Day 11 and 12

Day 11: May 30, 2025

Today we visited Changdoek Palace to tour the Secret Garden. This Palace had many interesting features. The most notable of all was a driveway built by a king because of his love for the Model T automobile. The Secret Garden was also very beautiful, showcasing many natural plants, striking architectural elements in houses, and natural water features. After our tour of the palace, courtesy of our wonderful tour guide Dr. hur, we ate lunch and trekked to the University of Seoul to attend a presentation. Dr. Hur presented her information on the housing crisis in Dare County, North Carolina. Her research highlights how this area has a severe lack of housing available to essential workers such as law enforcement, fire fighters, wait staff, etc. her research was very informational on how residents believe that the lack of housing is a problem, but no one seems to want to build more housing to fix it. After her presentation we also had another presenter, Dr. Jeongwon Son or London University, who presented his research as well. During these presentations, students from the university’s planning program also sat in. Afterwords we all attended dinner together, and got to know some of the students. It was nice to talk to students and get an idea of what studying in South Korea is like compared to the US!

Day 12: May 31st, 2025

Today we started late into the afternoon, venturing into Insadong to create our own stamps. As a crafty person, I was very excited to do this. I made my stamp with my name in Korean by carving into a piece of stone. This was such a great experience and I got a keepsake to bring home. After, we ventured around doing some final shopping before taking an impromptu trip on another bullet train through the city to the suburbs. This train was much faster than the one to Kangnung, reaching speeds of 176 km/h. This was a very fun extra excursion for our group to do. After eating dinner we attended a Moonlight Music Cruise on the Han River. This was a beautiful, stress free trip that allowed me to gain another new perspective of the city from the water.

Blog 9 Theme: Street Food

Throughout my visit to South Korea, I have noticed many street food stands and designated areas throughout the city of Seoul. This is very similar to large cities in the US like New York, but on a much larger scale oftentimes. This was one other excellent example of how good is distributed throughout the city from these vendor areas. I really enjoy seeing these street foods as it shows how supportive people in the city are of supporting small food businesses.