So, I took the opportunity to delay my flight to Sunday and go a little deeper into South-Korea and do 4 days of sightseeing. No plan until Tuesday evening and last day of work in Sacheon, but:

– I am not the biggest fan of huge metropoles – particularly not when they have 25M inhabitants, even less with a car, so that quickly eliminated Seoul. It is supposed to be an interesting city though with several very distinct districts and several people (and the brother) recommended spending 4 days there – so maybe another time. In my experience, large cities are places where you have the lowest chances to discuss and talk to people – you see thousands of people but just nobody cares. This applies to pretty much anything: restaurants, hostels,…
– Busan: second largest city in Korea (10M people) -> the global consensus is that there is nothing really worth visiting – except my dad who repeatedly wants me to see “the largest fish market of Korea”. Okay, but I am not going to buy a Japanese-whateversorius-shark…
– The DMZ: the border with North-Korea, probably the most well-known sight in South-Korea… but that feels like Disneyland, the price is a total rip-off (over 100$ to see custom officers…), it is only by bus in guided-tours (I love bus guided tours…), and departures are only from the center of Seoul – so no.
– That leaves a tour basically where no travel agencies go – going north through the center of the peninsula, through basically a list of temples and mountainous national park

It has been raining a lot the last days and the atmosphere in the south feels like being in a Turkish hammam… constant 95% of humidity and 30°C during the day. A 12km jogging the previous day felt like running in a warm shower, and I was literally dripping water behind. So Wednesday, departure early in the morning, leaving Sacheon behind. This city could be a really great place to live: it is surrounded by mountains, directly on the coast in some kind of Fjord, some natural reserves and national parks around … but the urbanism (inexistent), the architecture (amazing if you like concrete, fences, asphalt and metal) and its industries in the nicest locations make me glad to not have to be there longer than 15 days.
First place: the “Maisan” park. Maisan means “the horse ears mountain”, and it is pretty much what it is: two huge blocks of limestone not connected to any other mountains, 700m altitude (450m higher than the base), and a temple in-between. I climb one of the two “mountains” – nobody on the way up (something like 2500 steps, they have had the great idea to install stairs all the way up: great for an ascent speed record, less for the legs ), than the temple with hundreds of Cairns around it. I am not a big expert of Buddhism, but it feels like temples are built according to weird geographical locations – they are always near a source of water, a funny looking mountain, a grotto, a lake… I guess it makes about as much sense as putting a monastery wherever someone claimed to have seen a ghost, or in Austria bringing up a 5m cross on top of every single cow-hill of the country. My car feels lonely on the parking and the 10 restaurants look at me wondering if I am possibly going to be the only hypothetical customer of the day (I guess it is a lot more crowded the week-end): well I am not particularly interested by a bowl of Kimchi at 10am…
Second place today will be Jeonju, one of the rare city where Koreans kept a traditional historical center. Buildings and houses are a lot more picturesque than all other towns, although most of the traditional houses have been remodeled into shops and food places. Jeonju is still a pleasant place to get lost a little in small maze streets. I am going towards the Gyeryongsan NP for the afternoon and a small hike up between pagodas and waterfalls. The park is not particularly exceptional, but hiking up in the mountain with a temple every few kilometers, the sound of waterfalls and rivers and the overall ambiance make it very pleasant. The altitude being also a bit higher and further away from the coast, the place is also more “breathable”. I finished the day in Gongju. Remember that name cause although it has now only 150.000 inhabitants, it will overtake Seoul and become the new capital of South-Korea in the next decade! No, I am not hallucinating – the government has planned to move step by step the administration and government from Seoul as it is overcrowded and … within artillery range from North-Korea! Not a joke! Gongju was actually already the capital of Korea sometime between the 15th and the 18th century – after Gyeongju if you had read the previous posts – and it has the remains of a huge fortress (3km – the walls are in an excellent state, but there is pretty much nothing inside the walls).
I am not sure how this fortress was defending anything as the walls follow a series of steep hills and is surrounded by more hills: if I was trying to assault it, I guess I would just walk on top of a hill, have a great view over the wall and target with a bow everyone behind. The wall is in addition sometimes 5m high, but 1,5m a few hundred meters after. But okay, I guess it somehow worked, I am not a Korean-middle-age-defense-expert and the Unesco declared it as a major sight – and it is indeed worth visiting.
First night in a motel in Korea (also unofficially named love-hotel): it sounds a bit weird, but those hotels have actually great rooms with excellent equipment, with AC, a TV with international channels and a computer, they are really cheap, you get free food and drinks, closed parking space for the car,… perfect! The good thing in Korea is that motels are always all next to each other (something like 20 motels in a 200m radius), they cannot be mistaken and detectable kilometers away – with flashy pinky fluorescent sparkling colors, often some interesting outdoor decorations (a giant heart, the Eiffel tower, …), the only thing is basically to drive around and select the one with the best decoration: the most inventive are usually the nicest ones – and more for lovers, the non-decorated cheaper looking more for “a-la-carte” menus… Motels are also used very often for workers during the week and travelers though. I mostly met some workers from southern Asia and Malaysia at the breakfast in the morning. Maybe the distinctive fact: the biggest wall of my bedroom had a 4 x 2,5m picture of a giant blond lady in “lingerie”. Her head on the wall next to me, except that her eye was something like the size of my hand!

