01 Apr 2010, Posted by Matt in Best of DK.com, Food & Drink, Nature, Seoul, 8 Comments

A Bicycle Tour of Yeouido and Seonyudo

With spring on its way, why not take a bicycle tour of two Seoul islands – Yeouido and Seonyudo (My cover story from Seoul Magazine’s April 2010 issue).

11 Feb 2010, Posted by Matt in Festivals & Holidays, Gyeonggi, Historic Korea, Jeolla, Seoul, 7 Comments

Celebrating Seollal in Seoul

(Photo from the Seoul Tourism Organization).

Seollal (설날), or the lunar New Year, is the traditional Korean calendar’s most important holiday, along with the autumn harvest festival, Chuseok. Although its origins are unclear, many say the rituals go back to the 6th century. It was during ancient Korea’s Three Kingdoms period when the lunar calendar was first adopted. Today, several Asian countries, including China, Mongolia and Vietnam, all celebrate the lunar New Year holiday.

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18 Sep 2009, Posted by Matt in Seoul, Video, 10 Comments

Seoul’s Iconic 63 Building

For over 20 years, the curved pink glass tower known as the 63 or yooksam Building (육삼빌딩) has stood on the eastern tip of Yeouido Island. Beyond its beauty, the iconic home of the Daehan Insurance Company was Asia’s tallest skyscraper when it was completed in 1985. As a testament to the skyward race since then, today the tower’s 249 meters don’t even break the world’s top 100 list..

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01 Apr 2009, Posted by Matt in Festivals & Holidays, Historic Korea, Nature, Seoul, 0 Comments

Seoul’s Yeouido Island

An artist’s rendering of Yeouido’s future, now that height restrictions for the island have been lifted (from Yonhap News).

At about 8.4 square kilometers, Yeouido (여의도) is by far Seoul’s largest island. But despite its strategic location in the middle of one of the world’s largest cities, the name “yeouido” actually means, “you can have it.” In the past, this now very valuable piece of real estate was thought to be worthless, since most of the island disappeared when the Han River frequently flooded. As a result, for centuries Yeouido was generally relegated to pastureland and peanut fields. The first major development didn’t occur until 1924, when the Japanese colonial government built Seoul’s first airport there.

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14 Sep 2008, Posted by Matt in Festivals & Holidays, Food & Drink, Gyeongsang, Seoul, Transportation, 1 Comments

Chuseok: The Full Moon Festival

During Chuseok, my family conducted an early morning ancestral worship ritual. Afterwards, everyone enjoyed a feast!

The Korean calendar is a hybrid one. It’s a mix of the Gregorian calendar, which begins on January 1st, and a luni-solar calendar that begins on the first new moon of the year. The result is a mix of holidays- so, while Korean Independence Day always falls on August 15th, a traditional holiday like the harvest festival Chuseok (추석), occurs on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, which means sometime in September or early October.

This year, Chuseok, which is also known as Hangawi (한가위), falls on September 14th. The days before and after are combined to create one of Korea’s four main traditional holidays. This weekend, tens of millions of Koreans are returning to their ancestral hometowns to be among family and friends. Traditional rites include an early morning ancestral worship ritual and the tending of family tombs, called beolcho (벌초).

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