Over the last several days, it was the Lunar New Year long weekend, one of the two biggest holidays in Korea. Also one of the best times of year to go exploring, when workers are all away and about 6 million cars hit the roads leaving the capital city. These pictures start from last Wednesday to yesterday (Monday). A few earlier pictures are thrown in for reference.
1. I guess I started the long weekend with a visit from a friend to my office, which happens to have an impressive roof.
2. This is approximately what he would be seeing.
3. Somewhere down there is an entry point to an underground bullet train line that I can only visit on major holidays.
4. I guess this is part of the process of making an actual floor, where they lay out these plastic things that look like they're for gardening. They were unpleasant to walk over.
5. Walking up this to get out was also unpleasant. I didn't take many pictures because I only had my phone, and I was using it to take videos.
6. On Lunar New Year's Eve, I checked in on this Buddhist temple in an urban renewal zone. Previously in October I jumped the fence, only to find it
still inhabited. That seems to still be the case.
7. The neighbourhood sits on a mountainside, and it's almost entirely vacated.
8. Also in the same neighbourhood was a more residential temple built out of a heavily modified residential building.
9. Everything they considered of value had been moved out, as of December according to one calendar, but it was still pretty magnificent.
10. Lotus lanterns with prayers attached.
11. A wonky Buddhist mural. Looks like that elephant sprang a leak.
12. Looking down into the residential alley.
13. A less ceremonial part of the temple.
14. Where the monks ate.
15. A lantern that's seen better days.
16. The area's name, which translates to "Iron Hill," makes a nice-looking logo ripping off Coca-Cola.
17. I went out to Hongdae, one of the liveliest parts of the capital, on Saturday night, only to find it pretty well vacated.
18. Usually on a weekend like this it would be swimmign with people in their 20s.
19. I stopped by this subway vent (pictured back in December during daytime).
20. On that previous visit, I peeked up on top and noticed the hatch had a lock that looked like it may have been cut.
21. Yes, it had been cut. There were still people walking by in the evening, but I have a few tricks and nobody really looks up.
22. Down into the tunnel.
23. This is the Joseon Door. Once, I walked through and it locked behind me, trapping me in a vent room. Fortunately there was some cellphone service down here and I was able to call for backup.
24. Bando.
25. What a good idea, battery packs of 3.
26. Next stop was a site we call Son of The Host.
27. About 500 meters upstream, we reach the lower part of Seontongmulcheon, a channal that seems to have been built during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation of Korea, and is the only one of these underground rivers that is entirely manmade, not based on a preexisting body of water.
28. We were a little weirded out by these droplets on the ceiling, but I'm pretty sure they're just condensation.
29. A manhole from below.
30. We got pretty deep, and the air was smelling surprisingly fresh but getting a little cloudy, and then suddenly we hit a threshold where the rotten egg smell was strong. I suggested we turn around at that point.
31. I think that's supposed to be an arrow pointing downstream.
32. This is what we just explored.
33. A sultry signal mannequin.
34. On the final day of the holiday, all the millions of cars that had left the city were flowing back, and I had to return to work. Before coming in, I visited this parking lot.
35. It's built over top of this underground storm drain area, which has been named Teen Host.
36. If I waded up this stream a couple hundred meters, I'd find the upstream end of Seontongmul Stream, and be able to follow it down to where we'd been the previous day.
37. Here's a view from a nearby rooftop of Teen Host. You can see three waterworks buildings sort of close to the river, and the bottom level within that circle of road where there's a water chute, plus the parking lot built over the rest of the underground complex.
