Korea

Incheon International Airport

I arrived in Korea at 4 o'clock in the morning with a thirteen hour lay over ahead of me.  There weren't many people around so I explored Incheon International Airport for a couple of hours with the girl that I happened to be sitting next to on the flight from JFK before she had to depart on a flight to China.  Incheon airport is the largest airport in South Korea and is one of the largest and busiest airports in the world.  From 2006 to 2011 it has been rated the best airport in the world by the Airports Council International.  It has a golf course, spa, private sleeping rooms, ice rink, casino, indoor gardens and a Museum of Korea Culture.

The Buddhist temple had 108 steps leading up to it
108 steps to contemplate impermanence and mortality

However, I didn't stay in the airport long, instead I went to the sight-seeing tour desk and signed up for a 10,000 won (10 dollar), three hour tour of Incheon, a nearby city.  The tour was very nice.  We visited a Buddhist Temple, the Korean War Memorial (for about 15 seconds) and we had lunch in a traditional Korean Market.  The Buddhist Temple was perched on a ridge overlooking Incheon's Old City.  It was very beautiful and very peaceful, I could have stayed there all day.  While going around Incheon in the tour bus, I noticed army personnel everywhere, some perched in machine gun nests along the roads in full camouflage, guns pointed and ready to fire.  Korea is one of the most militarized places on earth.  There has been a de facto war on the Korean peninsula between the communist north and the democratic south since 1950 when North Korea invaded the South Korea.  Combat operations stopped in 1953 with a cease fire agreement but incidents along the demilitarized zone occur almost daily, like the recent shelling of a South Korea's Yeonpyeong island, which was North Korea's most recent attempt to get international attention.  Before then the world hadn't really thought about North Korea since the box office success of Team America in 2004.

Korean War Memorial

After the Korea War, South Korea, one of the Asian Tigers, experienced a sustained economic boom, in part thanks to economic aid from the United States.  The country is now one of the world's largest and most advanced economies, with successful global companies like Samsung, Hyundai and LG and an annual GDP of 1.4 trillion dollars.  The South Koreans refer to their economic success as the Miracle on the Han River.  Their miracle has been contrasted by the poor, stagnant and underdeveloped North Korean economy, which suffers from high poverty and starvation.  But now back to my tour...

Spicy Chicken

At the market I treated myself to some spicy chicken.  As the name implies it was spicy and delicious.  If only it were boneless it would have been a lot easier to eat.  After filling up on chicken I hopped back on the bus and hurried back to the airport for what I thought would be a 1 o'clock flight...  But when i got there I found out that my flight to Ulaanbaatar was delayed 17 hours.  I was immediately filled with joy, as this would allow me to spend more time in Korea.  It was also nice because Korean Air put me up in a nice hotel (Hyatt Regency) with free meals.  I went to my hotel, checked in, showered and went straight to the concierge desk.  The man there suggested that I take a bus to Seoul and visit Gyeongbokgung Palace.  Gyeongbokgung is a royal palace located in northern Seoul.  It was first constructed in 1394 and reconstructed in 1867 and it was the main and largest palace of the Five Grand Palaces built by the Joseon Dynasty. The name of the palace, Gyeongbokgung, translates in English as "Palace of Shining Happiness."  

Gyeongbokgung Palace

The bus ride to Seoul from the airport hotel was over an hour and I slept the whole way.  Luckily I woke up right before my stop.  By the time I got to the palace it was just past 5 o'clock at night and the doors had just closed.  Dismayed, I sat outside the gates trying to snap some pictures.  That's when a friendly Korean woman in a traditional looking outfit spotted me from inside and walked over to me.  She noticed that I had arrived too late and couldn't enter the palace.  She called over a group of students and asked if I would do an interview with one of them.  I told the guy where I was from, what I was doing in Korea and how I had found out about the palace.  After the interview the woman brought me around the gate, spoke to security and got me into the palace for free! Wootga!  The students showed me around the palace for an hour.  I found out that they were all studying tourism at a near by University.  They shared with me their names, they told me about Korea and I told them about America.  They were all dudes between 22 and 25.  They told me that all Korean males are required to serve three years in the military before they turn thirty.  Most of them weren't happy about this, because it meant they would have to interrupt their University education or put off getting a job.  They were very friendly and also very adamant that before I leave Korea I try soju, a Korean liquor made from rice.  Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to have it, but I exchanged email addresses with my new friends and they offered to show me around the next time I come to Seoul in January. After leaving the palace and walking a bit through Seoul, I said goodbye to the students and took the bus back to my hotel.  There, I ate my free dinner and went to bed.  The next morning I hopped on a plane to Ulaanbaatar and said goodbye to the clean, organized, and modern city of Seoul.

My new Korean friends