Sun 16 Oct 2022, Day 34/61. Most of my online communications here are by KakaoTalk, used by around 94% of Korean mobile messenger users. On Saturday it went down for over 11 hours, leading South Korea’s President to worry about the company’s near-monopoly.

Sun 16 Oct 2022, Day 34/61. On Sunday I preached at Seoul Cathedral’s English language service. I was expecting that. But minutes before the service I discovered I was also presiding and baptising two children. Which was interesting!

Sat 15 Oct 2022, Day 33/61, 2/2. On foot the Palace is deceptive: it keeps feeling as if you’ve reached the end, but then you notice a side entrance which reveals how much further back the grounds reach & how many more buildings it has.

Sat 15 Oct 2022, Day 33/61, 1/2. A visit to Gyeongbokgung, 경복궁, built in 1395, the largest & most significant of Five Grand Palaces built in Seoul by the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897). Twice destroyed, twice restored.

A photo of Gyeongbokgung

Fri 14 Oct 2022, Day 32/61, 4/4. Gimchi or kimchi are different ways of spelling the same Korean word. In 2002 South Korea published a revised romanization in which the first letter of the alphabet, giyeok, ㄱ, is represented by ‘g’ rather than ‘k’.

Image of first letter in Hanguel alphabet by Jérôme Banal (Eden2004), under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic. Licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en

Fri 14 Oct 2022, Day 32/61, 3/4. A shortage of napa cabbage (‘chinese leaf’) this year in Korea has led to many households not making their own gimchi but buying it ready-made. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2022/10/129_336237.html

Fri 14 Oct 2022, Day 32/61, 2/4. I love gimchi & Seoul has a whole museum dedicated to it, which I visited on Friday. Nothing to eat sadly, but interactive videos showed me how to make it & I learnt about its history.

Fri 14 Oct 2022, Day 32/61, 1/4. Gimchi, 김치, a side dish of salted & fermented vegetables, is eaten with almost every meal. A video is now promoting it in New York’s Times Square. This Channel A News broadcast is easy to follow. youtube.com/watch

Thu 13 Oct 2022, Day 31/61. A great view whilst eating on Weds. But hard to beat the atmosphere of Seoul’s back streets, vibrant, full of restaurants & street food. In Ikseon-dong (익선동) we found great food, service & value in a modest looking restaurant.

Wed 12 Oct 2022, Day 30/61. A backwards look at the Tower on our way back down to the cable car.