A note about the pictures. The images that you might want to see are small so click on the picture to enlarge them on the web browser, Ara

1. At the top of the hill in the center you can see a North Korean guard post.

2. This is on the reverse slope of the observation observatory, not facing the north. The Korean words spell out "One Country"

3. This is the best shot that I could get of the north south transit point, toll booths, and visitors center. If you click on the image and look at the bottom right of the green sign at center you can see that it says, "North South Transit Point."

4. Looking back south at the beach. Note the rail line and the excellent shape that it is in. It was just opened to serve as a way to transport goods to the North Korean port of Woosan.

5. Tour busses heading to Mount Gamesong. The mountain is the tallest one in the distance to the right. The actual border can be seen about fifty meters in front of the busses. Look at the road and note what looks like big pillars on either side. This is the border.

North Korea

Sokcho Diary 25.9.06

Sunday was a pretty big day for me. After having lived in Korea off and on for just over a year now I finally got to go up to the border of the last Stalinist, closed, society left in a world that has seen the fall of almost every Communist country.

There was a time, just twenty short years ago when the communist world was still going head to head with the capitalist one. Communism held sway over Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Cuba, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and North Korea. Almost half of the world was under some form of Communist rule.

All that has now changed. Russia has become a democracy, at least in name, and its former client republics have emerged to become some of the newest democratic nations on the face of the earth. Some like Hungary and the Baltics have met with success and been welcomed into the realm of “free world” countries while others like Belarus and the central Asian republics have descended into chaos and dynastic rule. China and Vietnam are Communist in name only, having both engaged a free market economy that has started to become real players in the world markets, especially China. Cuba, a country that I thought would remain a stalwart of the revolution for, well, ever, is starting to turn, slowly but surely, to a market economy and Latin America, despite the left leaning, socialist ideas of the leaders of Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, and Chile has embraced a more moderate brand of Socialism rather than moving to a radical form of Communism that I thought would surely follow the collapse of the ruling military juntas.

So that leaves the D.P.R.K., the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, as the lone holdover to the days of Stalin, secret police, and five year plans. And here I am, just twenty-five miles away from the last workers paradise left on earth. I had to get as close as possible to it.

My friend Kelsey, who works at Dari School, also has a perverse fascination with the forbidden places that still litter the earths surface and she said that she would head up to the border with me so that I could have some company.

Amazingly enough here in South Korea, a country littered with heavily armed troops getting to the border of a nation that has been intent on invading it with its army of 1.1 million men for about fifty years, it only takes a short ride to get to what Bill Clinton called “the scariest place on earth.”

We hopped the number one bus to Dajin right outside of our building about noon and headed north. The sea was to the right, the east side, and on the west we passed miles of rice fields with the Taebak Mountains behind them. This far north the beaches stretch for miles, unbroken sand with crystal clear waters and not a soul on them. Here security is taken vary seriously. While there are a few beaches open at times for public use most of them are closed off with huge swaths of barbwire and fences with small guard posts. The threat from the north is taken so seriously that, every morning, teams of conscript soldiers are sent out to rake the sand of the beaches smooth so that footprints leading up from the waters edge will readily betray an incursion.

Something truly odd here, despite all the fear of invasion and incursion, is the constant idea that reverberates throughout the country of unification. When you ask a Korean where they are from the always say “Korea” not North Korea or South Korea, but Korea as a whole. They firmly believe, as do I, that one day soon there will be no division of the peninsula, that all Koreans will be from one country. Nowhere is this more evident than the huge new four-lane freeway under construction from Sokcho to the north. It goes all the way to the border and stops about five miles from the D.M.Z. where there are tollbooths and a visitor’s center ready and waiting to facilitate traffic up the peninsula.

When we got off the bus in Dajin we had to go up to the visitor’s center to buy tickets, a whopping two bucks for the both of us, and more importantly since there are no busses that run all the way to the border, find a ride.

Kelsey and I were totally prepared to pay forty bucks for a taxi ride up to the border but when we bought our tickets the lady at the booth asked us if we had a car to get up north and when we said we did not she asked the two Koreans behind us if they would mind taking us with them and it was no problem. These really nice people were the epitome of Korean kindness as they cleaned out the back seat of their car to make room for us, and so we set off.

After passing through a checkpoint where we had our papers checked we passed through the northernmost town in South Korea, a charming, rural place of about a thousand people, just a fishing village with a new school, some boats, and a few tractors. Nothing really that identified this as the last bastion of democracy before the proverbial line in the sand.

One thing that really struck me on the road past the village was the huge free way and tollbooths that were next to the little two lane road that we were on. Here the road was completed and just waiting for traffic to be able to move north and south just like it was in 1945 when you could board a train in Pusan and take it all the way to Paris.

When we got up to the visitors center I had the eeriest feeling of being watched. On the observation platform the sensation was almost unbearable. Here I was just a mile from the border and I knew that I had already been photographed by South Korean intelligence, D.P.R.K. border troops, the C.I.A, and who knows whom else. It was so strange to know that so many people were watching me.

Looking at the huge expanse of beach and crystal clear water that ran unbroken to the north you could just sense that everywhere around you were enough troops and munitions to plunge the world into a massive conflict that would probably include the use of nuclear, biological, and conventional weapons.

