Category: My Photos

Any Westerner who has spent time in Korea knows about the “subway ajumma” – the experience of being shoved or trampled by what one would initially expect to be benign tribes of elderly women. In general terms, Koreans have very few of the qualms or social constraints on pushing, shoving, cutting in line, etc., that are so important in typical Western culture. For the most part, in the subway, I’ve gotten used to this and it doesn’t bother me in the least.

Yesterday, however, I had decided to go up to Seoul and go hiking with my friend Mr Kim at Bukhansan National Park. There was something a little bit crazy in driving up to Seoul on Saturday night for what seemed the sole purpose of hiking and Sunday, and then heading back south again Sunday night. That appealed to me. Really, I think Mr Kim had some kind of important errand to run, and he decided this would give an excuse for the trip.

He has a small apartment in an excellent location in Seoul. I think it’s a sort of “investment apartment” – he uses is a few days every other month, or so, as a kind of dedicated hotel room up in the capital. I understand the investment angle – I’m sure, based on its location, that it’s worth a mint. It’s a few blocks from city hall, within the boundary of the now non-existent ancient city walls, near the “media district” (where the newspaper headquarters buildings are strung out between city hall and Seoul Station) and several universities that climb the hills west of downtown toward Dong-nim-mun.

We got there sometime after midnight, Saturday night. We woke up pretty early, but he went to run his errand (to the building manager’s office, he said), and we ate ramen for breakfast. We started hiking from the east side of the Bukhansan (in northeast Seoul) at around 9:30.

The crowds were stunning. It was like hiking in the midst of a migration of goats. I really wasn’t feeling that healthy, it turned out, either. Cold-like symptoms, and still not as energetic as I was feeling before my food poisoning, two weeks ago. After several hours, we ended up skipping the peak. Mr Kim was gamely pushing and shoving his way toward the top, but one elbow too many on a precarious-seeming ledge caused me to finally put my foot down and say, simply, “I can’t do this.” I think he understood why I was unhappy. We got away from the worst of the crowds on an alternate path down.

For future reference – be careful when opting to go hiking in a major national park located within walking distance of the Seoul subway system on a stunningly beautiful (if somewhat chilly), sunny November Sunday.

Here are some pictures.

Leaving my apartment, around sunset on Saturday night. The view southwest from in front of my gas station (which is in front of my building).

Several views from the top of the building where Mr Kim’s apartment is.

Some things that I saw on the mountain, despite the crowds.

Looking toward my old home, Ilsan.

The crowds.  Let’s all go climb a mountain!  Is this fun?

An iconic image that I think well captures contemporary Korea’s spot between past and future.

Yesterday my friend Mr Kim and I went hiking at Duryunsan (두룐산), which is in Haenam County about an hour and a half’s drive south of Gwangju.Originally, we’d discussed taking an overnight to Song-i-do, but Mr Kim couldn’t do an overnight, so we did this instead.

After our hike, we drove another 30 minutes to a place called Ttangkkeutmaeul (땅끝마을), which translates pretty literally as Land’s End Village. That’s because the spot is the southernmost extremity of the Korean mainland. There are thousands of islands scattered in the area farther south, including two large islands, Wando and Jindo, that are connected by bridge – so nowadays Ttangkkeut is no longer the farthest south one can go by car, but historically, Ttangkkeut is the “tip” of the Korean Peninsula.

It was a good day. There were a lot of steep and rocky spots. In Korea, all “up-the-mountain” hiking trails are substantially engineered, but this one included a number of spots where one had to use attached hand-holds, hanging ropes and chains to cling to the sides of pretty steep (not to say sheer) rock faces. I always have a little bit of acrophobia in such situations of exposed heights, but I’m pretty good at just “dealing with it” and pushing along.

So here are some pictures.

I saw some jang-seung (장승 – left and right, above). I love jang-seung – I want to become a jang-seung sculptor in my next career, I think

There was a cheesy stone lion (courtesy Lion’s International) at the park entrance.

Just starting out, we met a group of senior citizens who were starting their day with hefty doses of purple makkeolli (rice beer flavored with some kind of root or flower, I forgot to write down the name).

They insisted I drink with them, and eat seafood jeom pancakes and kimchi. One has to comply with such requests – it’s social obligation. So… two big bowls later (makkeolli is traditionally drunk from bowls, not cups), I began the hike in a bit of a drunken haze.

