It’s Festival Time

16.10.06

Well kids, its festival time again here in Sokcho. So far this year we have had the Korean music festival, it sucked unless you like k-pop or a Korean rap duo affectionately called the Krappers, the Mushroom Festival, very cool, and now we have the Sorak Festival.

The Sorak Festival has been going on here in Sokcho for the past forty one years, in fact it started just after the Korean war when the park itself had been ravaged by four years of war and destruction and was covered not with verdant greens and pretty trails but covered with the blackened stumps of trees and the stench of the thousands of men, Korean, Chinese, American, and others who had died while struggling in the picturesque park for control of the Korean peninsula.


The main part of the festival happens not where you would think, at the park, but instead right across from my school, at Expo Park, along the lake.

The festival grounds in the summer are vacant lots with a few restaurants around the large saltwater lagoon that the town surrounds with the bridge to nowhere off in the background.

Karen and I headed out around eight when we were done with work to sit outside the Family Mart by Expo Tower and drink beer while we waited for the rest of our posse to show up about ten.

We had a nice wait, sitting outside on white plastic chairs on a pretty, warm, clear, evening, watching the world pass by. We sat drinking cold Cass and O.B. while in front of us the festival spread out in all of its glory.

Directly in front of us was Expo Tower, all lit up for the occasion. The tower itself is about twenty stories tall and towers over the park.

Behind the tower is the stage that will have semi-big names, for Korea, on it this weekend. Currently it sounds like someone is being beaten to death on it, maybe it could be someone singing, but if they are, I think that their record company will be filing for bankruptcy at some time in the near future.

Behind that is the main night market, a pulsating mass of tents and humanity selling all sorts of the things from Inca clothing (?) to a man touting the beneficial affects of putting wedges of cucumber on his forehead.

There is also food at the night market, which we will enjoy later, famous black Jeju pig, slowly roasting on spits over cherry wood, honey and cinnamon pancakes cooked, bam, bam, bam, six at a time in a special machine, hand made by a sweating old man in a Quicksilver shirt, hot dogs, fish, squid, and shrimp, all roasted over charcoal, and many other things.

Around ten, the rest of the crew showed up, Kelsey and Helen from Dari, and Kirsty, from a late class at A.P.

We were having a few more beers when, boom, boom, boom, without warning, the fireworks started. They weren’t very good or spectacular, but we had a great view of them. They shot into the air like mortars and exploded in reds, greens, and blues, then, after just a few minutes, they were over and we headed into the carnival.

We hit the pig palaces, eating with pleasure the juicy pig, over priced at twenty five thousand a plate, but we knew that we were not getting spit roasted pork again any time soon, and sopping up soy sauce with squid pancake, all washed down with shots of soju.

After eating we wandered out to the shooting range, where, wonder of wonders, you could shoot plastic balls at targets and win liquor! I had never seen this type of excitement at a carnival before and I worked hard at winning a bottle of North Korean soju that I shared with my compatriots.

After wondering through a huge tent filled with name brand clothes, brimming with Koreans looking for bargains when there weren’t any to be had we headed through the Banzai tree display.

The trees and flowers on the stands were great. Tiny trees molded and cut to minature size. You could see that some were incredibly old and weathered. Someone had sat and cared for these trees for years, constantly cutting and trimming them to reach the ideal size and shape that their masters desired.

Then there were the flowers. Orchids, Lilies, Morning Glories, all kinds of flowers just sitting in the rapidly chilling air, their colours brilliant with little spots of dew on them as they all vied for the first place ribbon.

Finally, after a few hours, we called it quits and headed back to our seats at the Family Mart to have a few more beers before we began the long walk home.

A note about the pictures

1 and 4. Fireworks in the night air over Yongan Lake.

