Seodaemun Prison & Inwangsan Shrine

The Execution Stool

This tree is outside the execution chambers. It was the final thing many prisoners saw before they were executed. It's the oldest tree on the site.


The prisoners were responsible for making bricks while they were incarcerated. These are bricks that are in the courtyard today.



View of the prison from the top of the mountain/shrine.

Zen Rock


Today was unlike any other I have had in Korea. My friend and I headed out to Seodaemun Prison. This prison was built by the Japanese during their occupation of Korea. It was built in the late 1910's to house Koreans who were trying to start an independence movement. The prison was used to house Korean criminals all the way up until 1987.

The prison has numerous buildings that housed different types of prisoners. They showed prisoners being tortured in various ways including by electrocution. As we were going through the exhibit about how the independence fighters were tortured, one of the Korean workers came up to us and explained how the torture devices worked. There was a wooden box that had spikes in it that they would put people in and have the guards kick the box over and over, so the person would be punctured by the spikes many times.

The cells looked pretty large but as I read more I discovered that they would house up to 40 prisoners at a time and the prisoners had to take turns sleeping at night since there wasn't enough room for everyone.

There was also a reenactment of the Japanese court that independence fighters faced. The Koreans were not represented by attorneys and the only Korean that was in the room was the one that as on trial.

When it came to executing the prisoners, the prisoner would sit on a box with a noose around their neck and the box would fall through the floor killing the person. The Japanese would then take the bodies out of a secret tunnel to be buried.

It was a pretty intense experience. I have to keep reminding myself that all of these memories are still fresh in people's mind since the Japanese occupation only ended in 1945.

After this we headed to the Inwangsan Shamanism/Buddhist shrine which is at the top of the mountain next to the prison. It was quite a vertical climb. The tour book called it a walk so we were in flip flops which were not the right shoes for this hike. We made it up to the temple and drank some water and chilled out. A Korean woman came up and gave us tissues to to wipe our sweat away and offered us cigarettes. She was super cute. We headed further up the mountain and encountered many shrines and people praying along the way. There was a natural spring that we stopped at and we ran into the Korean woman again. She gave us some incense and showed us how we should whirl it around our head before sticking it in the shrine.

We passed the Seounbawi Rock or "Zen Rock" which is supposed to have the power to give sons to pregnant women. Most of the people that were praying here were women.

We made it to near the top and sat and looked out over the city. It was a beautiful view and was very peaceful and quiet. I was able to pick out some different neighborhoods (Gus) within in the city.

We climbed down and had some dinner and headed home for the night.

Soccer, Noraebong and more Randomness

On Wednesday night, I met up with one of my Korean friends for dinner and to celebrate the end of her semester and beginning of summer break. We ended up at our neighborhood chicken hof which is normally rather busy. We wanted to sit outside since it was a beautiful night. However when we arrived, there was only one table left inside. We sat down and there was a huge projector playing the Iran v. South Korea soccer game that was taking place in Seoul. The score was 1-0 in favor of Iran towards the end of the game. (Sorry my knowledge of soccer is rather limited).

South Korea ended up scoring a goal in the final minutes to tie the game. The restaurant exploded. It was a pretty amazing site to see everyone in a place cheering for the same team since this doesn't seem to happen back home too much.

Another one of our friends met up with us but we had finished eating and he was hungry. We decided to try out the "New Zealand House" which is just around the corner from my apartment. They served some delicious ribs that hadn't been "Koreanized" (translation: has something funky added to it) and soju (the Korean traditional liquor) in a CO2 powered bottle. They also had some international beers which doesn't happen too often in my neighborhood. I'll definitely go back.

On Thursday, I met another group of Korean friends in the Kunkuk University area. The areas around universities here are always really trendy and there's lots to do. We went to Ho Bar II and played darts. I have no idea why it's called Ho Bar but it's an interesting name nonetheless.

The night ended at a noraebong or "singing room." Each group gets your own room to sing to your hearts content. The room comes with all of the essential equipment like a TV, microphones, tambourines, and maracas. They had quite a few English songs. We had a blast!

One of the guys I was with speaks about as much English as I do Korean. I always seem to have a great time when I am with him though. We communicate through hand motions and our extensive 20 word vocabularies in both languages. I told his "Canchunayo" which means "it's okay" and I blew his mind. He told me my Korean has improved by 100% (this was translated through our mutual friend who speaks both languages) since I last met him. This isn't too much of an accomplishment since I could like two words last time a hung out with him.

All and all, it was a pretty awesome couple of days. I love Korea!

Another Random Saturday in Seoul

I had an awesome Saturday and one that shows how completely random Korea can be. My friend Madigan (who has only been in Korea for three weeks) and I set out to visit Changdeok Palace and Biwon Gardens. At this palace you are required to take a guided tour, so we purchased our tickets for the next English speaking tour, bought some coffee and waited for our tour to begin.

In the meantime a guy from the Netherlands came up to us and asked if we knew where the tour began. He ended up waiting with us and we started chatting it up. We took the tour together. More on this later.

