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