Thursday, starting in Gongju with some “royal tombs”. In Korea, the tombs are basically human-made hills, and the more important you are the higher your hill. The highest are 10 to 20m high (for kings, not for Kim-the-farmer), and the tradition still continues although today’s graves are more in the 50cm-range. There are so many tourists (irony!) that all sights in Gongju are simply open and the ticket office has been (temporarily) abandoned.
The weather is getting a lot better now, so more national parks! I am driving first to the Songnissan NP (don’t worry, I cannot remember the names without the guidebook the day after visiting the places…). It is a bit similar to the others, mountains and temples together – but the Boepjusa temple has the particularity to have a 33m high gold platted Buddha in the middle, and a giant 5 levels wooden pagoda facing it. That temple has had up to 3000 monks (how do you call a Buddhist monk by the way???), and although it has a lot less today, the prayer time is very meditating (see video – with sound). Once again, I am the only foreign tourist – although two retired people were suspicious: speaking English when there Koreans nearby and speaking Korean between each other later alone… As I had previously mentioned, temples are never near a road, so it usually implies some easy hikes in the park. A good mix of nature and culture, plus I would probably not go there just for that mountain, and (most of the time) not go to a temple if that was just a place behind a parking lot. Maybe St-Sernin in Toulouse should be moved on top of the Vignemale!
I am planning to spend the night in Andong, and the road with a small detour goes through the Woraksan NP. Again, mountains and temples – although more “antique” here (see pictures, probably better than words). The road to Andong follows some lakes and rivers with a very scenic drive. Andong has nothing particular, except a lively center with some motels and restaurants – today my bedroom is pink with sparkles, free popcorn and some nonsense poetry in English on the walls. Luckily most of the Koreans don’t speak English because the wall poetry-philosophy says more or less “if you suck with love, you are not happy and nobody likes you… don’t be desperate!”. There are words like “love”, “happiness” and “hope” so I suppose it sounds romantic…
The first other tourists I see in days, come sit right next to me in a most usual restaurant – a couple of retired Italians from Turin, speaking French and traveling around Korea by bus. They will actually be the only other foreigners met in this week! The restaurant is all about chicken…ribs: spicy-chicken-ribs, Korean-chicken-ribs, vegetables-chicken-ribs, etc.! The two Italians had been travelling in several other countries in Asia and were also surprised that Koreans eat and drink (alcohol) so much. It’s across from Japan, but they probably don’t have the same long healthy life expectancy.

