On our fourth day in Korea, we decided to spend the morning visiting the Namsan Park area including the North Seoul Tower, then head towards the National Museum of Korea and the War Memorial of Korea in the afternoon. In the evening, we decided to see Nanta, a popular culinary-themed show comedy with music, comedy, and acrobatics mixed in.

North Seoul Tower in Namsan Park

In the morning, we we got breakfast in Myeongdong, then took a 15 minute walk to the Namsan Park Cable Car lift. As it turns out, the lift didn’t open until 10:00, so we had to wait around for a few minutes. We could have walked up the hill in about the same amount of time, but with a full day ahead of us, we decided to conserve our energy.

Upon arriving at the top, we stopped by the Love Lock Bridge. Each lock is a symbol of eternal love, so many couples will bring a lock and add it to the collection.

Before heading up the tower, we continued to wander around. The views were quite beautiful!

Eventually, we purchased a ticket and took the elevator to the top of the North Seoul Tower.

The views were even more lovely than from the base! It was nice to take in views from a central point in the city, and also gave us a better view of enormous scale of Seoul.

We took our time, then enjoyed some cotton candy at the base of the tower.

We then took a short walk back to Myeongdong for lunch.

National Museum of Korea

From Myongdong Station, we rode about 6 subway stops to the National Museum of Korea. The museum building and complex is quite large. We enjoyed the exhibits about Korean history and culture, though that said, we ended up enjoying the next two museums more.

National Hangul Museum

James has a particular interest in foreign languages and the scripts are used for each, so we decided to stop by the small National Hangul Museum, which is on the same museum complex area as National Museum of Korea.

Hangul is the script that the modern Korean language uses. In 1443, King Sejong the Great made a push to improve literacy in the country and developed the Hangul script to replace the more cumbersome Chinese characters.

This small museum had some exhibits about the script being created (to be per the king’s goal “simple enough for a wise man to learn in a morning, and even an unwise person in 10 day”) and slightly evolving. It’s a nice place to visit if you’re interested in languages and alphabets, though skippable if that’s not a particular interest.

There was also a statue of King Sejong the Great that we saw on our second day in Korea near the Gyeongbokgung Palace:

War Memorial of Korea

The War Memorial of Korea was a couple subway stops away from the National Museum, just on the other side of Yongsan Park. To our surprise, this wasn’t just a war memorial, but was also a very well done museum. After visiting, we decided that we liked this museum the most.

The flags in the picture below represent the countries who provided aid to South Korea during the Korean War.

The outside area of the museum contains many tanks, airplanes, and other vehicles that were used during the Korean War.

The indoor exhibits had more vehicles, but also other exhibits. It was interesting to learn about which countries sent aid during the Korean War. There were 22 countries in all that provided aid. Some of them provided military aid, while others provided medical or financial aid. There were exhibits about each country sending support – from the US which sent 1.7 million people, to tiny Luxembourg, which was able to send 110 troops.

After finishing here, we were thoroughly exhausted and decided to head back to our hotel to rest. This museum was a great follow-on to the previous day’s visit to the DMZ.

Nanta

In the evening, we decided to go to the Nanta show, a highly rated non-verbal culinary-themed performance that combines music, comedy, and acrobatics. In this live show, we were entertained by people chopping up cabbages with chainsaws and more. If you land seats in the first couple of rows, you may even be selected to go on stage and help with the performance!

Originally, we were planning to see Nanta at 5pm, but when our travel plans had to be altered earlier in our trip, we had to cancel and rebook. By the time we rebooked, all that was left was an 8pm showing. With jet-lag, the 5pm would have been a much better choice, but we still had fun and managed to keep our eyes open the entire time.

All-in-all it was a fun, but exhausting day.

More From Adventures of the 4JLs

Keep reading our travel blog for more adventures in Korea: