Near Changgyeonggung (palace) and somewhat hidden from view is the Seoul National Science Museum. Opened in 1990 after the National Science Museum moved to Daejeon, the museum is showing its age a bit but still has some life left in it. Outside are a couple larger exhibits, including an old school trolley that predated the subway by decades.

A narrow-gauge locomotive, or just call it an old-school train.

After paying 1,000 won to get in, climb the stairs and up the hill, then around the corner. Once at the museum’s first floor, start out with some interactive exhibits dealing with science:

Meant more for kids than adults, this Nuclear Energy Science Hall had quite a few hands-on activities related to energy and the history of energy.

A display on the light spectrum – sort of interesting, but again meant for kids. The first floor is almost entirely in Korean, so tourists would have a tough time here.

Push the white panel with the green button and watch the optical illusion of spinning disks.

A marble track similar to the ones displayed at Funique (inside the War Memorial).

Robot drummers? Suuuuure, why not? Push the button and listen to a little intro about the robot before he plays briefly.

Looking more like an arcade game than something educational; the ‘ENERGY’ on the side of the car was the only tip-off.

A many-faceted room made up of more mirrors than I could count, reflecting off each other and making for an interesting candid shot.

After the various hands-on activites, it’s time to move on to the second floor for animals!

Recreated ocean scenes – with no ocean or water of any kind. What the heck?

Some different kinds of coral.

Underwater scenes and animals – without the underwater part. Although they’re not real fish, they look real enough if it weren’t for the unusual scenery – and lack of water.

A nice variety of butterflies.

A journey to the center of the earth, and some rocks you might see along the way – again, almost entirely in Korean, but still somewhat interesting if you already know the scientific stuff.

The writing on the globe didn’t surprise me one bit – even including the ‘Dokdo is Ours!’ on a globe where you can’t even see the tiny rocks!

Moving up to the third floor – and the highlight of this museum:

K’NEX! You either had them as a kid or knew someone who did. These things probably took hours or days to put together – and yes, they had the ball machine that my siblings and I put together when we were kids:

Seriously cool – I wonder if that set is still available today?

An old dino’s skull – can’t tell a lot more than that since there was nothing more to go on.

Some wonderful ly detailed miniature models of how printing was done hundreds of years ago. To give you a sense of scale, the green bowls might fit on your pinky like a thimble, while the sitting people were perhaps 15 centimeters (6 inches) tall.

One page of type – and its result.

Just next to the printing press miniatures – literally ten feet away – is a fairly nice display of a baby in utero. WTF? What happened to organization – putting like things together?

Smoking kills – or so the message seemed to be.

Some interesting displays of earlier man; a couple others showed different species of man from earlier times.

Turn around from the primordial humans and you’ll find birds. Organization on the third floor is a little sketchy at best – but the exhibits are still interesting.

Up to the fourth floor – the space floor:

Plenty of displays and models, but very little about Korea’s space program.

A replica of a satellite.

While the Science Museum has its quirks, it’s certainly worth the trip if you’re a science person or want to encourage it in your kid(s). Not much is available in English, so sights and sounds will be your guiding forces.

What made the area more worthwhile was the newer, flashier exhibit on climate change. The building next door and closer to the street held this exhibit, which runs through August 30th.

Pay 10,000 won to get in (geez) and begin your trip in the same place you got your Science Museum ticket.

Again – virtually everything’s in Korean, but I can guess the red line tracking north to be a reverse timeline (old to the right, new to the left) of environmental threats.

It was shortly after I snapped this picture that I was kindly asked not to take any more. No idea if they want to avoid publicity or damaging their exhibits with a flash unit that’s not being used, but whatever. In a fairly impressive visual display, one could see a spinning globe, created by multiple projectors onto a sphere. It showed the progression of the ice caps (I think) while continuing to rotate.

After moving out of one of the main rooms showing the threats, the next room showed a possible reality:

(At this point, another shutterbug was snapping away and the staff person didn’t seem to care)
The City Hall subway station, perhaps a few decades from now, having been flooded or not kept up. No idea what the subway authorities would say about the exhibit, but it’s certainly a fairly dark picture.

On the other side of the diorama is a girl escaping the flood water. I’m not sure how susceptible Korea is to rising water from climate change, but something tells me this is fairly close to a worst-case-scenario.

The threats of doom and destruction ended as soon as the first floor did. Upon reaching the second floor, the room brightened, flowers bloomed, and kids laughed in the background… No contrast here, of course:

One example of a human-powered machine – turn the crank and watch the propeller turn above. It was meant more for kids than adults based on the crank’s height – hopefully they’ll expend more of their energy and be zonked out by the time they hit the souvenir shop.

Green label clothing, anyone? The descriptions were in Korean, so I can’t tell you what’s different about these fibers compared with others…

A colorful description, pointing out how different activites release different amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Each of the black bags weighed the amounts below them – I’m guessing the kids could lift them and feel the impact of, say, leaving your computer on all night.

Corporate sponsorship or capitalist interest, I’m not sure, but the United Colors of Benneton had a display as well.

Not pictured was a tricycle course on fake grass that took up most of the floor. Kids would pedal around while the parents tried to ensure they didn’t break anything. Um, cute I guess…

The Climate Change exhibit might have been worth the 10,000 won if there were more English to explain the exhibit’s perspectives. That so many lights and one-time-use displays were used in the exhibit made for some well-needed irony – when else will one need the ‘flooded subway’ scene? As for the Science Museum, it’s quirky and showing its age, but may still be worth a visit.

Directions to Seoul National Science Museum / American Museum of Natural History: Take line 3 of the Seoul subway system to the Anguk station. Take exit 4 to street level and pass by both Changdeokgung and Cheonggyeonggung (yes – two palaces!). Turn left at the light and keep walking along the outer wall of Cheonggyeonggung and you will see the Museum just past a small parking lot. This is approximately a 2 km walk – if interested in taking a bus, take exit 5 to street level and get on almost any bus at the first bus stop you come to.

Alternatively, take a bus that stops at Changgyeonggung – buses 101, 102, 104, 406, 107, 108, 140, 143, 149, 160, 162, 171, 172, 272, 301, or 710 all stop across the street from the Museum, coming from many different points of the city.