Friday starts with the Hahoe folk village north of Andong. The Hahoe village is a community in a particularly remote location surrounded by a river who therefore kept all their traditional houses made of wood, straw and clay. People still live in the village (apparently, everyone there is more or less from the same family), are still farming and keeping a traditional landscape, although they probably now get the vast majority of their incomes from tourism. However because I arrived there before 8am (and not many people, mostly groups buses) I had no entrance or parking fee… I actually realized walking back (the village is a 15min walk from the road).
The Andong region is famous for its Korean paper, and the “Andong Hanji” museum shows the best creations (if you are not into paper, it is not especially amazing). I am driving towards the north eastern coast today, to get a glimpse at the sea and North-Korea on Saturday.
The roads passes through the “Dosan Seowon” school, an old Confucianism Academy: Confucianism is kind of Buddhism, but not quite… it is more the Chinese philosophy, and Korea has had a huge influence from China in, its history. Basically the culture influence in Korea has been mostly from the Japanese (aka. the invaders, colonizers and enemies), the Chinese (aka. the helpers and allies against the Japanese, plus brought the old Korean alphabet and a bit of traditions/religion) – and (purely my personal guess) the Russians for alcohol, plus central Asia for the binge meat-eating! After a long drive (but luckily plenty of nice podcasts), I arrived in the afternoon at the Seoraksan NP near Sokcho, not far from the North-Korean border on the eastern coast. The mountains there are higher than the rest of the country (apart from the Jirisan range – see first weekend’s hike), have a lot of cliffs and rock formations, plus great views with the sea on one side, the summits on the other side (and temples/giant Buddha’s down in the valley). Sokcho is one of the few areas in Korea with long sand beaches, and together with local sights has made it a very popular destinations for Koreans. The beach week-end get away from Seoul (3h drive + 2h with traffic jams in Seoul). It is also apparently a popular destination for Russians coming from Vladivostok and eastern Siberia to do some shopping! The only signs that were usually translated in the western alphabet have been replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet! In Sokcho, rely on your English-speaking GPS! Great… The town itself is not particularly idyllic, except that Sokcho is a large fishing harbor with boats, half Russian and half Korean, bringing all sorts of fish to the market. All sea food in here is alive! Not sure how fishing works there and how do large boats manage to catch the fish with the nets and keep everything alive… plus I guess the sharks and tunas would make a disaster if confined with squids in the boats reserves.
I am not particularly aware of the environment in the Japan/Siberia-seas, because the market is literally a sea-food freak-show: 1m large crabs, 5kg lobsters, 30cm large mussels, large weird looking fishes, small sharks, squids,… If you want, you can buy a fish alive on the market and ask the cook at the next stand to kill it and cook it immediately (the 1m large crabs in a giant pot included). I didn’t try, mostly because a portion is the whole fish… someone for a tuna? Tonight, a normal hotel, i.e. nothing offered and the strict minimum for a room for a more expensive price, and no funny décor: motels are definitely a better deal!

Saturday, last day of sightseeing starting with a walk on the coastline and up to the lighthouse, then visit of the Naksansa temple (mostly famous for being on a cliff right on the sea shore) and drive to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone: the border buffer between North and South Korea) at Goseong. Multiple checkpoints on the highway going north (not that there are many cars but lots of roads going to the border are large highways… for tanks to quickly go there!), the tension rises at every kilometer with more and more wired fences everywhere (around building, around towns, on the coast, around the roads), cameras and sensors everywhere and at the end the “unification peace observatory” where you can view tens of kilometers into North-Korea. The difference between the North and the South is impressive, the north has simply nothing! Not a building, the highway becomes a path,… on both sides of the border some military installations looking at each other. But nobody crosses, and nobody has crossed here for almost 70 years. The South has installed a special weapon – maybe the most dangerous for the north : some gigantic loudspeakers diffusing information and South-Korea propaganda into the north. Apparently the loudest equipments can be heard 30km away! Somehow the attitude of south-Koreans is very surprising: kids are mostly interested in ice-creams, grandmas are doing some flashy fashion competitions and in-between the most import is to take as many selfies with your dummy-stick as possible. They don’t seem particularly worried that a part of their country is ruled by a crazy paranoiac totalitarian dictator. The feeling that I had (at least with the younger generations) is that they consider north Korea as being now a different country where that cannot and do not want to go to… What is sure is that if they one day reunify, it will be a lot bigger shock (for both sides) than east and west Germany. The news however seem to talk about the north a lot more, no idea what they were talking about but the Crazy-Kim’s take at least a third of the news. Same with older people, it is a sensitive topic (all guide book and website mention the two “forbidden” topics: North Korea and US-soldiers in the South.
Funny fact of the day, the youngest Kim in North Korea has decided to launch a ballistic transcontinental missile from a submarine about 100km north-east in the sea of Japan at the time I was there: (un-?) fortunately nothing observed, and the missile exploded at 10km of altitude.
Drive to Seoul and direction airport for the next day in the evening, with a short tour of Suwon (a neighborhood south of Seoul with a fortress and a palace). The main attraction of Suwon is possibly more the view of Seoul from the top of the hill. The city is huge, but has a surprising important number of parks and is relatively well contained, notably comparing with cities of similar size like Mexico city, Beijing or Los Angeles. The most surprising is however the number of high-rise buildings, thousands and in all directions! Evening in a shitty motel near Incheon – I was completely exhausted and literally took the first place where I could repack everything, clean-up the mess in the car (the trunk became in 4 days the wardrobe, the rear left seat the food reserve, the rear right seat the trash, the front right seat the electronics and day stuff), and crash in bed.