At the base of the mountain, there was 대흥사 [dae-heung-sa = Daeheung Temple].

I saw a scary demon (or was it a portrait of a new member of anger-rap group Insane Clown Posse? Hard to tell…).

I saw some bodhisattvas (I think they were bodhisattvas) riding on animals.

I saw Siddhartha thinking about his deceased parents.

About halfway up the mountain, we found a construction area near a small hermitage (암), affiliated with the temple.

There was a mysterious backhoe. A construction worker told us he drove it there. But we’d traversed some very rocky and un-drivable paths to get to that point, and so we were sceptical. A monk later told us the construction worker had lied – the backhoe had been delivered with a cargo helicopter.

There was a cute, but rather grumpy, old temple dog.

At this hermitage, we found a 미륵 [mi-reuk = Maitreya, which is “future buddha,” but also is used to refer to a statue of buddha]. It was a big, ancient one, enclosed in a little temple/shelter structure to protect it from further erosion from the elements. It was really awesome to see. It was my favorite part of the hike.

The view from a helipad.

Hints of fall in the foliage.

A difficult, steep stretch, where I had to hang on a rope and pull myself up through a hole in the rocks.

Some panoramic views. Pardon the specks of dirt visible on the camera lens. Looking east.

Looking southeast – toward Wando, I think.

A summit marker.

Mountain-top-deep-thinker.

In this picture, I tried to capture a little bird that Mr Kim told me was rare. You can barely see it, in the lower left quadrant. But I liked the sort of abstract look of the face of rock that the picture captured, so I decided to put it up.

Here is Mr Kim, in among some trees.

This is a charming green moth that was lurking on a lavender-colored flower.

The mountain is supposedly a reclining buddha. So there are multiple peaks: head, belly, feet. I think this is buddha’s head, but looking toward the chin from the valley of his neck/chest area.

Here is a natural stone arch that we went under, after going up some very steep, steel stairs hung on a cliffside.

Clowning around on said steel stairs.

Here is Mr Kim, having one of his long conversations with random strangers, that he likes to enjoy. I think he likes to “brag” about his foreign friend, a little bit – I’m kind of a walking, smiling status symbol, for him. I don’t mind – he’s very intelligent, and, to the extent we succeed in communicating, interesting to talk to. We both learn a lot of each other’s respective languages, although we are often just as exhausted from the effort, mentally, at the end of the day, as physically.

A panoramic view from the peak, looking eastish.

The obligatory top-of-the-mountain victory pose.

Here are some people we met. I mix up the various groups of hikers we meet. This group, or another one, were a church group who served us kimchi, apples, makkeolli (rice beer) and coffee flavored hard-candies: lunch snack of champion mountain climbers everywhere!

Sharing food in the middle of nowhere is a deeply embedded part of Korean culture, I’ve come to believe. My friend Mr Kim will literally walk up to just-met strangers and begin a conversation with something like, hey, do you have any kimbap? Or they will greet us with, hey, get over here and drink some makkeolli – and here’s some kimchi to go with it.

A little monk’s hermitage (암) we encountered on the way down.

The painted wooden panels on the temple building at the hermitage were amazing. I love these things, and they’re easy to find, all over Korea.

Two pictures of boats at Ttangkkeut.

Here is a man parking his boat at a dock where my friend Mr Kim bought an octopus for his wife. That seems like a really romantic Korean thing to do:  buy a fresh, wiggly octopus for one’s loved one. The fisherman’s Korean was incomprehensible to me. And he had a young, Philippine wife standing on the dock, assisting, and her Korean was even worse than mine, and I wondered… how do they communicate? Is communication really even a part of their relationship? It’s very common for rural Korean men, these days, to find “foreign brides” – because all the Korean women go to university and go live in the cities, wanting nothing to do with farmers and fishermen. A very interesting cultural phenomenon.

Here is a tiny scrap of rock with some very Korean-looking trees clambering around on it, just off the coast of Ttangkkeut at the ferry terminal (well, really just a chunk of concrete where the boats can disgorge their vehicles).

A bright half-moon over a tree and rock at Ttangkkeut, at dusk.

A big rock that says “땅끝 .  한반도최남단” [ttang-kkeut.  han-ban-do-choe-nam-dan = Land’s End.  Korean Peninsula’s Southernmost Column (i.e. column of rock on the beach there, I think)]

This morning, I awoke at 6:40, which felt decadent, given I normally get up an hour earlier.  My legs are a bit sore.  There were dumptrucks rumbling, roosters crowing, and goats bleating, outside my window.  For breakfast, I had some coffee and some leftover cake that a student’s mom gifted me with, last week.