Looking at the north all you could see were mountains and trees. The only buildings were a D.P.R.K. guard post on the top of a hill and some huts at the borderline. No troops, no flags, no propaganda, nothing. All you could see were mountains, the beach, and some rocky islets just off shore. There were no boats in the vast sea, no fishing buoys that are so common off the shore in Korea, nothing, just empty hills and the sea, and then, out of the corner of my eye, a hint of the surreal. Heading up the highway to Gamesoung Mountain, the third most sacred peak in Korea, were eleven tour busses in a convoy, no doubt packed with tourists going off to see a heavily sanitized version of the last Stalinist state.

Picture One-
Buddha giving to the poor, a frescoe at the temple

Picture Two-
The view from half way up the mountain looking twoards the sea

Picture Three-
The bell tower

Picture Four-
The view from the top of the mountain

Ulzinbawi- The Old Man

Sokcho Diary

23.9.06



There is a new waygooks here in town, an Irish lad named Conner from Dublin. He just arrived in Sokcho last week and we met here in Dongjin today as I was leaving to go and climb Ulzinbawi with Karen. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and being new in town I asked him if he would like to go up the mountain with us, kind of like a little tour.

We walked down to the bus stop about noon, and what a nice day it was. Blue skies with little streaks of white clouds at about twenty five thousand feet and a warm sun keeping the temperature at about seventy degrees, a really great fall day.

We met Karen down by Sokcho beach where she lives, on the other side of town from me and we rode out to Sorak-san together, talking about schools, jobs, and the places that we have been.

Turns out that this is Conner’s second tour in Korea, he had worked for a chain school in Incheon before and wanted to get back to nature this time around so he looked around a bit and found our little piece of heaven here in Gangwon-do.

We rode out through the river valley, past the rice fields that are just about ready to harvest. It was just a few weeks ago that the rice paddies were a deep, dark green and now they have become golden, like ripe wheat. The hulls at the top of the rice wave gently in the breeze that has become a daily part of here in Sokcho.

Rice is what makes life here in Korea what it is. A popular greeting, still to this day, here in Korea, is “Did you eat your rice today?” This harks back to the time just after the Korean War when food of any kind, even rice, was scarce. It is good to see, even today in the age of huge agribusiness, the small family farms here, and all over Korea, that provide this staple to the Korean people.

Back to the story of Ulzinbawi, so sorry for the digression about rice!

When the bus headed through Sorak town the traffic started. Even though the leaves are not even starting to turn the park was packed with tourists from all over Korea and even abroad. The bus was stuck in a massive traffic jam and we got off at the Kensington Hotel stop to walk the rest of the way.

After stopping by the statue of Buddha to pray for a safe hike we headed up into the hills. Along the way we stopped and went through a temple that was originally built in 1543, destroyed during the Korean War and rebuilt in the sixties.
This temple is not the commercial enterprise that so many have become. It is a pretty simple place with a few buildings housing the gold statues of Buddha and some long, low, yellow buildings that the monks live in.

All the buildings are painted in brilliant colours and have wonderful frescos on the walls depicting Buddha seeking enlightenment and giving to the poor.

When you walk through the main gate of the temple you pass through a building that houses some statues of Buddha and the saints. In front of you is a gravel courtyard with a two buildings, one bigger than the other, that house the gold statues of Buddha where the faithful kneel and pray, lighting joss sticks to ensure good fortune.

Behind the courtyard there is a small building, probably the most ornate in the temple that houses the bell that calls the monks to prayer. The building is painted in brilliant colours, reds, greens, blues, and yellows and there is a small walkway leading to it, unfortunately blocked off. The bell itself is huge and there is a wooden beam tied on a frayed rope that hangs next to the bell that the monks slam against the bell to make its sound.

After leaving the temple we hiked up through the greenery and past the usual rest areas that serve beer, soju, and seafood pancakes.

When we got to the base of the rock we started up through a rock fall and soon reached the bottom of 833 very steep stairs that wind their way up to the top.

After about forty minutes we reached the top of Ulzinbawi. The rock outcropping that is Ulzinbawi looks out over Sokcho and the sea. There is not one specific peak; rather it stretches in a line about a half a kilometer like jagged teeth that are set away from the more major mountains that are behind the rock.

A very old Korean legend says that the god of the city of Ulsan heard that the Sokcho area was very beautiful and he decided to move there. When he got to Sorak-san all of the other gods had taken the best spots and he was forced to move outside of Sorak-san and he became the jagged line of peaks that have become Ulzinbawi.
I really expected the climb to be harder than it was. People had been telling me for a while that this climb was very difficult and strenuous, that the 833 stairs would do me in, but it just wasn’t. Too be honest I felt the climb was almost too easy, it lacked the challenge of Dae-chun-bong, the mountain that I climbed a few weeks ago. While the view from the top was good and it was fun to climb with Karen and Conner I am going to seek out more strenuous hikes before the snow and cold of winter close down the hiking in Sorak-san.

Transient Friends


Picture One
Everyone gathered at Matthew and Catherines for the great give away of things they are not taking with them.

Picture Two
My good friends Matthew and Catherine

Picture Three
Eating a last lunch with Matthew and Catherine and the rest of the A.P. crew. We are eating Pak Ban. Pak Ban means a meal consisting of side dishes. We have close to eighty differant dishes on the table to try.






Sokcho Diary

20 September 2006



One thing that really sucks about Korea is the social scene. I do not mean that the people I hang out with are not fun, they are. I have had some great times with the A.P. crew so far, and I hope to have many more. The people I have met here so far have been great. We go out for drinks, go hiking, head out to do our shopping together, we hang out a lot and they are some great people.

