Seoul Mann 서울 맨

“Noraebang” is the Korean word for karaoke. “Norae” means “song”, “bang” (pronounced like ‘long’, but with a b instead of an l) means “room”. So a lot of my students mistranslate “noraebang” to “singing room”. [FYI: ”Karaoke” is a Japanese word カラオケ meaning ‘empty orchestra’.]

Korean-style noraebangs are very similar to Japanese-style karaokes. You and a group of friends rent out a private room and take turns singing songs to each other. It isn’t like American-style karaoke nights at bars. You only sing to people you know.

Korean noraebangs usually have a pretty good selection of English songs, but you’ll sometimes be surprised to not find a very popular song in their song books. I recommend the 락휴 (Rock You) chain of noraebangs, because they usually have a pretty big collection of English-language songs. There is also a small chain of Kenny Rogers noraebangs in Busan.

These days, renting out a noraebang room will usually run you about 10,000-15,000 won per hour, and if you order drinks or it is a particularly slow night, the owner might give you an extra half hour or hour for free.

Busan is a seaside town, so naturally it is famous for its beaches. Haeundae gets the most attention of Busan’s 6 beaches. A Google image search will show you how popular this beach is in the summer. It is the longest of Busan’s beaches, and it is also pretty wide.

There are also a bunch of good restaurants near the beach if you visit here. Haeundae has a big international school, so there are a lot of foreign people living here. There's a pretty big variety of restaurants in Haeundae, from Indian curry to Brazilian barbecue.

There are also a couple walking paths in the area, too. A good daytime stroll is along the old train tracks. The tracks follow the coast to the east out of Busan.

When the new train line opened up, they closed this one and opened it up to the public, so you don’t need to worry about trains coming behind you.

If you’d like a night time stroll, check out Dongbaek island.

The wood path is covered with colored lights. The lights change colors, too.

You get a good view of Haeundae from this island, and the path ends at the beach.

(Image from the Shinsegae homepage)

Korean department stores are huge. They are actually more of an entertainment-shopping complex. A lot of department stores in Korea are around 10 storys tall. They are also where you go to buy luxury brands in Korea, so don’t expect to find any extremely good deals.

Shinsegae is one of the big department store chains in South Korea, along with Lotte and Hyundai. Shinsegae used to be part of the Samsung mega-corporation, but they split paths in the early 1990′s. They still work together, though. You can get a Shinsegae-Samsung credit card, for example. Also, every Starbucks in Korea is owned by Shinsegae.

The Shinsegae Department Store at the Centum City subway stop in Busan is the biggest department store in the world. It is around 5.5 million square feet big, more than doubling the second-place department store.

The department store has plenty of shopping with that much space, but it also has:

An IMAX movie theater

A Korean-style sauna

A Korean culture center

An ice skating rink

A gym

An art gallery

A statue park on the roof (currently there are a bunch of dinosaur statues)

A golf driving range

Several food courts (with pretty decent food)

Lamb curry, cheese tonkatsu, and a Vietnamese soup from the food court.

And, even though the department store was already the biggest in the world by a couple million square feet, they opened up a new Shinsegae Mall just across the street from the department store. 

The mall has a microbrewery on the top floor that is owned by Shinsegae, Devil’s Door. This place is odd, because the food is pretty reasonably priced, but the beer is quite expensive (about 10,000 won for a pint). The beers were pretty decent, though. The IPA was hoppier than normal Korean microbrews and the stout was pretty smokey.

The indoor seating was a little dark and the music was pretty loud, so Sweet Ji and I decided to sit outside. There’s a better view of the city out there, anyway.

Only I could turn a post about a department store into a post about beer.

Gukje Market is a huge outdoor market near Nampo-dong in the southern part of Busan. “Gukje” means “international”. Historically, this area has had a fairly big Japanese population. It is also pretty close to Busan’s Chinatown and Texas Street (which, oddly enough, is where a bunch of Russians live). So this area has earned the name “International”. 

