My trip to Korea May, 2003

I was honored to attend the International Vacuum Electronics Conference, which was held in Seoul, S. Korea to represent my company, Teledyne.  The conference itself was very good, with some good information to bring back home.  Fortunately we were able to arrive in Seoul a couple days prior to the conference and spend a few days afterwards.  The city is top notch.

We arrived in Seoul, S. Korea after a very nice flight with Singapore Airlines on a Boeing 777.  I highly recommend this airline and plane for any long flight like this.  Our route was a polar, non-stop from SFO to Incheon Int'l airport which is near Seoul.  The bus ride from the airport to the hotel was my introduction to Korean style driving.  It was frightening.  Once you've been there a couple days you sort of get used to it, but I'd just as soon not drive in that kind of traffic.  They don't drive particularly fast, but there are so many cars, and lane changes happen amazingly often, with no regard for other vehicles that may be nearby.

We stayed at the Hotel Lotte, near the old section of Seoul.  Here's the picture looking out of my room:

You can see the Blue House (S. Korea's equivalent of the White house) circled in blue.

I stayed on the 32nd floor of the Hotel Lotte.

Here's our first day walking around.  That's Jim on the left, one of my coleagues.

Another view of a very common scene.  This was indeed very different than anything I've ever seen before.  Cars, trucks and motorcycles share this roadway with people.  It's not entirely clear who has the right of way, and when two cars approach from opposite directions it gets interesting.  You can see there aren't very many places where two cars can even pass... and in the evenings, forget it.

Here's what most of the motorcycles look like in Seoul.  They are not recreational, but trucks.  Traffic is so congested, that you would probably get from point A to B 3X faster on a motorcycle.  Maybe even faster.  I saw completely new methods of splitting lanes.  Heck, even the sidewalks are open game.

Yehuda tried to convince the gentleman in the car to switch places, but despite the language barrier, it was made quite clear that we'd have to stay on the sidewalk.

Here's the car I wanted to sit in.  No luck though.  This was the same week as the F1 race at Monoco, so Mercedes Benz had a nice display at the hotel.

Here's a palace we visited.  This is the main gate.  We went on an English speaking tour.  After spending a few days with no other Westerners, it actually felt odd to be in the tour group that was mostly Western tourists.  I would frequently forget that I stood out in the crowded city streets until I saw another American.

A quiet resting place on the palace grounds.  This palace sits on over 100 acres - the tour was about 1.5 miles walking.

Here's a painted ceiling.  This room was the king's office, where he would meet with other dignitaries and advisors and make his decisions.  The furnishings in the palace rooms was a mixture of Eastern and Western styles.

Here is a palace room being rebuilt.  This rebuilding of palace rooms has been going on for centuries.  Korea has been invaded on a very regular basis.  It seems every invasion sees fit to burn down the palaces and intermarry the royal family.  One sad thing is that this generation marks the end of the Korean royal family.  The last remaining full blooded royalty died in the last couple of years.

Here's a waiter we had at a particularly good Korean restaurant.  We hit it off with this guy very well.  Jim thought he looked like the Korean counterpart of a good friend of his.

From left to right: Joel, Yehuda, Dave, Jim.  Dave is our VP, and he took us out for dinner.  It's hard to see but in the center of the table is a burner where our meal was cooked.  We're toasting with shots of soju, a very nice Korean liquor.  If you look very closely, I think you can still see smoke coming our of my ears as well as Jim's.  Dave told us the peppers weren't too bad.  Now I know to never trust Dave in a restaurant.

Here's what the open markets look like at night.  On the left you can see all the food out there.  You can buy the food, sit down and eat it right there on the street.  Some areas seem to specialize in food, others in clothing, others in gadgets.  There is never a shortage of cool things to look at and shop for.  Many of the vendors show up either on custom 3 wheel motorcycles or push carts, and set up every night.  The street markets stay open most of the night.

These two guys are an example of how friendly the people are in Seoul.  I felt incredibly safe, even at night.

In Seoul, you don't cross the street like you do in the US.  Instead, you walk down approximately 45 stairs and walk under the roadway.  As you're walking under the road, this is what you see: more stores.  Some underground walkways are fairly simple, others are entire shopping malls.  The subway is one to two levels below the shopping level.  The underground walkways are very clean.  Even the public restrooms are clean.

Here's a motorcycle shop I saw.  Notice the office.  I tried to purchase some non-US spec turn signals for a friend in the States from these guys.  They were so nice, they called around and had me talk to a couple of shops, but it turns out Kawasaki's are very rare in Korea.  You can see one of about 5 Kawasaki's I saw out of thousands of motorcycles.  This particular one is a ZX-400RR.  The first time I'd ever seen one of these bikes.

Here's where an alternator was being replaced.  Somehow I don't think this method of running a shop would fly in the US.  This shop seemed to be doing a brisk business though.

Here's what the average motorcycle is used for in Seoul.

We hired a car and driver for a day while we were in Seoul.  One of the things we wanted to see was the DMZ (de-militarized zone) which is the dividing line between S. Korea and N. Korea.  Here's our first view of the museum for the DMZ.

