National Maritime Museum of Korea

This afternoon in Busan, Korea, I visited the National Maritime Museum of Korea, which is beside the sea on the same island that contains Taejongdae Park, where I was this morning. At the end of my post about Taejongdae Park, I made mention of my “afternoon activity” and said it was foreshadowing. It was the use of the singular, “activity,” that did the foreshadowing. That’s all I did this afternoon.

The exhibit space in the National Maritime Museum is rather small. So why was that all I saw, you ask? Stop being so pushy. I’ve got to slow down sometime, dammit.

However, slowing down wasn’t the primary reason for not doing more. For one thing, by the time I left Taejongdae Park, had a quick bite to eat and then walked for just over half an hour to get to the National Maritime Museum, it was a little after three in the afternoon.

Because the museum is small, I might have done more, but when I looked for something reasonably close that I wanted to see and hadn’t seen before, there was nothing that wouldn’t take more than half an hour to get to. And I still had a journey of about an hour ahead of me to get back to my hotel. So, that was it for the afternoon, which is a shame because I’ve run out of time in Busan. I leave for my next Korean destination tomorrow morning.

This being my last post from Busan, there’s a summary of my time here below.

At the National Maritime Museum of Korea

The National Maritime Museum of Korea is set back from the road I walked along to get there. From the road to the museum, I walked through a park. The park has two parallel sidewalks on either side, with a lawn running the length between the sidewalks. Rows of trees on both sides of both sidewalks form peaceful tree canopies.

At the seaward end of the park, there’s a large statue of three white horses galloping fiercely. When I first saw the statue, it looked like it fronted the National Maritime Museum. But I don’t think the park is associated with the museum, because galloping horses seem inconsistent with a maritime museum.

The National Maritime Museum building is stunning. Its front wall is roughly curved, all glass except for the narrow frames holding the panes, and sloped inward from the protruding segmented-arc roofline.

Seen from the front, it looked to me like a giant version of a sci-fi spaceship.

Inside, there is a soaring atrium, taking up much of the internal space.

The street level contains an information desk, a gift shop, washrooms, and a children’s museum. There are also a couple of special exhibit halls on that level, but they were closed while they set up a new temporary exhibit. One thing the lower level doesn’t contain is a ticket office. The National Maritime Museum is free.

The next level up contains a permanent exhibit hall. It has displays of old maritime documents and books about maritime themes, along with maritime-related art. There is also a display of furniture and crafts made from or decorated with marine materials, such as pearls, fish skins, and turtle and other shells. And there were some fishing tools and fish-related implements. I’ll mention one specifically, and include a picture of somewhere here, for a particular, namely, fish-shaped knives.

That level also contains two rooms titled Media Art Galleries. They were roped off. I don’t know what’s in them.

The next level up has another permanent exhibition gallery, which displays old globes, old navigation devices, and several models of old ships and boats. Some of the ships were models of well-known historical vessels. Included among the names were the Santa Maria and Nina, the Mayflower, the HMS Bounty, the Endeavour, and the Beagle, among others.

Some of the other displayed ships and boats were generic types of traditional vessels from various parts of the world, with a few focused on Korea.

Near the start of this exhibit area, there was a darkened hallway that projected onto the floor illustrations of stylized points of light in the shape of sea creatures swimming along the hallway. It was kind of cool. I took a brief video:

This upper level also contains a small “4D” theatre. Don’t ask me what the fourth dimension is. I didn’t go in. There is a fee for that. They were showing something titled “Return to the Lostworld.” The promotional image had dinosaurs in it. I wasn’t interested.

There is also a lower level in the National Maritime Museum of Korea that contains an auditorium and a library. I didn’t go down there.

Apart from having more exhibits, the only thing that would have made the National Maritime Museum better would be if it had an aquarium. So it’s a good thing it did.

