2500 Years of History in 7 hours

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Early morning wake up, the room we are staying in has the heat way up, and no way for us to control it, so we have the one small windo wide open, letting as much heat out as we can, but that means the sun can get in as soon as it can. We drank a bunch of water, realizing we have only drank beer and makgeoli since landing...Today was to be a day of museums, so we grabbed a (and Laura really wants me to emphasize this) Honey Latte from a lil shop down the street that cost all of 2800 KRW, which yesterday meant it was less than $2.25.

We walked to the metro to hop a train down to the War Memorial Museum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Memorial_of_Korea), this place is huge, built on the grounds of what used to be the Army headquarters they had tons of exhibits, the section about the Korean War (go figure the seminal event in the nations last century of existence takes up half of their military museum) would have been an excellent museum on its own, but then they had half a floor dedicated to the historical conflicts of the Korean peninsula, and sections regarding the expeditionary experiences of the ROK, including their efforts on behalf of the UN. Unsurprisingly the Republic of Korea contributes soldiers, materiel, and equipment to just about everything the UN does, it was never explicitly stated, but its clear the ROK believes it owes its very existence to the UN. I dont have alot of pictures of the displays,

but they were all well done, and most of it had English placards, and some had Japanese as well, it was very inclusive. Outside they had static displays of equipment that were outside the "bounds" of the museum that it appeared locals use as walking/jogging paths.

I must say, I like the ROK vehicle camo scheme, even just looking into the bakcground of this photo you can see it would be effective for the local environs. I will admit I quickly got sick of all my military equipment being desert tan...

The largest single takeaway was the realization that no representative of South Korea signed the armistice that paused the conflict, it sounds like there are several reasons for this, and depending on who you ask, of varying degrees of importance. I personnally thing that once of the States that enclose the territory much of the fighting was conducted on, should at least get a token signature on the documents.

After several hours of museum sauntering through, we were hungry. The neighborhood was very residential, with enormous apartment complexes, 15-20 story building clustered around a little park/childrens play area, we found a Japanese Tonkatsu (read previous blog entries for explanations on that) place that was as good as any we went to in Japan.

Laura got a classic set of Katsu, and I got the Katsu Curry Don, both came with a delicious light pork broth soup, a little plate of two different kimchi, and laura got the shredded cabbage salad, the dressing was not the classis onion/garlic dressing but an apple (or maybe pear) sauce that really took it in a new, and just as delicious direction.

We then went to the National History Museum which was also spectacular. Pictured here is just the main lobby.

The musuem walked you through the history of the peninsula from paleo-lithic times all the way up to just before the Korean War, (I bet they think the other museum had the 20th century well covered). American Western Centric education leaves so much interesting history out, all of the internecine conflicts of British Isles have analogues just as complicated and varied on the Korean Peninsula, I would love to see some of the K-Drama Game-of-Thrones-esque media make it to the West.

The museum was beutifally integrated into the environment, despite it being a big modern concrete and glass structure, here is a pond above one of the annexes, filled with cool ducks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Korea

After this museum we hopped the train to the the IPark Mall ostensibly to check out the Gundam Bas Seoul location, but also to see if the exhaustive food options carried any interest for us.

The Gundam Base Seoul had a great many of the kits on display, but not a great variety of inventory, and I did not end up buying anything. This mall was so big, that it was split into 3 parts, and each part was independently the size and variety of a major mall in the US; there was the fashion mall, with all 9 floors filled with clothing, shoe and accessory shops. there is the Food mall with 7 floors of restaurants and stalls, and then the lifestyle, which was basically all the other stuff you would find in a mall.

We did not settle on a restaurant in the mall, and took the train home to recover before finding dinner.

We did stop at a convinience store and grab some beers, 4 tallboys of an actually local beer (as in craft beer) for 9.25USD. We drank a single beer, and then headed out in our local neighborhood for some Korean BBQ spot. As we rolled up one of the staff told us they were closing in half an hour, we assured him we could eat plenty in 30 mimutes.

And we did, we ate all of that food before the 30 minutes was up, the bowl of soup wasnt empty by the time we left, because they kept filling it up, im guessing to get rid of it for the day. As we left they all apologized profusely we only had 30 minutes, but honestly we were glad to be there such a short while, I was exhausted from reading a million museum placards and was ready for bed.

We again stopped at a convinience store, this time for sweet and went home for bed.