Korea Day 3 - Fun with Guns

The next morning, or more likely early afternoon, we went to a place near the hotel to get some breakfast. The food was the same sort of mash up with Kimchi that we had at other places. It was good though and the place we ate at was little more than a kitchen with about three tables in it. It actually seemed that most of the business was selling food out front to people who passed by but they also did meals. We took the subway down to the war museum, which is supposed to be a good one. Immediately the scene there seemed pretty strange as instead of mostly camera toting tourists it was mostly Korea teenyboppers. As we got closer we saw gigantic signs for some signer or group called the Mobius. It seemed that the big area out in front of the War Museum was going to be the host for a gigantic pop concert. I doubt there was any actually connection between this pop star and any war commemoration. It just seemed totally out of place to me like going down to the Vietnam War Memorial in DC and seeing a Britney Spears concert. There were already a lot of people there for what must have been an evening concert when we got there around noon and I even managed to get a sign. The crowd was about 90% female and all under the age of 16.



Outside the actually war memorial stuff included a lot of old planes and tanks, not too dissimilar from what we saw at the war museum in Ho Chi Minh City. As I was looking at a big plane that you could walk up and look at the cockpit of there band started rehearsing giving the whole place a wholly inappropriate sound track. Most of the other tourists there didn't seem to mind too much though just going about their business. There was a group of what looked like Korean Boy Scouts walking around. The artillery pieces they had all set up in a row were actually pretty impressive. We went inside the museum and got tickets. There was also another type of ticket available for some kids thing but we didn't know what that was about. Inside the museum was actually set up in a sort of confusing way so we had to walk around for a while before we found where the main tour started. While we were looking around we discovered that most of the lower floor of the museum had been turned into some gigantic play room for children. I actually wished I was four years old because it looked fantastic. They had an area where kids could put together toy train tracks, and a gigantic train ride around the middle of the room, actually it looked like the whole place was sponsored by Thomas the Tank Engine.

Around the other side of the room they had a moon bounce and a big slide. They also had this clear inflatable tube that kids could walk in and they get the whole thing to roll. The most interesting area though was two big pits filled with little colorful balls, sort of like the children's area in a McDonalds. But the two pits were connected by a conveyor belt that had to be cranked by hand and would raise the balls up until they would fall down a slide into the other side of the conveyor belt. The children would then use little buckets and shovels to start the process over again. I don't think I've ever seen a children's toy more suited for teaching children how to work on an assembly line. Now that's how you build GDP. There were a huge number of tiny flags over the whole thing also for some reason. It was just like the concert not exactly what you would expect to find in a war museum. The actual war museum part was pretty interesting. I'm not really a huge fan of museums but it had a series of videos which I always prefer. I actually knew quite a bit about the Korean War before going there so I didn't learn that much. The single most interesting thing was the picture of an old blind man the South Koreans had run into outside of Seoul when they liberated it. The battle lines in that area had gone back and forth so many times the man greeted the soldiers with flags for both the North and the South since he was so confused.

I knew that Korea is famous for being a place where video games are treated as a serious sport so we had asked one of the people at the hotel if he knew where we could go to watch some games. He gave us the name of a subway stop that came up right into a mall. The first odd thing about this mall was that there was a Mexican band playing outside for some reason. I don't know that much about musical tastes in Korea but if they're anything like China something with a lot of horns isn't exactly what they're looking for. We went into the mall and looked around for a little while with no success. Finally I noticed that there was something listed as an "e-Sports Stadium" on the top floor of an electronics store. We took a series of escalators up about eight floors to until we got there. There was a person sitting outside one of the doors and when we approached we were just allowed in. Inside was a TV studio with a big stage and a number of chairs. On the stage were two tables with five computers each with TV monitors in front of them showing exactly what each person was doing. There was also a big screen behind all of them showing a big version of the whole thing. They were playing a shooter that I didn't recognize but they're all pretty much the same anyways.



The teams would run around shooting each other eliminating players until whoever was left won. They would shout out suggestions or some such thing to each other while the game was going on also. The teams were actually very well organized with coaches sitting off to the sides in suits and even some team cheers. It was a pretty surreal experience to see it being filmed for TV. Me and Ken were at least filmed once as I think they don't get too many tourists at these things. The whole place was really fancy also with some top notch looking equipment. There were also what seemed to be judges standing behind the players. The most interesting team was an all girls team that wore matching high heeled shoes. They lost mostly but it was fun to watch. There was one guy in the audience who I hope was one of there boyfriends since he was yelling along with them on all the team chants and very excited. Even the other Korean people around him seemed to think he was a little nuts. You've got to respect any country though were playing a video game can be considered a career option. After the games were over, me and Ken went to a Korean BBQ place where they cook the meat in front of you with these turning spits. It was a little hard to figure out but our waiter was incredibly attentive and we had some Soju, a Korean liquor that it about 40 proof. It's not as strong as something like vodka but they drink it in shots so they end up drinking a lot of shots.