Seoulland

This guide to Seoulland in Seoul traces its rushed construction on a bare Gwacheon hillside in the months before the 1988 Olympics, built so Korea could show the world it could produce joy as well as infrastructure. It follows the patchwork of borrowed styles stitched onto this hillside, a Bavarian plaza, a Korean folk-tale hill, an American boardwalk corner, in Korea's first Western-style theme park. The Columbia Double Loop Coaster still runs the same steel track it opened on that first day.