Se ul searching
Alexander Armstrong sees a different side to South Korea’s capital on his latest adventure…
Looking for a pick-meup? The chances are deer antlers and dried frogs wouldn’t be first on your shopping list.
But in the second episode of his series on South Korea, Alexander Armstrong heads to Yangnyeongsi, Seoul’s herbal-medicine market, where these are some of the remedies on sale.
‘There are around 1,000 businesses here offering help for anything from blood pressure and piles to genital warts,’ he says. Playing it safe, Alexander buys Korean red ginseng which is boiled for two days and made into tea. ‘That will put the lead back into anyone’s pencil,’ he says. After a reviving brew, Alexander heads to a street market selling vintage clothing to those leading the way in street fashion – the over-65s. ‘The whole K-fashion phenomenon isn’t limited to the young,’ he says. ‘The older fashionista here in Seoul is absolutely as noticeable.’
On his travels Alexander is served by a robot waiter, snacks on eels, learns to play a 10th-century drum and tries out the games made famous in the hit TV series Squid Game.
‘South Korea effortlessly mixes the ancient and the super-modern,’ he says. ‘Yet it’s only 70-odd years old. It’s younger than
David Hasselhoff!’