Spring in Korea

Spring has arrived in Korea a while ago, but I’m only writing now because I finally feel like I have enough photos to show! (Actually more like I was busy with midterms and thesis :P)

So spring, where the freezing winter is no longer and you see the sun more, the green shoot growing and the flowers blooming. I still can’t decide if my favorite season is spring or fall, but I love the feeling of warming days and finally being able to shed those down jackets in exchange for colorful knits and now it’s even warm enough for cardigans! Oh the joy 😀

So the signal of spring in Korea comes sometime around mid-March, when the temperatures begin to slowly rise above 0°C. Though the skies are still gloomy and your fingers are still frozen, you realise that the sun rises and sets a little later every day. By the end of March, the real spring weather (around 10-15°C) would have arrived in Korea usually! But by mid-May or June it would be the sweltering summer so make the most of spring!

Some features of spring in Korea:

An evening in Sinchon

Spring is finally here!! The weather is finally humane enough for hanging out (at least for me), and the flowers are blooming everywhere and it’s beautiful~~

So to commemorate the beginning of spring I went with my friends to watch the film Twenty starring Kim Woobin, Kang Haneul and 2PM Junho! Some of the cinemas in Seoul offer English subtitles for Korean movies so be sure to check it out before heading down ^^ The Sinchon CGV is one of those that offer movies in English subtitles (for certain showtimes), as well as Hongdae CGV as far as I know.

Korean film Twenty starring Kim Woobin, Kang Haneul and 2PM Junho!

Popcorn is a must for me when I come to cinemas ㅋㅋ Large popcorn + 2 drinks + nachos is only W10,500!! Much cheaper than Singapore I think.

[Wow Korea] Taebaeksan Snow Festival

It’s snowed on the first day of December, welcoming us to winter for real and a reminder that Christmas will be here soon! And of course, acting as an encouragement to all of us poor students who are busy cramming for our final exams ㅠㅠ

Korea holds many winter festivals especially since it has such a distinctly long and freezing winter (well, at least to me), and I think most people who talk about the ice fishing festivals in Korea. Personally I am more interested in snow (yes, the tropical kid in me) and so I would like to introduce the Taebaeksan Snow Festival, one of Korea’s major winter festival!

It is definitely fitting to visit Taebaeksan in winter. Located in Gangwon-do, its name roughly translates to “Great White Mountain (태백산;太白山)”, and it boasts one of the most beautiful winter scenery in Korea.

[WOW Korea] Winter in Korea = Ski Resorts!

So the weather forecast says that the temperature will drop into the negatives next week, but along with the freezing temperatures there will be snow!

Throwing in a photo of Yonsei in winter ^^

Yes, snow is an integral feature of the Korean winter. It seems like the only thing to look forward to (well, at least for a tropical kid like me xD). It’s the only comfort in the freezing cold anyway. Of course the aftermath of snow is terrible, dirty snow, icy roads, traffic jams, but at least it’s beautiful while it falls.

Thus it would be logical to guess that in this snow-filled winter, ski resort is definitely the place to visit!

Live chat event with current Underwood International College students!

After a few months of spamming you guys with travelling in Korea and education-related topics, I am finally sharing more about studying in Korea! Hope that you guys don’t mind because I do feel that you can learn more about travelling in Korea as part of student life, and education articles are a way of showing what activities you can join in Korea as a “SNS supporter” of a UNESCO organization.

This “SNS supporters” thing seems quite unique to Korea, basically organizations like to recruit university students to help promote them or some ideas on their own SNS channels. For instance, Wow Korea supporters aim are supposed to promote Korean tourism. And as UNESCO APCEIU supporter I join conferences or events and through writing articles I’m supposed to promote education for international understanding. There are many other organizations recruiting supporters too, such as KOTRA from what I’ve heard. So depending on your interests there are many such organizations you can join, outside of school!

