atomicmaya

AtomicMaya's Blog at the end of the universe.

~$ I went to South Korea!

Posted on Nov. 17th, 2022. | Est. reading time: 10 minutes

I may have had the opportunity to take a one-week trip to South Korea, mostly subsidized by the University of Geneva and a few undisclosed partners.

By which I mean, I had the opportunity, relished its existence as I had not been able to go there two years prior, and then subsequently went there.

Summary

Day 0 - Travel

The first day was more two days merged into one very long day.

The reason for this is we left Geneva Airport on November 5th at 10:00 AM, and arrived in Seoul on November 6th at 06:35 AM (Geneva time still), implying at least 20 hours of travel to arrive in Seoul, transiting through Saudi Arabia (which was not fantastic, see this blog post to understand why).

In Seoul, it was Sunday afternoon when we arrived, and we subsequently shuffled to our hotel, checked in, went for fried chicken and beer (a kind of new traditional dish) in a back alley, and then crashed for the night.

The back alley where we had dinner.

Day 1 - Visiting Asiance and Trip South

The first "real" day in Seoul, we had some time to wander around the city, where I walked around the Northern side of the city.

Picture of buildings near the intersection of Namdaemun-ro and Cheonggyecheon-ro.

The intersection of Namdaemun-ro and Cheonggyecheon-ro, facing North-North-West.

The Cheonggyecheon urban park space.

The park at the roundabout between Jong-ro 1-gil and Sambong-ro.

We then visited Asiance, an e-brand company implanted in the South-East Asia markets, which gave us some perspectives as to how the South-Eastern ecosystems work with regards to tech.

Picture of the crossing at Jeongdong-gil.

The crossing at Jeongdong-gil and (unbeknownst to me) the backside of the Canadian embassy to Korea.

That same evening, we were slated to take a train south to the city of Yeosu, but a very rare train accident occurred the day before which ended up throwing the whole train network in disarray for a day ( see news article).

So we ended up on a later train and arrived in Yeosu around midnight instead of 19:00 PM.

Day 2 - Visiting Chonnam National University and Trip North

The second day started off fantastically, with a good breakfast and a beautiful view.

Picture of the view from the terrace of the Darakhyu hotel in Yeosu.

The seaview from the terrace of the Darakhyu hotel in Yeosu.

It quickly soured when the bus that I was going to take to the Chonnam National University, where a symposium I was supposed to attend took place, simply skipped my stop.

This meant I had to take another bus and I had to walk up the entire hill up to the university, and arrived late to the symposium.

Although mildly uninteresting, the whole event was very nicely organized, and we were then promptly brought to the train station to hop on the train back to Seoul.

Day 3 - Visiting Korea University Business School Startup Station

The next morning revolved around visiting the Startup incubator Korea University Business School (or KUBS), one of the top 3 universities in Seoul.

The π-ville 99 experimental campus at KUBS.

The Incheon Memorial Hall at KUBS.

Day 3 - Visiting the National Museum of Korea

The afternoon was dedicated to cultural exploration, so I legged it to Korea's National Museum and spent a good 3 to 4 hours there.

The view from Korea's National Museum.

Day 4 - Visiting the Swiss Embassy in Korea

On the fourth day, we legged it to the Swiss Embassy where we were to attend a workshop on a creating a technical event to improve relations between Korea and Switzerland.