Across the River and Into the Trees

     This last weekend, Alice (Andrew's wife) called Ami and asked if we would be interested in going on a day trip to a mountain to see the fall foliage on Tuesday (Andrew and I had Mon-Wed off this week as the school is closed for the session change). I love Seoul so far, but the thought of getting out to see a little nature very much appealed to me, so we agreed and yesterday took a nice long road trip.

     They borrowed Alice's brother's car and about 10am picked us up at our place. Getting out of Seoul was a small challenge and we crossed the Han River twice, once going north and then coming back south, but we finally got our bearings and were soon heading east and into the mountains. Actually, I'm not so sure I should called them mountains. They were more like steep hills covered in trees. To me, mountains are formidable looking structures of nature and these looked more like bumps on the landscape. Some were large and steep but none of them rose very high and it looked as though a person in moderate physical condition could climb to the top of any of them in under half an hour. 

     The other interesting feature, this one regarding the highway, was that rather than turn and wind its way around these geological features, the road simply burrowed through them. There were a lot of tunnels, most of them several hundred meters long.

     As we passed over rivers and through tunnels and past the bumps, the trees began to thicken with some of them beginning to turn to the reds and yellows of fall and others clinging to their summer fashions. Alice and Ami spoke a lot of Korean with Andrew (he's fluent too) jumping in from time to time and at other times throwing out English to keep me informed of the topic at hand. I'm noticing that while I don't understand 99% of the words, there are some that I do and those coupled together with the context of the conversation and the English loan-words that Koreans use means I can, about 50% of the time, figure out at least what the subject being discussed is. This is something that I learned to do in Japan and it's fun to be back in the dark with a small flashlight again trying to figure out where I am. Of course, I do hope to learn more Korean in the weeks/months and possibly years to come. I haven't sat down to study yet, but starting tomorrow, life will begin the work/home routine and perhaps I can find time to do this.

Seoul is circled in green and our destination is in red (the red has been zoomed in on below).
(Click for larger images)

   
     Unbeknownst to me in the early moments of our journey, we were heading for a town called Sokcho (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokcho). I was in the back seat having fun with the GPS feature on my new phone trying to find where we were and where we were going when I scrolled around a bit and found a large blank expanse--no roads, no rivers, no mountains, no place names. "Ah," I thought, "North Korea." And I showed my GPS map to Ami who found it slightly less interesting than me. 

     As you might have already figured out, we were more or less paralleling the DMZ which lay about 40 miles to the north while were were heading due east on highway 60. But once we turned onto the 46, we got to within about 14 miles of the border. I've watched quite a few documentaries on the hermit country and was quite excited to be in such close proximity to it--kinda like the way the you might get excited to see a dead body. North Korea holds such fascination with me mostly because I can't believe in this day and age that such a country exists, but there we were nearly within running distance of the place.

     Anyway, as we made our way to the east coast, Andrew mentioned something about Korean rest stops. Apparently, Korean rest stops were something to behold and he quite excitedly informed us that we would be stopping at one quite soon. A few minutes later, we were, indeed, pulling into one and I instantly remembered day three of my stay in Japan, when we drove from Tokyo to Kofu and the bus stopped at a rest stop. 

     I don't know if it's a continent-wide thing, but rest stops in Japan and Korea put American rest stops to shame. The Far East versions have bathrooms as big as a house, food courts with all sorts of delicious-looking dishes, coffee shops, and a store or two selling jackets, shoes, hats, socks, sunglasses and nearly any other necessity you suddenly remembered that your forgot when you packed this morning. So we stopped and had lunch. Ami and I went with the breaded and fried pork cutlet (tonkatsu for those of you who know the Japanese version) with udon soup, Alice went for the soup and kimbap (the Korean version of sushi minus the fish), and Andrew went for a hotdog because, he said, " I haven't had a hotdog in two years!" 

     After eating we hit the road again and about an hour later stopped at a smaller rest stop, this one containing a giant swing and two smaller ones. We all tried them out and were lucky not to be strong or skilled enough to go vertical, although Andrew and I tried.

Andrew tries to get some height while the girls try not to fall.

View from the swing.

