Korea 2011: The Olympic Park: The entrance

The Olympic Park covers 1.5 million square meters.  It was built to meet the requirements of the 1988 summer olympics, hosted by Korea.  It can be found at Songpa-gu.

As space is never wasted in Korea, the park has been converted into a very pleasurable park for the use of citizens of Korea and tourists.  Everything in the park, except for any food that one might choose to purchase is free.  There may be small entrance fees to one or two of the museums.  I don't recall paying for anything like that.  Here is the entrance to the Park:

Entrance

Close-up of artwork on the roof on the entrance

As one walks towards the entrance, there are sentries or guardians marking the walkways.  These statues are sort of like totem poles, each of which has a unique face.  Here are examples of two of them:

Below the rather imposing roof of the entrance are pools:

Behind the entrance is an enormous plaza with one or two monuments, one of which is the Olympic Flame:

This flame, since time of lighting in 1988 has never been allowed to go out.

Behind the plaza is a semicircular archway of the flags of all countries represented at the Summer Olympics of 1988:

The above takes time to process.  It is immense as well as being thoroughly awe-inspiring.  In the next post, I'll take you into some of the features of the park.