This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
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Notes -
Didn't expect my random travel post about South Korea to appear here - I was just spitballing about a place I enjoyed a lot, but I appreciate that people thought it was interesting enough to nominate.
I do have some photos of the trip which were not included in the initial post. Here's a link to them. Frankly I hesitated from uploading them initially because I was skeevy about how amateurish they look, but perhaps they help provide some context for what the trip was like.
I like those photos; thanks for sharing. What strikes me is the near-complete absence of any people in them. One caption mentioned you were early in the morning but was that true everywhere you went? I know it's possible to wipe people from photos these days, is that what you did? Or is SK just not as densely touristed as Japan?
I haven't wiped any people from my shots, that wouldn't be an honest depiction of how the trip actually was, after all. SK in general was just shockingly empty and quiet, we visited destinations from dawn to dusk (and sometimes at night, too), and most of them received little foot traffic. No doubt this is in part a consequence of going off-peak, but getting a whole UNESCO-listed royal palace almost entirely to ourselves (Changdeokgung) was an unprecedented and surreal experience I've never had anywhere else. It's right in the historic district of Seoul, too.
So it's often very quiet even around well-known tourist sites. It's possible to go even further off the beaten path and find remarkably isolated corners of South Korea that receive almost no international tourism at all (sometimes even locals seem absent). The country is absolutely littered from top to toe with ancient historical sites that I'm convinced would be a big deal anywhere else, but in SK most of them aren't marketed well. Some of the sites around Gyeongju are so obscure that I only found them by scouring Google Maps or the Korean heritage service, and posting the Hangul into search engines just to obtain more information about them.
If you're lucky, it's sometimes possible to stumble upon them randomly, but in my experience putting in the work to actually seek them out is worth it.
Great pics, in any case.
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