KTX and Yongsan Station

The KTX is the high speed train in South Korea. It runs between Seoul and Busan (and a few other major cities) at about 300km/hour. What normally takes around 5 hours by train only takes a little more than 2.5 hours. Sweet! Last week, they had one of the trains (well, part of it) set up infront of Yongsan Station, one of the 2 stations in Seoul that has the KTX. It is a nice looking train. The front of the train is streamlined and meant to look like a shark.[KTX map from Wikipedia]

[the KTX in the news - even though it is all in Korean, it'll give you an idea of the speed of the train as well as some of the technical aspects of it (if you keep watching)]

In the middle of the steps up to the front of Yongsan Station is a bit of a water feature - basically, in the middle section, water runs from the top to the bottom and then disappears. The steps of the middle section light up. Yongsan Station is connected to 2 huge department stores, a very large EMart grocery store, and the huge Yongsan Electronics Market. To the left of it is the huge IPark Mall. There are too many things in the IPark Mall to list, but it includes a few floors of electronics, a floor or two of home decor, clothing, a 2 floor Sobics bookstore, a CGV movie theatre, and other things.


[The opening of the I-Park Mall in the news.]

(I find most Korean commercials to be silly or strange).

To the right is a huge Shinsegae Department Store with the E-Mart in B1 and B2. Shinsegae is a huge company in Korea that includes E-Mart, Starbucks Korea, the Chosun Hotel, and others. It recently bought out all Wal-Mart stores in Korea and turned them into more E-Mart stores. Sad. (Sorry, I know some of the sites I linked to are all in Korean, but you get the idea, I suppose)