The Korean autumn—and its cloudless blue sky—has finally arrived. Went up Mt. Namsan to celebrate. Now, Seoul has gotten bashed quite a bit—and with some justification—for its ugly urban architecture. Few major cities, however, can match its natural surroundings:
1200 px version here.
Just how blue was the sky?
I just love the Korean autumn. It just doesn’t get any better than this.
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13 Comments
The sky is high and the horse is fat!
After three months of dingy summer skies, the clear autumn air is a welcome change.
Keep brightening the blog with your great photos, Robert.
This really is the best season here, although the first snow can be picturesque too.
It is lovely and surprisingly cooler as well however I was awakened at 7:30a.m., today, by the local morons that felt they just had to fog pesticide for mosquitos, by truck.
Your photography is excellent. Thanks for sharing your travels and photos with us.
I’ve always really liked the September/October season here. It’s the one place in the world you can count on an indian summer every year. Now, if only somthing could be done about the other ten months of the year.
Sunday was awesome. I was going to go out and take some pictures as well, but it was so groovy I didn’t care to do anything except enjoy it.
Yup, i just hiked on the local mountain, just glorying in that air and sky… pure seasonal pleasure!
Let me add - Wow, totally excellent panoramic shot — got Surak-san, Dobong-san, the whole deal of Samgak-san, Bugak-san, Inwang-san AND part of An-san in there — most of the Bukhan Range! and such clear air!
When I lived in Haebanchon I had a great view of Mansan and the tower. I was always truly happy when fall arrived, summer in Seoul was torrid and the winter windy and cold!
Corpy Carly, the symphony of spring blossoms starting with golden yellow forsythias and big white or purple magnolias crescendoing to delicate white and pink cherry blossoms and ending with a grand finale of bold red and fuschia azaleas is every bit as beautiful as the warm hues of autumn.
South Korea and central Japan are blessed with the right climate conditions and plant species to show off brilliant colors in both the spring and the fall. In the US, New England puts on a most spectacular autumn show but its climate is too cold to host the purplish redbuds and delicate pink and white dogwoods whose longlasting blooms serenade people in the lower Appalachian states.
As Sonagi wrote in comment 1, 天高馬肥. I’ve only experienced one Korean autumn, but I was not disappointed. Get out there and see some 단풍! (I noticed a headline in the last day or two that the first leaves are changing colour on Seoraksan.)
(I was in Mungyeong Saejae that autumn, too. Just beautiful.)
Last year’s leaf peeping season bombed due to irratic weather. The torrential rains that flooded New England last May and June produced very healthy trees that are expected to put on an especially vibrant show this autumn. I’ve already arranged to take a Friday off in mid-October to drive up to Vermont. Korea’s maples and gingkos are beautiful, but nothing can match a huge North American sugar maple decked out in tricolored patchwork of yellow, orange, and red leaves, except maybe a whole stand of sugar maples draping a canopy over an unpaved country road. Then I’ll sit back and wait for the autumn wave to spill its palette over Shenandoah National Park, just thirty minutes from my home and get up early to beat the bumper-to-bumper traffic along Skyline Drive.
Back to autumn in Korea, the folk village in Suwon is a great place to give your camera a workout. The colors of the different styles of houses harmonize well with the leaves as a backdrop.
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[...] After seeing what Robert did with Adobe Photoshop’s photomerge option, I got a copy of Photoshop CS 9.0 to see how well it really worked. Today while fishing, I took 10 pictures of Idong lake and after I got home, opened up Photoshop CS and did a photomerge to get the below picture: [...]