     After a quick trip to the restroom and a shot of some energy drink that tasted a little like a cross between a RedBull and medicine, we were back in the car. The further east we got, the bigger the bumps became so that eventually I could call them mountains. The trees were still red and yellow in parts with many of them still green and the road eventually dipped down as we started our decent into Sokcho. Before we got all the way  into the town, however, we stopped one last time at a very small (and unimpressive by now) rest stop to take in the view.

This is what we stopped for although I took this shot from the road.

Andrew and I thought this sign a little funny. What were we supposed to be observing exactly?

     After the quick stop, we then drove the last twenty minutes into Sokcho. I guess before and during the Korean war, this town was part of North Korea. It wasn't until after the war that it was deemed part of South Korea. To me, however, it just looked like a medium-sized sleepy town with a colorful downtown and a fishing industry (from what I could tell). It was a little strange to be looking east out over the Pacific Ocean when just a couple weeks before I was sitting with Ray and Judy, drinking wine on the beach, and looking west out over the same ocean and I had one of those moments (again) when I realized how far I was from home.

     I say that I was looking out over the Pacific but in reality I was looking out over the Sea of Japan (or East Sea if you are Korean). This Sea of Japan/East Sea thing is quite funny to me. Basically, the entire world calls it the former while Koreans refuse to do this. I'm sure it goes back to the Japanese/Korean relationship and all the trouble between the two. I have seen it for myself in my many Korean students and Ami has told me herself that Korea still has ill feelings towards Japan--although I should mention that the two countries citizens, from what I've witnessed, get along quite well. But when it comes to things like baseball or the Olympics or the naming of large shared bodies of water, Korea feels quite slighted by much of the world and feels the need to make up for this by, all else being of some small significance, beating Japan in whatever game/challenge is at hand. It doesn't matter if Korea gets second-to-last place in the world in whatever venture it is being measured by so long as it is Japan that is in last place. This is why Korea still looks to the 2002 World Cup as cause for celebration when it got fourth place overall; a feat that Japan has never accomplished. On the other side of the spectrum, it is also why Korea felt such dismay over the 2009 World Baseball Classic when the final game went into extra innings and Japan beat Korea 5-3. Ami still can't stand the name Ichiro.

This is Sokcho. The red marks where we stopped to have a walk around. The yellow marks where we stopped for a meal (a zoom in on the yellow area below).

    Back to the trip, though. We stopped at one area in Sokcho to walk around a bit and then we drove up to another area for lunch. Lunch was interesting. I don't think I've ever had such fresh fish. As we walked up to the market/restaurant, we were (or rather Alice was) accosted by middle-aged ladies imploring us to stop and look at the fish we could buy and eat. At first we just passed them by and took a look around off the pier. Andrew and I watched some fish in the water and talked about what kind they might be--they were long, maybe 6-8 inches and very skinny. Soon, though, we went back to the ladies and Alice told them something and one of them set about gathering fish out of the holding tanks. She grabbed a plastic basket and reached into the tanks coming out with a fish each time. Each holding tank held a different variety of fish, some of which were quite strange looking. After she gathered about five or six, we all followed her into the building to where there were rooms. Inside the rooms were more ladies seated before a low table. The lady who had gathered the fish then gave the basket to the seated ladies and then took our money, about $45. The ladies in the room then, and much to my surprise although I guess I shouldn't have been, started cutting. These fish were alive, mind you. They had just been ripped from their tanks and were flopping about in the basket and now they were on a large cutting table being hacked to death--although perhaps hacked is the wrong word because these ladies cut them in a very methodical way and one that they were obviously very familiar with. Real pros with the blades, I tell you.
     Once the bloodshed was over, the ladies handed us the plastic tray upon which the raw fish was laid and we carried that and another tray upstairs to the eating area. The other tray, for your information, held a plastic bag of garlic and peppers, another one of lettuce, some styrofoam containers of different pastes (aka. dipping sauces), and another bag with the head of one fish and other various body parts that had not been so delicately cut and would not be eaten raw. These parts, I later found out, were to go into a soup which would be cooked at our table in a pot over a burner.
     When we got upstairs, we sat at a long table, a lady came over and spread out a plastic table cloth for us and we got to eating. This was all quite different from the Japanese way of eating sashimi (raw fish) in that there was a lot less fuss over presentation. Nothing was beautiful in any sort of aesthetic way. Basically, they hacked the fish to death, put it on a plastic tray, sat us at a large table in a room full of people doing the same thing, and we ate. I even had to get up to go get my own beer. But I will say this.....The fish was excellent.

