Category: Seoul

Anyone want to place a bet that this cable car operator was busy looking at his phone?:

The police investigating a cable car accident that took place at N Seoul Tower on Friday will book an employee who was in charge of the operations control at the time.

The Namdaemun Police Station said the individual will be taken into custody on charges of professional negligence resulting in injury. 

In earlier police questioning, the employee is known to have said that he was late in putting the brakes on the cable car because he hadn’t been paying attention.

At around 7:15 p.m. Friday, the cable car carrying 20 passengers failed to slow down while entering the platform and crashed into the safety fence.

Seven passengers including two foreign tourists suffered minor injuries and were taken to a nearby hospital.

Cable car rides at the N Seoul Tower have since been suspended for mechanical inspections.

KBS World Radio via a reader tip

This is a unique idea to differentiate from all the other bus tours in Seoul:

Seoul City Tour Bus, one of two bus companies providing hop-on, hop-off rides between key city landmarks, is now offering on-board meals. 

Starting June 15, visitors who sign up for a “Bustaurant” journey are offered a barbecue eel lunch box with sides and drinks on the bus during a 30-minute stop at Sevitseom, LED-covered manmade floating islands near the banks of the Han River. 

For children, the main dish will be either hamburger steak or fried pork cutlet.

Along with Yellow Balloon City Bus, Seoul City Tour Bus offers convenient access to traditional markets, historic neighborhoods and cultural landmarks for visitors on a tight schedule. 

Bustaurant tours run two times a day. The day trip runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with hour-long guided tours at the National Museum of Korea, N Seoul Tower, one ancient palace (Gyeongbok Palace or Changdeok Palace) and one old neighborhood (Insa-dong or Bukchon Hanok Village) near Gwanghwamun. 

The night trips are shorter, from 7:20 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., and only let passengers off at N Seoul Tower and Cheonggye Stream, the final destination. The night course mostly travels along the Han River for a succession of light-clad bridges and high-rises out the window. Noteworthy sights include the 63 Building, the National Assembly and Seongsu Bridge.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Pretty soon every piece of flat land around Seoul is going to have an apartment unit sitting on it:

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on Tuesday laid out plans to build an additional 110,000 residential units in 28 locations including the two new towns, which are in addition to three new town projects announced by the Moon Jae-in government last December.

That completes the Moon government’s grand scheme of building 300,000 housing units around the greater Seoul area to cool the real estate market. 

According to the Land Ministry, 38,000 residential units will be built on a 8.13 million-square-meter (2,009-acre) area in Changneung-dong in the city of Goyang. Some 20,000 residential units will be built on a 3.43 million-square-meter area in Daejang-dong in Bucheon. Both are in Gyeonggi.

The remaining 52,000 housing units will be in smaller projects in 26 locations around Seoul and Gyeonggi. 

For example, 12,000 residential units will be built around Sadang Station in southern Seoul while 300 units will be built on a former railroad property near Wangsimni Station in central Seoul. As was the case with the new towns announced in December, both of the two newly-added towns are close to Seoul. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This article makes me wonder what the old 2ID command bunker at Camp Red Cloud will be used for in the future with the closing of that camp:

For more than half a century, the Demilitarized Zone in Korea has been the site of clashes, skirmishes and tension. However, a new age is dawning on the Land of the Morning Calm and sites that were once used as bunkers and military installations are being converted into community, arts and culture spaces given back to the community at large. Sites that had previously been surrounded by barbed wire are seeing a transformation as the metal fencing is taken down and architects and artists come in to breathe new life into decaying structures. 

Citizens are able to walk in and use spaces that have been off limits for decades and with that, new communities are developing.

Last October, the Peace Culture Bunker was unveiled just outside of Dobongsan Station on Seoul Metro lines 1 and 7. Originally constructed between 1968 and 1970, the structure was a defensive shelter for tanks on the first floor and featured housing on the second. 

The third and fourth floors were meant to disguise and conceal the weapons within. Covertly named “Simin Apartment,” there were five buildings with three residential floors and each floor had six units. It was originally planned as a military housing complex to enable quick mobilization in the event of conflict.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

So says this survey:

South Korea’s capital city, Seoul, ranks as the seventh most expensive city in the world to live in this year, a survey showed Saturday.

The Worldwide Cost of Living (WCL) Survey, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), measures the prices of more than 150 items in 133 cities across the globe, with the index for New York set as a benchmark of 100.

According to the latest WCL poll, Seoul ranked seventh, on a par with New York, down one notch from the previous survey.

Singapore, Paris and Hong Kong are the joint most expensive cities in the world with an index of 107, followed by Zurich of Switzerland with 106, and its sister Geneva and Japan’s Osaka coming next with 101 each.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Even Seoul city mayor Park Won-soon is allocating taxpayers' money ($22.2 million) to give North Korea. #sanctionshttps://t.co/0kixuAFv92

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) February 10, 2019

I like this idea of having elevated bike paths, much safer than sharing the road with cars, especially in a congested city like Seoul:

Seoul has announced the winners of an architectural design contest for elevated bike paths that can provide cyclists a more continuous and safer ride around Seoul.

The first prize went to a submission titled “UNDER the C,” which drew up plans for a bike path beneath an elevated expressway in northeastern Seoul. If built, this elevated bike lane will connect cyclists in the Jeongneung Station area to the Jungnang stream, whose bike paths eventually connect to those along the Han River in the south. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Is it just me or is Gwanghwamun Square seem like it is in a state of constant redevelopment?:

In two years, Gwanghwamun Square may be grander above ground and more complex below as the Seoul city government plans to remove structures on the square and build an underground plaza connecting at least five different subway and train lines. 

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced Monday that it selected a blueprint to renovate the square in central Seoul located south of Gyeongbok Palace by 2021.

“The announcement today is about more detailed plans to a project that was proposed last April with the Cultural Heritage Administration,” the city government said in a statement Monday. 

“We have decided on a winning design for the square that will focus on bringing back the historical value of the square and making it more pedestrian-friendly.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

It is going to be interesting to learn in the future if all this yellow dust is going to have adverse health affects on Koreans:

Seoul was hit by a record-high level of ultrafine dust, known as a class one carcinogen, on Monday, as most of South Korea was blanketed by extraordinarily heavy levels of choking dust particles for the fourth consecutive day.
The Ministry of Environment has decided to extend a set of emergency measures aimed at reducing fine dust in Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province through Tuesday. It would be the first time for the government to implement the system in the metropolitan area, which has around 20 million residents, for three consecutive days.
Under the step, vehicles with license plates ending in even numbers and used by public offices, will be restricted from operating on Tuesday. And the operation of 2.5-ton diesel cars or bigger ones, registered with metropolitan governments before 2005, will be limited.
The daily average level of ultrafine particles, smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, in Seoul surged to 118 micrograms per cubic meter as of 3 p.m., the highest figure since the government began taking such measurements in 2015, according to the state-run National Institute of Environmental Research.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The more the native English-speaking waygook thinks these (admittedly horrible) slogans are horrible the more it’s apparent the waygook in question doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because he obviously thinks that if it’s in English he’s the target audience. https://t.co/RJYm35kr6n

— the oranckay (@oranckay) January 3, 2019