But I digress. The main point of this post is this live event that I’m very excited about! So basically two of my best friends in school, Amalia and Thanh who are running the Woori UIC Youtube channel are planning to hold a live event via Youtube! What this means is that you get to chat with them in real time, and get all the answers to your questions immediately!

[WOW Korea] Some must-try Korean Food in Winter!

Winter has almost arrived in Korea, and while the great temperature range in the day is driving me crazy, I am actually waiting quite expectantly for snow since I missed out on it entirely last winter when I was in Japan for my exchange. Another thing to look forward to would be the food! Sometimes there are just some food that tastes better when you have it in certain seasons (like having naengmyeon when the weather isn’t hot yet is just weird), and so here I’m recommending three winter must-haves in Korea!

1. Odeng (오뎅)

One of the most popular must-try street food! Especially tasty in winter. Source: blog.naver.com/neep/120200402604

When Korean street food is mentioned you might think of ddeokbokki first, but when winter comes around odeng (fishcakes) is what people look for! It may seem crazy to be standing out in the cold eating from street stalls like this:

[WOW Korea] Autumn foliage in Korea

I think the first (and only) post I did about the weather in Seoul was for fall! (Sorry I haven’t continued that part, perhaps I should do up one for spring? :D) Fall is actually one of my favorite seasons (although I always oscillate between spring and fall), but the beautiful autumn leaves are definitely worth your visit in Korea! This time through the weekly missions for #wowkoreasupporters , I have the chance to introduce locations where you can view pretty autumn leaves in Korea!

Deoksugung Dolgam-gil

Beautiful autumn foliage along the sidewalk of Deoksugung Source: koreatimes.co.kr

It’s such a coincidence that I just learnt about Deoksugung Dolgam-gil being famous for autumn foliage in my Korean class today! According to my Korean teacher, it is really one of the most popular locations where Koreans visit to enjoy the beautiful red and yellow leaves in the cool weather. There’s also a little tidbit where she says that couples don’t go there, because they would break up if they do. So it’s a good place definitely for a group of friends!

Clearing the Immense Backlog

In a bid to procrastinate when you have a mountain of work to complete (I’m sure many of you have had the same experience), I took the excuse to come back to the blog!

First off, I am so sorry to everyone who has emailed or commented, because I took an impossibly long amount of time to reply you guys. There are some emails even from March which I have yet to reply (Please forgive me!! ㅠㅠ) I have to say that the exchange to Japan last fall semester did allow me to relax a little, but it also made it a little more difficult to get back on track to the academic rigor in UIC… I am now replying the emails and comments so please wait a little more!

On another note, it’s been almost 3 years since I’ve started my life in Korea and in UIC, and I just have about 1 more year left. There are so many things that I would like to share with all of you before I leave, but senior year will probably be crazier than it already is for me now ): I will still try my best to update more often though.

What I have no time to say in words, I shall leave in photos. Spring came really early to Korea this year, temperatures were so warm that the cherry blossoms bloomed exceptionally early this year! (Usually they bloom towards the end of April, this year they were in full bloom in early April!) I took a trip down to Busan and Gyeongju as well since my sister visited, as well as some interesting places in the vicinity of Gyeonggi-do and Gangwon-do (the two provinces really close to Seoul). I hope that these photos will give you a better idea of how life in Korea can be! 😀

Fall (Autumn) in Korea

I know it’s the dead of winter now in Korea but I had to start with a season I experienced first when I got to Korea ;D

Fall in Korea starts around late September and ends around mid November.. Although they always say that Fall starts in September, that’s not true cos it’s still as hot as summer the whole of September ==” And though they say winter officially starts in December, we’re already all freezing by the end of November >< (20th Nov was the most memorable, it was like 0°C that day ㅠㅠ)

The temperatures during autumn are pretty cool, usually in the range of low 20°C in the beginning and reaching about 10°C towards the end of the season… It’s a really enjoyable season in the beginning, but as it slowly drops towards 10°C and with the wind, you might start to feel cold D: