COEX Mall

The COEX in Seoul is a multi-purpose place. It has convention centers and exhibition areas and an underground mall that contains a large movie theater, an aquarium, and a kimchi museum.

I found the mall disappointing. Unless I missed something there was a minimal selection of stores, though restaurants were numerous. We chose not to visit the aquarium today, it being Saturday and highly crowded. We did visit the very small kimchi museum. It was actually quite interesting and I learned there were many more types of kimchi than I could have imagined!

The kimchi making process:

preparing the cabbage

preparing the spices

mixing

storing for fermentation

They also had a tasting room with 8 different kinds of kimchi to sample. I could not bring myself to sample any since I didn't know who had done what and when. Also, I must have something with kimchi; it's not something I can just eat by itself.

Chusok, Korea's Thanksgiving

This is our third Chusok in Korea, but the first one we've ever really 'celebrated'. The date of Chusok is set by a lunar calendar, so it can fall anywhere in September or October. It is a celebration of the harvest, and they give harvest offerings to their ancestors and spend time tending graves. I don't know how many people still give offerings to their ancestors, but everyone still goes to their hometowns and tends graves and gives honor to their parents/grandparents.
This year, Chusok fell on a Monday. On Saturday our family went to the National Folk Museum where they had some performances and booths set up to make traditional style crafts. They also had an area with traditional games set up for anyone to participate.

samulnori, with buk & janggu drums

painting traditional style masks

too-hou, throwing arrows

On Monday, we went out to a Korean folk village to see the founding activity of Chusok, the harvest time. I didn't see what I expected, but we still saw many other things and got to participate in some hands-on activities. (This was also our first time taking a bus somewhere in Korea! With dozens of buses coming and going every few minutes this can be rather daunting.)  

grindstone

pounding grinder

selling rice candy

making 'dok' (or 'tteok'), traditional rice cakes

threshing

You can take a boat ride around the small lake. I'm not sure what the barge looking thing in the middle is.