What I do mean is that here, in Korea; you are always losing your friends. Every month or two people who you really like leave just when you are getting to know them. It is the nature of the beast that we all live with here.

In Korea all of us waygooks are on one-year contracts. That means that every month someone’s contract comes up, and if they do not re-sign, they leave.

Case in point, Matthew and Catherine, two of my co-teachers at A.P. They were, are, wonderful people that I enjoyed seeing everyday and doing things with. I pretty much spent every weekend on the past month and a half hiking with Matthew and then going out for drinks with he and Catherine, but alas, it was there time to go two weeks ago.

In the next few months I will be saying goodbye to Kelsey and Lloyd, two other people who I have grown fairly fond of since I came here and I am pretty sad about it.

It works both ways too. When my contract is up, I will leave behind people who have just arrived and who have started to hang out with whom, and me possibly, will be a little upset that I am leaving as well.

So what does friendship with other foreigners mean in Korea? Well, in short, you live it up as much as you can. You live one day at a time and have a blast doing it. No one brings up the date that they will be going back to the real world, back to jobs, families, friends, bills, the rat race of Europe or the States. This is the life we have chosen, and while it is a good one, the sacrifices that we make, in terms of friends and relationships, is a profound, deep, sense of loss that we do not share with anyone. We just keep it inside and deal with it alone.
So this beast, this life of teaching overseas that I have chosen for my career, will it always be this way? Will I always have to make new friends and lose others? Probably, but will it make me any less of a social animal? I don’t think so. I make a lot of friends here, some I will keep in touch, others not, but they all add to my being in some way or another.

Picture One (Top Left)
A pretty gritty part of town down by the water. The large building to the right was abandoned about half way through construction. This is suppossed to be picture three on the walk

Picture Two (Top Right)
Crossing the bridge very near school. Note the mountains looking west. That is part of Sorak-san Park. Picture four of the walk.

Middle Left
The building my school is in, note A.P. English sticker on the third floor. Our chicken place is at the lower right with the red sign. This is the fifth picture of the walk

Middle Right
The main street in Sokcho the Brits have got me started calling it the "High Street". In Britian this means the main commericial street in town. This is where all the cool stuff (such as it is) is and happens in Sokcho. Picture two in the series

Bottom
Just leaving Dongjin (my building) one of our two bus stations in town is just to the right. From here you can take busses to anywhere in Korea. Straight ahead is the ferry terminal and naval base where I saw five South Korean frigates and two destroyers this morning.

Sokcho Diary-

17 September 2006

Walking to School-

Its twenty after twelve, time for you to come with me on my little walk to work. It will take us about forty minutes and I can show you a bit of my town on the way.

Down the elevator to the first floor and out the revolving door. Do you see the little guard shack to the right? Wave to the guy, he is good to have on your side as that is the man who can unlock your door if you come home drunk and have lost your keys. When I make cookies I always take a few down to him.

Past the gate, lets make a left and walk past the tennis courts, church, and cultural center on the other side of the road. On our right is the Dok-do singing room that has very peculiar sounds coming from it late at night as drunken Korean ashojis caterwaul into the wee hours of the morning here.

At the corner we go left again, towards the sea. See the bus station across the road? You can take a bus from here to anywhere on the peninsula for, at the most, thirty bucks.

Lets keep going, past the butchers and the gas station. On this street you can see Yeogwans (small hotels) restaurants and other cheap shops selling a few essentials, nothing big,

At the reunification statue, a stone monument of a mother and child looking longingly at their homes in the communist north that they had to abandon, we turn left. The ferry terminal is just behind the statue. From hear you can go to Russia and Japan. This is also where the Korean navy keeps a squadron of five frigates that are currently tied side by side to a pier across from the ferry terminal.

This street that we are on now is the high street. The main commercial heart of Sokcho. Here we can see a lot of brand name shops and their Korean knockoff alternatives. To the left is the administrative heart of the city. The courthouse, city hall, it is all here in this one big complex.

Do you see the two little restaurants just down from the gun shop that only sells b.b. guns? The ones with all the deep fried goodness out front? Lets stop and grab some squid and sweet potatoes for a couple of bucks, a good quick lunch. If we eat standing up at the counter we can dip our stuff in the soy sauce flavored with ginger, scallions, onions, and chilies.

At Mr. Pizza we turn left, off the high street. Above Mr. Pizza do you see Dari International School? That is where my friends Helen and Kelsey work. That school does not only English but also Chinese and Japanese.
Down this little side street, past a couple of restaurants and some love motels is a dirt road, we take a right here.

See that uncompleted building? The one that is about ten stories of bare cement and unfinished room completely open to the elements? What a waste. Millions of dollars spent and there it sits, never to be finished, slowly sinking into the muck.

Further we go down the road, past the recycling center where the handicapped and disadvantaged scrape out a few won, enough to buy some kimchi and rice, working ten hours a day sorting through the debris of a society that has swept them to the curb to fend for themselves with no help from the state.

After about a quarter mile we see Yongin Lake and the park around the west shore. See the football fields and trees, the bike paths around the lake. It’s a pleasant place to while away an afternoon. I wish I could sit here with you awhile but I have to run to work.

