand people. Construction is constant and everywhere.  They have been trying to reforest Korea but the economic juggernaut is making it very difficult to conserve anything.  There is certainly a lot of affluence in downtown Seoul and when you ride the subway (about $.80 a ride) you get the impression of a very middle-class society but there are homeless in the underground shopping areas at night, and there must be a lot of people that are having a hard time economically.    There seems to be more economic segregation than you see in a lot of the European cities and it's very different from the shopping pattern in Europe where you have a butcher, a baker, a grocery, a dry cleaner, on every street.  Commercial and residential areas seem more segregated here and the commercial areas are all specialized.  We didn't really seem many groceries.  They must be all in one neighborhood somewhere.  Lotte has a discount store, like a Walmart, near Seoul station, that includes a food section and we wound up buying supplies for our field days, there; but again I think that is unusual.

A fascinating city;  a bit scary in that these huge high rise parks are probably the future for housing a lot of the world but Korea is doing well at present.  The political climate is (according to news reports and our ex-pat birder) much improved, with room for debate and dissent.  The North is dangerous but unless the Idiot-in -Chief does something nutty, may remain quiet.