2. A wonderful flower, either a lilly or an orchid, I am not sure which, just a nice picture.

3. Extolling the virtues of putting cumcumber slices on your head.

4. A nice shot of a Banzai tree.

Journey to the Cave

16.10.06

This weekend was the Sorak festival, a celebration of the beauty of the fall colours of Sorak-san. While it was incredibly pretty, the crowds were horrendous. If Kim Jong Il would have launched his nukes against the park this weekend he probably would have eliminated half the population of Korea at one stroke.

After a fun night carousing with the locals, Karen and I finally headed out to the park about one. We got out of the bus at Sorak town because traffic was backed up almost five kilometers with the massive amount of people streaming into the park.

Our goal today was to hike up to the cave, a trip that I have now made a couple of times but for Karen her first run up to the shrine that sits six hundred meters above the valley for.

While strolling towards the gate we passed a few interesting sites, a Ferrari that was driven by an idiot Korean male who was obviously unable to drive it correctly, shifting gears at the wrong time, riding the clutch and the brake, a Korean woman wearing a shirt that said, “This is My Girlfriend” with an arrow pointing to her (female) friend, hordes of Koreans decked out in matching shirts and packs, outfitted as if for a six month polar expedition, and other assorted lunacies.

After fighting our way through the crowds towards the entrance we finally started our hike, elbowing stubborn Koreans out of the way as they blocked the path by walking five and six abreast. It was like being back on the football field, cutting, blocking, giving the fore arm shiver while all the time having to stop and accelerate through the crowd.

When we finally reached the turn off marking our trail the crowd thinned a little bit and we were finally able to take in the stunning panorama that opened up below us as we climbed higher and higher.

I wont bore you with the details as I recounted my last cave expedition but this one was much easier. Instead of sweating like a pig and struggling for every breath, I merely perspired like a normal human being.

When we reached the lookout we were able to stand on the edge of a ridge and look at the splendor below us. In the valley itself the canopy was still fairly green, the leaves there had not really turned colour, but as you looked a little higher on the mountains the green became interspersed with reds, yellows, greens, and gold’s.

When we got to the gave we stopped to rest for a few minutes and to give thanks before the small, gold Buddha that rested in a recess in the far back of the cave. It was here that I took the best picture that I have taken.

While sitting at the edge of the cave enjoying the view, our conversation was stopped when the resident monk began to bang on his wooden bowl and pray to the mountain gods.

The guy had a great view to give thanks for. The green pines broken up by the red of the maples and the gold of the elms, rocky crags retreating into the distance, truly a phenomenal site.

Buddhist monks have a great fear of being photographed anyway, and a true paranoia about having their picture taken while they are praying, but as I sat there I couldn’t help but take my camera slowly out of my pocket and turn it on with a barely audible click. I shifted my seat ever so slightly, and with my finger over the flash, snapped two quiet pictures. I know that I will probably go to Buddhist hell but the picture that I took, well I will treasure it for the rest of my life.

A note about picuters.

1. Obviously this is my favorite shot. I know that I will be going to Buddhist hell for it, but I really think it is the best picture that I have ever taken.
The monk is praying at the opening of the cave, in his hands you can just see the wooden mallet and bowl that he bangs to pay respect to the forest gods.

2. About midway up the path to the cave, just a nice shot through the trees of the mountains.

3. Fall colours under the canopy. The lanterns to the left are what guide you on the path to the cave.

4. A view from the lookout.

5. A little more fall splash.

Nak-san Temple

Sokcho Diary

8.10.06



Just down the coast from Sokcho is a rarity in Korea, and well, Asia, a Buddhist temple that sits on the sea. Most temples here are set back in the mountains, at the back end of deep wooded valleys, or even in cities, but Nak-san is different.

Nak-san temple was first founded about five hundred years ago by a group of monks seeking a place of quiet contemplation. Only they know why they choose a pleasant bluff over looking the sea in the town of Nak-san, or even if the town existed at that point, they just seemed to like the area.