The palace was interesting because it contained a secret garden and this was the first tour I took that was guided so I got a better understanding of why the palace is designed in certain ways. The gardens were absolutely gorgeous. They had lots of trees and ponds. It was amazing to see so much green in the city.

We finished up the tour and decided to head to Insadong to get some food and check out the stuff people had for sale. The Dutch guy came along with us. As we were trying to figure out how to get there, an American guy stopped us and asked us how to get to Insadong. We told him to join our group. We tried to go to a vegetarian restaurant but went in the wrong door and ended up at an awesome tea house. It was literally a hole in the wall place you had to duck in order to walk through it. We tried some amazing tea and ate the traditional Korean rice cakes.

We then sat out to find the doll for the Dutch guy's grandma. While we were walking to the market, I mentioned that I needed to get back to the baseball stadium to buy some gear for my Grandpa and told the guy how amazing Korean baseball is. He asked if there was a game and turns out there was one that was about to start in 30 minutes. (As with most Europeans, he loves soccer and was disappointed there wasn't a soccer match and he decided he wanted to see some sort of club sport in Korea.) We all jumped in a cab and headed to the baseball game.

We decided to cheer for the travelling team and the game turned out to be amazing. All the newbies loved the game and we had Koreans stopping and asking if they could take their picture with us. It's still so funny that they think we're something special.

Our team lost in the 9th inning after leading 2-0 throughout the game. We stayed behind for a while talking and had trouble leaving the stadium. It was a strange feeling knowing that we might be locked in the big stadium for the night. We finally found an open exit and decided to head to Gangnam to get some dinner.

The night before I had been to a Czechoslovakian bar (shout out to Uncle Larry!) and I decided I should take them back there. They brew their own beer and site and it is far superior to the light beer that is standard here. We order the meter of beer which is 10 beers that the Dutch guy told us really is a meter. (I still have know idea about the metric system!)

The Dutch guy and I moved on to another bar and discussed U.S. politics and how he feels the US is viewed right now in Europe and throughout the world. I was very happy to hear that he had a bad image of Americans and told us that the 3 of us changed his mind.

It was pretty awesome to meet such intellectually stimulating people in such a random way. We had some pretty deep conversations that you usually don't have until you've known someone for a while. I'm glad we stumbled across these people and it showed me that I should put myself out there more in more non-bar and club related places and I can meet some more awesome people!

I'm back!!!!!

So I have fast forwarded back into the 21st century. It was a rough week. I hope this stupid computer doesn't break again. It's only 2 months out of warranty. As my dad would say, "That's the story of my life."

Anyway, moving on. On June 2, I have been here three months. It's hard to believe I'm already 1/3 of the way into my year here. Some days I feel like I just got here, and other days it feels like I have been here forever.

I had an incredible weekend in a small town of Sokcho on the far Northeast corner of the country. It is still much bigger than Yuma but you can walk out in front of cars and they stop for you. There were a total of 7 of us that went and we drew quite a few stares from the locals.

It was one of the fellow teachers birthday's and her birthday wish was for us to all dress in "jorts" (jean shorts) and anything ridiculous we had. I don't any ridiculous clothes but the other teachers really went to town. Their outfits were amazing.

We left Seoul Friday night. We made it on the last bus which left at 11:00 pm. We made it to the bus station at 8:30 so we had some time to kill. We decided to play card games outside the station. We drew large crowds of Koreans who were trying to figure out what we were doing. Koreans love betting so if they would have spoke English I think they would have joined us.

We arrived in Sokcho at 2 am and headed to this awesome bar. It feels like you're some place really tropical. It's very relaxed and you can request music. The birthday girl's favorite song is "We Built This City" by Jefferson Starship. One guy made us all tank tops that had "We Built This City" printed on the front. We sang and danced to this song to pretty early in the morning.

We ended up at a Noraebang (Korean Karaoke bar) and started singing our hearts out. We tried to get out own room so we wouldn't subject the Koreans to our horrible singing and English songs but they kept telling us we couldn't have one. We ended up clearing the bar and seeing the sunrise from the Noraebang. We finally made it home at 6:30 am.

Since our late (early) night, we didn't start our day until around 1 pm on Saturday. There was a big beach party that had been organized by the expats who live in Sokcho. The weather was cool, and gray so we didn't head to the beach until later in the night. We couldn't find a cab to take us. My suggestion was we stop one of the Koreans who was driving an empty truck or van to take us. This guy Joe ran after this van and was screaming, "Take us to the beach-y!" The Koreans were scared to death and couldn't get away from us quick enough. So we hopped on the bus to see if we would end up at the beach.

On the bus, J brought out his guitar and we had an improv sing along. We scared the Koreans again. My favorite moment was this Korean girl who had her head out of the window talking on her cell phone to try to avoid us.

We ended up at the beach where the was a camp fire, fireworks and lots of ex-pats. I met people from all over the world and had a blast. I went swimming in the ocean. They water was really choppy but I had a blast.

We were getting cold so we went back to the amazing bar and danced some more. Around 4 am, we decided to head back to the beach where we watched the sun come up and met some more people. Once again, we made it home around 6:30.

Sunday we started our day at a great Italian restaurant playing card games. We moved to "Miller Time" and continued on endeavor.

