Jusarang Baby Box Center

We start our day with a visit to the National Museum of Korea. It is the third most visited museum in the world behind the Louvre in Paris and the Vatican Museum.

Our guide did a short tour of some of the more spectacular items like this crown and belt from the Silla Kingdom.

Next was the Room of Quiet Contemplation, that has two sixth century gilded Buddha statues.

We visited Geyongbokgung Palace yesterday and saw the throne from there today in the museum.

We didn’t have a lot of time on our own to see the rest of the museum, Donna chose to look through the Celadon collection, which was quite impressive.

Our group got divided into small groups of four and we went to a home-hosted lunch of Bibimbap. The hosts Donna and I went to were a husband/wife with a 12-year old daughter. The daughter was at school. He is an engineer that had moved into project management and works from home one day a week. She had worked as an architect and designed and assembled his standing desk. They live in an apartment built in 2023 on a steep hillside. On one side of the apartment it’s the ground floor, on the other side it’s the third floor.

Then you mix it up and eat. The korean red chilli paste is called Gochujang, but isn’t too spicy when mixed in. We’ll make some tomorrow.

After lunch, we took a taxi to the Jusarang Baby Box Center for a visit.

Decades ago, Pastor Lee Jong-Rak woke to find a baby freezing on his doorstep with nothing more than a cardboard box to protect the infant from the blustery winter wind. This horrifying discovery eventually led him to install a “drop box” in the wall of his home, which would provide a safe way for people to anonymously leave unwanted babies. Since its inception, 2,209 newborns have been left in the box (last one three days ago), a service that is entirely funded by private donations. In addition to the temperature-controlled box, the Jusarang Baby Box Center also offers help to single mothers faced with this difficult decision, such as temporary shelter, food, and monetary support.

This is the current baby box, it’s heated/cooled and rings a bell in the building when it’s opened. The center always has someone present.

Pastor Lee Jong-Rak had a child with Down’s syndrome, saw many others abandoned, he adopted or is the legal guardian of 16. The center is trying to move its help to pregnant mothers earlier in the process. 30% of the women it helps receive financial medical support and keep the baby, 30% of the women go through an adoption where baby can find mother, mother can find baby and 40% of the babies are turned over to the government.

Around 100 mothers receive a baby care package for 36 months. 80% of the women are Korean, 20% are foreigners, students blue collar workers etc.

The baby box center is in a hilly area with narrow streets. We had to walk a 1/2 mile to get to the city bus stop and rode that back to the hotel.

Rode in Lisa’s Uber to Insa-dong street. Walked through Bukchon Hanok Village a bit. It officially closes at 5 pm, so we didn’t get to go into the heart of it.

Walking past this parking garage, we saw that it was full of lanterns from the festival.

We stopped for chocolate mango/passion fruit gelato before taking the subway back to the hotel area.

Dinner was on your own, we walked over to the night market and Donna tried Gyeran-Bbang, Korean Egg Bread. It’s some bread in a muffin cup with an egg baked in or on top of it.