I went down there with Kelsey and her friend Lara. Lara is a pretty neat girl, about my age, a single mother, she has never before been out of America and chose to come to Korea for a long weekend, about four days, to hang out with her college friend Kelsey.

We had made plans early last week to head down to the pek-ban restaurant for lunch. This restaurant does not serve main dishes, only side dishes, usually about twenty, with a small main course of roasted mackerel for each person. What is really cool is that you can get refills of any dish you want, except the fish, and it all only costs seven thousand won.

After eating we walked down to the bus stop and took the number nine out to Nak-san, about a half hour down the road. I had been to the town before with my friend Matthew but we had never made it to the temple itself, instead we had stopped at the local Family Mart for a drink and never made it up to the temple.

The temple sits on a bluff that looks over Nak-san beach, a very popular place for vacationers from Seoul in the summer. Today, even though it was a beautiful day, it was almost deserted. There were a few boats pulled up on the sand but no people along its entire length. We stopped about half way up the hill and watched the big breakers role in for a time before hitting the temple itself.

When we reached the temple, again, me for the first time, I was struck by the fact that almost all of the buildings were new. It turns out that Nak-san had had a tragedy here about two years ago when a forest fire had swept through the five hundred year old temple. All the buildings were lost, a thousand year old bell had melted and the only things that had been saved were a few handwriting sutras from the seventeenth century and some beautiful old paintings depicting the monks of Nak-san at a funeral and offering gifts to the gods of the sea.

The buildings of Nak-san have been replaced by cedar ones, I don’t know if they look anything like the original but they are pretty. The logs have all been peeled and set into white frames and the insides smell of fresh cut wood.

The temple grounds consist of a small plattue that has two buildings, a gift shop and a small museum, where the few relics that had been saved by the fire were displayed in glass fronted cases.

At the end of a small path that led to the edge of the bluff was a tiny pavilion, brilliantly painted, as are almost all Buddhist buildings, in reds, greens, and blues with orange lotus flowers on the end of the roof beams. From this point one looks down almost five hundred feet to the bottom of the cliff where there are jagged rocks that break up the waves. To the south, the right, stretched Nak-san beach, almost as far as the eye can see, and to the left, the north, you can see Sokcho city.

Walking out of the pavilion there was a small path to the right that led to a tiny shrine with a small gold Buddha. Inside the building there were several ajummas, older Korean women, bowing and praying to Buddha.

Walking back up the path we turned right and went to the top of the hill where the two main shrines are.

Below the summit of the bluff was a huge building, again painted in reds and blues with something that I have never seen before on a temple, dragonheads at the end of the rood beams. I don’t know why they were there, maybe to ward off evil spirits, maybe for luck, but they were just as colourfully painted as the rest of the building.

Inside were icons of the seven Boddihistavas, man I wish I knew more about Buddhism, and other icons, all over the walls. The floor was old, maybe ancient, and you could tell that either it had been salvaged from the fire or been brought in by another temple, it had not been made in the last hundred years, it was almost black with age.

Along with the usual burning joss sticks, for luck, were candles and people praying in typical Buddhist fashion. Some of them had mats on the floor to help protect their legs but others did their prostrations without them, rising and falling in the seven ritual bows.

Alongside the walls were gold inlays of other gods and deities; all sacred and holy in one way or another, and on the ceiling were little tags with the names of people who had donated money to the temple.

Leaving the most holy shrine at the temple we headed to the highest point on the grounds where there is the only Buddha statue in Asia that looks out over the sea, or at least that is what I had been told.

When we reached the top Lara just sat looking at the white statue while Kelsey and I just stared at the ocean, talking a little, but mostly just staring out at the blue green waves moving over the surface of the ocean, breaking on the rocks below.

