Seoul National Cemetery

Because we were in the mood to do something uplifting on Sunday, we visited the Seoul National Cemetary in Dongjak. Dongjak Station has a hallway that is strangely decorated with the slogan "Lucky Dongjak" juxtaposed next to pictures of tombstones and war time images of soldiers dying in combat and bombs exploding. "Lucky", indeed.

The Cemetery is located directly outside of the train station (Exit 8), and when we turned the corner and saw the giant gate and monument seen above, we knew that we'd found someplace interesting.

We passed through this gate, where two motionless soldiers stand guard in phone booth-like structures, to take a look at the giant monument behind the gate. Actually, this monument in the rear of the photo turned out to be the entrance to the cemetery.

There were some stairs around the base of the giant monument so we followed them down and saw this impressive statue.

There were colorful murals on the ceiling.

The cemetery is reserved for Korean veterans, and inside the monument there were many hallways listing the names of the dead. There were flowers, bibles and candles left all around the room.

We found another set of stairs that exited to the cemetery itself. The cemetery is enormous, and reminded me a lot of Arlington Cemetery in Washington. All of the graves are identical and are perfectly geometrically aligned. Either a red or yellow flower is left at each grave.


It could take hours and hours to walk around the whole place. It is an absolutely massive cemetery. I usually find cemeteries pretty creepy, and would generally not spend the afternoon sightseeing in one, but this one was really pretty and peaceful.

Some of Korea's ex-presidents are buried here. This is the grave of Yi Seungman, who was buried with his foreign born wife, Francesca. Foreign spouses are a touchy subject among a lot of Koreans nowadays, so we were really surprised to find out that a president had been married to a non-Korean. I feel like that wouldn't happen today, but maybe that just the pessimist in me.

Outside the cemetery is a nice park where people were picnicking and kids were running around.

There were some cutesy statues representing the army, navy and air force. Our favorite statue by far was this fellow and his tank's suggestively placed gun.

A river ran through it.

On Saturday night we'd gone to a housewarming party in Noksapyeong. Everytime we go to that area we get super hungry walking past all the restaurants but we'd never had time to just stop and eat at one. Well, Dongjak was only 5 subway stops away from Noksapyeong, and with the strip of restaurants fresh in our minds from the previous night, we decided to go there for supper. We went to Fat Panda, which is opposite exit 2 of the station. They serve Western-style Chinese food cafeteria-style, sort of like Manchu Wok back home. It wasn't amazing, but it was good enough for the price (8,900 Won for 3 dishes + noodles and rice) and it's a type of food we rarely get to eat in Korea.

Because I don't really have anything witty to say about cemeteries, I'll just end this blog by saying that Seoul National Cemetery is a nice place to visit. And if you go, you may as well get some Chinese food afterwards.