This year I will celebrate a milestone birthday, and I had planned to celebrate big. To start the celebration, I got tickets to attend the BTS concert in Chicago. Then, I planned to travel to Korea this fall on my actual birthday to explore some drama and K-pop sites either alone or with friends. Of course, COVID-19 has changed all of those plans.
Instead, over the first week of July, I took a road trip to St. Louis, Missouri. A road trip had not been on my agenda for 2020, even though I have always loved road trips. While it wasn’t the big plans that I had been anticipating, after being quarantined at home since mid March, this road trip seemed extra special. I was able to spend time with one of my best friends, and I helped her stock her kitchen with staples that she and her daughter would need to make more Korean dishes. The visit was wonderful, and as I was driving home, I was reminded of the last road trip I had taken.
Last year, during our September 2019 visit to South Korea, our friends took us on an excursion to see the history of the Silla Dynasty. We left Daegu and drove to Gyeongju, and, of course, no road trip is complete without a visit to a Korean rest stop. I had seen Korean rest stops in dramas, but I hadn’t visited one since our only other road trips in Korea had been short excursions in 2017 when these same friends took us to Jebudo Island and Hwadam Botanic Garden in Gwangju. So when our friends said we were stopping at a Korean rest stop, I was excited to see if the real experience lived up to the drama version. And I’m happy to say it exceeded my expectations!
For us the stop was a quick one, but I could have stayed a while. The restaurant portion of the location we visited had offerings such as pork cutlet and large bowls of ramyun. There were plenty of tables available for families and friends traveling together to sit and enjoy a meal together. But if you were alone, you could use one of the solo dining areas, called 혼밥 (hon bap).
Since we needed to get back on the road, we grabbed snacks instead. There were many options to choose from, including the familiar to us, 떡볶이 (tteok-bokki). It was the perfect blend of spicy and sweet, and we finished it before heading back to the car. But the highlights of the stop were two new-to-us Korean snack foods.
Each of us got 소떡소떡 (so-tteok so-tteok), which is a skewer of small sausages and rice cakes that are fried and covered in a mustard and gochujang sauce. Quickly so-tteok so-tteok became one of my favorite foods. The tender rice cakes tempered the pungent taste of the sausage and the sauce perfectly completed the taste. My only regret was that I only had one skewer.
Before leaving the rest stop we purchased a bag of 호두과자 (walnut pastries) that we could take in the car. These are small walnut-shaped pastry balls that were filled with a sweetened red bean paste and pieces of walnut. As we pulled out of the rest stop, we opened the bag and began to feast on the still warm snacks.
The day we spent in Gyeongju was wonderful. We visited Woljeonggyo Bridge; Gyochon Village, including the home of the famous the Choi Clan; Cheomseongdae observatory; the grotto of Seokguram; and Bulguksa Temple. As a lover of history, I was enthralled with each location, soaking in the colors and beauty as the stories I had read came to life. We returned home late that night, thankful for our new experiences.
The United States is famous for its road trips—being such a vast country, it is best to see it by car. While Korean road trips might not require 12 hours, or more, of driving between start and destination, for me they have set a high standard for such excursions The food is always amazing, from snacks at a rest stop to local restaurants that are off the beaten path. The beauty of the country—with its mountains and oceans, trees blazing with colors in the autumn and blooming with buds in the spring, large cities and small villages, and the history of thousands of years sharing the landscape with modern skyscrapers their glass skins gleaming—provide such variety that one would never grow tired of exploring the country. Well, I wouldn’t grow tired of it.
It seems that this year I’ll miss celebrating my milestone birthday in the country I love so much, but Korea is never far from my heart. Instead I’ll make so-tteok so-tteok at home. I’ll share my love of Korean culture with my friends through food and photos. I’ll continue working on studying the Korean language and enjoy Korean dramas. And I’ll dream of my next Korean road trip, as I marvel at what I might discover when I return.
Road Trippin’ in Korea was originally published on July 13, 2020, on Korea.net’s TalkTalkKorea site (a site for content produced by Korea’s Honorary Reporters.
Amy G. Park 