Land

Korea is a land full of mountains/hills and nothing is built upon them, be that out of respect for the mountain spirit as someone once argued or perhaps because it is too difficult, I really don't know.  However by not building on these hills two major things become apparent very early on.

One, you are never very far from the countryside or so to speak.  Even in Korea's biggest cities nature has not been driven away from the hills.  Busan for instance is a very scattered city, it is spread out because their are hills all over the area that the city has grown out of and so the city has developed in the valleys.  As far as I am concerned I like it, sure it make travelling from A to B a little more difficult, but that's what tunnels are for.  I like the fact that even when you are in the heart of the city you can look out on both a natural view in the distance and the urban scene closer by.

Two every scrap of flat land is precious.  Korea seems to be growing some sort of crop on every last bit of spare flat land.  The first time I saw this was when I was flying over Korea on my flight from Seoul to Busan.  It is an amazing thing to see for a Brit since our government actually pays some of our farmers not to produce crops (can't be arsed to get into that, if you are interested, look it up yourself).  This actually extends to a little scrap of land just across from the building I live in.  It's probably about as big as a garden shed, but even so someone is growing something.  I've no idea what, but since I pass it every day maybe I'll find out at some point.

I understand the economic reasons for this, but I suppose it's just very strange as far as I am concerned not just because of the farmer thing in Britain, but also because we Brits, at least like our gardens for grass and flowering plants and the occasional tree of some sort.  Very few of us produce any veg any more.  So yeah as far as I am concerned very interesting and different.