I went on a great hike with my friend Mr Kim, today, at 내장산 [naejangsan]. Up the mountain, and down again, pretty fast (about 4 hours). Rain threatened, and then, as we were arriving at the bottom, raindrops. We sat under a canvas awning in a vacant restaurant in the little tourist ville at the entrance to the park area, and ate 전 [jeon = Korean egg and vegetable pancake] and 김치찌깨 [kimchijjikkae = kimchi stew]. And it rained. It was beautiful, and very relaxing.

Here is a picture from the inevitable temple-at-the-bottom-of-the-mountain we stopped at. And a picture of me at the restaurant. I’ll post more pictures tomorrow.

Yesterday I took a day trip. It followed the pattern of many day trips I’ve taken with Koreans – a little bit random, with an initial plan but a lot of ad hoc changes, too. A bit like many things. Unlike in work situations, however, this kind of thing doesn’t bother me in the least. It’s a good way to do things.

I have a coworker, Haewon, who is Gyopo. “Gyopo” is what Koreans call fellow Koreans who are born or have lived abroad and pertain at least as much to that foreign culture as to Korean culture. Haewon grew up in Houston, Texas, and she is not a full-time teacher – she’s kind of bottom-of-the-totem pole, because she’s young – university age – and I don’t think she holds a Korean teaching certification. She’s kind of just a teaching assistant or part-timer. Anyway, being the only truly bilingual person in the school (and possibly the only truly bilingual person in the entire town of Hongnong), she often gets stuck with “translator duty,” which I think must be very hard on her.

At first, I didn’t feel that comfortable around her – she seemed too serious, and kind of gloomy. But I’ve come to think highly of her. She’s quite intelligent, although she hides it for the most part, and she’s got a sort of understated, wry sense of humor that shows up at odd moments. Friday, she told me she had been invited by one of her adult students (she teaches a night class at the nuclear power plant) to go drive down and look at Boseong, which is where the famous green tea plantations are, at the other end of Jeollanam Province. She conveyed her student’s invitation that I could come along too.

The adult student was Mr Kim, who is a nuclear engineer who works at the power plant as a senior reactor operator. Interesting stuff. He’s my age. He’s trying desperately to improve his English (because his next promotion depends on a certain minimum level of proficiency – it’s tied to recent contract the Korean Nuclear Power company has finagled to build reactors for the United Arab Emirates), hence the fact of his taking the night class, with Haewon, and also his invitation through her to any “foreigners” she might know to spend a Saturday hanging out and touring around. He’s a nice guy, and generous.

We didn’t follow the plan of going straight to Boseong. We ended up going the opposite direction, at first, because he wanted to go see this giant causeway (it’s a bit like the giant polders the Dutch have built to increase the size of their country, in engineering terms). First, though, we stopped at a ancient Buddhist temple called Seonsun, which is one of the oldest in Korea, having been established in 577.

The causeway, which stretches south of Kunsan in a great arc jutting into the Yellow Sea, is called Saemangeum, and basically, as I hinted, the Koreans appear to be taking a cue from the Dutch and are attempting to build more, brand new South Korea, from scratch. One dumps dirt and rocks and cement into the ocean, fills things in and drains water, adds roads, trees, buildings, harbors, and viola, more Korea!

The project is still in early stages, but the plan is humongous, vast – and although it’s not terribly photogenic, especially in the sticky summer fog, I tried to take some pictures. Then we drove to Boseong, after stopping at a fish market in Kunsan and eating some dried, smoked octopus tentacle, and then nearly drowning in a rainstorm while tailing a dumptruck.

Here are some pictures. I really liked the dumptruck bas-relief attached to the monument at Saemangeum – it would maybe make a good logo for my blog.

Here is a flower I saw at the side of the road, while walking to meet Haewon and Mr Kim at 7 in the morning.

Peering into one of the temple buildings, at Seonsunsa.

Me and the dumptruck.

Me and Mr Kim.

The giant, super-humongous tidal flood gates, near the midpoint of the 50 km. long dike that we drove along.

A stream in the woods near the tea fields.

Peering at tea from under cedars, misty day.

Tea fields.

More tea.

Me, candidly, eating naengmyeon.