 The streets are narrow. The stores’ wares spill out into the narrow streets. And on weekends, this place gets packed with people. While the stores in buildings tend to have legitimate products, if you’re looking for a Brada handbag, a pair of Bayran sunglasses, or a Lorex watch, then check out the temporary stands in the middle of the street. They aren’t good fake products, though. Words are clearly misspelled and logos are changed to try to skirt copyright laws. They are also really low quality, so I don’t recommend them. Go to Myeongdong in Seoul if you’re looking for that.

There are also some really good stores that sell Korean souvenirs scattered around the market. I’ve done a fair bit of Christmas shopping here over the past couple years.

One warning if you go here: motorcycles and scooters will drive down these tiny, narrow roads and sidewalks at unreasonable speeds. So stay alert.

To get here by subway, go out of Nampo station’s exit 1. Take your first right down a side street and walk to this wavy street.

My favorite sports team in Busan is the concisely named Busan Transportation Corporation Football Club, or the BTC for short. Although that is a long name, it isn’t the longest team name in Korea. That would be the Gyeongju Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Company Limited Football Club. Almost every sports team in Korea is owned by and named after a non-sports-related corporation. So the players for the Busan Transportation Corporation Football Club are technically employees of the public transportation system in Busan.

The BTC play in the National League, the 3rd level of Korean soccer. The top level is the K-League Classic league, and the next level is the K-League Challenge league. Those two leagues have a promotion-relegation system like in European leagues, but the National League isn’t connected to that. There is a huge gulf in class between the leagues, and the National League teams generally have no chance against the K-League teams in the FA Cup.

So why would I support a team in the lower leagues?

1) The Players

My first year in Korea, I would go to the Busan I’Park games, too. I even bought a season ticket, as it was only 50,000 won. The team would play ugly soccer. If they scored a goal, they would try to park the bus and go all-out-defense. But they usually ended up conceding a goal, panicking, and then conceding another goal. They just weren’t a good team to watch.

But the BTC put a lot of effort into their play. We fans like to call the last 10 minutes of a game “Transport Time.” We noticed that the BTC seemed to score a lot of goals at the end of games. There was also this one bizarre league game where we were down by 1 with a couple minutes left in the game. We got a corner kick, and the fans started jokingly shouting at the goalkeeper to run up the field to play offense. That is unheard of in a league game; it is only done in you are down in a tournament. Much to our surprise, the goalkeeper looked over at the manager, and the manager waved him forward. In the corner kick, the goalkeeper actually got a head on the ball, but he didn’t score because sometimes life is disappointing. It was still great to see a team that actually wanted to win every game.

2) The Team

The entire team have fully embraced us as their fan club. The National League doesn’t typically get a lot of fans, so when we first started showing up to the stadium, the team was a little amused. They were probably also wondering why we weren’t at the I’Park.

When we kept showing up, the team started to feel a bit of pride that they had a foreign fanbase. The club chairman will invite us all out to dinner on the company’s dime a couple times a year. He also offered to drive Sweet Ji and I up to Gangneung, about 4 hours away from Busan, for a game since he had two empty seats in his car. The goalkeeper that ran forward for the corner kick has given Sweet Ji and I two match-worn jerseys, and he promised to give me his jersey at the end of this season, too. The team captain found me and friended me on Facebook. One of the players nominated me for the ice bucket challenge. When the team wanted to change their away jersey, they let us decide what colors. When the team were celebrating their 10th anniversary, they gave all of us free scarves.

The team really appreciates us. So we love them back.

3) The Community

When I went to the I’Park games, there was a strict hierarchy in the fan section. The guy with the drum called the shots. He started every chant. If you tried to start up a chant, he would shush you and tell you to wait. It was a very awkward atmosphere.

But the BTC didn’t have a fanbase like that. So we moved in and created a more European-style atmosphere. If someone wants to start a chant, they can. If nobody is really feeling like chanting, then whatever.

