Six Things That Surprised Me about South Korea

Oh! Mountains in South  Korea

  1.     Mountains! A whopping seventy percent of South Korea is made up of mountains and uplands. Ulsan and Busan, two cities I visited, are semi-ringed by mountains, making for gorgeous vistas. The majority of South Koreans name hiking as their favorite leisure sport, and now I understand why. Those mountains beckon city dwellers to explore in the fresh, fir-scented air.

  2.    So many coffee shops! I expected tea to be the beverage of choice in Korea, so the number of coffee shops, including chains, astonished me. It’s not unusual in cities like Ulsan and Busan to find four or five within a ten-minute walk. Some chains were born in Korea, like Angel-in-Us, but Starbucks is popular, too. On weekday mornings, coffee shops fill with young moms and babies. In the late afternoon, teens in school uniforms stream in.

Yummy food! 

 3.   Delicious food! I didn’t have a bad meal in Korea. When in doubt, I fell back on soup or soup-like bowls of noodles, vegetables, and some kind of protein. Although Korean barbecue now is popular in the U.S., I hadn’t tried it before my trip. Now, I’ll seek out spots for cooked-at-the-table meats wrapped in lettuce or sesame leaves. Ah,  the tofu in Korea proved a silky revelation. Why can’t I find tofu that good in Texas? It must exist, but I’ll have to hunt for it.

    
       4. My lack of self-consciousness. My Caucasian face and I didn’t look forward to standing out in a crowd. To my surprise, I had no time to think about how others perceived. Why? Because I was too busy studying everything around me: vehicles, the variety of winter hats, cloth-wrapped packages from stores, red-cheeked children bundled up against the cold, teens in their school uniforms, the variety of book bags, the narrow, soaring apartment buildings, and, of course, the mountains.

5. Public transportation arrives and departs on time. The U.S. does many things well, but public-transport-one-can-set-a-watch-to isn’t one of them. In Korea, my husband and I rode buses all over Ulsan, and we took the KTX—high-speed train—from Incheon to Ulsan and from Busan to Seoul. Everything ran on schedule.

      6.  Drivers in Houston, Texas are sedate compared to those in Ulsan. Pedestrians in crosswalks must proceed with caution even when the green walking man light glows. Small wonder Lonely Planet warns its readers not to be the first or last person in a crosswalk in South Korea.

Outside of the crosswalks, we encountered kind, helpful people. That wasn’t a revelation, but the degree of warmth surprised and charmed me.

Next post: We ferry to Kyushu, Japan, home of my husband’s brother and sister-in-law.

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Big news: Lark Howard started this blog and invited me to join it. I jumped on the invite because I like and respect her. (Every woman needs a fashion-forward friend who encourages her to try a boot instead of another pair of black ballet flats.) Lark and I share a love of writing, France, and food. Like me, you’ve missed her here for the past year, but she’s been busy. Now, Lark has a pen name and a three-book contract. Here’s the announcement from Publishers Marketplace: 

Fiction: Debut

Lark Brennan's DANGEROUSLY YOURS, a contemporary paranormal romance in which two sexy power players, each with hidden abilities and agendas, must work together to solve a mystery in the Caribbean islands, and the next two books in the series, to Mary Cummings at Diversion Books, by Becca Stumpf at Prospect Agency (World).

Congrats, Lark! I can’t wait to read Dangerously.

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