Across the bridge we go. To the left is Yongin Lake and to the right, the west, are the mountains of Sorak-san Park. If it was a little clearer we could see Ulzimbowi, the Old Man, a ragged set of limestone teeth that look over Sokcho.

Over there is Tire Pro. See it, the green building? We have to cross the main road here and take a quick jog left. Quick look up to the third floor of the building with the Koreana chicken sign on the bottom of the building. See the A.P. logo on the third floor? That’s my work. I have to go in now, so why don’t you head down to Gimpap Click for some donkas and I will meet you around eight at Koreana for some chicken and beer.

Sokcho Diary

The Cave Hike

13.9.06


One of the many hiking trails in Sorak-san Park is a hike up to a Buddhist shrine deep in the mountains. One of the first big hikes that I did with my friend Wojtek when I got here was to head up to the cave as he had never been there and I really wanted to see it.

When you take the bus to Sorak-san you go along a river valley lined with some very traditional villages that sit on the banks of a boulder strewn river that looks tame now but you can tell has seen some terrific floods in its day by the size of the rocks that litter the river bed. There just had to be some tremendous forces of water rushing down from the mountains to carry these massive stones into where we see them now.

When you get almost to the gate to the park the bus goes over this bridge and through the town of Sorak. This is a nothing but a rest stop, a tourist town. There are a few min-baks (homes that rent rooms), yeogwan (small hotels), and two five star palaces, the Star Hotel and the Kensington arms that are very high dollar. Along with a few homes and stores this is all that exist in the town of Sorak proper.

While touristy, Sorak does have on redeeming quality. It is incredibly beautiful. It sits on the slopes of the river valley and the town extends a little bit up the sides of the mountains. Everything is a brilliant green and the peaks rise up the valley with tops of craggy limestone. Have you ever seen a painting from Asia with the mist rising over a verdant green slope crowned with pinnacles of bare rock? That is what this town, and the park of Sorak-san looks like.

We hiked through the gate, paying our whopping 3400-won entrance fee, about four dollars and stopped by the five-story statue of Buddha. Even though I am a baptized Catholic, when I am in Asia, I do as the locals do. As this area, and everything in it, is essentially a Buddhist retreat, I have always felt that it is only appropriate that I stop by the statue and pay my respects, asking for a safe hike from the gods.

From the statue it was a pretty easy hike up to the start of the mountainside where the cave is located. We stopped at a couple of rest areas on the way to have jon, Korean pancakes, stuffed with mountain vegetables and squid and had a couple bottles of soju. I know, it was early in the morning but it really goes great with food and well, it tastes good.

When we got to the last area before the cave there was a little signposts with distances to various points along the trail. The one we wanted pointed to the right, across the river, and said, “Cave, .6 kilometers”. Easy we thought, that is only 600 meters about six football fields, hell we could walk that in about fifteen minutes we said and started off. It took about ten minutes before we realized that it was going to take us a tad bit longer than fifteen minutes because the “mere” 600 meters happened to be straight up, an exciting vertical climb.

First we scrambled up the obligatory rock fall, the trail marked occasionally by a small rope as our only guide, what fun!

After about a half hour scramble we came to a very narrow ledge where the trail forked, the left went over a pass to a temple deep into the mountains, about fifteen miles away and looked like sheer and utter hell. You know the ten thousand yard stare that combat veterans have? That is the look on the faces of about five Koreans stumbling towards us. They looked like they had come from the seventh pit of hell and had absolutely no desire to head back. Luckily the cave was to the left, up 963 steep metal stairs, oh boy!

As we looked up at said stairs I turned to Wojtek and uttered the only words I said from there to the cave and said, “I hate fucking stairs”, took the lead, and started heading up.

The hike was awesome. We kept heading up and up and were constantly rewarded with views of the mountains and the peaks with layer after layer of mist rising up. It looked like those old landscape paintings of China from Szechwan Province.

After about forty-five minutes we reached the cloud line and could not see anything for a little while. Wojtek had taken the lead and it was getting tough to see his white t-shirt about five meters above me.
We finally broke through the cloud line at about 850 meters, right at the entrance to the cave. It was a little disappointing until I realized that is peace and beauty were not to be found in a gaudy, church like place but in the simplicity of a small gold Buddha statue with a few prayer lanterns and some burning joss sticks.

The Big Night Out

Top-

The crew who made it to the Western Bar. From the lower left: Lloyd-Welsh, Kelly-British, Stewart-Scottish, Karen-Aussie, Helen-British, Kirsty-Aussie

Second-

At the Zu-Zu club in fine form @ 3:00 a.m.

Third-

Out side Koreana Chicken-

Catherine (with her back to the camera),
Matthew, Wotek, Kirsty, Karen, Helen, Kelsey

Fourth-

The girls singing "Buttercup"

Fith-

Lloyd singing with his new Korean buddy

Sokcho Diary

The Big Night Out

So a couple of weeks ago the A.P. crew, Matthew, Catherine, Kirsty, Karen, and I decided to get together after work at our local chicken place right down below the kids school.

We have been doing this every Friday night, going out for chicken, beer, and dried fish. We usually have salt and pepper chicken, sesame chicken, Cass beer, Soju, and dried Pollack. A great end to a tough week.

It was a cool night and after snacking a bit we decided to head down to Bar Western, a local watering hole that draws a good mix of Koreans and ex-pats with its mix of western décor and, for some reason, a ton of Oriels pennants on the wall.

