Colin's Trip to South Korea!: Day 34 - Noryangjin Fish Market/Eating Live Octopus

Today I went through the normal school routine as usual. After class, I watched a Korean War movie called 71: Into The Fire (포화 속으로). It was a movie about the defense of Pohang-dong Girl's Middle School near the Nakdong River perimeter by the battalion of 71 student soldiers. Of course, the film was slightly dramatized, but a lot of it was factually based off of the memoirs of the few survivors from the student soldier unit. The basic idea was the essentially untrained student soldiers were left to defend a strategic point safeguarding the Nakdong River. The students were able to defend the school for 11 hours against the North Korean People's Army with 48 of the 71 soldiers dying in the battle. It was a very good film and I would recommend it if you don't mind reading subtitles, as the actors speak in Korean language.

Poster for 71: Into The Fire

After finishing the movie, I went and met with eight other friends to go to Noryangjin Fish Market, which is on the southern side of the Han River (the main river that runs through the middle of Seoul). Before we headed to the market, we ate dinner at a Japanese restaurant near Ewha Women's University (이화여자대학교).

Traveling via subway to Noryangjin Station. The picture is kind of lopsided because I was trying to take the picture discretely because I feel slightly awkward taking a picture of the people on the train.

(Left) Walking across the footbridge over the train station. (Right) The view of the footbridge coming from the train station (the staircase on the right leads into the station).

We hopped on the subway and rode about 30 minutes to get to Noryangjin Station. From the station we walked across a pedestrian bridge over the station and down into the Noryangjin Fish Market. The market is huge! Every vendor had all kinds of exotic creatures for sale (exotic to me at least), such as sea urchins and octopus.

A panoramic photo I took of the Noryangjin Fish Market from above

The main purpose of us coming to the fish market was to buy and eat live octopus, which is a Korean meal that seems really strange to foreigners. We chose a stand with a good price and bought two octopuses from the woman running the booth. We then took them to a seafood restaurant connected by an alley to the market and had them cut it up and serve it to us. It was honestly not as bad as I expected! The worst part about it was trying to pick up a wiggling tentacle with chopsticks! The suction cups stick to the plate and make it really difficult to pick it up.