It also helps that the BTC’s stadium is in the southern part of the city. There are a lot of native speaking English teachers in the southern part of the city, so it is easy for them to get to the stadium. We’ve got a good group of people that go and hangout.

4) I got a plaque of appreciation.

I don’t really have anything else to add. The team gave me a plaque of appreciation.

Craft beer is a relatively new business in Korea. There have been a few microbreweries in the Itaewon neighborhood in Seoul for a while, since there is a big American military base there, but the rest of the country was left drinking Hite and Cass. 

These days, there are a lot of craft breweries springing up, but there were almost none until a couple of years ago. Take this with a grain of salt, as I’ve only heard this through the grapevine, but I’ve heard that a company had to make a prohibitively huge amount of beer to set up a brewery before the laws changed in 2013. Something like a million liters a year. No start-up would be able to make that amount.

The guys who started Galmegi Brewing used to home brew, but they were in Korea at the right time and jumped on the opportunity to start a new craft beer craze in Korea.

Galmegi Brewing opened up in Gwangalli in 2013, just shortly after Sweet Ji and I started dating. They started as just a little pub that brewed its beer off-site to opening up a big two-story brewery in 2014 where they could make everything on-site.

Since then, they have opened up a location in Seoul as well as opening 3 more pubs in Busan: one in Haeundae, one in Seomyeon, and one in Nampo, but I’ll talk about those later.

“Galmegi” in Korean means “seagull” (hence the logo). Busan is a seaside city, so it’s symbol is the seagull. The local baseball team sometimes goes by the nickname of “Galmegi”. The unofficial theme song of the city is “Busan Galmegi”. People from Seoul sometimes jokingly refer to a person from Busan as “Galmegi”. There was really no better name for a brewery in Busan.

Galmegi always has a blonde ale, an IPA, a pale ale, an amber ale, and an awesome vanilla espresso stout on tap. They also regularly change up 4 or 5 seasonal or special beers, too. They currently have a lemon-lime gose to celebrate spring and a IIPA to celebrate the brewery’s second birthday. My favorite is the espresso stout. Sweet Ji always has a hard time choosing between the sour lemon-lime gose and the amber ale.

If you want to buy some clothes or jewelry in Busan, the underground shopping centers are a pretty good choice. They are filled with small, independent stores (as well as a couple chains) that generally have pretty reasonable prices. Some of the clothes here have some terrible English grammar, if that’s the sort of thing you are looking for.

This underground shopping center runs under the main street of Seomyeon. It stretches from the H&M close to Bomnaegol through Seomyeon station and all the way to Bujeon station. Go towards exits 1 and 2 of Seomyeon station to get here.

Busan's signature dish is called dwaeji gookbap. And it is my favorite Korean dish. 

Dwaeji means pig, gook means soup, bap means rice. So it is a pork soup served with rice on the side. When you order dwaeji gookbap, they'll bring out a bunch of side dishes first. 

When Sweet Ji and I took these pictures, she ordered soondae (kind of like blood sausage), so that was extra, but everything else comes as part of the meal. 

 You can eat some of the side dishes that come out, but you should leave some, too. The soup is pretty bland by itself, so put in some garlic and onion and mini shrimp to give it some more taste. 

 Some people like to get a spoonful of rice and dip it into the soup, but I like to put the whole bowl of rice directly in the soup to let it soak up the broth. 

 Dwaeji gookbap can be found everywhere in Busan. But a good place to go if you are visiting is Dwaeji Gookbap Street in Seomyeon. 

해동용궁사

I said before that Beomeosa Temple is the best Buddhist temple in the city limits of Busan. But the best temple near Busan is Haedong Yonggung Temple. It is built on a rocky shoreline to the east of the city.

I have only been to this temple during the celebration of Buddha’s Birthday, so all of my pictures show a bunch of paper lanterns decorating the temple grounds. These are not up year-round. They are only up during that holiday in early spring.

From the main entrance of the temple complex, you’ll need to walk about half a kilometer on a paved path to get to the temple.

