seoul II seoul

this guesthouse has a couple more guests now...both american, including a

jamaican/dominican girl from florida who lives in japan, if you can figure

that out. anyway, it's raining today. it's 1:30 in the afternoon as i'm

writing this. lots of things, like museums and palaces and the like, are

closed on mondays anyway, so it's a slow day for tourism. this is the first

time i've worn my nice new completely waterproof jacket since i started my

trip. i stay dryer than the people with umbrellas.

i took the subway to the korea stock exchange this morning. the building can

be seen at www.kse.or.kr. it's interesting in that there is really no korea

stock exchange anymore. in 1997, they went to a fully computerized system,

like nasdaq instead of the specialist desks like the nyse. so there's no one

really there at the korea stock exchange. what used to be the trading floor

is now a visitor center, except that they don't have visitors other than

pre-reserved tour groups of students. so when i showed up, some american guy

in shorts and a rain jacket, they were caught by surprise. the girl was very

nice, though, and showed me around, and threw together a demonstration of some

things, and a 15 minute video detailing the history of the exchange. so that

was worth walking in the rain for. then i went to a food court that doesn't

exist anymore, and ended up eating at subway. i have yet to go into one of

the hundreds of korean restaurants around here, since nothing is in english.

i'll figure it out one of these days.

the tours they have to the dmz area are pretty expensive, so i don't know if

i'll do that or not. i'll probably take a day trip north tomorrow, to the

area where my dad served in the army over here. then wednesday i'll probably

leave seoul for a few days to see some cities to the southeast. oh, the guy

here just told me this guesthouse has a webpage...it's

www.seoulbackpackers.com. so now everyone can see where i'm staying. i'm

getting chills from the excitement.

everyone here wants korea to be reunited.

i guess they hope it's just inevitable. of course, the south would never

become like the north, so what will happen at some point is that the north

will fall apart, i guess. north korea has a very strong military and a very

strong communist government, so i'm not sure how the people here think that

will happen. in reading about korea's history, i've noticed that it has been

split into north and south many times for hundreds of years, this last time

being since the end of world war 2. i would love to see north korea, but

that's pretty hard to do. it's just interesting that there are hardly any

people alive who remembers there being one korea, but everyone wants

reunification. hopefully it will happen someday soon.

the world cup! jeez, it's everywhere. it starts next month in korea and

japan, and the whole country here is just crazy with it. everywhere i go,

there are soccer balls, and people always ask me if i'm here for the world

cup. you can't turn around without seeing the words 'fifa world cup 2002' on a poster or banner or big soccer balls. i'm sure they will make a lot of money on the thousands of people that show up to watch the games, but soccer doesn't interest me in the least.

it's now monday...i have not been able to actually post any new journal

entries on here since i got to korea. i can read them, but i can't post new

ones. i've just been writing them and saving them in my email, so hopefully i

can post them soon. it rained all day today, a medium cool rain. so i spent

the afternoon reading, then went to a travel place to try to book a panmunjom

tour for tomorrow. unfortunately, the english tours were all booked up and

all that was available was the japanese tour. so today was not too active for

me.