334 down, 31 to go

It seems a little strange, but my year in Korea is very nearly up. This time one month from today, I'll be zipping up my backpack and preparing to go to Cambodia and other magical places.

So now, 11 months since my arrival in the Hermit Kingdom, I once again find myself in the position of figuring out what to do next. Fortunately, for the moment I've made my decision: procrastinate. I'm putting off most thoughts of the future until my triumphant return to Toronto two months from now.

This past weekend was spent in Seoul. We had Monday off for Children's Day, and I have a friend visiting from home at the moment, so the timing for a three-day weekend was most opportune. You can also expect a guest column from Sara-Jane later this week.

Random thoughts on Seoul:

I've been there a few times now over the course of the year, and it's always been an enjoyable experience. I like the opportunity to get out of Busan for a couple of days, and Seoul has a cosmopolitan vibe that my "hometown" doesn't. It's not just more international, though that's certainly true. Rather, Seoul as a city emanates a certain confidence lacking in Busan. There's a vitality, a vibrancy to the city which makes it a great place to visit. Museums, restaurants, palaces...I like it.

Having said that, I do like Busan, and in some ways I'm pleased not to live in Seoul. For all its attractions, it's much easier to live a Western lifestyle there, and I suspect I would have fallen even more deeply into that trap than I have in Busan, where one is forced to practice rudimentary Korean regularly, and where Korean food is about all one can eat in many corners of the city.

On a different note, one of the sites we visited in Seoul this weekend was the Seodaemun Prison Museum. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, it's where the political prisoners would be taken, tortured, and often murdered. It is, as one might suppose, a sombre site. However, I left it feeling dissatisfied because of the overall tone of the museum. It's clear that the museum founders and curators have striven to convey an understanding of the horrors committed there and what it was like for the prisoners. This does come through, but not always in the manner they might have intended. I found there to be a certain low-budget theme park feeling to the museum at odds with the respectful tone they might have intended. Many of the cells have animatronic figurines sticking bamboo spikes under fingernails, or screaming mechanically, and one is not allowed to forget, even for a second, that the Japanese were the ones committing these atrocities. One of the cells has been reproduced as an execution chamber, which isn't a bad idea, but visitors are encouraged to sit on a stool which suddenly drops four inches. Presumably, this is to show what it might feel like to be hanged, but instead it gives more an impression of a house of horrors in Niagara on the Lake. So that was a little strange.

We also went to a microbrewery which featured the best beer I've had in Korea. The most popular Korean beers are OB, Cass, and (s)Hite, and are generally even less flavourful than the Molson/Labatt/Budweiser stuff one might find back home, so it was a great relief to try a nice brown ale and a stout that actually had some colour and taste. Hurray for microbreweries!

Oh- and I learned recently that (apparently) Koreans weren't allowed to travel outside of Korea until the late 1980s. I intend to investigate this further; the results will be published here as they become available.