On Friday the week before, we (i.e., Seoul Selection) dumped our upcoming Korea guidebook on the printers. The following morning, I didn’t have to go into work (well, not until 2:30 anyway to conduct my weekend Bukchon tours). It was quite surreal. Anyway, that weekend was largely spent attending to Mrs. Koehler and engaging in [...]
While I was shooting Incheon Bridge last night, one of the other guys there was showing off on his Galaxy some of the shots he’d taken the night before of Banghwa Bridge. Due to government energy conservation policies, they no longer light Banghwa Bridge up ever day, but they do turn on the lights on [...]
Since I was a little kid, I’ve loved bridges. I suppose growing up in Long Island has much to do with this. Long Island, after all, is the kingdom Robert Moses built, and New York City, of course, has the greatest collection of bridges of any city in the world. Korea, too, has its share [...]
“Saetgang” refers to a branch of a river that flows around an island and rejoins the main body of the river downstream. Although one sometimes forgets this, Yeouido — Seoul’s financial district, often liked to New York’s Manhattan — is an island, separated from Yeongdeungpo by just such a saetgang. For a while, this marshy [...]
Got my sensor cleaned — no, that’s not some crude sexual reference; there was serious dust on my sensor — at the Nikon service center in the Korea Chamber of Commerce Building in Namdaemun today. Had some time to kill in the evening, so I swung by Dongdaemun History & Culture Park to take some [...]
After a long wait, the Floating Island — or Sebit Dungdungseom, as it is called in Korean — partially opened on May 21. Designed as a multi-functional cultural space, it is the centerpiece of Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon’s Hangang Renaissance project, an initiative that seeks to transform the Hangang River into a accessible culture and [...]
One of the more visually pleasing of Seoul’s bridges over the Hangang River is the Olympic Bridge, built to commemorate the 1988 Summer Olympic Games. Connecting Guui-dong and Songpa-gu, the bridge was built by Korea’s You One Engineering & Construction and Austria’s Vienna Consulting Engineers between 1985 and 1990. To both show off Korea’s growing [...]
Last weekend, I finally got a chance to check out Songdo New City, a massive new international business district being developed on 1,500 acres of reclaimed land off Incheon. Architecturally, it has the potential to be really spectacular, with Kohn Pedersen Fox’s masterplan highlighted by the 68-floor Northeast Asia Trade Tower (seen above) and the [...]
OK, let me get this out of the way first — I was no fan of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park project (see official site here). In fact, I downright hated it. The destruction of the landmark Dongdaemun Stadium, where much of Korea’s sports history was written, was symptomatic of the authorities’ lack of [...]
I spent Wednesday at Gyeongju’s Yangdong Village, recently designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, working on a story. The ancient capital of the Silla kingdom, Gyeongju is a wonderful place to visit as the town is virtually a big outdoor museum. You could probably spend months there and not see everything. Returning downtown from Yangdong [...]