September 26, 1970: A Weekend Walk Through Seoul
	September 12, 1970: A Trip to Seoul
	Return to the Index for 1970

I know these pages for weekend trips to Seoul may get repetitive, but I don't like to just stay around Camp Howze on weekends. There is not much to do, as I neither drink very much nor play poker, and I also figure that I am unlikely to ever return to this part of the world, and so I think I need to soak up as much of it as I can.

This weekend, I will be spending most of Saturday with Dr. Kim and his family, staying overnight at his house. On Sunday, in the afternoon, I want to visit a major attraction in the center of Seoul- Namsan Mountain- before I hop on a military bus back to Camp Howze.

At Dr. Kim's House

I have mentioned Dr. Kim and his family already. I was connected with him via the Eighth Army Civil Affairs office. Korean families can apply to be "host families" and then the Civil Affairs Office will let field commanders know that a family is requesting to have a soldier visit with them. What the family wants is something like an "exchange student" that they can show themselves and Korea to; high on their list is someone with whom the kids can practice their English. What the soldier gets is a view into everyday Korean life (plus free Korean meals and most times overnight lodging).

Usually, the Korean families that apply are middle-class or higher, usually with kids in whose education they are very much invested, so the "life" into which the soldier gets a glimpse may not be all that typical. But for the soldiers who want to experience as much of the culture as they can while they are here, it is an excellent experience.

My family was a good example. The extended family included Dr. Kim and his wife, three young children, two older children, both married, and Dr. Kim's mother. Dr. Kim actually held a doctorate in mathematics and was a professor at the university in Seoul, and I would definitely have counted him as upper-class.

Take a look at his house at left. It was two-story, with kitchen and other facilities on the ground floor and bedrooms and such on the upper floor. The house may not look all that "upper-class" to you, but you must trust me when I tell you that the majority of housing I saw on my walking trips through the city was not nearly so nice.

Although I'll have more to say on upcoming pages, and although I'll have some pictures taken inside the house, I can say a few things here, things that came to mind on this, my first solo visit to the Kim family. I suppose the one thing I saw in the Kim household that impressed me the most, and which cemented my understanding that the Kim family was definitely way above average, was that in one of their downstairs rooms (which was given to me as a bedroom on one visit) there was a piano.

At right is another view of the house from a slightly different angle. There is a gate at the front through which you enter, and I found later there was also a back entry, through which foodstuffs, charcoal, and other items were delivered. The ground floor had the kitchen at the back, which was essentially a tiled room with a hand pump to get water (a great many people have to go get water from a common source), a couple of charcoal cookers, a sink, and stuff like that. Mrs. Kim even had a very small fridge.

Also on the ground floor was a large common room. This room was used both as a living room and a dining room. There was relatively little furniture- low cabinets, a low dining table, pillows and mats to sit on, and one or two low chairs. Dr. Kim had a small black-and-white television as well, but I never saw it in use.

There were other rooms I didn't see, and also the "facilities" which I did. Indoor plumbing and modern sewer systems are rapidly being introduced for private homes; office buildings, hotels, and most newer structures already have them. But this is taking time, and the Kim family still uses a version of a "pit commode" such as you might see in a National Park or at a campground. These are something like our septic systems, which we don't normally see in urban areas. In a separate room are a tiled shower (although the water is not piped in but brought in from being heated in the kitchen) and a little sink.

Upstairs are basically a number of rooms used for sleeping, and there are very narrow stairs to get up to them. I recall sharing one of these small rooms with Dr. Kim's eldest little boy, and it is typical to use beds that are more like very thick mats laid on the floor, with light covers. (I recall one of the kids saying that on very cold winter nights, the whole family sometimes lay out their mats in the common downstairs room where it's warmer.)

That's about it. Staying with the Kim's was a lot like staying in anyone's guest room, but the house was more like something you might see in a very rural area in the States. But modernization is coming; I can see it all over town, and you'll see it in my pictures as well.

What about the neighborhood in which the Kim house is located?

Dr. Kim lived just a short distance from Yongsan post; this is the alley that leads to the Kim house. It may not appear so, but the neighborhood is definitely above average.

I am standing right outside the gate to Dr. Kim's house and looking up the hill; you can see the conglomeration of different housing styles that make up Seoul. No two houses appear to be alike, unlike our own cities and housing developments. A radio station caps the hill. This is a representative middle-class neighborhood.

