– historic korean cities

It’s been over a month since I last posted, and it’s been pretty busy (and not all that interesting to write about) because it was midterms week at Yonsei at the end of October. Those weeks were just a lot of studying and taking exams, which I’m glad to be done with now at least. And right after that, my mom came to visit me for a week! I figured I’d update on my coolest trips to some historical Korean cities over the past few weeks post-midterms, especially since I have more travel plans this weekend that I want to dedicate a separate blog post to…

– gyeongju

One of my biggest bucket list trips this semester ever since learning about it in my Korean art history course was Gyeongju, a city about a 30 minute bullet train trip north from the southeast coastal city of Busan. Gyeongju (known as Seorabeol back then) was the historical capital of the Silla kingdom, one of the 3 kingdoms that ruled over the peninsula from around the 1st century BCE to the 7th century CE (a stretch literally called the “Three Kingdoms” period), until Silla took over parts of the other two and ruled as ‘unified Silla’ for another 250 years. Silla is best known for its gold artifacts that have been discovered from tombs, which are scattered in parks around the middle of the city, giving the city a reputation for being a ‘museum without walls’.

We left Seoul super early on Friday morning, which was rough but ultimately it worked out well because it forced us to get an early start on the day. Getting to Gyeongju station in the morning was really pretty, too, because the valley was full of morning fog and it was a stunning welcome to the city!

Anyways, the parks were absolutely stunning to walk through in the fall! The tombs in Gyeongju from the Silla dynasty were royal or high-ranking offical tombs with a mound structure, and the mounds and tombs themselves are quite well-preserved. As tourists, we couldn’t walk on them or look inside, but the parks themselves were really cool to walk through. There were just so many, all scattered throughout the middle of the city! One of the prettiest ones was Cheonmacheong, which is one of the biggest tombs, and has a small lake in front of it. We walked through the Noseo-dong tomb cluster and into the Daereungwon tomb complex, which was a much more built-up park where some of the more well-known and preserved tombs were, including the Cheonmacheong tomb. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves!

After dropping ur bags off at our Airbnb, we walked around a street full of traditional architecture called Hwangnidanggil. We were actually so surprised at how cute the area was! I didn’t realize it was basically a cafe street, and I’ll again let the photos show you just how cute everything was, but it really added to the historic vibe of the city. We were so exhausted, so we found a pretty cafe that I had seen recommended online and sat there for a while, went and had lunch nearby, and then finally checked into our airbnb (and had a nap!).

That evening, we checked out the Gyeongju Jungang Market, which is a traditional market that was actually pretty close to us and was open pretty late. We had dinner at some of the stalls there – my mom got some japchae, and my friend and I got some stir-fried steak and vegetables. It was really delicious, and I also bought some hotteok (a sort of pancake full of brown sugar and nuts), which was actually the first hotteok I’ve had in Korea somehow…

On our second day, we got up early to head to Bulguksa, a Buddhist temple located about a 40-minute bus ride east of the main area of Gyeongju where we were staying. Bulguksa contains a lot of National Treasure artifacts, including its 2 pagodas, and is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The temple complex packed a lot in, but it was a lot less spread out than I worried it would be, so we were able to walk around the whole thing in around an hour or so. I had learned about Bulguksa in my Korean Art History course, along with the nearby Seokguram Grotto, which was built as a place of private worship for a Silla nobleman. We didn’t end up going to Seokguram, but Bulguksa had more than enough Buddhist statues and art that was really cool to see after having done my art history midterms and learning about so many different Buddhist motifs and figures. I was often pointing out identifying features on a lot of the statues to my mom and my friend… they were very tolerant.

We skipped the Seokguram grotto in order to ensure we had enough time to see the Gyeongju National Museum, which I personally was more interested in because it was much closer to everything else we wanted to do. The museum houses a bunch of other Silla artifacts that I had learned about in class, and some of the artifacts that I got to see in person were actually items that I’d written about on my midterm! That was a pretty wild experience, and I was again pointing out details I’d learned in my art history class. Most of the gold artifacts uncovered were from the tombs that we’d see scattered around the city, and being funerary artifacts meant that they were in pretty good condition still, so it was awesome to see details like the filigree decoration and comma-shaped jade pieces that I had been learning about. My favorite was definitely the iconic gold crown, which was so gorgeous in person (and is also an official national treasure)!

