A Trip South through Korea

In the end of  January we had a very long week end for the Lunar New Year.  I rented a car for part of the time and went on a trip down the west side of the peninsula and back up the center.  I have not had the chance to see the east part yet, but I hope to this summer. 

I tried to leave on one afternoon, but after four hours, I had not gone past Seoul.  It took me that long to get about 15 miles.  I decided to return home and leave early in the morning.  That turned out to be a much better idea.  I left at about 5:30 in the morning and by ten o’clock, I was well down the western side of the peninsula. 

Traveling by car in Korea is much different from traveling in the US.   Most of the roads are toll roads.  You have to pause every so often and pay a toll.  The toll gates funnel down and then when they expand again, there is no easy merging.  You just sort of have to barge in front of cars and keep one foot on the break in case someone barges in front of you.  Blinkers are seldom employed here.  People just assume that you will turn or not.  Also, city driving is so strange.  There are many places where U turns are indicated and it is the only way to get where you are going.  There are flashing red and blue lights that look like the light bar from a police car along the side of the road.  Police cars here also have their lights flashing all the time.  You know when they are going to stop you by the siren.  The lights along the road are there to get people to slow down, but people don’t slow down because they are used to the lights.   Driving is an exciting experience here.  Even parking is fascinating.  People squeeze into tiny parking spaces and sometimes they park on sidewalks or on the side of the street (not the shoulder).

There are rest plazas very often on the Korean highways.  When you stop at the plaza, they have nice restroom facilities, and they have shops.   There is almost always a coffee shop of some sort.  They also have an outdoor bbq grill where they make grilled squid on a stick.  Yes, they grill the entire squid and people line up to purchase them.  There is a street food stall where they sell various street foods like compressed fish on a stick with a broth, a type of rice pasta in spicy sauce you eat with tooth picks, hotdogs that are breaded like corn dogs, sweet cakes of various other types.

This is a rest stop on the toll road.

A woman grilling squid at a rest stop.

The highways in Korea have many tunnels that go straight through the mountains.  In the US we usually go around the mountains and over them but not straight through them.  When I mention the fact of the unusual amount of tunnels, people just shrug and say, “We need them in case North Korea drops bombs.   Where else should we go?”

Coming up on a tunnel

The trip down the coast was fun.  The towns have blue and green roofs and red houses.  It is so different from other places I have been where the houses are built to blend in to the nature around them.  Here people seem to be building the houses to stand out from the surroundings. 

I saw fields and farms.  It was great!  I felt so at home among the area and people that I could relate to.  I kept stopping and checking out the soil and trying to guess what all was grown in the different areas.  The countryside was not as rural as many places I have been, but it was such a difference from the area of Paju where I live.  The area I live in is a suburb of Seoul and there are so many people here. 

Some buildings with colorful roofs.

A field in rural area.

I went to the city of Gwangju in the southern part of the state.  The city has had its share of Korean history including an uprising of the citizens against the military resulting in a huge national cemetery.  There is also a famous mountain there that has much historical significance.  I drove up the side of the mountain and saw some beautiful things there as well as an up close look at some burial mounds.  Koreans used to bury people in large dome shaped mounds.  It is fascinating.  Some of the burial mounds were from hundreds of years ago.

A view from the road.

A more modern cemetery.

The trip was good, but being in the winter, it began to snow in the evening.  It also got dark early so my visibility got very bad.  I would love to see some of the area at a better time of the year to appreciate the scenery.  I understand that the water on the east coast is much better than the weather on the west side as well.