Our last full day in Korea began slow. It has been nice this week to slow down and enjoy sleeping in. We decided to start with a morning coffee at a Starbucks just behind our building. We ordered our drinks to go but sat down to eat a pastry before walking out. However, we got approached saying we had to either pour our drinks out into mugs or leave with our plastic to-go cups immediately. We at first thought an employee was just being rude to us but we looked up online and learned that in the last few years Seoul (or maybe all of South Korea) has made fineable offenses to establishments that serve plastic cups for folks eating in. This is in an effort to reduce waste in the country. This explained some of the mysteries we had earlier in the week like why a McDonalds would be serving drinks in glass cups.

We weren’t initially sure what we were going to spend the last day doing, but after some research decided to take a visit to the War Memorial of Korea. 

Like the Gyeongbokgung Palace, we arrived just in time to catch the daily entertainment outside the entrance of the museum. We had heard some pop music walking into the gates and weren’t exactly sure what was going on. They had the different groups performing different styles of dance and marches for the different military branches of Korea. The show lasts about 15 minutes and seems to just continuously recycle. We watched through to where we had started before heading into the museum to explore. 

The War Memorial of Korea supposedly opened in 1994 on the former site of the army headquarters to exhibit and memorialize the military history of Korea and it holds an exquisite collection and memorabilia of several past wars ranging from prehistoric times with very rudimentary weapons to two floors explaining with extreme detail on the Korean War and the ROK Armed Forces. They also include one section about how they have sent forces in more modern conflicts and South Korea’s presence as an ally in the UN. They are very proud that after being the country being helped in the 1950’s in their own brutal war, they have been able to since flourish and in turn return the favor to many other countries. As I had previously mentioned in an earlier post, history was not my strong point in school. I mostly learned enough to ace the exams but the info quickly left my brain post high school and college. It was a nice refresher to read the information on the Korean War since the DMZ visit and see just how far back Korea’s history goes. 

They had several military vehicles on the bottom floor of the museum and as well as outside. We realized after walking through that a lot of military equipment given to South Korea was done by the US while Russia and China supplied the North with most of their equipment. The museum noted that most of the old Soviet equipment is still in use by North Korea. In our DMZ tour earlier in the week Grant had asked our guide what happened to companies that had offices on either side of the DMZ and he noted both countries were poor and ravaged at the time and had no major companies. The country was so decimated by Japan in the early 1900’s (annexed by Japan in 1910), then after World War II the North/South divide was created in 1945 by the Allied countries and just 5 years later the country was at war again (the Korean War). When the Korean War started, North Korea (backed by Soviets and China) captured Seoul in just three days. The United States immediately acted, along with various UN counterparts, to help push them back North and the fight basically stale-mated for 2-3 years as the superpower countries helped pump more and more equipment, training, personnel, etc. into both sides. You can see in many of the pictures below the major equipment still has USA insignia. There were also a number of modern vehicles that proudly displayed “designed and made in Korea.”

After spending a few hours walking through the museum, we were ready for some dinner. Sebastian had given us his recommendation for the best bulgogi in town. And let me tell you, it was! So much so that Grant wanted to order another helping of it (but we didn’t). It was also some of the best kimchi we’ve had. We think they may have used the red pepper paste to help flavor it. The sides in Korea are unlimited so I was happy when the waitress supplied us with more kimchi. 

We initially were going to grab dessert around the area, but Grant wanted to check out this retro game bar in a different part of town. When we first arrived, we were the only ones besides the bartender. They had a Nintendo Switch, Playstation, and Xbox along with some card, board games, and arcade games. We tried to play a couple games on the Playstation and Switch but couldn’t get them to work so ended up playing a couple rounds of Jenga. As the night progressed, more people started showing up and the bartender helped to get the gaming systems up and running. We ended up playing Fifa Soccer (which we were terrible at), MarioKart along with Mortal Kombat and BombJack on the arcade machine.

After a few rounds of me mostly losing to Grant, we headed back to our place to rest before another early morning…this time to head to the airport for Vietnam. We were sad we were now able to count how many countries we had left on one hand but I was ready to leave the cold and head for some warmth.