And the way back to Munich on Sunday, from where I am writing this post – 14h flight!

Take care,

Cedric

A few thoughts:

– Korean work A LOT, and that is almost insane. At the company where I work, a standard week is 6 days, 7am to 7pm with an hour of break total (2x15min + 30min). But depending on the workload, employees are voluntarily working extras for free. During the last two weeks, most of the employees therefore also worked 10h on sunday, and it is usual that they work overnight (not in shift – but 30h straight), or at least until 11pm. It seems like there is some kind of pride to work more than imaginable, stay longer for the company, etc. I have had a few people gladly telling me in the morning that they worked non stop for 24h for the project – while I feel like I have to congratulate them, in Germany I would most certainly tell them it is stupid and they should go home immediately…
However, the productivity is very low – Korea actually has the lowest efficiency per hour in all OECD countries – , you can clearly see people fighting tiredness torture, sleeping on their desks if not taking a nap in the “nap room”.
It also seems that there is a small issue of planning tasks, people are never able to tell how long a task is going to take or when it will be done. It will be done by the deadline with crazy working hours, but something standard that could be planned for let’s say 4h, will usually be done between now and sometime in the night.
At the opposite of many other countries, the Korean government is doing everything possible to have people STOP working! Important increase of vacations, stricter controls of working hours, and Korea tries to have people travel and do other activities! It’s starting with conglomerates (the Chaebols) and slowly going down to smaller companies.

– The work hierarchy is almost like in the army, it is top down and nothing else. Whatever the manager says is to be granted as the truth and the most important thing. Compared with Germany, that makes the steering very simple – you talk to the manager and everybody applies it without discussion, but that also blocks communication as employee will never directly tell you something if not going through their responsible. But this also affects priorities: if an employee as a main task to do and whoever supervisor comes asking for anything, the supervisor becomes the very first priority right away – although it may just be en email, a powerpoint slide for next week, etc.

– Open-spaces are super quiet: 20 people and almost no noise! Quite different from my previous office with 5 people and a huge mess… Because of the top-down structure, no need of numerous coordination meetings and discussions, you just need to apply! Apparently, talking at work (even work related) makes you look like someone lazy and not professional -> solution: chat with your friends through Skype, Whatsapp and other Kakaotalk. Even if you have a question for your colleague sitting right in front of you, you should better text him the question instead of asking!

– Productivity and schedule are not the greatest, but failing or mistakes are very badly seen. That makes things for me, working in supplier quality, great: I have never had so far a supplier starting the production of so many complex parts almost without any issues! Easy work… At the same time, this can be a risky thing as culture with such behavior tend to try hiding issues instead of speaking up. Hopefully no whale under the gravel

– If you are a man and older, it is better. I have never had the situation myself, but it is common that companies officially only hire man for the only reason that “they are better”. No problem with that apparently. We have had a few weird situation, first last week being invitate for dinner, the two people leading the project (two woman) were replaced by two other people not related to the project (two man)… The strangest was probably last friday, all people involved in the project had dinner at a restaurant in a friendly atmosphere – man and woman – until at 8pm, the oldest guy decided that it was over, time for woman to go home (like 8pm is already too late for them, and they should clean/cook instead) and man to go to some weird shady karaoke. Most of the people weirded out, the woman simply resigned, and younger people not necessarily enthusiastic… until we explained him that we would better all stay together and he can go wherever he wants afterwards. This may slowly change with younger people, but it’s still far. To not help female employees, a Korean woman alone with foreign males has good chances to be harassed by other Koreans for being a prostitute… and in some cases the foreigner may be then manhandled. So they need to have a Korean male around for cultural well behavior.

