북촌한옥마을 | Bukchon (& Dongdaemun)

Going on a recommendation from an acquaintance we managed to bump into at Changdeokgung, we thought we'd go for a fairly relaxing walk around Bukchon Hanok Village. It's really cute and, to me, pretty hipster. A whole area of traditional wooden houses, and little indie cafes and trinket shops erupting from more modern (but still old) buildings in an oddly European way.

Being, essentially, a housing area, there are lots of doors to look at. Something I've noticed about Korea that I really like is the way older houses seem to have really wonderful, ornate front doors and gates.

한국민속촌 | Yongin Folk Village

Looking through the photos for this post, I'm uncomfortably aware of the fact I didn't actually take many photos that weren't of us doing silly fashion poses. I like to think of it as just us having too much fun actually looking at stuff...? Maybe.

We busted out the 50mm for this trip, so enjoy a lot of blur and an unhealthy obsession with depth of field.

We got up early for a long train ride to Suwon and thankfully the weather looked like it was going to be pretty good for the day. There's a shuttle bus at the other end that we were certain we'd missed, but we caught the driver looking for stragglers and he wrote us all up a ticket, saving us a 10 minute dash to the ticket office.

It's then a long drive further south into Gyeonggi-do, until we reach the folk village. It's not what I'd expected. I was expecting a model village, maybe in the countryside somewhere, or possibly even an actual village, like Bukchon. What it actually was, was a sort of Korean History theme park.

월미도3 | Wolmido Again Again

As a slightly more relaxing comedown for Nick's parents (having just come off a long haul flight, then up early for a pretty intense tour), we thought we'd visit Wolmido one more time. We'd been told to expect bad weather as the beginnings of a hurricane, or possibly the tail end of one from further afield, so we didn't want to go too far and risk getting stranded.

Wolmido's actually big enough and varied enough that this was our third visit and we still managed to find new things to do. We decided to go to the mini hanok recreation and potter around.

We were pulled in by some of the staff there, and encouraged to take part in a little arts and crafts session. Nick made a little spinning top while we made...some kind of cute decorated stick? I didn't really understand what the lady helping us was telling me. I thought my ears were failing me but I do believe we ended up making bejazzled...ear cleaning sticks?

I think I'll just wear them as hair decorations. They're cute and pink with bells on.

Anyway, this place is great for a little concentrated dose of South Korea's architectural history. They've recreated buildings from the northern and southern areas, for both the rich and the poor. They're fairly similar in style but there are subtle differences in layout and size, and there's some really great examples of how they were carefully designed to ensure coolness in the hot summer, but warmth in the freezing winters.

One thing I find interesting is that the living room almost always has only 3 walls, and is open to the outdoors on one side. With the exception of the palaces, where they could afford a screen that could fold down from the ceiling in the winter to offer some extra protection.

There's also a great cutaway example of how the ondol, traditional underfloor heating, worked in the days before gas and electricity. It's similar to the way the Greeks and Romans did it, with pipes working their way under the house (another reason for the raised structure). The pipes connect to the house fireplace on one end, usually in the kitchen for cooking with. Rather than waste all that heat straight up and out, the chimney basically extends under the entire house before emerging out of the opposite side. Mm. Nice warm floors to lie on!

We played tuho, a traditional game like a cross between darts and hoopla, where you have a handful of arrow-like sticks, stand behind a line, then throw them into a narrow container (think of an umbrella stand). I was terrible at it, haha.