Korea War Memorial and Museum and a bit of Itaewon Streets

The trip starts waiting for the subway ride. 

One good part of waiting time is the reading. (while waiting for the sub)

Four hours on our feet walking around from Itaewon to here and my feet are just about to surrender. We have just covered around 3/4 of this and we still have to check out the outer exhibits. That is basically just the indoor exhibits. 

Another War Museum and it's on a bigger scale, way bigger than what we've been to so far!
Why? But of course, it should be since it's the War Memorial of Korea.

P had some summer homework to do, so I thought why not do some day trip to Seoul. And what could be a better place to head with kiddo but to a museum that he would be totally interested to go to. I would have preferred to just go walking around some interesting street but with a kid to educate, a museum would be better. I'll try to induce him to do the street one next time.

We did a little walking in the middle of the hot sun to get to his favorite gimbap chain, and a bus stop after. He even found an interesting alien thing outside a small cupcake store called Monster Cupcakes.



Nevertheless, we both enjoyed the war memorial yesterday. It was almost killing my feet to cover the three floors and we only managed to roughly cover more than half of the indoor exhibits. We just went in and out of the exhibits, roam around in our own free will until P finally realized to really look for the outdoor ones. It was about time to head out around four with my feet almost about to give out. But I still had to do some mother role of taking photographs.

We saw the exhibit about Korean-Vietnam war, how the Viets lived underground during the war, the land mines, the different war strategies like isolating a village so the enemy can't use them as cover and suppliers.

He was also fascinated with the workings in the exhibits. He told me that he like how the miniatures were made and he'd like to make things like that too. I'm pretty surprised coz I've never really seen him to be meticulous and that kind of thing needs a very detailed eye. 

Oh boy, what will he turn out to be is still a mystery. 

For future reference on a next trip to the place, here some notes:

1. There are some QR code available in some exhibits so better prepare the app before heading there.



2. An overview of the floor plan of the exhibit room can be helpful to fine-tune or maximize one's time. I looked it up a bit online but didn't really register much. The flier at the entrance was helpful, IF we took a few minutes to study it and figure out the exhibits' layout. BUT the little boy insisted on just going with the flow of our feet. As a result, we missed the Children's Museum and other possibly interesting exhibits. 

3. English Guided Tour: As far as I can remember, there should be a 10 AM and 2 PM tour. Unfortunately, there were almost a dozen of US soldiers in the the 2PM tour and the guide available is just pinch-hitting for the day. P insisted on DIY. I was too tired to disagree.

4. Pick a better time to take outdoor shots. Definitely not the best on a summer day, with the sun's heat in the middle of the day and it's angle against the lens on the later part of the day. We went in the midst of summer. Spring or fall season might be actually better.

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