Getting to Insa Dong proved to be a bit of an ordeal. I took the Subway from Cheyongyangni, to Jongno-(sam)-ga. It’s easy enough to get to the station, but at this particular station, there are three lines that run though, and the exit to Insa Dong is at the far end of the last one. So, I have to walk from the farthest end of the first station, all the way through the second, to the farthest end of the third. It seems to me that it rather defeats the purpose of taking the subway, if you still have to walk about 25 minutes to get where you want to go.
Even though it’s secretly trashy, Insa Dong is still a pretty cool place to look around. My favorite parts of the area, though, were the ones that weren’t trying to be “cultural.” There is a really cool shopping mall, which is really just a giant spiral ramp, with the stores on the outside edge, and open on the inside, so that you can look down into the courtyard below. There were some really interesting stores, leather crafts, jewelry, accessories, and the like. There were also, tucked along beside staircases, and in corners, some really interesting pieces of installation art.While Insa Dong is probably most known for its street vendors, we saw some other really cool (and scary!) things while we were there.
The streets are closed on the weekends to vehicular traffic, because there are so many people. While we were pressing our way through the crowds, we saw a group of people protesting. There were two people with hoods on, and their wrists and ankles tied together, and then to each other. They were being led down the street by a man in an army uniform holding a machine gun! The gunman represented the Chinese army, and the hooded people North Korean refugees, although they clearly were not (even though we couldn’t see their faces, they spoke English, as did the girl who explained to us what was happening, and most of the protesters were white). 
The scenario: as many as 300,000 people defected from North Korea in the last several years, and fled to China to hide. Since China won the bid for the Olympic Games, they have been under pressure to uphold International Law, and so they have been repatriating these defectors; or, they have them arrested or killed (if they are deported back to North Korea, they’ll essentially be killed anyway). The goal of the protests is "No Olympics in Beijing Without Human Rights for North Koreans.” The protest started 444 days before the Olympics are set to start, and it happens every weekend.We followed the protesters for a while, and they eventually led us to a sort of street stage,
where there was a performance of drumming and traditional Korean instruments. It seemed to be a school group, maybe, since they were pretty young. There were some people dancing, too, and at one point this guy was wearing a hat with a really long ribbon on it, and he’d wave his head around, and the ribbon would make big loops in the air. It looked really wacky.After that, we went to my new favorite place, which is called Ice Berry. For a little taste of how amazing and bizarre it is, go to http://www.iceberry.com/ and click on the pink button. It’s really something special. I’ll wait –
Ice Berry is sort of ice cream, except it is actually ice, and cream. It’s a big bowl of chipped ice, and then ice cream on top, and you get it with different toppings (fruit, chocolate, cereal???); I had strawberries on mine. It’s a variation of a really popular Korean dessert called Bingsu, except that Bingsu usually has red beans on it, so it’s a little off-putting, but probably delicious.
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