Seoul City Hall

One recent afternoon I went to the City Hall area of Seoul. It has an old castle that was the seat of government hundreds of years ago. Each hour they have kind of "changing of the guard" ceremony, which made me think of London but this was much more colorful and ornate and musical. At some point I'll go back and take the full tour.

As soon as I got off the subway, I saw not one, but two Dunkin' Donuts shops. Across the street in a large park there was a "Lifelong Learning" expo, which I wandered around for awhile. Of course, I couldn't understand anything at the various exhibition booths, but I did see a couple of very entertaining sights--

a harmonica band (approx. 20 people, with a conductor) playing American folk music followed by Bach.

a group of older women having an aerobics class

Later the same afternoon as I wandered around I saw a headhless pig being roasted on a spit on the street corner.

As I waited for the subway later, a Korean man holding a couple of newspapers and two small American flags approached me, pointed at the flags, and gestured to ask if Iwere American. When I told him yes, he gave me the thumbs up sign and said "good" several times. He tried, with little success, to engage me in conversation about how great the USA is. Mostly he seemed to be saying that it spread democracy everywhere it went in the world. I kept thanking him for saying my home country was great, and didn't even try to point out the possible exceptions to his perception of the USA (you know, Viet Nam, El Salvador, Iraq, etc. etc. etc....) He gave me a copy of his newspaper, which had a photo of some big rally featuring the US and Korean flags held high.


When I got home I showed the paper to my friend Darren and asked him about it. He said the guy was from a far-right political group that wants Korea to be more closely allied with the US. The way he described them, it sounded almost like a lunatic fringe.