I never wanted to go to Korea.  Really, if I was going to go to any Asian country, it would have been Japan or nothing at all, but when americankorean offered me his brother's ticket (he couldn't go) for a spring break vacation...I mean, how was I going to say no?  If nothing else, I could see how "Japan Lite" operated, and maybe do some "studying" to see what the hell I'd be doing and eating when I finally moved over there for good.  Thank God my adventurous spirit won out over my preconceived notions because I had a fanTAStic time over there.  Obviously, you can't see all of the country in just 12 days, so this review is based on my time in Seoul and Kangneung and may not be representative of the rest of South Korea.  Cripes, I can't believe I just put a disclaimer in my lead...

     So!  The first place I set foot in Korea was at Incheon International, a beautifully designed airport that puts the aging SeaTac to shame.  It sits on the way outskirts of Seoul, much in the way SeaTac does, except that Seoul's the only place to go.  My first misadventure was getting on the shuttle bus, when the driver just stuck out his hand expecting payment and I just handed him all my money (60,000 won, or about $60), since I had no idea how much he needed (he was standing in front of the sign that said 12,000 won).  He laughed, took 20k and gave me the proper change, but then my traveling partner, Illandros, just got on the bus behind me thinking that I'd just paid for the both of us.  Yes, we were off to an auspicious start, but it did get better, even if Illandros's Korean didn't.  And since I can't tell you about every little detail of my trip, I'll hit on the points everyone likes.  Please read on.

     Food:  Don't go to Korea if you can't handle spicy food.  With very few exceptions, Korean food is fire-breath-inducing.  Why it's so spicy when Japanese is so mild, I don't  know.  Maybe they were invaded by folks from the Szechuan province in China or were influenced more strongly by the Indonesians, or maybe they had a better supply of chiles.  Whatever the case may be, get ready for your taste buds to tingle.  Most of the kimchis we ate were spicy (you *did* know that kimchi is just a blanket word for pickled stuff, didn't you?), as well as the dak kalbi (stir fried chicken 'n' veg), dak noritang (chicken and ginger soup), bulgogi (a generic term for fire-roasted meat, but they're pretty much all spicy) and even their lamyun (ramen to the rest of us).  The cool thing about meals in Korea is that the entree is really just a focal point, as opposed to the main bulk of the meal.  You get all manners of sides to go with whatever you order, so even if you're just getting a 1,000 won kimbap, you still get a couple different kimchis, making your dollar stretch.  Aside from dinner, you really need to try hard to spend more than $15 on a meal.  And you'll never go away hungry, I guarantee that.  Don't expect too many sweets, which I've come to see is the norm in all Asian countries, but I would recommend trying the delimanju and the hoduhk.  They're all kinds of tasty.

     Shopping:  Custom-tailored suit?  Cashmere coat?  Dongdongju (a traditional Korean liquor)?  Young girls?  These were all questions asked to me during my stay in Korea.  If stuff can be sold, it will be in Korea.  As a matter of fact, I bought two knives that normally would have cost well over $100 for less than $60.  Why?  EVERYTHING is negotiable.  I didn't even mean to bargain prices with the dude who sold me my deba knife, but he somehow lowered his price by 7,000 won just by me saying, "Isn't the 270mm size the same price as the 240mm version?"  I didn't mean to barter, but he did anyway.  Even so, you're still going to be stuck with the 5,000 won watch with a band you can't adjust, a Panjunmon (Reunification Village, one of two villages in the DMZ, and isn't creepy how that word sounds close to "pandemonium?") hat that makes you sweat, and kitchen knives that need to be sharpened before using.  Whatever happens, you probably can get damn near everything you need from street vendors, from food to clothing, and chances are you won't spend much.  If you think that you're shelling out too many won for something, you're probably in Itaewon, the international district in Seoul, where everything from phone cards to cowboy boots to live rabbits are on sale.  The bunnies are for personal use, of course.

     People:  If you can speak Korean, and you're not Korean, chances are that you won't be understood the first couple times you speak Korean in Seoul.  Outside of the big city, your chances improve exponentially.  When my little group was outside of Seoul, americankorean had only to speak a bit of Korean to be understood in Kangneung or Gyeoungpo or Donghae, whereas he had to repeat himself several times to request water while in Seoul.  Seoulians (Seoulites?) don't have any use for foreigners, and, in reality, they're probably kind of sick of them.  We were often neglected by waitresses, given the "tourist route" by taxi drivers, and overly hassled by street urchins in Seoul.  However, if you travel outside the big city (Pusan might be an exception), everyone loves the fact that you speak English ("Wow, a foreigner!") or Korean ("Wow, you speak our language!"), depending on which city you land in.  It was strange to see how we went from an irritant to a curiosity while in Kangneung.  Shoot, even the store owner who offered us dongdongju even tried to set us up with his college-aged daughter.  But when all is said and done, know this: if you speak only English, you're fscked.

     Drink:  If you're ready for the alcohol, it's ready for you.  Korea has but a few local beers (O.B., Hite, Cass) and only two local liquors (soju and the incredibly bizarre dongdongju), but any of them will keep you occupied.  Beer is supremely cheap (about $3.50 for 1.6 litres), soju is even cheaper (about $1 for 750 ml), and the tap water is undrinkable.  Expect to spend between 8,000 to 10,000 won a day on bottled water, depending on your consumption.  That'll get you about 6L.  Of course, you can always find a vending machine nearby, which will dispense various sports drinks, juices, sodas and either hot or cold coffee or tea.  Those usually run between 600 and 1,000 won.  And really, nothing starts your day right like a hot can of "It's Cappuccino!" coffee, made just right with the addition of some sweetener and milk.  Hello, world.

