Sunday night took me to the Seoul Forest – yes, not only is there a forest in the city boundaries of Seoul, but it’s reasonably easy to get to via subway / bus. The Seoul Drum Festival was being held here at the same time – another reason why I wanted to go.

From the subway station (Ttukseom station, line 2, exit 8 to be exact) it’s a bit of a walk. If you prefer a bus, take exit 1 and look for buses 2413 or 2224.

Aahh, that’s more like it – maps like this don’t appear until you actually arrive at the destination. Welcome to Seoul Forest – home to any number of family-friendly activities spread out over a large grassy / wooded area. Although not extremely dense, there are more than enough trees to help one consider it a forest – even though wooded park may technically be a better definition.

Forests don’t usually have skate parks / lanes for rollerblading, for example.

Forests usually have dirt paths through them, although this is one of the denser areas of the forest.

Getting artsy with the flowers and some blur =)

Your guess is as good as mine – the blue… thing… is not supported in any way other than how you see. It is attached, and you could easily sit on top of the blue thing without fear of falling.

This particular piece of art was entitled ‘Emptiness’ – perhaps the feeling you get after sitting inside.

Entitled ‘Towards the Space’.

Hey look, it’s me! I asked a Korean photographer to snap a picture while I posed.

OK, the Seoul Forest is nice and all, but half of the reason I came out was to see the Seoul Drum Festival. Time to find out where it’s happening.

While in the park you couldn’t help but hear the THUMP THUMP THUMP of big drums in the distance. I followed my ears, and eventually I found the following scene:

A cacophany of drums – all drumming to their own beat. About 10 sets of drums (모듬북, or modeum buk) were available for the crowd to beat on and try. There was no coordinated effort to find the same rhythm, and the saying ‘march to the beat of your own drum’ became quite literal. It wasn’t a pretty sound, but I pressed on to the other half of the tent.

Thankfully, the other half of the tent was a little more organized – a class of some sort, perhaps. The hourglass shaped drums are called janggu, although I didn’t see anything actually naming the drums or telling the crowd more about them. According to Wikipedia, there are about 20 types of buk (drums) used in present Korean traditional music. While they were much better at staying on beat, too much noise from the other side probably made it very hard to hear their own beat. Take a look at the video to see – AND HEAR – what I mean:

Not surprisingly, the drums took some abuse. Since the part you actually hit is just a shell (probably easily replaced), the drums were moved to the side to be picked up for later. This kid found this to be the only drum that no one was already using!

Across from the dozens of drums to bang on were several other instruments available for playing or purchasing.

A jingo (?) – Wikipedia describes a jingo as the “largest barrel drum”, which seems to fit – if anyone out there knows for certain, please send me an e-mail or write a comment and I’ll correct or remove the question mark =)

A hat typically worn during a sangmo nori (a spinning streamer hat performance), during a namsadang (a wandering troupe that did acrobatics, dancing, and drumming) but in this case was part of the hands-on experience.

Since the professionals weren’t scheduled to perform until later (and I was short on time), I wandered around the forest some more.

A fairly small stream connecting most of the events to another area of the forest.

The other area was more dirt paths and trees – nice to visit but not much to get pictures of.

A beautiful location – and a great place to hold a drum festival. There’s far more here than I had time to see, and some areas were closed or closing at dusk – a future visit must be made during the day!