Pictures

1. The outside of one of the shrines at Nak-san

2. Waves breaking on the rocks

3. The roof of a building at Nak-san

4. Looking down at the small pavillion that overlooks the sea from the top of the bluff at Nak-san

5. The inside of the roof at the Nak-san pavillion

Chuesok

Sokcho Diary

7.10.06

Chuesok- A noun denoting the biggest Korean holiday of the year. For this holiday, almost every Korean goes to their hometown to do several things: Commonly called Korean Thanksgiving, it is a lunar holiday that shifts year by year with the moon phases.
1. Pay homage at the graves of their ancestors.
2. Eat
3. Eat some more
4. Settle family business


The Craziest Bus Driver I Have Ever Met

For this Chuesok, like the last one I was in Korea for, I was invited to my old bosses family residence in the tiny town of Go-Sak, about five miles outside of the first town I worked in, Heung-hae.

I left Sokcho on the 9:10 bus, right after my last class. I had packed my bag and taken it to school with me, so I was totally prepared. Because of the holiday, when travel of all kinds in Korea is very hard to get on, I had bought my ticket the preceding Saturday. For the low, low price of 32,000 won I was given the privilege of meeting the craziest bus driver I have ever met.

He was a pretty young guy, the driver of the express bus to Pusan and Pohang. Probably he had only been out of the army for a couple of years, and he still showed enthusiasm for the job.

I got on quick and found my seat, about two rows back from the door, thankfully a single, and stowed my bags. Looking around the bus it seemed pretty full but not totally with a mix of both waygooks and Koreans.

We pulled out of the bus station with a lurch and I was thrown into my seat with the sudden sensation of speed as the driver stomped on the gas and shifted from first all the way through to fifth in about three seconds, running the red light at the corner and flying around a curve on the way to pick up the main road out of Sokcho.

We blazed through downtown, past the busy shops and through the waves of neon lights without stopping. Red lights did not mean anything to this guy and we hit Yang-yang, usually a forty-five minute drive in thirty minutes.

The road south from Sokcho starts out as a four-lane expressway all the way to Donghae, about one hundred and fifty kilometers down the coast but that is it. While a new highway is being built to link Pusan with Sokcho by expressway, the road is mostly a twisting and turning run through mountains along the ocean.

Four the four hour run from Donghae to Pohang I alternated watching the squid boats on the ocean and gripping my seat in fear as my driver passed on the yellow line, around curves, going up hill, sounding his horn like the hounds of hell were after him, telling everybody in his way that he was coming through in a ten ton bus and it was up to you to get out of the way in time.

The other sight I had outside of my window was much prettier. The whole way down the coast, and the road hugged it for about eighty percent of the way, you could see the full moon shinning on the water, and far out to sea you could see the lights of the squid boats shinning like little cities in the night.

The boats ran in an almost solid line from Donghae to Pohang. Some were closer in shore than the others but all of them had their bright lights shinning on the water to lure the squid up to the nets.

The boats, even though they could see each other seemed like little planets on the ocean. Small worlds were nothing else mattered, only the men on the boats and their catch. It was like looking at a satellite picture of the world at night but instead of looking down at it you looked across it, like it was three-dimensional.

You could picture the men sweating and working the nets, talking in Korean, listening to their captain shouting directions about where to place their gear, all the time pulling, tugging, the nets into the boat, laden with the catch of the sea.

I finally got to Pohang about one thirty in the morning and walked off the bus into a bus station that I had not seen for almost two years but remembered it like it was yesterday. I walked to the right door and immediately veered right to the taxi line and went to the head of the row. I looked the taxi driver right in the eye and said, “Heung-hae”.



Heung-hae

I always knew that I would come back to the little town that I had called home for a year, my memories of the place where too good to be ignored and forgotten.

I checked into a pretty run of the mill Korean hotel about two in the morning and watched the Twins lose live. I had to get up around ten to meet Greg so I only watched through the fifth inning.

When I got up I headed into the bathroom to wash the travel grime from the night before off of my body but of course, in this very mediocre motel, my opinion of this place was going down by the second, there was no hot water. That kind of sucked because it meant the last real shower that I would take for three days was on Wednesday morning.

