Would You Sell your SEOUL? We´ll buy it!: Sell Your Seoul Trip 5

Sell Your Seoul Trip 5 - Day 5

Our first activity of the day was visiting the Seoul Design Fair at the old Olympic stadium. It was really impressive to see all of the exhibits and examples of how Korean’s are implementing creative design techniques to solve problems or improve society. For example, they had a “bench” design contest where Korean designers competed in making an environmentally friendly, efficient, attractive, and comfortable sitting contraption which would be used somewhere in the city. There were so many unique solutions to the “bench” design and I was blown away by some of the prototypes.

*see Seoul Design Fair video

Another thing that I found really interesting was the term “Upcycling”. I had heard of recycling before but upcycling differed because the whole point was to use materials that would normally be thrown away to create something new and more valuable than before. They had an upcycling flea market where people had created clothing, jewelery, household décor, and other objects of value from old “throw away” materials.
I also really liked seeing the culinary design entries. They had so many interesting platings and they definitely made me hungry for lunch. I wished I could read the signs that described what each entry was exactly.

We got in a cab and headed for Myeong Dong which was another busy tourist area where people enjoyed shopping and other tourist activities. We went to a restaurant where the wall was covered in post-it notes that patrons had left little messages on.

After lunch we took a cooking class to learn how to make our very own Kimchi in Kimchi Academi House. I didn’t realize what an important part of the Korean diet Kimchi played but apparently many Koreans eat it for every meal of the day.

*see Kimchi Academy video

We then headed over to the Seoul Medical Tourism Cente r. Apparently the prices for various medical treatments including plastic surgery are very affordable here. People travel from all over the world to have various medical procedures performed.

*see Seoul Medical Tourism Center video

We concluded our day by taking a long stroll down Cheonggyecheon which flowed right through the center of Seoul. There were a lot of people walking the path next to the river and we saw examples of Korean art on display and even a live art expression piece where a woman was walking through the icy stream and braiding colorful ribbons of fabric. It was very unusual but a pleasant surprise to see a public display of artistic expression amongst the city streets of Seoul.

*see Cheonggyecheon video