Korea: JeonJu

Again, I took the bus from Gunsan to get to Jeunju, and another thing I’ve wanted to do is eat Korean convenience store food! So here are two rice ball thingies I’ve never seen before.. and they were both just very o.k. and overpriced.

Throwback to the 1990s for me! But these are all over the country still. less than 50 cents for a tiny cup of coffee or tea. Yool Moo Cha is my childhood.

I’ve had this in Japan (where it’s more appropriate) but I saw one at the bus station/terminal so i grabbed one anyway c: it’s from Crayon Shin Chan!

Once I managed to get out of the station, I headed over to PNB. It’s another famous bakery, and apparently they had some family drama. So you’ll find stores of both chains, and they’re named similar things. Their original “choco pie” is supposedly famous, but it’s all a hoax. a trap. not worth.

The cool part of Jeonju I went to go see is the traditional Korean village. They have a lot of houses still built in the traditional architectural style, and a open museum of a lot of the Korean history that I don’t know.

The cool thing though, is that you can pay a few dollars to experience some of the traditional activities, and one of them was to try on a luxurious traditional korean dress, called hanbok! Apparently what I wore was a wedding dress. oops.

Plenty of other people rent more modern looking ones for a few hours or the whole day and walk around the museum grounds or the streets outside for funsies.

JeonJu, besides the traditional village, is known to have amazing food! So I tackled them all. The first one is roasted squid, and I got the sweet onion flavor. Not super chewy, soft, and absolutely delicious. 7000 won, which is expensive for street food, but its become so commercialized that street food was generally expensive here.

This wasn’t really a street food, but there was a throwback game, called “pick.” You pay a dollar or a few and you can pick a tab, and it tells you what gift you got! and I got the lowest level one, which is some starchy chewy snack from way back when.

One of the dishes Jeonju is famous for is the bean sprout soup. The best, according to online sources, is wang-ee-jip, located a few blocks north of the traditional village area. Only 6 or so dollars for the dish! They bring you a bowl of lightly cooked egg and some seaweed, and what you do is pour some of the hot soup into the egg bowl and rip up the seaweed and mix it up. Then, the egg should be semi cooked and seasoned with the salt from the seaweed! It’s not a common thing in Korea, but a specialty of this area. And the soupy looking brown liquid is an alcoholic drink that tastes cinnamon-y, called Moju. It’s made from cinnamon (obv) and makkoli!

A restaurant called Da Ooh Rang has a couple locations, all a few blocks from each other, and they specialize in dumplings! All sorts of fillings and shapes and methods of cooking. You can pick and choose, and they’ll heat it up for you.

Another famed dish is the “cake-galbi.” Beef is ground up and seasoned and reput together into patties. Generally more pricey than other dishes I’ve been eating (like soups and not hq meats) and worth every bite!

A suuper well known dish is the mixed rice (bibimbab) or jeonju. I dont know what is supposed to be famous about it, but it was damn good. There are a few famous and popular places in the area, but I went to Han Guk Jip.

One of the weird sensations that has taken over Korea is churros.. it’s everywhere, and everyone wants some. But at this place called chu-nam (and other street vendors) they sell something called grapefruit beer. Which sounds and looks fancy, but its just beer with grapefruit extract mixed in. Would rather have regular beer..

To finish up my whole day of just eating, we went up to a cafe called View Cafe (jun mang cafe) which is about 4–5 stories up, and located right north of the village.

The point of this cafe is to be able to see all the beautiful rooftops from above!

Keep walking north of the traditional village, and you can visit a temple situated atop of a hill.. unsure why it’s significant so you can skip that. But continue walking north and you’ll see a small and cute hilly village filled with murals.

And a bunch of perfect photo ops!

A cool thing that happened is seeing two presidential candidates/politicians on the road! The one on the right is a doctor and programmer, and I’ve heard his name and seen him on TV before he turned politician before. I mentioned that I was from Cali, and they immediately OKed a photo. solid.

Something that I was told would be worthwhile is the “young adult mall” that is in one of the old school markets of jeonju. It’s a collection of small trendy shops that have been opened by high schoolers and college students, and theyve made it a tradition to just have young, trendy shops in that little second floor corner. Although I went during the advertised open hours, I didn’t see many shops open.

But all the decoration is pretty hipster, so worth a visit just for that.

There were so many places I didn’t get to visit here: Korean alcohol museum, Kimchi museum, and most of all, the types of restaurants that gives you food depending on how much alcohol you order. Like, 30+ dishes. Now that. is my kind of place. There are a bunch in the area, so drink for me!