Like I promised, here is our post on my parents’ trip to Seoul. It’s kind of a historic trip, especially for my dad, since the last time he was here was in 1984. My parents left that January before I was born for the USA. I think the neatest part of their trip here, for me, were all of the stories my dad had to tell about what Korea was like during the 70’s and 80’s and all of his memories. For those of you who don’t know, my dad served in the US Army stationed in and around Seoul during the 70’s and 80’s and he met my mom (who is Korean) during that time.

For this trip, they stayed with my grandfather in Northern Seoul so we actually didn’t get to see my parents every single day. But, we did try our best to either get up to my grandfather’s house often or meet them in some part of the city. Surprisingly, it takes us a good hour and a half to get to my grandfather’s house by bus and a little less time than that by subway.

The highlights of their trip were spending a couple of days on Jeju Island (the small island off the southern tip of South Korea), a tour of the DMZ, shopping in Namdaemun and Insadong, seeing some palaces in Seoul, my parents were able to visit the memorial sight of the Christian martyrs who were all beheaded near the Han river, and of course just spending time together. 

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So there are a million other photos from this trip but it would be impossible to put them all on here. Most of these photos are from Jeju Island. I didn’t include any photos of the DMZ because we were dumb enough to have forgotten our cameras (luckily a nice woman on the tour sent us photos from her camera….they’re still on my email though). My mom also has some pics of them just hanging out in the noraebangs (karaoke rooms) and the martyr’s memorial near the Han river.  It was really fun to have them here with us!