After my unfulfilling shower I headed into Heung-hae proper to meet Greg who I had not seen for over a year. Unerringly I found my way through the back alleys and side streets that I had walked and wandered through for a year on foot and on my bike.

I looked in the shop windows where I had gotten my haircut and bought some clothes. I went by the now closed bookstore where I had looked in vain for any sort of English novel.

Lots of businesses that I had gone to had failed or moved but some were still there. The man I had bought my fruit from, religiously every Friday still ran his stall but had obviously prospered as he was not selling out of the back of his blue truck anymore. The old crone that I had bough my eggs from remembered me and gave me a ton of garlic for one thousand won.

My Family Mart, a place that I had bought many bottles of soju and makju from had been replaced by a L.G. Telecom outlet, but the lady who sold me deep-fried chicken balls was still there. Most importantly, to me anyway, Mrs. Park was still running her mudfish soup restaurant deep in the market.

After fortifying ourselves with a few bowls of the excellent soup flavored with leeks, garlic, hot peppers, and who knows what else we each drank a big bowl of makgoli and headed into Pohang to hit the market and buy some supplies.

We took good old bus 107 into town, from the same bus stop that I always went to and drove to Pohang. On the way I was able to point things out to Greg that I remembered seeing on my many treks through the neighborhood. The leper town was still there, we could just barely see the ruined church, and so was the apple grove and the driving range that I always wanted to go to but had never been to, if that makes sense.

Downtown Pohang had not changed much, the main market not at all. There were still crowds of people jammed into a very small area, each one hustling and bustling to gather supplies for Chuesok. The fish market was the same, the floor still covered with slimy water and floating guts and heads, the whale vendor was still on their corner with lumps of baleen and meat for same at ten thousand won for a few small slivers. Even the smell of the fish was the same, and why wouldn’t it be? Rot, decay, death, salt, all mixed together to from a potent scent that permeated the air.

After wandering around for a while, we headed to E-Mart. It was our job on Friday evening to cook up a big pot of pasta at the pension that Mrs. Kim had rented in a little fishing village.

After gathering our ingredients we headed back to Heung-hae and had some of the worst sundubu that I have every tasted and proceeded to drink ourselves silly until the wee hours of the morning.

After stumbling home around one I had to get up early to fetch Greg and head out to the village of Gok-san where Mrs. Park would be cooking the very traditional feast.

We hopped in a cab about ten to eleven and headed out into the country. Again I was able to see places and things were I had spent a lot of time. The rice was golden and about ready to be cut, just like I remembered, and look, there is the first mountain I climbed in Korea with the thousand year old grave stones out in front of it

We went through the small village that I had hiked through on my first quest to see the blue green waters of the Pacific and under the irrigation system that I climbed to get to the top of a mountain. Past fields, ponds, and little streams that I knew intimately from bike rides and walks taken, well it seemed like yesterday.

When we arrived at Mrs. Parks the food was all laid out for us to eat. We had fish, both cooked and dried, squid, octopus, sweet potato, kimchi, two kinds of soup, bean sprouts, fruit, a real spread. Everything was fresh cooked by Mrs. Park using nothing but a rice cooker and a two-burner gas stove.

We left after just an hour, the family had business to take care of and I think Mrs. Kim felt we were intruding a little bit, and we were, but it was a nice gesture to invite us to such a pleasant and traditional holiday.

Mrs. Kim had a really nice surprise for us after we ate. She had rented a large room in a really small little seaside town for us all to spend the night in. It was so incredibly pretty and relaxing to smell the salt air and feel the power of the ocean so close to us. We alternated between playing spades with the girls, talking, walking on the little beach and just staring from the balcony as the huge swells that rolled in, ten footers at least that came crashing over the breakwater with a roar like a train, the foam sliding off into the inner harbour.