This path goes past some statues for the animals in the Chinese zodiac.

Sweet Ji is a mouse in the Chinese zodiac.

When you are walking down the stairs leading to the temple, you’ll see a turnoff to the left that leads to a really good overlook of the front of the temple and the shoreline.

After you’re finished admiring it from afar, you’ll have to cross a small bridge to get into the temple grounds.

Buddhist temples tend to have a lot of statues of Buddha. They’ll have a couple big statues, but they are proud of having a buch of tiny statues off to the side.

People visiting the temple will also leave a small Buddha figure to get a blessing. All of the statues have a description written on them. I’ve only been there in early spring, so almost all of the figures in this photo are for academic achievement.

At the back of the temple, you can walk up a staircase to get to an overview of the back of the temple.

The name of the temple is Haedong Yonggung Temple. “Hae” in Korean means ocean. Makes sense, because the temple is by the ocean. “Yong” means dragon. That has to do with the mythology behind the founding of the temple. You can also find a statue of a dragon in the temple.

Getting to the temple is a little complicated. You can take a bus or go by taxi.

Taxi:

This is probably the easiest way. Take the subway to Jangsan station and go out of exit 1, 5, or 7. Get a taxi on the main road and show the driver the Korean name of the temple at the top of this article. It will cost between 6,000-7,000 won.

The downside is that it will be pretty tough to get a taxi back to Busan, since this temple is pretty far outside of the city.

Bus:

Take the subway to Haeundae Station. Go out of exit 7 and take bus 181.

You’ll get out of the bus at the Yongung Gookrip Soosangwa Hagwon (용궁사국립수산과학원) bus stop. It is right after the huge Lotte Outlet shopping mall on the left side of the road.

In Korea, houses tend to be pretty small. Most people live in apartments with their whole family. Some families will have a small dog or a cat, but having a pet in your house isn’t extremely common. Instead, some people will go to a cat (or dog) cafe. It’s exactly what it sounds like.

A cat cafe has a bunch of cats running around. These cats are around a ton of people every day, so they tend to be pretty used to people and are pretty social. The cats won’t be afraid to jump up on random people’s laps.

The cafes also have toys that you can use to try to lure the cats over to your group. Every once and a while, the employees will announce that it is snack time. The employees will put some cat food on your hand, and you can go up to a cat to try to get it to lick the food off of your fingers.

When we went to a cafe, we had just gone shopping. We emptied the shopping bag and put it on the ground next to us. Cats are curious animals, so it ended up being a pretty good way to get cats to come to our table.

When you enter, an employee will ask you want drink you want. You’ll have to pay about 5,000 won for a small cup of coffee, but that acts as an entrance fee to help take care of the animals. Everyone who comes into the cafe has to order at least one drink, so you can’t tag along with a group and hang out with the cats for free.

Every cat cafe has the same rules and they are pretty common sense. Most of them are to make sure the animals don’t become afraid of people.

1) No loud noises.

2) Don’t chase the cats. If one doesn’t want to come to your table, don’t try to force it to.

3) Don’t pick up the cats. A cat can jump up on to your lap, but you shouldn’t pick one up and put it there.

4) Pet the cats softly.

5) Be careful with young cats. Sometimes the cafe will put a bow or something on new cats, and they ask people to not walk up to those cats, but to let those cats walk up to people. These cats aren’t used to people yet, so they might get scared if people keep crowding around them.

There are two major religions in Korea: Christianity and Buddhism. To completely oversimplify the demographics of Korea, a little under a third of Koreans are Christian, a little over a third of Koreans are Buddhist, and the remaining are unaffiliated. I won’t write anything about Korean churches, as there is a blog dedicated to them.

The biggest Buddhist temple connected to the Busan subway system is Beomeosa. This temple is usually on the top of any list of sightseeing spots in Busan. It was built on Mount Geumgang (in the northern part of the city), about 1,300 years ago. The temple is built pretty far up the mountain, so if you are getting tired of being in the city, this is a nice little retreat.