At this fine establishment you can get anju, light appetizers, makju (beer), soju, and padu-soju (grape juice and soju mixed in a pitcher, it kills the taste and makes the firewater taste like kool-aid, lethally deceptive). Since we were in the mood to drink and had just eaten we ordered a lot of beer and padu-soju and proceeded to tell stories and lies until about two a.m.

After amassing a whooping 64,000 bar tab for all of us (about $70.00) we headed over to the Zu-Zu Club a karaoke bar and met some new friends!

We all had a great time singing and acting like drunken fools. I was even able to finally understand how to play cricket! The night was pretty much a blur so I do not have a lot to say about it but it was a blast and I finally headed home about five.

Five-Dollar Vittles

Sokcho Diary

10.9.06



I went out for a late lunch today here in Sokcho and I thought that I would share with everyone what that really entails here in Korea.

I love Korean food, in fact I rarely, if ever, eat western food in Korea. Now when I go to Seoul or Pusan I do partake of some ethnic stuff that I just cannot get to easily in the small towns where I hang out but that is usually Indian, Thai, or Mexican food. Stuff I love but not your typical burger and fries kind of stuff that we eat back home.

So anyway I went out on this really nice fall day. Really high skies with streaks of clouds, a brisk wind, and temps in the mid seventies made it a perfect day for a little stroll.

First I went behind my place to the ocean and walked through the Sunday fish market down by the ferry terminal. There were trays of sea urchins, all kinds of fish, you can get fresh caught mackerel here for about two bucks a fish, and tanks filled with all kinds of fish and shellfish. Stuff like red snapper, sea bream, mussels, oysters, scallops, squids, flatfish, and rays, all alive and ready to be either picked out and served at a handy restaurant or taken home for the family.

I cruised past this stuff and went to the Gatte boat, a hand pulled ferry that goes maybe fifty meters across the channel that connects the two harbours, really cool actually, and turned right, again paralleling the sea.
Walking further south I passed through what is locally referred to as North Korea Town as this is where many refugees settled after the war and walked toward the bus station. This is a very quiet, very religious part of town so few shops were open and even fewer people were out and about on the streets so I pretty much had the place to myself

The houses seemed empty and deserted but you could see kids toys on the ground and on a roof there was a bunch of fish drying in the fresh salt air. This part of town, as befitting its almost refugee status, as very poor and the houses look it. There are very few cars here and a lot of homes do not have electricity. Hard to believe but true.

I finally got to one of my favorite places to eat here in Sokcho, a little hole in the wall down by the bus station that us waygooks call the Orange Place because the front is all orange. It is very popular with the locals and since it only has four tables I was pretty glad that it was empty so I would not have to wait.

The specialties of this place include sam-gap-syal, galbi-tang, and kimchi jiggahe.

Sam-gap-syal is like bacon but fattier, in the states we would call it fat back. It is grilled on your table on a gas grill and then stuffed in lettuce and sesame leaves with rice, kimchi, garlic, and onions. It is a really heavy meal and is best shared.

Kimchi jiggahe is kimchi stew with tofu and soybeans. It is fantastic but not really what I wanted. Besides, I have another place I go to for it that serves it with fresh clams and dried anchovies and that is a little better.

What I really wanted was galbi-tang, one of the best, if not the best soup in Korea. Galbi means beef ribs and that is what it is, beef short rib soup. It comes in a clear broth with noodles and the broth is flavored with fresh onions, scallions, garlic, ginger, egg, salt and pepper. Really, if the lady would have just brought me the flavored broth, with nothing else I would have been really happy. The shreds of beef, bone, and vegetables are really just a bonus.

The picture of the meal you see at the top is what I got and I will describe the dishes for you as best I can.

At the lower left is the bowl of glabi-tang and beside it the bowl of rice that you always get when you order soup, (you do not always get rice with every dish in Korea, contrary to popular belief.)

In the middle row, going from left to right is seaweed kimchi. This is fresh, not dried seaweed flavored with red pepper. It tastes slightly salty, mildly hot and excellent. A great source of iron and iodine.

In the center of the middle row is lightly fired tofu with peppers fried in egg batter, probably my favorite dish on the table other than the galbi-tang.

On the right side of the middle row are toasted soybeans flavored with pepper. Crunchy like popcorn they are fantastic. I fry them at home sometimes for a snack. They taste like pepper popcorn without the salt.

On the top left is radish kimchi. These are small Chinese radishes made like kimchi with onions, salt, garlic, and red peppers. Not my favorite, I prefer regular kimchi but not bad.

Finally on the top right is cucumber kimchi. Baby cucumbers with salt, pepper, anchovy, red pepper paste. They are soft, not crisp, but excellent.

I sat there eating my soup, slurping my noodles, just like a regular Korean for about an hour, just watching life go by the window.

Total cost for this whole meal was 5000 won, about five dollars.

Sokcho Diary

9 September 2006

The Ships of Gangnueng

It’s finally the weekend here in sunny Korea! Thank God! This week was long and torturous, the kids were really wild, Matthew and Catherine left, and one of our Korean teachers was fired. It was obviously a stressful week and I really needed to get out of town today by myself.

I was looking around in my guidebook at some close places that I could get to pretty cheaply and quickly. I did not want to spend all day and night traveling and I really did not want to spend a lot of money doing it.