The night was so pretty that after watching the moon rise and eating the pasta that the girls had helped to make that I took my blankets and thin foam pad out to the balcony about one in the morning and made a nest to sleep in where I could hear and feel the waves while the smell of the salt tickled my nose.

When I got up on Saturday morning I went for a walk. It was early, around seven, and the sea was still breaking hard against the breakwater. I sat for a long time on a hard cement post facing the ocean watching the waves roll in, one after another. They kept crashing against a group of rocks that jutted out from the shore and the water from the curl at the tops of the waves ran over them and down their backs with a sound just like a running tap in the bathroom.

The Stupidest Bus Driver that I have Ever Met

Saturday afternoon, I met probably the worst bus driver that I have ever seen.

I got on the bus in Pohang around two fifteen to head back to Sokcho and I new immediately that this would be the worst bus driver that I had ever had.

The first giveaway was he let some guy come on board to try and sell cheap watches to the customers, not a good start.

The torture continued as we had to stop every hour, on the hour for the guy to have a smoke, and it wasn’t like we stopped at places where the rest of the passengers could get off and do something, no we stopped at random bus stops, wide spots in the road, you name it we stopped at it.

Constantly riding the clutch and the brake we gradually weaved our way up to Sokcho. With the horrible driving skills of the old man at the wheel it turned a five-hour ride into an eight and a half hour torture. The less said about it the better.

Pictures

1. A traditional Chuseok meal laid out on the table

2. Waves crashing over the breakwater

3. Red peppers drying in a wooden boat that has not been used in years

4. The full moon rising over the harbour Chuseok night

5. The girls wearing Hanbook, traditional Korean clothing made from hemp, back left Sandy, back right Laura, center, a cousin

The Yang-yang Mushroom Festival-

30.9.06

Picture one-
With flags flying in the breeze you can see and feel the excitement of a great fall day in Korea as the winning team starts to carry their champion around the clearing.

Picture two-
The loser straining

Picture three-
The Song-I mushroom. This basket costs five hundred dollars.

Picture four-
The winner being paraded around after the contest.

Picture five-
The winner fortifieying himself with a big drink of makgoli

The Mushroom Festival
Yang-yang, Korea 30.9.06

Sokcho Diary

Well kids, guess what, another amazingly beautiful day here in Korea where it never rains and the only clouds you see are big and puffy.

Today in Yang-yang, a town about forty-five minutes south of Sokcho, was the annual Pine Mushroom Festival. Lacking anything even remotely more exciting to do I decided to head on down after waking up at the crack of noon.

After a quick bus ride, where I was the only passenger, I hit the very provincial town of Yang-yang. This is a quintessential market town in Korea. It sits on the southeast side of Sorak-san national park, inland from the sea, and well, pretty grim. There is not a whole lot here. Some restaurants, a few computer rooms, the agricultural cooperative, that’s pretty much it for Yang-yang.

Everything that is, except for the Song-I mushrooms.

From what I gathered here at the festival, and I was the only waygooks, this mushroom has magical healing properties, along with tasting really good. Judging by the prices they were charging for the fungus, about $300 for ten-fifteen caps, they better have been the greatest mushrooms known to man!

When I first got off the bus, I thought to myself, “this is stupid here I am in this tiny ass town for a mushroom festival and nothing, absolutely nothing, is going on here.” Then I saw the happy mushroom signs.

On the side of the road, leading towards the river was a big folding sign with a really happy mushroom cartoon on it and an arrow. Wow I thought, maybe, just maybe, there is something to this mushroom festival thing. I followed the signs, gradually leading towards the river and veered slightly through a small, narrow alley that wound around the back streets of Yang-yang, then I saw them, a huge collection of cloured tents and I said to myself, “Well that looks kind of festive like, maybe I should go there,” and off I went.

The first thing that I noticed as I approached a wide, rocky field on the riverbank was the sound of drumming and yelling, maybe this could be interesting. As I strolled down a little hill I looked upon an open area at something that I have never seen before, something that is probably as ancient as Korea, or even the world, a shamanistic celebration for a good harvest.