We stopped by the gift shop, and then walked through the rest of the parks in the middle of the city that we didn’t get to see before. The highlights of these included Donggung palace and Wolji pond, which were some reconstructed pavilions on the site of the old Silla palace complex that overlook a pond; Cheomseongdae, the oldest surviving observatory in Asia; and Woljeonggyo, a very pretty long wooden bridge that was originally built during the Unified Silla period (but was also a reconstruction after burning down). We went to a cafe near Woljeonggyo while we waited for the sun to set to see the bridge light up at night!

That was pretty much it for Gyeongju, though, and we went back to Seoul the next morning! I had a ton of fun in Gyeongju, and I feel like it was very easy to see all of the highlights in two days, so a weekend trip was perfect.

– suwon

The weekend after that, I went on a day trip to Suwon, the capital city of the province that surrounds Seoul, with my roommate and her friend. Suwon has a lot of historical sites as well, since the Joseon court had been relocated there during the reign of King Jeongjo, who ruled during the latter quarter of the 18th century. It is probably best known for the Hwaseong fortress, a city wall that was built to surround Jeongjo’s father’s grave, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Suwon is super easy to get to from Seoul, as public transportation extends south there as well. We got a late start and it takes around an hour and a half to get there, so we ended up getting to Suwon a little before 4pm. Thankfully, though, it isn’t a super spread-out city, so we still managed to fit a lot in!

We started off by walking around the fortress, where we had a beautiful view of the city’s skyline and took a lot of pictures. We didn’t walk around too much inside the park, because it started raining after we walked in, but we did see a statue dedicated to Jeongjo inside which made us do a bit of research about Jeongjo (I confess we really didn’t know much about the history before we came…).

Suwon is also the filming site of a decent amount of K-dramas! After walking along the fortress and its parks, we spotted a mural dedicated to the drama ‘Our Beloved Summer’ – which none of us had seen, but I had to send pics to my mom, who’s the biggest K-drama enjoyer I know!

Near there was a neighborhood full of cafes and restaurants, a lot of which were located in traditional hanok-style buildings! We eventually walked into a cafe that had a view of the main gate of the fortress, and we sat and had some snacks to get out of the rain for a bit. While we were there, it became dark out, and I got to test the zoom on my camera with the lit-up gate.

We wanted to go to a restaurant after the cafe, and surprisingly, a lot of the restaurants in the area were Western food, but after a few months abroad having some pasta for dinner is always pretty welcome. The restaurant we had in mind had a bit of a long wait, so we put our names down and walked around the neighborhood. We stopped in a ton of cute stationery shops, where we all bought way too much stuff (especially me… I have no self control) – but at least some of it was gifts for people. We finally went to eat, and the pasta was pretty good, but nothing really to write home about. The Christmas decor was funny, though, since as an American I’m not used to seeing Christmas trees and music playing this early before even Thanksgiving.

I had a lot of fun getting to see these two cities with a lot of opportunities to learn about Korean history! I would definitely recommend going to either of these places for day/weekend trips if anyone reading this is planning to spend an extended amount of time in South Korea. I definitely feel pretty satisfied with all of the exploration I’ve gotten to do of the country this year after all of this travel; the one other city I’d really want to go would be Gwangju, which would be a chance to learn about more modern history post-Korean war. The weather is getting pretty cold, though, so we’ll have to see about that…

Regardless, though, the semester has passed so quickly, I only have a month left! I had a lot of worries about spending so much time abroad this year, as this is the longest amount of time I’ve spent out of the country, especially alone. Not to get too reflective when I still have time left, but I think with the summer and this semester combined I’ve spent more time in Seoul/South Korea this year than any other city, including my hometown, so it’s going to be weird to go home with no plans to come back anytime soon after making myself so at home here. Hopefully I’ll have some more fun posts up before I leave!!