I decided on the city of Gangnueng for my trip for a couple of reasons. First of all it is only about an hour away by bus and the cost of 6,000 won really appealed to me. Second Gangnueng has something that you will see nowhere else in the world. An actual North Korean submarine that came ashore in 1999 and that you can actually get into and look around in, so off I went.

I got up a little later than I wanted to, the going away party for Matthew and Catherine having gone into the very small hours of the morning so I did not actually get to the bus station until about 11:30 and had just ten minutes to get to the bus and grab a seat. Luckily it was pretty empty so I was able to grab one on the side that would face the sea.

We pulled out right on time; Korean busses are amazingly good for that and headed out of town. It was supposed to rain but instead was just cool and cloudy, a really nice day.

We went down the coast road, paralleling the sea for a while then headed in land. The view as typical of Korea. Rice fields everywhere with mountains covered in cloud to the west. The rice is about a month away from harvest and is starting to get to be a golden colour. The paddies have been dry for some time now, they are only flooded in the spring, and you could see a few farmers out in the fields checking the crops.

The bus made a few stops along the way in various villages (in Korea a town with –ri after its name denotes a very small village). People got on and got off with various packages. Styrofoam containers of squid, bags of vegetables, and assorted other goodies that people here accumulate on a daily basis.

We finally got to Gangnueng after about an hour and I made a beeline for the tourist information booth. My buddy Matthew had been down here a couple months ago and mentioned that the woman at the booth spoke really good English and he was right! This amazingly beautiful Korean woman who spoke perfect English really helped me out. I got an English map of the town with, amazingly, an English language bus schedule. This lady was incredibly helpful, amazing in Korea where so many people, even are afraid to use their English skills even if they have them.

I was able to get on the correct bus and make it to the transfer point, coincidentally right across from the only McDonalds within one hundred miles of me and waited for an hour for my bus. The dreaded subliminal advertising must have worked because I stopped there on the way back to the bus station for a Big Mac.

After an hour good old bus no. 111 stopped by and I paid my ninety-five cents for a forty-minute ride to the submarine.

Again we paralled the sea, going through pretty seaside fishing towns with picturesque beaches and rocky islets covered with pine trees. After a while, out of the distance, five a five inch gun turret became visible, then the hull of a destroyer.

I knew that I had reached my destination and hit the buzzer, jumping off the bus for a tour of some really cool naval architecture. At this little naval park was the former destroyer U.S.S. Larson and what I had really come to see, a North Korean infiltration submarine.

For the whopping price of 2000 won I was able to get into and tour both ships. Being the communist that I am, I of course started off with the submarine.

The D.P.R.K., the formal name of North Korea is the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea sub was about forty meters long, around 125 feet, and incredibly cramped, I think it was made for three foot gnomes. There were still scorch marks in the radio room where the captain of the submarine tried to burn his documents before they were captured.

After walking through the sub, investigating the periscopes and viewing the incredibly cramped crew quarters I moved on to the destroyer.

The U.S.S. Larson was built in 1944 in Bath Maine and served the U.S. navy in the Second World War, the Korean conflict, and Vietnam before being sold to the South Korean government in 1972 and it served with the R.O.K. navy until being retired in 1999 after firing rounds in the first Gulf War.

So the really cool thing about this ship is that it has been totally Koranafied. You know that cheap fake wood flooring? It is really crappy and in every Korean apartment, including my own. Light brown with a fake wood grain it is just about the ugliest thing to put on a floor and it is in every room of this ship.

On the flip side, what is cool is the gun turrets and anti-aircraft cannon that you can operate, unfortunately without shells or firing pins.

So before I close I will post a few notes.
The Submarine Incursion-

On 18 September 1999 a taxi driver motoring along the coast south of Gangnueng spotted what he thought was a whale close inshore. On further inspection it was determined to be a North Korean infiltration sub and the entire country was seriously motivated to get out and look for commies.
In the end the thirty-man crew was hunted down and killed over a two-month period with a loss of about twenty South Korean soldiers and civilians, most due to friendly fire. One agent was captured alive and is still in prison here in the R.O.K.
Interestingly enough the governor of Gangwon-do, the province where I live was awarded a medal for being the “Outstanding Anti-Communist of the Year” in 1999.

A Note About Pictures-

Top Left- A guard tower overlooking the ships. Note the heavy machine gun on top. This area is still a high-risk security area.

Top Right- A broadside shot of the North Korean submarine.

Middle Left- A bow shot of the destroyer.

Middle Right- Bow 5-inch gun mount on the destroyer.

Bottom- Interior shot of the central control room of the submarine.

Post Script-

I have more pictures of this, and all of my other blogs if anyone would like some, just email me.

Ara

Sokcho Diary

Daechun-bong 3.9.06

This Sunday I did one of the hardest physical things that I have ever done. Matthew, Karen, Kirsty, Helen, and I decided to head up to the peak of Daechun-bong, one of the highest mountains on the peninsula.

Daechon-bong rises up in the middle of the Taebek range that parallels the east coast of Korea. The mountain itself is not that high as far as mountains go, only 1780 meters, that is about 5200 feet for you non-metric people. But it rises steeply to an initial, false, first peak and then it is a twelve hundred meter trek up to the true peak.

We had to start off early so I met Helen and Kirsty downstairs around 6:30 a.m. because we knew that it would take at least four hours to summit and around three to return to the base.