You can see N. Korea off to the right.  The river separates the two countries, and this happens to be the widest point of separation.  While we were looking out at N. Korea, we could hear these "booms".  We figured it was military exercises on one side or the other, and more or less dismissed it.  Well the next day we read in the paper that some N. Korean crab fishermen had strayed into S. Korean waters, and the S. Korean Navy was firing shots over the fishing boats.  Fortunately for us, no one was hurt and there was no damage.  Most importantly WW III didn't start while we were standing a couple hundred yards from a communist country pointing nukes our way.

Another view.  Notice that there are no trees on the hills.  Since the N. Koreans have no infrastructure to distribute fuel to heat with, they burned all the trees off the hillsides to keep warm.  The N. Koreans appear to be about 50 years behind S. Korea in terms of development.  The people typically use ox carts for hauling goods.  Personal transportation is by foot or bicycle.  50 years ago when the Communist party took over N. Korea, they built a couple of small villages on the other side of the river in an effort to impress the S. Koreans.  They put up some small (three story) apartment buildings, and some farm houses.  The same buildings are still there, and they haven't been modernized over the years, so now they look pretty shabby.  Meanwhile in Seoul, all the 3 story apartment buildings have been torn down to put up 10 story apartment buildings, and those buildings have been torn down and now everyone lives in 30 story apartment buildings.

Here's the three from Teledyne, soaking it up.

Above you can see two of our presidents checking out the DMZ.  You can see Clinton (on the left) with the lens caps on.  I'm not sure, but it looks to me that G. W. Bush is looking through them backwards.

You can see that we pay very close attention to our leadership.

Another stark contrast.  I wonder what the N. Koreans think when they look across the river and see the freeway.

Adder liquor, a product of N. Korea.  I would have bought a bottle of this, but unfortunately they were out.

This is called "Freedom Bridge".  It starts out in S. Korea, and goes to the fence where it stops.  It's a symbolic bridge the S. Koreans built in hope that one day the torn Korean nation will one day soon be a united, free country again.  The flag reads "one Korea", and they let you sign it.  I was proud to sign my name, and under my name, I wrote "FREEDOM".

Here's Jim signing the flag.  Yehuda signed the flag in Hebrew.

You can see the guy with the machine gun is looking at me.  A few seconds after I snapped this photo, it was made clear to me that taking pictures of these guys is not OK.  I just bowed and put my camera away.  Fortunately they didn't see the need to talk to me or take my camera.

We visited the War Museum on the US military base in Seoul.  The Museum covers all the wars Korea has fought, so it goes back to the days when war was fought hand to hand, and through modern times.  Many of the displays were more graphic than I think we would see in the U.S..  This war ship is a 2/3 scale model of a ship that was undefeated.  You can see the cannons sticking out of holes all around the perimeter of the ship, and the top of the ship is covered with spikes to protect the sailors.

This is the Seoul Tower.  There are two restaurants and two observation decks.  I would have loved to have eaten dinner in one of the rotating restaurants, but we had a driver waiting, and he wasn't very cheap.

Here's a view looking to the West.

Another view

My hotel is circled.

The "new" part of Seoul is across the river.  That's where the Olympic Stadium is.

This is a radio tower that sits right next to Seoul Tower.  Also notice the fountain several miles away in the middle of the river.

Here's what the tower looks like from the street level.  You can see the tram that leads up to the tower area.

Jim and I finally got up the nerve to eat dinner on the sidewalk between the hats and T-shirts.  Jim got some mussels.

I went for some shrimp and sushi.  The lady in red behind me cooked up our dinner.  Jim sat next to the cooler that contained all the beverages for their customers.  Our Korea shirts were hugely popular on the streets.  As Americans, we stood out anyway, but when the locals saw us wearing their flag, they were very happy.

One of many beautiful bridges connecting the city to itself.  We were on the subway, crossing the river when I snapped this photo.

Here's the Olympic Stadium.  The Summer Olympics were held here in 1988.

We're clearly attacking the Koreans, as evidenced by this photo.  We also saw a number of McDonalds and Burger King stores.  It was sort of sad to see these fast food restaurants popping up in Seoul.  We did avoid anything that looked the least bit American for the most part though.  The only way for a pizza to get delivered hot in Seoul is by motorcycle thanks to the incredible congestion.  When you're in a bus a car, it's very frequent that you could get out and walk faster.

Here's an ice skating rink at Lotte World.  This mall is massive.  The main shopping area is 9 floors high.  The ice skating rink is three levels high, and there are shops all around it as well.

A view looking up.  The third floor above the ice skating rink is a small amusement park for small children, complete with balloon rides, roller coaster and much more.  We really didn't spend the time to get to know this mall - we were more interested in the traditional Korean street scene, but it was interesting seeing this place.  There are balloon rides, train rides and many other activities available for children on the top floor.

There is a very heavy layer of smog over Seoul.  Out of the 7 days we were in Seoul, there was only one day that I'd consider light smog.

Here's a picture of my girls with their traditional Korean dresses.  Aren't they cute?