My Town Monday: Seoul, Korea

Technically, this is My (husband's) Town Monday, because last week, he was in South Korea on a business trip for 10 days. He brought back some nifty picks of a place I didn't know much about, and I thought you might be interested in a sampling, too. The aerial views below are misty, but click to enlarge, because they're quite nice.

Korea is craggy and mountainous. The mountains aren't high, but they're plentiful, terraced for agriculture, and spanned by cities laced across their valleys like dense spiderwebs. These are pictures of Seoul, the capital city of South Korea, the country administratively established south of the 38th parallel after WWII.

High-density, high-rise housing is where most people live, and it's considered a very nice way of life. You can barely see a stripe of solid gray-blue, near the very top of the picture, which is the broad Han River, over a kilometer wide, that flows prettily through the city.

Seoul Tower, which looks a lot like Seattle's Space Needle, was built in the 1960's, and is a proud symbol of the country's post-war progress. Visitors can take the Namsan cable car to the top of the mountain where the tower perches. At the structure's base is metal caging which holds up a wall of lovers' padlocks above. Lovers attach locks onto public structures, many here with inscriptions, to symbolize their affections to the world. I had heard about this in other cities, but it's also here. (Wikipedia identifies at least 22 notable sites internationally.)

The open air shopping is plentiful and pleasant, and you'll notice the large amount of English on signs. There's English to assist travelers almost everywhere, even if some of the translations, to us, are as unintentionally funny as our attempts at Korean must be.

Interesting, even artistic display of pigs' knuckles.

Though people have lived on the Korean Peninsula for millenia, Seoul is a largely new city. Much of it was destroyed by the end of the Korean War in 1953. The city's design and layout were re-conceived from scratch and designed specifically to facilitate conducting international business. The streets are well-paved and lanes wide for lots of traffic and manufacturing transport, and it's easy to get around and find your way as a foreigner.

Deoksugung is a walled palace compound in the heart of downtown Seoul that became a royal residence in 1592. One of Five Grand Palaces, it was targeted for destruction by the Japanese who ruled from 1910 through the end of WWII. Many of its buildings are gone and many more simply had to be replicated.

The changing of the guard is a magnificent pageant. See the modern buildings just behind the trees lining the compound. Today's city hall complex is close by as well.

To bang the large painted drum above, the percussionist almost runs up to it with a full baseball swing.

This was the scene outside the hotel, where thousands of people assembled to watch the World Cup on huge TV screens in the public plazas. They're all in red to support the Korean team, and if you look more closely, you'll see tons of cute, light-up devil horns. Sadly, since this photo, both the U.S. and Korean soccer teams are out of contention, but I did get a pair of horns as a souvenir!

For weekly posts like this from all over, you can visit the wonderful and official My Town Monday blog, which I'm hosting for the first time this week. Be gentle with me! Hop into our comments here or there, and let us know where we can find your MTM, because I'll be updating everywhere all day!

UPDATES:

Barrie Summy takes us from lovers' locks to another similar and widespread phenomenon she observed in California: shoe trees!

Gabriele Goldstone chimes in with the fascinating ways Winnipeg is a part of every World Cup game!

Barbara Martin gives us a passionate, insider's view with plenty of info from a less universally peaceful gathering than the one above, the recent G20 in Toronto!

Travis Erwin has a blast from Amarillo's Old Western past, double-quacker!

J Winter shows us why his dream hometown is Loveland.

Richard Levangie shares the beautiful Northern Lights of Nova Scotia.