South Korea

Best of South Korea

October 18, 2013 /

We visited South Korea for 9 days, from July 21 to July 29, 2013. Although our trip was brief, we enjoyed exploring the cities of Busan and Seoul. South Korea is a small and interesting country where their history reveals the strength and pride of the people, whom despite many years of Japanese occupation and unresolved war continue protecting their culture and hoping for a peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula.

South Korea left us with various different memories: it is, without a doubt, a place of delicious food where eating is fun. The table is served with multiple dishes of different tastes and colors, even people without any type of attention deficit disorder can get distracted with the options; when you think of Korean cuisine, you think of kimchi. Kimchi is serious business for Koreans and for this reason most families have two refrigerators at home, one specifically for kimchi and the other for everything else.

Ondul Floor Heating System
Beautiful Roof

A surprise for us was finding scissors at restaurants! In Korea, a pair of scissors are a cooking tool frequently used to cut your meal into desirable sizes at the dinner table; if you ask someone their age, they may have two different answers to tell you because in South Korea the day you are born is your first birthday, age counting starts at conception; Seoul has become the plastic surgery epicenter in Asia, sadly many men and woman are trying to get rid of their features while seeking a more “westernized” facial look; hanoks, traditional houses in Korea, and even new apartment buildings today have a unique floor heating system to keep rooms warm during the coolest days of winter; everyone can find peace while hiking to a Buddhist temple in the mountains of South Korea and no one appears tired of starring at the beautiful roof shapes and colors of the temples. We haven’t been in any other country where trekking is so popular, everywhere you go you find Koreans in hiking clothes, carrying poles and backpacks ready to go!

The height of the country’s mountains isn’t what defines its hikers, it is the strength and endurance of the people’s spirits what takes a nation up high. This is South Korea, a country of climbers and resilient civilians that rebuild their land after the worst tragedies of slavery and war.

Below are other great things we enjoyed about South Korea:

Food and Drinks

  • Sushi and Sashimi: raw fish

  • Fried Fish

  • Cass Beer

  • Kimchi: spicy pickled cabbage

  • Jeon: egg-breaded, fried vegetables

  • Rice Wine

  • Korean BBQ: bulgogi and pork

  • Pejeon: onion pancake

  • Ginseng Chicken Soup

  • Blue Crab Soup

  • Pickled Radish

  • Sweet Red Beans

  • Pickles

  • Hite Beer

  • Pork Blood Sausage

  • Cornsilk Tea

Favorite Sights and Activities

  • Hiking on many South Korean Trails

  • Watching on Outdoor Movie at the Busan Cinema Center

  • Visiting the Temples and Palaces with their Unique and Colorful Roofs

People

  • Sean: from South Korea, our CouchSurfing host in Busan.

  • Mark and Rachel: from New Zealand and Malaysia, we originally met in Japan and got together again in Busan.

  • Marion and Sangbyeon: from the US and South Korea, our CouchSurfing hosts in Seoul.

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