This is the area where we stopped for a late lunch. The orange circle indicates where Andrew and I climbed a small hill for some photos. The red shows where we had lunch. 

The fish market and restaurant. The holding tanks are inside the little blue walls and are divided into sections. Each section holds a different species of fish.

The gathering of the fish. Notice the fish in the basket flopping about. Within 20 minutes, he and his friends were in my stomach.

She was a pro as she simply reached in and grabbed our lunch.

The variety of fish was rather impressive.

These ladies didn't want their picture taken for some reason, so I snuck one through the glass. They are cutting up the fish.

I was so impressed with the whole business that I forgot to take a photo when our meal began. Here it is after about five minutes of eating.

     After we ate more food than we should have, we left the place and headed out. The girls ran by a bank while Andrew and I climbed a long flight of stairs up to a structure that overlooked the ocean (see the yellow oval in the map above). We took a few pictures from up there and then we headed back down to meet the girls, grab the car, and head north. 

The pagoda-type thing we climbed the stairs up to.

A look back at the fish place we'd just eaten at.

Looking south down the coast.

West towards the town.

     For those of you so inclined, you might look at a map and find to see how close we were now going to get to North Korea. I did a little measuring and I believe we came within about eight miles. Good stuff.

     Our destination now was just north of a town called Goseong. Apparently, Kim Il Sung--the father of Kim Jong Il, the first leader of North Korea, also known as the "Great Leader", and still thought by many to be the leader of the country (although I would assume these are all brainwashed North Koreans)--used to have a vacation house in this area in the years between World War II and the Korean War.
     The house itself was no big deal aside from the look of the exterior. It looked like a castle at the top and was made of rocks and mortar. Really the only cool thing about it was the knowledge that Kim Il Sung and a young Kim Jong Il had stayed there. There was even a picture of the little guy sitting on the steps that we walked up to get up to the place. Inside the house, rather predictably, was a very small museum with large pictures and maps about the South/North relationship and all the strife that has gone along with it. I couldn't read anything but the pictures were pretty clear.
     Once we finished with the Kim house, we went to another vacation house, this one the small getaway of the first president of Korea after the war, Rhee SyngMan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngman_Rhee). He was a bit of a controversial figure but I don't think you can argue with the fact that he accomplished a lot in his life and was a pretty powerful man. The cottage itself was again no big deal, but the museum, which was up a few steps was better than the one for Kim Il Sung. There were artifacts that were apparently used by the guy: a pocket watch, a pair of gloves, and even one of those hot water plastic bags (which Andrew insisted was an enema bag), along with his books and various degrees from various universities. From what I could get from the whole experience and the very little I've read about the guy, he was a cross between George Washington, Richard Nixon with perhaps a little of Joseph Stalin thrown in, but I am sure that I am vastly oversimplifying it.
     After we finished with this place, we then made the long drive home. It was dark by this time and I couldn't see much out the windows of the car, so I just enjoyed my GPS a little more while Ami and Alice nodded off--Korean girls are pros at falling asleep wherever they are. We did stop at another rest stop on the way back and Andrew ate a hamburger out of a bag that looked absolutely nothing like the picture on the wall next to the price for it. While he and Alice ate, I watched a baseball game on the big screen HD that pitted the SK Wyverns against the Samsung Lions. I think it was game one of the KBO (Korean Baseball Organization) championship series. It had been a good day and a little baseball was a nice touch.

This is the area containing Kim Il Sung's vacation house. The ocean is to the right and the two lakes are to the left. North Korea is about eight miles to the left.

The stairs leading up to Kim Il Sung's vacation house.

At the top of the stairs is this picture. I would have never known the boy that the arrow points at had it not been for Ami who told me it was none other than a young Kim Jong Il.  

Kim Il Sung's vacation house.

And the view from the top.