– It does not feel like that at first, but Korean society is very misogyne and patriarchal, as mentioned in the point above. Whereas there is a relative percentage of females, none of them as any position with responsibility. Actually, the role of a woman is not quite the dream place in the Korean society – until you become among the oldest in the family, also called “Ajumma”.
Many marriages are more or less arranged (not directly, but basically your marriage is the choice of your parents and they will only accept if from their very specific conditions: younger people apparently always accept the decision of their parents – if they do not like your girlfriend, you will leave her immediately). Because renting an apartment is almost impossible in Korea (the concept does not really exists – except for expats in Seoul, but the caution can be in the 50.000US$ range), you have to buy your apartment – and real estate prices being very expensive, a lot of people cannot afford it. What happens is thus that the son will remain at his parents, his wife move to his parents in law and become the maid/cook/nursery/anything annoying. Her life becomes then controlled by the mother in law who – because she had that role previously – stop doing anything except commanding and giving orders (the “Ajumma”). From that moment, the spouse dream will be: 1/ to raise a son as fast as possible, and get him a wife so that she can replace her 2/ have the mother in law live not too long… The result is that lots of younger Korean girls do not want to ever get married (or boyfriend, but a boyfriend is some sort of illegal status – it’s marriage or nothing), and man have more and more to look for wives in southeast Asia.
Another result of these arrangements is the large amount of prostitution (although a tabu topic – there are tens of thousands of “love motels”, visible everywhere in every village but they officially do not exist: no website, no contacts or address, and talking about it can make you have problems), South-Korea is apparently one of the top countries for unfaithful husbands in the world, some “imports” of sex-workers from Russia and south-east Asia… all for the dominant patriarchs.

– Similarly, and probably because of its history of isolationism, a foreigner is often culturally suspicious. It is not uncommon to have places like bars and clubs banning officially any foreigners. Companies are also allowed for example to discriminate depending on the nationality and also on the origin (even if Korean). African people and south-east asians are at the very bottom of the scale. It exists elsewhere, but here as a boss you are allowed to say that you do not hire any black people! The image of westerners in more conservative medias is usually that they bring sicknesses and decadence… again, that seems to be more the view from holder generations – and it seems that many of them got stuck with the image of western soldiers during the Korean war, which was not the greatest. Younger ones are partying in Cancun, want to go to L.A., drink beers at the Oktoberfest and see the Eiffel-Tower

– Because of work-loads, cultural and societal pressure as well as the need “to be rich and succeed”, failure is not well accepted. Not just for yourself, but also for the image of your family, etc. And failure can be very large: unemployement, homeless, exams,… The result is the highest suicide rate in rich countries: 30% of 25-59 yo death are suicides, and that is the top mortality factor at that age.

– But, also because your work is such a large part of your life, companies do everything to build up teams and to make your job some kind of second family and your colleagues to be your friends. Some companies will offer you an apartment from their own employee residential area for the first years, pay for team events, pay for partying and alcohol (within colleagues), restaurants almost weekly, etc. Employees are thus very close to each other and very attached to their companies. I have been one evening to get a beer with the project team and many of them were still wearing the company shirts and jackets. Larger companies seem to take care of their employees, but in return expect a full commitment…
On top of the scale is Samsung, the largest conglomerate (500.000 employees and 17% of the country GDP – they do absolutely everything in Korea from ships to cars, electronics, insurance, hotels, construction, medecine, clothing, …), were employees are called Samsungman and basically seen as the elite and ultimate career goal. With an important white collar corruption, the CEO of Samsung is said to be more influent than the president of Korea.

– In 1975, North-Korea was richer per capita than South-Korea! That may seem unbelievable, but the GDP has been multiplied by 50, in 50 years! The increase really started only in the 80s. The level of wealth per capita is thus comparable to Spain and younger generations wish to have a society similar to western countries… but 50 years ago, South Korea was at the same level as Niger (also at that time). Society has been massively transformed, but older generation were born and raised in a country centuries behind – and they are now the current managers.

– If you are a couple, it is usual to have matching close – it can be from only the same colored shoes, to a complete outfit or the clothes of one person answering the other person’s clothes.