    Touristy stuff:  I suppose I might be the wrong guy to talk about this, since I don't know much about doing touristy things, but Korea seemed to have an abundance of this sort of stuff.  Palaces all over the place, museums for just about everything, the DMZ tour (of course) and various other stuff.  A couple things I would recommend doing/seeing in Seoul are the Seoul City Bus Tour, which, for 10,000 won gets you an all-day pass to ride a special bus line that takes you all over the city.  The busses run every 30 minutes, and you can get on and off as many times as you want.  It's a great way to spend a whole day just looking and doing.  One of the stops is the War Memorial Museum, quite possibly the finest museum I've ever been to.  It's three stories of military action from all eras in history.  The thoroughness and detail put into this museum is astounding.  One display shows a scene from the Korean War, and has some statuettes of guys laboring hard in the mountains.  Even though these figures are only about eight inches tall, they've got little sweat beads of clear acrylic trickling down their faces and off their hair.  Seriously, it's awesome.  The palaces and temples are cool and everything, but they eventually start to run into each other, and most of them are actually reconstructions of older stuff that was either blown to bits during the Korean War or burned down in the 16th century.  I guess you can call it historical fiction or revisionist history or whatever.  The DMZ tour was neat, if only because there's absolutely nothing like it here in the States, unless you want to sail out to within 2 km of Cuba and see if they'll shoot back.

    Entertainment:  Now we're talking.  Nightlife is VERY active in Seoul, as you can go to dance clubs, hofs (about the only things that resemble bars; places where you have to order food with your drinks), noraebangs (karaoke rooms), PC bangs (PC rooms) or the ever popular "juicy bars," which are the places that prostitutes hang out.  Though I never went to the latter, I went everywhere else, and I dug the noraebangs the most.  Instead of getting on stage in a bar full of people you don't know, you're sequestered in a room with your close buddies, so there's no stage fright.  Order some food 'n' drink, belt your lungs out, have a good time.  All the songs are "scored," and if you do well enough, time is added on to your rental time.  We paid for one hour and wound up singing for nearly three, and I think it stopped because we ran out of songs in English and were far too plastered to continue.  (And they had some seriously random stuff on their English playlist.  I mean, who in the States would sing to Stratovarius or Sonata Arctica?)  Speaking of getting plastered, that particular noraebang experience was preceded by a trip to Carne Station, the BEST RESTAURANT EVER.  For a flat rate (22,500 won when I was there), you get to eat and drink as much as you want, and that includes making your own cocktails.  Read that again.  Make your own cocktails.  Granted, this sort of place would never work in America because some idiot would get too drunk and kill himself or someone else, or some other idiot would burn himself on the grill built into the table, and then the restaurant would get sued and go bankrupt.  But there are three of them in Seoul, and I would recommend going to at least one of them while you are there.  It's money well-spent.  Earlier that same day, my crew and I went to another establishment where you can rent board games by the hour.  THAT was all kinds of good times, too.  Their selection included mostly stuff I'd never heard of...hundreds of games for all ages and all numbers of players.  Plus, you can rent what we anime fans call "baka hammers," inflated plastic boffers that you can use to bash in the head of someone who does something stupid while playing a game.  Just remember, beer + baka hammers + board games = more fun than people over 21 should be allowed to have in public.

    Getting around:  God Bless mass transit.  Even though I visited three different cities--one of which, Seoul, is about eight times larger than Seattle--I neither missed nor had a need for a car.  The subway system is fast, affordable and efficient, the busses are colour-coordinated to tell you which part of the city they're servicing, there are trains connecting pretty much every place in the country and the taxis are a more than adequate stop-gap, even though you're putting your life in danger every time you get into one.  Traffic laws aren't so much enforced in Korea as encouraged.  Busses will run red lights, cars will drive on the sidewalks and there's really no attention paid to the lines delineating the different lanes of the road.  It's totally chaotic and a bit nerve-wracking at first, but you get used to it.  Seoul is probably the only place I've ever been where I felt the need to look both ways before exiting a building, just in case some crazed motorscooter rider is blazing up the walking path.  But despite the dangers, you can get to where you need to go, and more often than not know how long it'll take you to get there.  That's something you just can't say here in Seattle.

    Tonight at work, one of the guys asked me which of my senses were exceptionally stimulated while I was in Korea.  First of all, that's a damn fine question to ask.  Second of all, Korea pretty much knocked my socks off in every area but touch, and that's probably because I didn't go to a juicy bar or take the offer of the gold-toothed woman who asked us, "Agashi?" ("Young girls?")  The food was fabulous (and my experience with a single pepper will go down as one of my more harrowing culinary adventures), the city was alive with colours and activity and even though the water smelled funny (who'd drink stuff that reeked of mildew?), the restaurants and street vendors were always intriguing.  I guess my ears didn't get a chance to do much (with the exception of the "Blue Man Group Lite" stage show Nanta), but that's because everyone I was with was telling stories and sharing laughs.  I never wanted to go to Korea, for any reason at all.  But now that I'm home, I miss it.  I want to go back and see the rest of the stuff that I didn't see, eat the stuff I didn't eat.  Hell, maybe I'd even hang out at a juicy bar to see what sort of deviance would befall me.  Is Korea a second-rate version of Japan?  Yeah, probably.  But anyone who's looking for an adventure or two would get everything they'd hope for and more if they went.

Rating: Kam sa ham ni da out of 10