Note from the present:
I very much wish that I could place Dr. Kim's house or his neighborhood on a map, but I never recorded an actual address or took enough photos on my walks to his house from the bus station to be able to trace the route. I suspect, however, that now, over a half-century later, this would be only an intellectual exercise, as I cannot imagine that everything you see in all these photos of his neighborhood has not been torn down and replaced.

Seoul streets are like this, with all sorts of small shops and businesses mixed in with the houses. Indeed, most shopkeepers live in their establishments, usually in rooms connected to the back. There is a small woodworking shop under Dr. Kim's, as can be seen here.

Looking up the left-hand fork, is a more modern house, like at the beach. Right under the yellow sign is the door to the tearoom where one can find Dr. Kim's "secondary wife," who is in reality the tearoom hostess. Relationship unknown. We had tea there after dinner on the nights I stayed.

In all these small shops, it was easy for me to figure out what kind of shop it was. Merchants do not bother to build big, non-descript buildings in which to display their goods or perform their services. Usually, the whole front of the shop is open and you can see the goods for sale or what is going on inside. I am sure that if I could read Korean, the signage would tell me the same thing.

This is a typical residential "common" area, basically just an intersection where one can find an open-air market such as this one. The farmers bring in all their products to sell to the neighborhood wives and cooks.

You can see these stacks of goods here. There were apples, oranges (which are expensive), other kinds of fruit, rice, and small items. The woman in the foreground is dressed in traditional Korean wear, and is probably one of the housewives of the neighborhood.

Namsan Mountain Park

While I can't be positive where Dr. Kim's house was located, some of my slide narratives from a visit I will make to his house in 1971 indicate that it was probably located just north of a recreational area called Namsan Mountain Park. So on Sunday afternoon, before I returned to Camp Howze, I stopped at Namsan Mountain Park on my way down to Yongsan and the military bus back to Camp Howze.

As I said earlier in this album, so many years have passed that I am unable to place accurately many of the places I visited in Korea. Historical sites are usually easy to locate- particularly the cultural sites like palaces and major monuments. Permanent structures can be easy to locate, if they are like capitols and such, or more difficult, like commercial structures.

Dr. Kim's house of course falls into the category of "impossible to locate"; even if I had the actual address THEN, huge swathes of Seoul have been totally transformed, with new streets and everything, making that address quite possibly meaningless NOW. I do know that Dr. Kim's house was not far north of Namsan Mountain Park, because in one of my letters home I recounted to my parents that Dr. Kim's son had given me directions, saying it was easily walkable and in the same direction as Yongsan Army Post.

So on the map at left, I have tried to illustrate this. Leaving Dr. Kim's house this Sunday afternoon, on my way to Yongsan, I stopped at Namsan Mountain Park, since I had to go right by it.

Namsan Mountain ("South Mountain") is an 860-ft-high peak in the Jung-gu district of south central Seoul. It offers some hiking, picnic areas and views of downtown Seoul's skyline. The N Seoul Tower is located on top of Mt. Namsan.

At right is an aerial view of the west side of Namsan Mountain Park. There are trails that go to the top of the mountain where the N Tower is and these same trails continue down the east side of the mountain to other park entrances in the northeast and southeast.

Most of the facilities are located in the area between the N Seoul Tower and the northwest entrance. I have marked on the aerial view one feature that I also photographed, and which still exists and appears in images you can find on the Internet for South Mountain Park. I cannot locate other features I photographed, like the huge concrete outdoor bandshell.

On this trip I did not go up to the N Seoul Tower, but I did walk up the hill part way so I could get some good views of Seoul. You will see these views in this section.

I came to the park from Dr. Kim's house, which is some distance north. I first spent some time in the area where most of the facilities are and which is always crowded- particularly on weekends.

So here is my first picture of the facilities at Namsan Mountain Park. I confess I don't know the purpose of the 10-story building in the middle ground, the one with the dome and what looks like a revolving restaurant at the top.

I do know that this building still exists; you can see it in numerous images on the Internet, but I just did not record exactly what it was.

At the top of the mountain, just to the right of the domed building, you can see the N Seoul Tower (I think it was just called the Seoul Tower when I was there). It is a transmission tower with an observation deck, restaurant, and other stuff like that.

