Seoul Grand Park

     Jungwon had been wanting to go to the zoo for a while so last Sunday we kicked things off by watching Shrek the Third at CoEx, and then heading down to Seoul Grand Park.
     First the specifics. Seoul Grand Park is on the number 4 line (light blue) 3 stops below Sadang {사당역}. It is subway station number 437 and is listed as Seoul Grand Park {대공원}. When you get off the subway simply follow the signs and/or crowds of people. You'll eventually come to a ticket booth to buy a tram ticket (or as an alternative you can veer right to get a ticket for a ski lift type thing, but I don't know where that will deposit you). The tram follows a circuit allowing you to easily get to any of the park's attractions. There is a rose garden, an amusement park, a museum, and of course, the zoo. The tram costs 800 won and has Korean and English voice overs.
     Jungwon made it a point to mention that she wanted to see the dolphin show so when we bought our zoo entry tickets we made sure to get our reserved seats. The zoo admittance and dolphin show came out to be 9,000 won total for two people. Total cost for tickets including the trams back and forth came out to be 12,200 won. Frozen bottles of water cost 1,000 won in the park, and during the summer they are a necessity. We went through three bottles of water, two that we brought with us, and one that we bought after the dolphin show, and this was only June!
     The zoo had a good collection of animals. Of course I didn't like the small sizes, ugliness, and boringness of many of the animals cages. For the most part the animals did seem to be in good health, although the monkeys and apes seemed very stressed by the jeering visitors and the lack of intellectual stimulation.
     One thing that I liked about the zoo was the fact that it had a lot of educational side shows. Little rooms you could enter that had information (in Korean) about how the wolves at this zoo were genetically altered to have domestic dog stomaches, or a room that talked about animal dung (many Koreans, especially children, seem to be obsessive about poop).


The Goodies


     First we have pictures uploaded to my web folder. There are giraffes, a cute baby hippo, lions cuddling, a rhino, a lemur, and (of course) the room of poop. Next are two videos of the dolphin show. The show started with a couple of performing seals, and then the dolphins showing off. The first video is actually the end of the show. You can see my camera going in and out of focus. The Auto Focus was giving me fits all day. The second video is cute, but unfortunately the end just went totally out of focus. None of the pictures of the show turned out.

Seoul Grand Park

Dolphin Show 1

Dolphin Show 2