Election Day - Suicide at Taejongdae?

Wednesday was national municipal elections day. Its been a noisy few weeks leading up to the polls with loud speakers lining every street corner blaring election promises, trucks driving around with political messages blasting and huge groups of people bowing to you as you walk/drive by. Despite all this, in Korea Election Day = Holiday for many company and government offices. So it was a very welcome holiday. In fact I was hoping there would somehow be a tie and they'd have to go back to the polls...but that didn't happen.

Leading up to election day, I was trying to ask some students about what the day was called in English, and so I wrote "Election Day" on the board and asked the kids to read it. And the result was a mix between Election Day and Erection Day as its very hard for some Koreans to differentiate between the two sounds. I had a laugh! Gotta love Erection Day....

I ended up meeting Matt and Marissa for lunch. Marissa and I came to Korea around the same time, but we really haven't hung out at all. So it was really nice to hang out with them and share stories/thoughts about Korea.

After lunch I met up with Jun, his daughter Jinnie, Marie, Dave and Gabrielle (Italian co-worker of Jun). We headed out to Taejeongdae where we hopped on the little train to take us around as it was too far for Jinnie to walk. As we approached the Observation Area we noticed lots of ambulances on the road and saw a dead body on a stretcher being put into an ambulance. It was completely covered in a blanket. I'd assume it was a suicide as that area is well known for suicides. It was really strange to see. I hear that suicide is not uncommon in Korea, especially among young people because the stresses of society are too much to take.

On a happier note, we had a wonderful time walking around Taejongdae. I also ran into Anthony and Rosie (from Brock U.) there which was nice as I haven't seen them for several weeks. I was able to shoot with my new camera (Nikon D5000). The pictures are a bit small, but I'm really impressed by the quality of them! More photos to come!