Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Korean Independence Day, Part the second
So we're at the 60th Korean Independence Day festival. It was actually quieting down when I was there and the big parades happened earlier in the day. It was also pretty damn hot out.
Here's some old dude hanging out by himself. I followed him around a little bit and I was never really sure what his story was:
Just in case anyone ever got the idea that Korea was all fun and games, these guys are a reminder that shit is not taken in these parts:
A short stroll, maybe a block away from the main street, and you get to this sight from a nearby alleyway:
Turning 180 degrees, and this is where we are:
Keep in mind that we are literally 1 block ... 2 at the most ... from the festival. Changes in Korea are even more abrupt than changes in New York. Here's an intersecting alleyway (if you can read Korean, one of the restaurants has a dish called "Pu-dae chi-gae", which means "army stew". It's basically just pork, ham, some hot dogs, ramen, kimchi, and some other stuff thrown into a pot with some water and heated up, and it's possibly my favorite Korean dish. I didn't notice the sign until I was back in New York and going over the pictures, otherwise I would have had to stop and get some):
I went back to the subway through a different entrance, and this is what greeted me:
So, that was the Korean Independence day in Seoul. A followup post will have Yun Jung's pictures from the countryside.
Here's some old dude hanging out by himself. I followed him around a little bit and I was never really sure what his story was:
Just in case anyone ever got the idea that Korea was all fun and games, these guys are a reminder that shit is not taken in these parts:
A short stroll, maybe a block away from the main street, and you get to this sight from a nearby alleyway:
Turning 180 degrees, and this is where we are:
Keep in mind that we are literally 1 block ... 2 at the most ... from the festival. Changes in Korea are even more abrupt than changes in New York. Here's an intersecting alleyway (if you can read Korean, one of the restaurants has a dish called "Pu-dae chi-gae", which means "army stew". It's basically just pork, ham, some hot dogs, ramen, kimchi, and some other stuff thrown into a pot with some water and heated up, and it's possibly my favorite Korean dish. I didn't notice the sign until I was back in New York and going over the pictures, otherwise I would have had to stop and get some):
I went back to the subway through a different entrance, and this is what greeted me:
So, that was the Korean Independence day in Seoul. A followup post will have Yun Jung's pictures from the countryside.
