Korea Day 17: SMTown Museum & Namsan Tower

Carol | August 5, 2019 | Featured, South Korea | No Comments

Most of today was spent in Gangnam at the SMTown (k-pop) Museum, Starlight Mall, and Namsan Seoul Tower. SMTown Museum was interesting and I loved the design of the exhibits, but Namsan Tower was definitely the highlight of the day. It was the only place I visited where I was able to see sweeping views of the city, and the atmosphere of the Tower was both hip and romantic.

Day 17 Highlights

Skipped Class to rest
Field Trip to SMTown Museum in Gangnam
Coex Starlight Mall
- Marvel Shop/Museum
- Dinner (iced jjamppong) with Kevin
Namsan Seoul Tower (남산서울타워)

Kookmin

I was sore and hurt all over so I skipped class to rest, but I did practice for my oral presentation with Tabitha.

Studying for my oral presentation with Tabitha

Cultural Experience

We had a cultural experience (field trip) in the afternoon from 1 to 4. We traveled to Gangnam and visited SMTown Museum, a K-Pop recording company’s museum for its artists.

SMTown Museum (K-Pop Museum)

SMTown Museum was really cool though not quite as cool as I was expecting. I enjoyed looking at the design of everything and made notes of some of the groups to look up in the future. One of the coolest things was the AR photo/video experiences set up throughout the museum. You scanned a barcode on your ticket to activate each experience and were then filmed/photographed interacting with various K-pop groups.

SMTown Museum Cafe

Coex Starfield Mall

After leaving SMTown some of us revisited the Coex Starlight Mall. This visit revealed a really cool Marvel shop/museum, and a Daiso with a much better selection of stuff than the ones near campus and in Hongdae.

Marvel Store

The Marvel Collection is a super cool shop/museum with all kinds of cool marvel stuff and some super elaborate figures and other collectibles in its museum area. I was really happy and surprised to find a League of Legends comic book.

I found a League of Legends trade back here and got a free minion plushie with it. Sweet!

Dinner in the Mall

Our group split up for lunch and Kevin and I went to a Chinese restaurant serving various noodle dishes and soups. I tried a cold soup called iced jjamppong at the recommendation of Kevin and it was quite good, even with the creepy little squid in it. Afterwards we went to UniGlo and Daiso before heading to Namsan Tower.

Namsan Seoul Tower (남산서울타워)

In the evening we visited the iconic Namsan Seoul Tower where we were able to see great views of the city. We arrived right after sunset, but it was dark by the time we made it up the tower. (We had a 20 minute wait in the lobby, followed by a 15-minute line for the tower elevator.

The views from the observation level were a bit underwhelming, especially since the glare was so bad we couldn’t get good pics of ourselves with the skyline, but I got a few decent photos of the city.

One standout bit was a large room featuring various projection mapped cityscapes and landscapes for visitors to enjoy while waiting in line to take the elevator up to the observation deck of the tower.

A bus took us most of the way up the mountain then we had to walk the rest of the way.

The projection-mapping experience in this room was great. It rotated through 5-6 different animated scenes. I’m pretty sure this is the coolest implementation of this technology I’ve seen.

Views from the Tower’s observation level.

It was difficult to take pictures through the tower’s glass but these turned out decent. These views make me think of the ocean because like the Ocean, Seoul seems to go on forever.

The gift shop had a ton of cute stuff, especially packaging-wise. I bought a music box with a boar hugging N Seoul Tower (my Chinese zodiac sign).

Leaving behind a Love Lock

Several of us purchased Love Locks to write messages on and leave behind. I really enjoyed this. I drew a little Carol & Karl on my lock and found a well-lit spot for it.

I put our blog URL on the lock. I wonder if anyone has visited this site because of it.

Back at Kookmin

We got back to Kookmin around 11pm, stopped by the Ministop, and the dorm’s unmanned convenience store for something to eat (photo tour below). I don’t think something like this would ever fly back home but I absolutely loved it. What a great feature to provide students with, especially since the dorm has a curfew and no one can leave for at least six hours out of every night.

I started laundry and worked on homework in the Study Hall with Jeremiah and Bethany while my laundry processed. We were kicked out of the Study Hall at 1am by a security guard which was a bit odd since we and many others had never been run out before at even later hours. The dorm gets locked down at 1am but we were under the impression we could still use all the facilities inside the dorm.

Dani and Alaina were out past curfew. I tried to let them in but couldn’t get the door open (apparently we’re locked in). Thankfully they managed to get in by pulling on one of the doors really hard.