The elusive wall

Today i started by getting my passport and guess what, they did not reject me, I got the visa.

Anyway, i decided that I would follow the old city wall around the city today so I went to the eastern city gate, Dongdaemun and found a trail along the wall. It was a nice  trek along the wall sometimes on top of it, some times on the outside.

Dongdaemun

Beginning of the wall

After a while it broke up and I almost lost it but I soon found it again. It wound up through the mountains until I came to some kind of military installation but luckily I could pass around it. A bit later I was able to go back on to the top of the it again and found this:

A bit hard to see but there soldiers working a cannon here, the Korean military actually seems very active.

I continued along until I found some kind of station where they informed me that the path was closed after three, apparently the great outdoors has opening hours in Korea. I think it might have had something to do with the military again.

Anyhow i decided to try to circumvent the checkpoint, looked at the map and saw I was at the edge of a park so I tried to go through it to find a way around. It turned out that the park was more of a forest and I more or less slipped down a small dirt path so I decided against my original plan. Instead I walked down towards the city trying to reach the wall like that and ended up by the Gyeonbokgung palace.

I continued on what had now become a quest to try to find the wall and went around to the western side of the palace. It turns out that there are rather many police officers around that area. Most of them are just standing around but some of them will tell you that you are not allowed to pass so that was kind of what I  expected when i came up on what looked like a road block. The police man asked me “What is your destination” in a military tone of voice and I feared I would have to turn back but no, he simple pointed out how I should get there. Anyway I walk around in search of the elusive wall for a while longer as it started to rain more and more. In the end I was tired from walking all day and gave up. I guess I will have to retry another time but that will have to wait for my next trip to Korea.

Not the great wall of China but still nice eh?