I knew that it would be an interesting day as we were waiting at the bus stop and were accosted by two very loaded Koreans desperately seeking ninety cents so that they could purchase another bottle of soju, the local fire water, a vial concoction made of rice or potatoes. After a little push and shove the bus mercifully came and we left them angry and bitter at the stop, still looking for that last bottle.

Matthew and Karen met us a little farther on, at the entrance to the park, and we began to get primed up for what we knew would be a horrendous climb.

After a quick stop at the largest statue of Buddha in Korea so that we could pray for a safe hike, we set off up the trail.

The first part was fairly easy, a low steady walk along a pretty well defined trail. We made good time passing many groups of people who had climbed the mountain the previous day and spent the night at the shelter at the top. Strange how we met a lot of people going down but we were one of only a few groups that were going up, that should have given me a little warning about how hard the climb would be.

The trailhead was fairly well defined, a nice wide path that went through a forest along a boulder-strewn river that came down in a series of pools and waterfalls. We stopped a few times to just hang out and absorb the scenery that was all around us. There were chipmunks, black squirrels, and all sorts of birds among the towering mountain pines. The more we headed up the more the terrain changed to an alpine environment. We left the bamboo gradually behind and moved up into a rock strewn environment that got progressively more rugged as the trail thinned from a nice even bath to a combination of metal stairs, twisting bridges, and huge boulders that we had to scramble over.

Our first view of the mountain was when we got to the top of the first ridge after going up about three hundred meters. It was a bright, sunny day about seventy-five degrees and the mountain rose out of a clear blue sky. I was filled with dread as I got a quick view of the steepness of the trail ahead.

After crossing a ridgeline we reached the last rest stop before the summit climb. After filling our water bottles directly from the stream at the foot of the path we started up a four hundred step metal staircase. It was there that the leg cramps started. My thighs rippled from the starvation of oxygen in my body and I crumpled, literally screaming, at the top of the stairs. I knew that I could not quit and massaged my legs as the rest of my crew went ahead.

After a few minutes I was able to get up and start climbing the steepest rock fall that I had ever seen. It was about a fifteen-degree pitch with only a vaguely defined trial bordered by a few ropes. I struggled and struggled, walking ten steps, stopping for a break then doing another ten steps. I knew that I just had to make it to the top, and after an hour and a half I finally reached the false summit where Matthew was waiting, the others having gone up ahead.

After resting for about ten minutes I was able to get moving the last sixteen hundred meters up along another ridgeline towards the peak. I moved slower and slower but the top was finally in view. I had made it above the cloud line.

Below us stretched what seemed like all of Korea. To the east we could see Sokcho and the sea, to the west stretched lower mountains and a few temples down in the valleys. To the southeast, well there we could not really see anything because there was a huge white cloud bank below us.

Its been two days since the hike, my legs still ache, my calves feel like Jell-O and I can barely make it up my own stairs but good what a rush.

Sokcho Diary

The Fishing Trip

2.9.06

Today was a gorgeous day! After being out until the wee hours of the morning, 5:00am, with some Brits and Aussies singing and enjoying the local pub scene, I got up around nine to go on a pre planned fishing trip with my friend Matthew and a Korean teacher from the school, Chris.

We met at the kid’s school, and I was a wreck. Four hours of really rough sleep and energy drink were all I had to face the day, and it started out brutal

First we hit the local market to pick up a few supplies. Going down into the shellfish market where everything was hot and humid and full of the smells of rotting and decaying marine life was almost more than my fragile stomach could handle but we needed to pick up some scallops and horse clams for the grill.

We cruised around, hitting various stalls for our treats. Out of one tank I picked up a kilo of scallops, big, round, and fresh, caught that morning and put right into the tank. Next to the scallops were the rarest of seafood, abalone. The idea of purchasing some crossed our minds until the lady told us that they were seventy dollars a kilo, a little out of our budget

After getting the scallops we cruised past the octopus that were sitting out on slabs, trying to avoid being the ingredient in that days soup until we got to the shrimp sellers. The shrimp were placed on ice and laid out in plastic dishes for around five dollars a pound but it was not what we were looking for. Instead of big, juicy, green tiger prawns, all that was in today were regular pink shrimp, about six inches long. Acceptable but not what we wanted but they would have to do.

Along with the shrimp, scallops, and horse clams, Matthew had also picked up some good cuts of Australian beef that he planned to throw on the grill with our seafood with some onions, garlic, and scallions.

Our purchases completed, we caught good old bus number one up north to Chris’s place. Chris lives in a tiny town about ten miles north of Sokcho proper. Not much is there except a little fishing port, a breakwater, and two or three hotels fronting the beach, that’s it. It’s a pretty quiet place eleven months out of the year but it really rocks in August.

Chris’s apartment is on the top floor of a four-story building and looks out on the sea. From his window, his morning view consists of the blue green ocean and the beach with a little rocky islet just off shore. Sometimes, if the wind is right he can hear whales just off shore, he says it sounds like children calling for their parents, mournful and sad

We stopped off at the house for our gear and headed for the breakwater. It was pretty busy with crowds of fisherman out going for a Korean delicacy known as the hair tale and sardines.

