Some of you might've heard that last week was the Lunar New Year, which always occurs on something like the second new moon of the year. You may even know that 2016 is the Year of the Monkey, but this is also the year of the "byeong-shin," as can be explained
here. Basically "byeong" means fire/red, and "shin" is for metal, and this occurs only every 60 years (12 earthly branches X 5 heavenly stems).
Anyway, it's an especially odd year for Korean-speakers, because "byeong-shin" is a very strong word for insanity/mental handicap, probably best translated as the one starting with R that I'm not going to say just to protect myself.
For the long weekend, tens of millions of Korean people hit the road (out of about 50 million) to return to their hometowns, and Seoul becomes a ghost town, inhabited only by those with roots in the city or foreigners. So I got together with those of both groups who wanted to do some exploring.
1. Let's start with a very confusing ladder/staircase to a good roof.
2. From here, we are plotting to go over that ridge where a neighbourhood has recently been destroyed.
3. Here's the view in the opposite direction.
4. Everyone really liked this roof/was afraid to take the stairs back down.
5. The remaining abandoned buildings were protected with yellow blankets.
6. Looking down at me.
7. Time to head further uphill. The blankets cover ruins, which create interesting shadows.
8. Spotted in an old church.
9. At the very top was a fence cutting off the obsrevation deck. We were able to peer through and see this little slice of the deck that still has a good view.
10. I had cat food with me because one of our stops was to look for a lost cat in an abandoned neighbourhood a friend had recently been evicted from. He found the cat without us but I donated it to these friendly street cats.
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12. Van Gogh's largest work.
13. Seen from an abandoned overpass being prepped to be transformed into
Korea's High Line Park.
14. Day 2 was a trip to Seoul's "abandoned" amusement park.
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21. Photobombed.
22. On New Year's Day, we went to the Bone Tunnel.
23. Here is its namesake, dozens and dozens of these bones, which I suspect are HOG JOWLS.
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26. Looks like there was a real artist down here since my last visit.
Anyway, happy new year!