I have never, in all my life seen something like this before.

There were two groups of people on either side of a huge cypress log in an open space between rows of tents, dancing in a circle. Some of the men had drums, both big and small and were banging them in almost a trance like rhythm. Both groups were separate and distinct, except for one man who seemed to be taking the role of a priest or a leader of some sort; I never did get a straight answer. Around the edge of the dancers were several pairs of older women dressed almost like Catholic nuns in black and white skirts and hats who carried around large earthen jars filled with makgoli, a sweet Korean rice wine that really tastes like beer. As soon as I started taking pictures people started to gravitate towards me, and making a beeline to the only foreigner around, me, was a pair of the nuns.

As I squatted in the earth taking picture after picture of the incredible scene before me the two old ladies joined me. Taking their huge jar of makgoli they offered me a small, wooden bowl that had been smoothed by the touch of probably a thousand hands. The bowl I held was an exquisite object. It was not beautiful, far from it, it was rather boring to look at, but you could see that it had been hand made, probably by a skilled craftsman, many, many years ago.
As I held the bowl the women looked at me with wide eyes and asked in Korean if I would care to join in the harvest festival by having a bowlful of the wine. When I replied in the correct, affirmative, proper form of Korean that I would be delighted they smiled broadly and pored me a full bowl of the stuff. After dribbling a little on the ground as an offering to the gods I held the bowl to my lips and drained it, to the approval of about twenty Koreans who were standing around me. After I finished the bowl, cries of “anju” went up from all around me, (anju is a small bit of food that one eats after drinking a big draught of alcohol), and a piece of mountain Gimchi was popped into my mouth. After bowing respectfully to the women, I made my way to the other side of the celebration to take some more pictures.

After a little while the dancing and drumming reached a crescendo and a man in white and blue moved into the middle of the clearing where a huge cypress log rested on two small, fairly rickety looking pallets. A white cord was passed under and over the middle of the log and strapped to his back and he took a deep breath, stretched his legs, and lifted the log.

As the log swung off the pallets you could see that it weighed a freaking’ ton! Every vein in his face was popping and I could see beads of sweat running down his face. Slowly, very slowly, he turned towards his team and the log swung with him, and then he crumpled to his knees, his mission a failure.

With a massive roar from his team, the man in blue was lifted out from under the huge log and headed back to his side of the circle. The drumming reached a new level as a man in gold from the other team fortified himself with a huge bowl of makgoli, not the little bowl I used, but a big vat of the stuff and strapped himself to the log, which by now in my drunken state, I had realized was fake, and prepared to give his utmost for the harvest gods, his team, himself, whatever.

With a grunt and a groan he lifted the huge log from the pallets and sank to one knee, got up, staggered a bit, turned the log, and finally, used its momentum, to reach his team on the other side.

With a huge grin on his face he leaned towards his team, then, with a grunt, a bellow, and a shove, he lurched into his group and dropped the log in the middle of them. His team, the crowd, and everyone else, including me, shouted and cheered this mighty effort, then the real fun started.

With what I presumed was a lot of taunting, shouting, and gestures, the winning team hoisted the man in gold onto their shoulders and took him to the head shaman, a man with a great black beard and a pipe. The shaman said some magic words, waved his opium pipe up and down like a catholic priest giving a benediction, and the party was on.

The winning team got in a massive conga line, drums blaring, cymbals crashing, and marched towards the other team which joined them in saluting the champion of the day. They marched around and around the circle for about fifteen minutes, chanting, singing and banging all the while, then it ended.

All that, and then it was over, there was nothing more going on, it was finished, kaput, done. By this time I was fairly well in the bag and wandered around for a few minutes looking at some mushrooms and exhibits, ate a squid pancake, and went home. The great mushroom party was over.

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.