IMID Notes

When my 10-year-old son asked me if we could go to Seodaemun Prison History Hall (서대문형무소역사관) in Seoul, the idea came from something he had learned at school. He already knew about Seodaemun Prison from his lessons and became curious about the actual place. He wanted to see for himself what he had studied, so we decided to go together. That made this visit feel different from the beginning. Instead of choosing a museum for him, I was following his curiosity. For him, it was a chance to connect something from a school lesson with a real historical place. For me, it became another opportunity to understand more about the history of the country where my children are growing up. Our visit began with something my 10-year-old son had learned at school and wanted to see for himself. A Place Connected to Korea's Modern History The history of this place goes back more than a century. The prison opened in 1908 as Gyeongseong Prison (경성감옥) and was renamed Seod...

N Seoul Tower rising above Namsan during our family visit in April 2024. Namsan Seoul Tower is one of those Seoul landmarks that I knew long before I ever stood beside it. Before coming to Korea, when I first started studying Korean in Uzbekistan, there were photographs of Korea on the walls where I studied. Namsan Seoul Tower was one of the landmarks I remember seeing there. At that time, it was simply one of those images that represented Korea to me. I think Namsan Tower is one of those places that many international visitors want to see when they come to Korea. Even before you know Seoul well, the tower can already feel familiar from photographs and images of the city. Years later, after Korea had become part of my everyday life, Namsan was no longer just a landmark in a photograph. It became somewhere our family visited more than once. Our family's first Namsan Tower visit was in September 2022, when my husband and children went without me. Two ...

Yesterday, while watching the news about the Central Asian presidents visiting Korea, I saw a very familiar place on the screen: Cheong Wa Dae (청와대) , Korea's famous Blue House. Seeing official meetings taking place there immediately reminded me of our own visit a few years ago. I went back to the photographs we had taken that day and realized that our visit now feels a little different from how it felt at the time. For decades, Cheong Wa Dae was closely associated with the Korean presidency. Most people knew its distinctive blue-tiled roofs from television news, official photographs and important national events. In 2022, after President Yoon Suk Yeol moved the presidential office away from the compound, Cheong Wa Dae was opened to the public. During that period, our family had the opportunity to visit. The Main Building of Cheong Wa Dae, with Bugaksan rising behind its distinctive blue-tiled roofs. At the time, I saw it mainly as a rare opportunity to enter ...

Living in Seoul means there are many museums and educational places to visit with children, and sometimes the places that sound quite serious turn out to interest them more than I expect. The Bank of Korea Money Museum (한국은행 화폐박물관) was one of those places for us. At first, a museum about money may sound like somewhere mainly for adults. But when we visited with our children, I found that there was quite a lot for them to see and do. My children, especially the boys, were interested in the old banknotes, huge displays of Korean won, damaged money, currencies from different countries, and exhibits they could interact with themselves. What I liked was that the visit was educational without feeling like another lesson. We could simply walk around together, stop wherever something caught their attention, and talk about what we were seeing. Bank of Korea Money Museum in central Seoul. Inside the Bank of Korea Money Museum The museum introduces the his...

Living in Seoul gives us access to many museums and cultural places, and the National Museum of Korea (국립중앙박물관) is one of those places that feels worth returning to. On this visit, I went with my children, and rather than trying to see everything, we moved through the museum at our own pace, stopping whenever something caught our attention. That is probably the best way to visit such a large museum with children. There is simply too much to take in during one day. Instead of treating it like a checklist, we could look closely at a few objects, talk about what we were seeing, and then continue to another gallery. Ancient treasures, everyday household objects, Buddhist sculptures and even the architecture of the museum itself gave us very different things to notice along the way. The Ten-story Stone Pagoda from Gyeongcheonsa Temple was one of the first objects to catch our attention inside the museum. The same pagoda seen within the scale of the ...