My rig consisted of a heavy surf rod and thick monofilament, quite the rig for catching six-ten inch long fish. At the top of the rig was a heavy orange float connected by about a three-inch length of line to a smaller orange bobber. Coming off the bobber was another four feet of line with about an eighth ounce sinker and a tiny hook that we tried to cover with baby shrimp that fell off at various inopportune time

We crawled over the cement pilings to the water and caste out about twenty feet into about ten meters of water. The water was so clear that we could see small schools of baby hair tales and sardines striking at the chum (shrimp powder) that the fisherman used to attract the fish.

From the first cast to the last we caught fish. About twelve in two hours. A mix of hair tales and sardines. Nothing huge but delicious cut up on the breakwater and smeared with red pepper paste washed down with a huge bottle of Cass makju.

After we had fished for a while we went back to Chris’s house and fired up the grill, a Weber, believe it or not. We laid down tinfoil and through on the scallops and the horse clams along with the shrimp and beef. On the table were heaping bowls of Gimchi and plates of raw fish. We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and eating seafood looking out over the ocean, not talking much just enjoying the view, the day, and the experience that is Korea.

Sokcho Diary

31.8.06

The First Hike

About two weeks ago, right after I arrived in town, my first weekend in fact, my new friends, Matthew and Wojtek decided to take me out for a little hike around town. We decided to not go up to Sorak-san, more on that later, but instead headed for the hills and rice fields immediately outside of town. Our goal was to find a little mineral spring and explore the surrounding countryside.

We met around noon at the school. I had taken the bus down from the north end of town so arrived fresh and dry but after stepping outside from the cool air-conditioning I was hit by this amazing wall of heat and water that is the Korean summer.

Let me digress just a little bit to describe the utter hell that is Korea in August. You are constantly wet. The air is so heavy that it hurts to breathe and the simple act of going from your bed to the bathroom is enough to make your brow break out in huge pellets of water that roll down your face, cutting through the other grime that you have sweated out over the course of the night. It is so hot that sleep is something rarely visited, that is solid, uninterrupted sleep. Your eyes may close a bit and you may rest just a little, but you never really sleep. Breathing itself requires a huge effort involving all parts of your throat and lungs screeching as super heated, super wet air are forced down your esophagus.

Koreans deal with this all-pervasive heat in time honoured ways. For one, they skip the day as much as they can, rarely leaving their homes during the day. They just go to work and then home. Trips to the store for necessities like beer are made after the sun goes down. That does not really help the heat as much as you would think because even at two or three in the morning it is still around eighty-five degrees.

Nighttime is when everyone comes out. Even at three in the morning entire families will be out in the streets, down by the sea, or up on the roofs catching any breeze that may come their way. It is not unusual to see mother, father, baby, and grandmother all sitting down on the sidewalk sleeping, eating, and talking at two in the morning.

Getting back to our little hike…

We set off from the school and started to pass into the countryside, a different world. Rice was everywhere, the green of the fields almost like emeralds, and as we got higher up the individual plots that have been farmed for roughly a thousand years showed distinctly in the valleys and in the terraces marching up the hills.

We climbed a tiny mountain road, stopping by a little fruit stand for some peaches. The man who ran the stand was a North Korean, there are quite a few here, and wanted us to sit with him and his mates drinking whisky and talking the day away, but it was just too hot and we had a mission to accomplish, we must find this mineral spring that we have heard so much about. We climbed higher and higher and the flora of the area changed. Gone were the lowland scrubs and ginkgo trees that we left at the floor of the mountain. Appearing in greater quantities were bamboo, towering sea pines, and wild flowers. Everything was this bright green. There was no brown, no black, except for the road that we were on.

A little farther on we went on to a side trail that had a sign reading “spring”. We hiked a little farther, and there it was. The water was oozing from a stone cairn set into the side of a hill. There was a crowd of natives around filling huge jugs with the amazingly cold and clear water that they would take home for its medicinal properties.

We drunk our fill and topped off our water bottles, we knew that we had a long hike still ahead of us and moved deeper into the woods.

Climbing up a set of wooden logs in the mountainside we went up and up, around one thousand meters. The countryside was strangely deserted; we did not see another person after we left the spring.

After about twenty minutes we reached the summit and all of Sokcho was laid out before us. Yongseon Lake with the bridge to nowhere was in front of us, the rest of the town moved north to south, we could see it all. Buildings, the school, the boats in harbour, even my building way off in the distance.

On the southwest side of the mountain we could look into this huge valley with triangular shaped rice fields as far as the eye could see. Everywhere was green, the most brilliant, bright, shining green that I have ever seen. Every rice paddy was like a little emerald set into a setting of brown terraced walls.

We went down the other side, into the valley, and I got my first look at Sorak-san, the most holy mountain in South Korea and second only to Budeke-san on the border with China. It rose up out of the foothills to its full height of about four thousand meters like a large jagged tooth surrounded by smaller teeth that were desperately trying to grow to the size of Sorak-san.

We followed an overgrown trail, past a row of bunkers and tank traps. We did not know when they were built. The bunkers had obviously been here a long time, they were dank and overgrown, but the tank traps looked relatively new. The conversation between the three of us centered on what it must have been like to run up and down these hills with your weapons and ammunition as about a million rather pissed off Chinese chased after you with the sole goal of destroying you.

We walked through the rice fields on the concrete paths put in to help farmers pull the sacred white grains from the muck until we found a little pagoda rest hut. In the shade of this very traditional building we threw off our packs and settled down for a good rest just staring out at the fields shimmering in the sultry air, not talking, just enjoying the heat, the sweat, and the pretty butterflies that seemed to take a great interest in us.