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If you are planning on getting married, Wedding Street (shops open daily 10am-8pm) might be the the place for you. Rows of shops display fanciful wedding gowns in their windows hoping to entice well-heeled 20-year-olds. Weddings are a serious business in Korea - a wedding gown, make-up, and hairstyle (all these services are offered a the wedding shops), will set Daddy back thousands of dollars. Then there is the wedding hall, the dinner for all the guests, a photographer and wedding gifts (from the parents); a Korean wedding runs into the tens of thousands of dollars.


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Seoul has several entertainment centers that cater to the young, but one of the most popular and interesting is Daeheungno, which caters to students from nearby universities. The streets in this district (Sinchon) have such a profusion of restaurants, bars (some with live entertainment, video arcades, clothing stores and coffee shops that young people from all over Seoul come here on evenings and weekends.


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A little more conventional is the Janghanpyeong Antique Market (subway line 5; Janghanpyeong Station; closed Sunday). Dozens of small shops are located in several two-story buildings; kind of mini-antique malls. Most of the dealers here do not handle top-of-the-line antiques (you need to go to Insadong for these), but since there are regulations concerning the export of valued Korean antiquities anyway, Janghanpyeong is the perfect place to find a funky piece to decorate your living room. How about a large wooden bowl that was once used to clean rice? Or a handmade farmers wood plow? And a Korean ceramic pillow makes a great conversation piece.

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Not far away from the Hwanghakdong Flea Market is the equally unusual Gyeongdong Oriental Medicine Market (subway line; Jegidong Station; open daily 9am-6.30pm except 1st and 3rd Sunday of each month). This is a great place to buy fresh ginseng, or dozens of other odd-looking roots and fungi that are said to be good for a myriad of ailments. There are also a few dealers of dog meat, which is considered a health food in the Orient.

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Just outside the old city center lies a threesome of interesting specialty markets. Two subways stops east from Dongdaemun (subway lines 2 or 6; Sindang Station) is a sprawling Hwanghakdong Flea Market (open daily 8 am-6.30pm). If you're looking for a life-size statue of an American Indian, reproduction antique furniture, used ice skates or an old TV, you stand a good chance of finding it here. For the truly bizarre, there is the snake salesman with microphone in hand. He dips his free hand into a bag and brings our a handful of snakes, tossing them into a plastic tub. A few turtles are added for good measure. Somehow he manages to sell this writhing basket of reptiles to one of the middle-aged men crowding around. While the salesman sets up another sale, his assistants boil the basket of turtles and snakes, and quickly bottle them in soju. Minutes later, the lucky customer leaves with a big smile, knowing that it will be a long time before he will be suffering from virility problems.

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Following on the heels of urban expansion, and in tune with a rapidly rising standard of living, many of the outer areas of Seoul have become shopping and entertainment centers that rival those found in the downtown area. With the notable exception of Itaewon, however, they do not attract a lot of foreigners. Part of the reason is that, even though any given point in Seoul seems to be only minutes from a subway station, it can still take an hour or more to travel across town. The subways are quick enough (allow about two minutes between each subway stop); it's just that you can seldom get your destination without one or two subway transfers, and a taxi ride. Still, there are some interesting places across the Han River that deserve a visit. The thing to do is to make a day of it, and check out several places of interest. And really, there is no better way to get to know modern Korea than by exploring the fringes of Seoul.

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Outside Seoul's historic heart is the modern part of the city, where you'll find huge department stores and markets, ultra-modern entertainment complexes and cultural centers.





Welcome 2010. To officially start the year, my blog will feature another attraction of Korea. We will discover the beauty of the outer areas of Seoul.

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Once you reach the exact Panmunjeom talks site, you will be escorted around a heavily guarded sector formally known as the Joint Security Area. In the Conference Room your American military guide will explain another propaganda "war", concerning the question of who had the bigger flag. This "battle" ended in a truce when the flags of the two sides were too large to bring into the meeting room.


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In the distance, across the dividing line in the North Korean half of the demilitarized no-man's-land, is another village. It boasts bigger flag (so large, in fact, that it flops listlessly against its giant flagpole in anything less than a Force Eight gale). The village is said to be the biggest in the world, but no-one appears to live there. Curiously, even the windows on the buildings appear to be nothing more than black paint. American soldiers are in the habit of calling the North Korea village "Propaganda Village". However, it goes under the official name of Gwijeongdong.

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Past the checkpoints and into the DMZ is an enormous South Korean flag. This marks the village of Daeseongdong (which means "Attaining Success Town"), a community of ex-refugees allowed to resettle in their native habitat. Called "Freedom Village" by the US military, Daeseongdong is about a mile from Panmunjeom. Villagers - and soldiers - have to endure propaganda blasted over from the North Korean side by loudspeakers, but for their pains they enjoy certain benefits; among them exemption from military service and taxation. In fact the residents here are extremely wealthy in comparison with other Korean farmers. Otherwise, life generally goes on here in much the same way it does in other pasts of South Korea.


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National Highway 1 is green and lush during the summer months, but when the winter chill sets in its beauty turns bleak and brittle. The late author James Wade describes this region best in his book West Meets East: "North of Seoul the Korean landscape is austerely beautiful in late winter. A light dusting of snow sets off the dark dots of rice stubble in frozen paddies and the lonely clumps of thatch-roofed farm houses. The steel-gray horizon, rimmed with jagged, ice-streaked mountains, recedes before the jeep as it rumbles past the rail terminal city of Munsanni and approcahes the Imjin River, with its symbolically narrow and precarious Freedom Bridge." Suddenly you realize that the bleak new chain of mountains looming up ahead is North Korean territory.


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