Yeouido Park & Hangang Park

Seoul is a pretty good place for outdoor activities, as long as you live in the right part of town (which I do, thank you!). There are a few parks around but 2 of the largest are Olympic Park (a massive place that I lived near for 6 months when I stayed with my in-laws when I first came here...they were right in the '88 Olympic Village, which was nice) and Yeouido Park (which was like a parking lot before they revamped it and added trees and stuff). Yeouido Park is about 69,000 평/pyoung (1 pyoung = 33 sq. ft.) or 52.27 acres large; Olympic Park is much bigger at about 370.66 acres.


View of Yeouido Core; the park at 6AM one Spring morning...gorgeous; The Great King Sejong; and, to top it off, a guy sleeping in a gazebo.

Take a look at the scene above...this is like a block from my home and work. Before the office moved to this side of the park these views were my commute everyday...a 12 minute walk from door-to-door. Pretty cool, eh? Sure it costs a bit more to live in Yeouido and there isn't a Lotte Mart (Korean Wal-Mart) to be found in the immediate area, but it's real nice here, I think. The Great King Sejong is credited with 'inventing', or at least causing the invention of, Hanguel (the Korean alphabet, although it's not really an alphabet, it's more a set of sounds put to writing...very scientific for back then). His name and image is all over the place, especially at schools. There is also a book store and securities company named after him. And what stroll in Seoul would be complete without seeing a guy sleeping on the ground or floor (as reported before a few times). This guy looks prepared, though. He had the presence of mind to bring a mummy sleeping bag and get himself in the gazebo (and away from the early-morning dew that is so prominent here in the Spring).

For exercise, the little that I do here, I like to inline skate (as they call rollerblading here). Take a look at these shots:


LG Twins Building, 63 Building, and Traffic!

Here's the lovely LG Twins Building (owned by LG Group, formerly Lucky Goldstar, also owner of the LG Twins baseball team; there are rumored to be anti-aircraft guns on the top of these towers to help defend Seoul); the 63-story tall 육삼빌딩 (yook-sam (6-3) bill-ding) which houses 대한생명 (dae-han-seng-myung, Korea Life (Insurance), aka KLI by foreigners); and a couple views of how close you can get to the traffic on this path. It actually goes under the 88 (팔팔/pal-pal) Highway for a ways. Ya, probably not the cleanest place to workout, but it's all we got without going 1-2 hours from here. Many people actually drive 30-60 minutes to get to here, especially on the weekends and holidays when this place is a madhouse. On Children's Day I got a groin injury from dragging my skate so much in order to slow down for the (literally) thousands of kids on the paths.

And why exercise? Well, there are a lot of fun places in Seoul such as Bricx (click here to see the Playboy Party pics...man, think I have to check this place out; wet T-shirts involved, no minors) and good ol' Ohoo/Hodge Podge (some crowd pics here).

More tomorrow...going to see a Korean horror movie tonight (with subtitles), should be interesting.