– English is kind of an issue in south-Korea, the government has tried and invested a lot of money in education of foreign languages (and native english teachers are more than welcomed by the government, and highly paid – over the national average). First foreign language is usually english, then either Japanese, French, or Chinese (in that order). However very few people speak english, even in the international companies – and basically nobody over 60 years old. Most of writings are only in Korean (and Korean alphabet), even road signs. On the shop-floor and technicians, it is also 0 english, engineers have usually a very good vocabulary about technical topics, but nothing about daily stuff (you may discuss about bearings and screw torque, but not about your week-end or the weather!), and actually only managers and people who have been abroad (i.e. mostly studying in the US) will be able to communicate. And whereas non speakers I found tended to be reserved, those speaking english will do everything to help you and become your friend in a finger snap: a liquor shot on top of the mountain, invite you to eat, get your email, phone-number, all sort of social networks (Kakaotalk!) and want to do business with you (I met one person in Gyeongju exporting Korean furnitures to the US and asked me if I wanted to help him start in Europe!) -> new job: make europeans eat on the floor with chopsticks? For sure a good challenge…

– Oh, yes: ten-thousand in Korean also means “a lot” or “infinity”, which is very confusing because if you talk about prices they may simply answer you “ten thousand” in English, but that does not mean 10.000! The 10.000 for infinity has no unit, because 10.000 Won is equivalent to 7,5€, so not much… I have had the case for a discussion about apartments in Seoul, where it was first 10.000 and later actually more like 1B₩, and the new Samsung cellphone which was also 10.000₩ (I was almost ready to get a container full of them shipped to Europe), turned out to be 1M₩!

– Pop music is a big deal in Korea, and the local pop is called K-Pop. South Korea is pretty small but has an insane amount of bands, with teenagers living in crazy conditions to become famous for at best just one hit. This implies almost living recluded, in autarky except during the shows. They have crazy trainings, massive cosmetic surgery and a huge pressure to succeed. The result is honestly very impressive and songs actually pretty catchy. I can bet that K-Pop is quickly going to be heard a lot more oversees (or across the continent). Music on the radio, except that they talk too much for my inexisting knowledge of Korean, is almost only pop music, not just K-Pop. By the way, Boney-M is famous in here too!
I want a referendum about the Eurovision (aka. the most soporific dull TV program) to have South-Korea replace England!

– Continuing the K-Pop, we went to a karaoke place last friday with the colleagues (if you have read from the beginning, that was after the restaurant, after a few drinks, and still with male AND female employees… in a karaoke for singing, not for a maniac third generation man). I was not very convinced at the beginning but it is actually pretty fun. The music is loud anyway, your voice “improved” by the system and you get a score at the end – hey, I even got a 98% with Daft Punk “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”! The catalog of songs has tens of thousands of references, in all languages (mostly Korean and English though and a few Japanese). With different types of people, you switch from Korean folk songs with older people to K-Pop with younger ones to the Beattles and Madonna… Apparently some Koreans are almost addicted to it, train 4 times a week and have competitions between each other!

– Possibly more if I have more thoughts in the next days! (I have a deal concerning Kimbaps with some employees)

-> and probably a post about food soon… I have been fed pretty much every possible dish existing on the peninsula (except dog meat, as I did not show a big interest ). We will see if one of them pisses me off in the next days and make me want to have a revenge!

Until then, some music:

> The current buzz!

> The hit of 2016:

-> and you can search Gangnam-style on your own! (Cassie, can I get a yellow suit?)

Another post from the same city of Sacheon, at the very south of South-Korea. This post may have no structure whatsoever as I have simultaneously no and too many ideas at the same time…if that makes sense.

So after a very sunny last week-end, we definitely entered the rainy season in here (see video hereafter) – every second day looks like a typhoon is hitting us with continuous hours of heavy rains and a constant 95% humidity. Not very pleasant – luckily the air-conditioning is massively used but mostly to dry the air, completely exhausting when running after the first kilometer (and a soaking sweaty t-shirt).

Work is going well, I may write something about working in Korea later. Sacheon does not have much to offer, it is a 100.000 people “town” mostly focusing on the industry: shipyards segment manufacturers and the aerospace manufacturer KAI with its suppliers around. The company I work at is directly on the coast, and the offices have view on the sea, in some sort of Fjord which would be a dream location in the Mditerranean sea. However, South-Korea is not necessarily very interested in tourism and there are a lot more chance to have chemicals tankers around than dingies.

