Paul Grau

korea

Impressions on South Korea from my trip in summer 2011.

Seoul

The first impression is just overwhelming. You can't compare Seoul to any German metropolis, but even New York seems small in comparison. That starts with the airport (Incheon): Very generous use of space, carpets, marble floor, good lighting... After one hour, which it takes to get into town, you alight in a giant, at first seemingly unmanageable city with many sub-centers. On several evenings we moved through the whole city and always came across the next skyscraper, crowd and colorful lights wherever we got off the excellent Metro.

Especially in Seoul you realize how much money is spent on recreation and city improvement. There are lots of big and well developed parks (e.g. the Namsan Park has two lanes running up, asphalt for walkers plus a track for runners) and on one evening we found a beautiful small channel incl. bank greening and laser show.

Striking is that a large number of people walk around with smartphones, especially in the Metro. Of course there are a couple of iPhones, but the majority seems to stay true to Samsung and has Galaxy phones. Mobile TV is also quite established, in contrary to Germany.

A huge antithesis to the modern is the large cultural heritage of Korea. Huge old temple sites, city gates and wall fragments line the city.

Convenient travelling

Let's talk about the basic conveniences of travelling Korea: Korea has an excellent network of public transport and is (still?) quite cheap in comparison to Western Europe. A bus ride to the next city is usually less than 10 €, local traffic usually less than 1 €. Furthermore, the country is relatively small in size and thus places aren't far away from each other. Taxis are quite cheap, as well, a 15 minute ride from the station into town was about 5 €.

Prices for food are also reasonable. In cheap restaurants you get a good serving of rice with vegetables (Bibimbap). Additionally there are several side dishes, omnipresently Kimchi (pickled spicy cabbage), which needs getting used to it. We once went to a restaurant next to a well known bamboo wood and had heaps of great food for 12.000 Won (less than 10 €) and could even keep the little bamboo boxes in which the food was served.

Apart from big cities, culture and food Korea provides another attraction: Its georgeous nature. The country side is very green and has lots of mountains. Koreans are keen hikers and the paths are aptly developed.

There's also no lack of good accommodation. Every hostel we stayed in had nice staff and even nicer Korean fellow travellers.

Beautiful and rough

So, everything's nice here?

Certainly not. There's lots of obvious stuff going on your nerves. For example, traffic. Here you see the dimension of the recent economic success. Between 1980 and 2006 the number of cars increased from about 500 thousand to over 15 million. Cities are charachterized by 8 to 10 lane roads – and there's still traffic jams. Driving habits are also kind of rough, you can turn right on red and many ignore traffic lights altogether. Facts really annoying to pedestrians.

Outside the center, where they spent comparitively large amounts of money on improvements, infrastructure is quite ugly. Wide roads und unattractive poor houses dominate the view.

So, economic upswing doesn't come without problems. Korea is a relatively young economic power. Koreans worked hard for their success. It will be interesting to see how the country develops in the future.

In conclusion: Korea is a very interesting country. Go there as soon as you can! I am, hopefully, coming back soon.