That’s one of the reasons why I really like Busan. It is a city of 4 million people built in the valleys of a mountain range, so you always have a place to escape to if you are getting tired of city life.

The temple is still being used for regular worship, so every once and a while you’ll run into some monks wandering around the temple grounds.

There is also a really nice hiking trail leading to the top of Mount Geumgang from the back of the temple. Busan has a ton of hiking trails, which, again, is really nice for taking a quick break from city life.

At the top of the mountain, there is an ancient fortress.

To get to Beomeosa Temple, take the orange line of the subway to the Beomeosa subway stop. It is just before the last station on the north end of the orange line.

Last month Conan O’Brien came to Korea and filmed a pretty good special. There are a lot of inside jokes for Koreans and people in Korea, but it is also pretty accessible to people who have never even thought of the country before.

The background to his visit is there is a Korean high school student, Sunny Lee, who likes to watch Conan on YouTube. Conan isn’t broadcast on TV over here, so she couldn’t see him anywhere else other than YouTube. Sunny sent Conan a letter saying that she was falling behind in her studies for the university entrance exam because she was watching too much Conan. Then she sent him a box of Korean junk food, and he decided to come to Korea with Steven Yeun (who plays Glen in The Walking Dead).

In the Korea special, Conan tries to learn a little bit of Korean, but, since he has mastered making people feel awkward, he makes his tutor very uncomfortable. If you don’t understand Korean, you’ll miss a few jokes in that exchange, even with the subtitles. Everywhere he goes, he tries to push the limits of what he can do to try to make people uncomfortable.

The whole experience ends with Conan participating in a JYP music video, which I will talk about tomorrow.

Before I start my rant, I would like to admit that I am definitely part of the problem. Whenever I see a link to someone’s blog about a trip to North Korea, I have to click on it. Really, who can’t? It is a fascinating place, especially the way that they try to build up a facade that people usually see through. So, yeah, I admit that I have provided plenty of clicks for these types of blogs.  But...

Everyone should stop going to North Korea. I, myself, have no intentions of going. That’s not due to fear, although I wouldn’t tell my mom and dad if I did plan a trip until after I’m already out of the country (sorry guys, that’s for your blood pressure...and I promise this isn’t a subtle admission that I’m planning to go).

When anyone goes to North Korea to shed light on the most isolated country in the world, they are strictly guided through the country and told what to show the outside world. The travelers might add in personal insight later, but they are kept far, far away from the worst parts of the country. What’s worse is that these photo albums and documentaries show North Korea as a curiosity or even as a fascination. Even the “illegal photos” that the blog I linked to treats North Korea as a spectacle. It isn’t. The regime in North Korea has committed countless (fairly) well-documented crimes against humanity. Even though everyone who goes to Pyongyang comments on how fake everything feels, it’s troubling that you don’t see the concentration camps, where whole generations of families are indefinitely imprisoned because one member committed a crime against the state; the starving people, who are conveniently always out of sight; or behind that fake facade, even though you see the comments about it being obviously fake.

Images are powerful. Whenever you see a picture of North Korea, you see that sanitized exterior. I’m sure that you’ve read about how horrible a place the north is, but when you see those pictures, doesn’t some little part of your mind involuntarily think: “You know, all the pictures of North Korea don’t look so bad. I know it isn’t a paradise, but could it really be that horrible a place? Many people have gone, and their pictures don’t look too terrible, even these ‘illegal’ pictures.” And that is a dangerous thought.

Before, I didn’t want to go to North Korea because I didn’t want to give any money to Kim Jung-eun. Now, I don’t want to go because going there and telling everyone about my trip feels like it would be sort-of legitimizing the government. Those sanitized pictures and videos that you see on the internet...they are propaganda. Especially these “illegal” pictures. They don’t look bad at all, even though “illegal” definitely has connotations of exposing the dark side of the authoritarian regime.

Oh, wow. That’s an interesting theory for where the term “fighting” came from.