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[HanCinema's Korea Diaries] "Gyeongju" June 21st-24th

...By the way, Gyeongju actually has three train stations rather than just one. So I'm spotlighting Singyeongju Station (신경주역) partially as a public service announcement. This is where the fast train from Seoul to Busan stops. It's pretty far off from the proper part of the city, although any bus that starts at Singyeongju Station will most assuredly take you somewhere more interesting on the cheap. Just bear in mind that if you want to have fun in Gyeongju in between adventures in Seoul and Busan, be prepared to either use buses or buy expensive taxi rides.

Inside Singyeongju Station also manages to give a decent taste of the kind of historical culture you're likely to find in Gyeongju proper. Paintings like this are common in the local museums. Although that much probably goes for everywhere in South Korea, not just Gyeongju.

More unique to Gyeongju are odd fixtures like this- the Gyeongju Walled Fortress (경주 읍성). It has seen better days- what remains of the fortress now just lies behind a church in downtown. These are all just basic foundations, too. I ran across this structure at random- Gyeongju has a lot of artifacts interspersed at random even in the city. You just need to walk on the less-traveled roads and not be scared of getting too lost.

While I generally focus on wall art lately Im also intrigued by pole art, that is, art that has been inscribed onto apparently random poles. I think a lot of this stuff is commissioned- the little King there is the advertising mascot for Gyeongju, along with the little Queen who wears much of the same regalia.

All right then enough of the weird stuff- the Gyeongju Observatory (천성대) is Gyeongju's probably single most obviously visual tourist attraction owing to its general uniqueness. It's an observatory so old no one actually knows how it originally worked, which among other things gives it a very distinct visual appearance. It makes a random gratuitous appearance in "Seondal: The Man Who Sells the River" for that reason alone. Fans of "Queen Seon-deok" may also recall that the construction of the observatory became an important plot point, since the future Queen was able to make an important political ally by promising to improve science education.

Beyond the old stuff Gyeongju also has a pretty neat night market- you can find it by going due south of Gyeongju Station (the one that's downtown). Only at night, of course- there's plenty of daytime markets if you're interested in that experience. As for the night market- it's well-populated, yet never quite crowded enough to feel overly busy. It's just a fun place that locals like to go to in order to get a wide variety of street stall food that's normally hard to come by outside of the big cities.

...Even when it comes to Pakistani cuisine. That's one part of traveling in more rural areas that's surprised me- a lot of the time it's actually easier to run into other foreigners there than in the city. My first night on this trip it seemed like the streets only just had foreigners and no Koreans, and there were plenty of Asian markets, too. I don't remember it being at all that easy back when I lived here, although maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

Oh, right, Gyeongju was the first place in South Korea I ever lived. Funny how I don't really have any useful secret stories- just good sense memory of all the streets. This is mainly because, then and now, my sightseeing strategy is unchanged. Just stumble around randomly. It's a better strategy in Gyeongju than most other places though, because small size notwithstanding, there's a lot here.

Article by William Schwartz

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