It seems that I was the first to look at local history when I went on a hill a few kilometers behing the factory to find the remains of a japanese castle last wednesday evening, as almost none of the employees were aware of that. Not breathtaking, but it was interesting to see that historical remain of a very important part of Korean history.
Sacheon was the landing area of Japanese forces who tried to conquer Korea in the 16th century – Korea won the battle and later the war after massive losses, an influence of China (who helped Korea), the beginning of Japanese imperialism theories, the beginning of nationalism in eastern Asia (and future war associated), and partially the resulting complete isolationism of Korea for almost the next 4 centuries (basically until WW2 and again the japanese).
Back to my castle, I walked on a path with almost no signs to the top of the hill to find the remaining walls – I can imagine this to be an important tourist attraction in France with souvenir shops and parking places around, but here it seens to be considered more like big walls around the cherry trees!

Apparently, the international customers of the company in Korea are mostly interested in either drinking, gambling, partying or harlotry and other feminine comforting – apparently, they managers know very well where to bring their visitors depending on their nationality. And they 1/ do not know what to do with my mysterious origin, 2/ are amused and surprised every time I am taking out the lonely-planet! What is sure is that nobody had ever asked them about the japanese castle before! Game: associate the above customer-locations with nationalities (aerospace related)…

I enjoyed the fact of have a rental car to travel this week-end to the Haeinsa temple on saturday (another one of the three “jewels of korean buddhism” – see previous post), with the largest and best preserved collection of buddhism scripts (I did not get what that was, but something like a very very old buddhism-thorah that is very precious and very well protected – and because it is sculpted on wooden tablets, it needs 80.000+ tablets on giant shelves stored in a very large and old building). As you may understand from the writting, I do not know much about Buddhism…and because nothing is translated, I am not fixing those knowledge gaps. But the temples are very peacefull, well maintained and nicely decorated, few visitors, the monks and the music create a mystic atmosphere so some nice visits. And because they are never close to a road, it is usually a short pleasant hike in the mountains.
Plus this saturday, by the end of my visit, leaving a temple, a monk made me sign something, gave me some kind of blessing on the head before offering me a book (in Korean!) about Buddha. So I may actually well have turned into Buddist Lama And that probably means I am allowed to buy a giant Gong in Augsburg, Cassie?

I continued my way towards Gyeongju in the afternoon, and a storm oriented me to the “national history museum”. Gyeongju was the capital of Korea during over a thousand years until the 14th century and lots of archeological remains are around the city. Gyeongju is also “the tourism” city of Koreans: the usual week-end cultural trip, therefore a lot more tourists. The rain also brought all those people to the museum, and for the first time in two weeks: some westerners – well, actually somes buses of US-Marines based in Korea visiting the country during their 4th of July cultural prolonged week-end.

I had not planned any accomodation thinking that I would always find a cheap motel somewhere, and at worse sleep in the car (which might be funny after a few hours, with both the 95% of humidity and the breathing!). I went to a hotel, knowing that it would probably be out of range, to then ask for advise – the owner asks immediately its neighbor if I can sleep at his place (homestay), the neighbor feels very sorry and thus calls a friend. That works! I get a room in a traditional home for 11€/night including breakfast in total 5 min, right in the historical center. Next day, visit of the Tumulis (some grass-pyramidal-royal-tombs), later the Bulguksa temple (also on the Unesco list), the Cheomseongdae observatory (oldest surviving observatory in the world) and the particularly impressive carved in a grotto at Seokguram. A stop at a handicraft market before heading back to Sacheon – 3h of over water-driving under a storm.

Next post tomorrow (hopefully) about culture-shoch, food and working in South-Korea.

So, this post is only from Cedric – from Sacheon in (southern-)South-Korea. For a work related trip I have had the chance to be contracted for a 3 week assignment in South Korea at a supplier for a large inspection.