It is only a small aquarium. It has one largeish circular tank with a glass tunnel through it. There are also six or seven smaller tanks. All of the tanks had pretty fish in them. And, for the pièce de résistance, one of those smaller tanks has jellyfish!

It made for a short but worthwhile afternoon.

Pictures of the aquarium at the National Maritime Museum of Korea:

Busan Summary

There’s a lot to like, and even love about Busan, Korea: A lengthy coastline, with harbours, some dramatic rugged shores, and some long sand beaches; lushly forested mountains, with parks and trails at their bases and up them; beautiful old temples; markets oozing character; an aquarium or two; charming Gamcheon Village; and more, he said lazily to avoid going back and refreshing his memory by rereading previous posts.

There are also some museums, but apart from the Korea National Maritime Museum, I didn’t get to them, so I can’t comment on them. 

There is also something to dislike about Busan. But it’s primarily not the city’s fault. You can blame the tectonic and/or volcanic activity that created the mountains in Busan, which, while beautiful, create immovable obstacles to navigate around. And they force the city to spread out. As a result, it can often take more than an hour to get to a tourist sight or activity within the city, even from a hotel that, on a non-topographical map, looks reasonably central.

Busan has an extensive metro network. My hotel is close to a station that serves two lines. But the stops on the metros don’t get close to many of the tourist attractions. Consequently, getting where I wanted to go often required either a bus ride or a long walk in addition to the metro.

Busan has an even more extensive bus network. It’s easy to navigate, provided you use a mapping app to dictate which buses to take. But, for the most part, buses operate in regular traffic and make far more stops than metros. So they’re not nearly as rapid.

Uber operates in Busan. Its drivers are plentiful, including a fleet of Uber Taxis with the name “Uber Taxi” emblazoned on the car. I used Uber more than I expected in Busan. My longest wait for a driver was six minutes, and often just one or two. Uber is not terribly expensive in Busan, and it doesn’t even provide the option for tipping, but it’s still materially more expensive than public transit.

Even then, due to traffic and mostly due to the need to drive around mountains, Uber rides can still take a while.

(Re tipping: it’s not expected in taxis or restaurants here. I don’t know if there are any establishments where it is expected.)

Could I have found a hotel that would have been more convenient for getting everywhere I wanted to go in Busan? Possibly, but I don’t know.

I don’t think it’s possible to find one just by looking at a map. Finding one would have required expanding my hotel consideration set considerably and then carefully researching each one individually.

That research would have necessitated looking at how long it would take to get from each hotel to all of the sights I wanted to see. Then I’d have to total up all of the trip times for each hotel and see which had the lowest total. Of course, that would distort reality because I see multiple sights in a day, so I’m not always going from my hotel to a sight.

I could have done that, but only if I believed in reincarnation. It would have taken a few lifetimes.

In the end, I narrowed it down to two widely spaced hotels based on dubious criteria. I then asked an AI engine which of the two was better situated for sightseeing and took its recommendation.

I suppose I could have gone broader and asked AI simply to tell me which hotel in Busan within such and such price and class range is most conveniently located for sightseeing. But for me to do that, a few factors would have had to have been true:

• The AI search engine would have to have the same sightseeing tastes as I have. Either that, or I would have to have formulated in advance a list of places I wanted to visit and provided it to the AI engine.
• The AI engine would have to know or have access to all of the up-to-date information required to formulate an answer.
• I’d have to trust that AI provides accurate answers based on that information.
• I’d have to believe that the AI engine wasn’t out to get me. Specifically me.

None of those conditions was met.

The lengthy journey times within the city notwithstanding, I still highly recommend a visit to Busan if you have the opportunity. There is so much worthwhile, and in some cases beautiful, to see and do. Just expect to expend more time than you might anticipate to see and do them.

I spent four and a half days here and left unseen a few of the things I wanted to see. I just ran out of time. In addition, my guidebook recommends some sights in nearby towns that are easy daytrips by train, but I didn’t have the time for any of those either.

A few more days in Busan could have been well spent.