We almost missed the last bus to Seoul. It left at 10:05 and we made it to the bus station at 10:00. We were really lucky.

All in all, it was an amazing weekend!

My Computer Died

Hey everyone. Greetings from crazy Korea.

I'm still alive over here, but my computer isn't. It seems as though the hard drive crashed. My only e-mail and internet access is at work.

I'll let you know when I'm back among the 21st century!

Paranoia!

So, I write this to you from the quarantine of my neighborhood. You may ask, "Why?" Well here's the story.

Evidently there is an English teacher who brought swine flu over to South Korea and spent a week in training with around 20+ other foreigners. It is suspected that they passed it on to the others. You can read one of their blogs here. http://underquarantine.tumblr.com/post/112182291

So how does this effect me? Well, my director is super paranoid and has told us that since a foreigner brought the flu in and so many other foreigners now have it that we MUST stay out of foreign areas like Itaewon and Hongdae and if we don't abide by this rule they will terminate our contracts. They have also advised us not to leave our neighborhood and run the risk of becoming infected.

This infuriates me on so many levels. First, since when do only foreigners in South Korea carry swine flu? If my memory serves me correctly, the first person to bring swine flu to Korea was (wait for it)...a South Korean who had travelled to Mexico. Now that some foreigners have it, they think that we all are carriers.

Another is I am not familiar with the South Korean laws but they claim to be a democracy. You see that they don't quite have everything figured out (detaining bloggers who say bad things about the government, curtailing Internet freedom, police brutally beating protesters) but for the most part you would like to believe that they live by the basic principles of human rights.

Can an employer really tell you where you can and can not travel or risk being fired? My first thoughts are no. I know this would not fly in America. It also feels as if they are targeting us as foreigners. They nonchalantly were like, "Oh and this applies to the Korean teachers, too." However, one of the Korean teachers lives in Hongdae and she was allowed to go home tonight.

I understand the concern but seriously this is taking it too far. The director needs to stop and think about where his school will be without any foreign teachers and if he can really afford to fly 9 new teachers out here to replace us . This is my rant of the week. I'll keep you updated on how it unfolds.

What a nice beautiful day in Korea...swine flu paranoia, North Korea launches a missile and the country is mourning the loss of a politician who committed suicide because he partook in the corruption that he was on a mission to end. At this moment, I can say, I am so thankful to be an American! Ok, I'm done now.

Cultural Day

On Sunday, we ventured to Gyeongbokgung Palace. I had been here before but it's by far the most "grand" of the palaces and it's the easiest one to find. When the name is translated into English it means "Palace Greatly Blessed by Heaven." The Palace was oringailly built in the 1300's but was completely destroyed by the Japanese during their last occupation of Korea. They are working on restoring everything back to its original state.

We checked out the National Folk Museum. They had an exhibit on the "Multicultral Families" of Korea. They must not of had a native English speaker read their information before they published it because it said there are 890 million foreigners living in Korea. Considering the whole country only has around 50 million, I somehow think they got it wrong. The other intersting thing was they only showed multicultural familes from other Asian countries, Russia, and a middle eastern country I couldn't remember the name of. The exhibit did not mention anything about the western influence on Korea or mention anything about the numerous westerners that have married Koreans and had children. Once again, interesting.

There was a multicultural fair that was taking place and was connected to the "Hi Seoul Festival." There was a stage where people from other countries performed their traditional dances or entertainment. There was a pretty awesome dragon dance, some twirling yo-yo looking things, and a girl that could twirl tables, other humans and pots with her legs. It was absolutely amazing. The girl probably weighed 100 pounds and she was throwing the table around like it was nothing. When she twirled her two assistants on a long pole with her feet I almost fell over. Now that's some talent!

We then wandered into Insadong which is very touristy and has lots of stuff to buy. We found Starbucks and bought a few trinkets. We also had lunch and ate some delicious pork. At the table next to us were some Americans that were here working on some project for the US government. They had ordered fried baby octopus and were mesmerized by it. It was fun to watch them try to eat with chopsticks and freak out about eating a whole baby octopus. I'm kind of amazed how this eating and seeing weird stuff doesn't even phase me too much any more. Oh and may I add, I'm pretty killer at chopsticks now!

We came back to my neighborhood and went bowling with my Korean friends. The bowling alley is a straight throwback to the late 80's. It still beats the old Yuma bowling alley though because it keeps score for you. The bowling alley is super close to my house and it is also cheap (appx $1.50 to rent shoes and $3.00 a game). I came out the victorious winner as I had some mad skills and opened the game with two strikes.

We then went to see the new X-Men movie which I hated and thought was a big waste of time. Anyway, the night ended by us not being able to find our way out of the movie theatre as it is on the 15th floor of the department store next to my house. Since the department store was closed when the movie was over, there wasn't access to the escalators and the elevator wasn't stopping on certain floors. We ended up getting into the underground parking garage and hiking our way out through the in-ramp. Oops!

Stayed tuned. There's definitely more stories to be told!

And always, you can check out all of my photos on my Picasa web album here...http://picasaweb.google.com/christinestroup