Things have gone pretty quickly as I booked the flight 5 days before departure implying a rush to find a hotel / car / international driving license / and particularly a flight that would be neither 3 days-4 continents-5 stopovers nor in the 5 digit range… I managed it through Istanbul, arriving in Seoul and crossing the entire country by night after landing. Tough start the next day (Wednesday 22nd), especially as Korean tend to do some very-(very)-long workdays (could be also called half weeks by some other western countries standards ). I finished that day invited by the company in a Korean BBQ restaurant: people are very friendly, but the communication in English not very fluent, and the limited vocabulary : the solution is to drink a rice/potato/whatever-available based liquor called Soju instead of talking. The soju essentially tastes like alcohol and not much more, younger people add some fruit juice in it, and it is cheap. And Korean drink a lot of preferably strong alcohol.
Luckily, knowing my passion for anything stronger than beer and cider – especially after 10h sleep over 3 days, a German based in Korea was here to participate in the shot tournament and a Korean part of a specific Buddhist congregation was not drinking.
Result: “- You all can drink together and forget us!
– Yeaaah, we all be drunken!”

Next day I was fit and almost recovered from jetlag, started the day jogging on the coast, while some managers of the company (+ the German) all had a good hangover. Plus bonus: several employees had seen me running from their car on the way to the factory… almost a celebrity after the second day!

June until August are the warmest months of the year, but the south of South-Korea has a sub-tropical weather. This means that summers can be hot, but are also very humid and rainy. A typhoon also usually comes by once a year. Thursday was sunny, but the Friday “il a plu comme une vache qui pisse” (Cassie? ) the whole day.

First plan for the week-end: climbing the Cheonhwangbong (지리산 천왕봉 / the highest summit of continental South-Korea – 1915m) and visiting the Ssanggyesa temple (an almost random pick among the larger older temples). The hike was more or less ill-prepared: almost no gear, no map except google maps, no topo in English… but I almost found the start immediately in the morning, to get lost by 2km at the first intersection of the hike (literally the first!). Needless to say signs are useless, apart from the kilometers, it just lets me know that something with funny letters is located in x-kilometers! No idea about the length either, except that the summit is the highest!
After 4h, 14km and 2200m of altitude elevation… I managed to reach a sub-summit at 1708m called the Daecheongbong (설악 대청봉). And the actual summit is still 8km and 800mD+ away!
But the views were pretty, the Jirisan national park gorgeous with rivers and multiple steep small hills, rice fields and a mix of tropical and mountain forest at the same time. The funniest part was probably hiking with Koreans: super prepared, top gears and equipment, clothes from the 23nd century (I am guessing that is how we will all look like then), all possible electronics, etc. The way of walking seems interesting too: one hour full-speed, one hour coffee break (with portable espresso maker), one hour full speed, one hour nap, one hour full-speed, one hour warm lunch with stove, etc. Slightly more professional than my crackers and bottle of water. I got to drink a shot of mysterious liquor on top of the Daecheongbong when someone I had talked for about 20s about Provence gave me a full glass of it: “For good Buddhists!”.
Descent the same way and visit of the temple in my stinky muddy clothes afterwards – it’s ok I was a good Buddhist

Sunday the sore legs brought me to easier directions with first the fortified village of Nagan, some sort of Hobbit-Tolkien village where the Germanic mythology would have been replaced by hordes of Japanese, very pretty and charming, especially as most of the houses are still occupied. Korea seems to be good at mixing old culture and tradition with ultra-modern. Then one the “three jewel temple of Korean Buddhism” – Songgwangsa – a large complex of temples on a side of a river. I headed to the Boseong Daehan Dawon tea plantation later with picturesque fields of the largest tea plantation of Korea (green tea).
By the way, Koreans do not drink tea – it is in Asia stuck between Russia, Japan and China but tea is not common to drink and the production is relatively recent: on average French drink three times as much tea as Koreans, i.e. not much – and countries not at all famous for their tea like Rwanda and Mozambique produce 3 times more than Korea… they also don’t drink coffee… no instead they really prefer to stick to their liquor: the Soju is the most produced alcohol in the world, a volume twice larger (and almost not exported) than the second – the Smirnoff vodka from Russia, and exported!
Last stop of this sunny week-end: the Suncheonman natural reserve with beautiful views over the Dadohaehaesang marine national park and its numerous birds and sea life.

Monday, back to work for a second week – just finished to wreck the bathroom by doing my laundry with the pressure jet nozzle of the shower!

Cheers, à bientôt!

Cédric