Can you explain to me how windows work again?

Our first morning in Seoul we woke to find our hotel room was boiling hot and no amount of fiddling with the air conditioner would solve it. On the way out for the day we stopped by the front desk to ask them to look at it while we were out. The clerk responded that they didn't run the air conditioning in the fall but that he could send a fan up to our room. As we walked away he added "Or... you could just open the window. It's quite cool outside."

Now, clearly we're the biggest imbeciles to visit this country but in our defence:

1. Hotel windows in hi-rises never open in North America. (Not because they're worried you'll fall out, but because they're worried you'll screw up the air conditioning and negative pressure inside the hotel.)
2. The window didn't open manually; you had to use electronic controls that were sneakily hidden behind the curtains.

Our tour guide for the morning was one of my (Andrew) old friends from Lister Hall at the University of Alberta (seventeen years ago - crap does that ever make me feel old) who I knew was living in Seoul thanks to Facebook. He gave us the essentials of the city and local customs, and we had a good catch-up before we adventured out on our own. We explored the local tourist market before having a long wander around Gyeongbokgung Palace.

Final thought for the day: cabs are very cheap and efficient here, as long as you're not bothered that the cabbie has a small TV on the dashboard that he watches while he drives. Ours was enjoying women's volleyball.