I walked through an area that had a lot of playground stuff for kids and lots of street vendors selling refreshments and stuff, and found some broad stairs that led up to the main level of the park- the level where the tall building pictured above is located.

Once I reached this upper level of the park, I stopped to take a few pictures. This one looks back down the stairs up which I just came.

This view looks across the city to the west of Namsan Mountain. This area is mostly residential, and you can see the Han River in the distance.

I am only a mile or so from Yongsan, although I didn't take a picture in that direction. I looked around this level for a while; it is a popular gathering place offering a view of the whole city. From here, I, too, got some good views.

One very interesting view is the one below. It looks basically west, and in the view you can see a new high-rise building and a church.

An Interesting View

I didn't think that a building like the highrise would necessarily last for a half-century, and I DID look for it on the current aerial view of this area of Seoul- since I could see right where it should be.

When I was scanning across the aerial view of this area of Seoul, what I DID notice was that the church in my photo was still there. So I Googled "church near Namsan Mountain Seoul" and discovered that it is the Namdaemun Presbyterian Church. This enabled me to find a current picture of it, and that picture is at right.

This goes back to what I said about what lasts; it's not just historical or cultural sites that last, but churches, too, and from now on they might serve as anchor points whenever I have taken a picture that includes one.

At right is the aerial view of this particular area of Seoul, and you can see the church right in the middle- just a block or so from the western end of the park.

You can also see that the church is now completely surrounded by high-rises, mostly, I think, office buildings, as central Seoul has expanded greatly. I looked carefully at each of the buildings in the aerial view, but to me, none of them matched the highrise near the church in my photo above. (Beyond the church in my photo you can see a long red roof, which was a train station when I was there and has now, I assumed, been replaced by the huge rail station complex that exists today- Seoul Station.) You can see the church steeple at the upper (as the picture is oriented) end of the building. So the obvious candidate building is the one just north of that (with the rectangular white area on its roof). But to me, that building didn't match up with the one in my picture, although I suppose it could have been renovated.

I find it interesting to make these comparisons , as I am always interested in how the things I saw a half-century ago have changed over time. You will find many, many such comparisons in the album pages that are upcoming, as I have already done most of them. Perhaps you will find these comparisons interesting as well, particularly if you have been to the same place.

While I was on this level here in the park, I took a couple of interesting pictures of the activity around me.

This is a huge concret bandshell/outdoor theater, open at the larger side at left.

I suppose these soldiers where using the park as a meeting place for some weekend exercise.

Leaving this "plateau", I continued up the steps to the path that leads up to the tower on top of the mountain. I did not plan on going all the way up there this evening, as it was getting on past six and I wanted to go to Yongsan and have dinner in a restaurant I favor. From a point further up the mountain, I took an additional series of pictures.

This view was taken from a spot further up Namsan Mountain, and it looks northwest towards Camp Howze. You will be seeing another copy of this picture on an upcoming page, for I actually took some pictures from that skyscraper you see here.

This view looks pretty much due North, and it is another picture I will be using on an upcoming page as I describe a walking tour across this area.

In this view, which looks pretty much south, the curved building with the upper windows missing is the Chosun Hotel. The Bank of Korea is in the center, and the string of orange globes is the Shinseye Department Store. Further right is a parking garage and offices.

Finally, here is a view as far east I could see, what with Namsan Mountain being in the way. These areas are mostly residential- similar to the area where Dr. Kim lives.

Downtown Seoul

I left Namsan Mountain and walked south towards the business district towards Yongsan Eighth Army Post, planning to eat dinner there before returning to Camp Howze.
The only other two pictures I took on my way down to Yongsan were taken at the new Chosun Hotel, and I want to include them here.

At left is a picture taken of one of the ends of the three-pronged structure. There are few hotel room windows on the ends of the buildings; most of them are found in the three curved sections of the building. Below is a picture taken outside the main entrance; the umbrellas are for the main hotel bar which offers outside seating for patrons:

It was an interesting weekend, with a visit to Dr. Kim's house, a stop at Namsan Mountain, a walk to Yongsan, and an excellent dinner in the Officer's Open Mess there before heading back to Howze.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	September 26, 1970: A Weekend Walk Through Seoul
	September 12, 1970: A Trip to Seoul
	Return to Index for 1970