Seoul Warnings Or Dangers Tips by mke1963

At a day at Lotte World, the big indoor theme park in Seoul, our two children were pestered constantly during the day – for the first and only time in Korea – a phenomena we thought we had safely left behind in China. I would have hoped that even Korean teenagers might realise that even a saint is going to get irritated after three hours of incessant (and I do genuinely mean incessant – it was several times every minute) pointing, staring and yells of “Hello! Where are you from!”. My two children are fairly used to this kind of attention, but this is the first time we have experienced sour reactions simply because we ignore it. No we are not being rude, it’s just that you are the thousandth person to bellow or squawk at us today.
If you have children that do not look Korean or north Asian, you might want to give the theme parks a miss, especially at the weekends or on public holidays or even on days near public holidays. For what it’s worth, we saw an Indian child getting the same kind of treatment. We didn’t experience this attention anywhere else in Seoul at big events or at parks or museums, but I guess that we were unlucky enough to be at a venue where there were large numbers of groups of teenagers and children all out to impress each other.
Before I get hate-mail saying they were all just being friendly – don’t bother. I am aware that many were being friendly – but it is still wearying for 10 and 12 year old children when you have it constantly for hours on end. And, what’s more, a lot of it wasn’t friendly at all: it was shouted at loud volume, accompanied by shrieks of laughter for the benefit of their friends.