Fireworks Festival

Saturday, October 13th

I attended the Seoul Fireworks Festival. It was held near the Han River with ideal viewing in a green space on Yeoido (an island considered mini-Manhattan) near the 63 building. I ended catching a bus from near Pagoda. I happened to meet a few foreigners on the way. One guy was wearing a jacket with "Minnesota" embroidered, so we talked a little while. He was going to the fireworks with his friends from Samsung. The bus was quite so because everyone trying to get near the 63 building. We ended up meeting a few other Samsung employees, so we had a diverse group. The group was two German ladies, an American, an Uzbek, an Indian, a couple other people, and me.

The fireworks show was really good. It had three separate shows. The first group was from Japan, next the Americans, and finally Korean group. Each group had music choreographed with the show. The Japanese group had quite traditional and conservative music. The American had a wide variety of new and old Rock-n-Roll songs. The Koreans also chose a variety of songs. Even the individual shows were shorter than traditional Fourth of July shows, New Year's, Seollal, etc., the groups definitely wanted to display the newest and best fireworks that they created. The shapes and colors were some of the best I have ever seen.

Afterwards, it was quite an adventure to try getting home. The attendance probably had over 100,000 people, so it was quite difficult to find any buses, taxis, or non-jammed subways. The closest subway station was actually closed due to safety. We ended up walking a long ways and couldn't find anything. After a long time, we ended up outside the Noryangjin Fish Market. This is the best known fish market and great place to get anything and everything from the sea. Outside of the market, Sonja (half-Korean, half-German) managed to get a van to stop and negotiated a ride for all six of us. Normally, the van receives calls to transport people, so we were lucky that he was starting his night and stopped to offer us a ride. He took a roundabout route to get back to Gangnam. At the time, we were south of the river, but he took us north of the river to avoid all of the traffic and it only cost $20 for the six of us. Two taxis probably would have cost $20 each.