Traveling Around South Korea

After the tour of the DMZ and Seoul, we were privileged to see more of this country with Sheila's brother Ed and Nelda Little - thanks to an excellent tour guide and historian - Brother Choe.

Here are 3 more pictures from Seoul.  

This country does a good job of restoring 

and retaining the old architecture - houses of common people as well as palaces of royalty.  

 Our next trip, after Seoul, was to the city of Suncheon about 2 hours South of Iksan.

Mrs. Kim, daughter in law of one of the local church members, hosted us to this elegant meal in Suncheon and our lodging in a beautiful hotel.

Sheila being taught how to play the Gayageum

 The expert in the purple dress played the instrument and sang a beautiful mournful sounding song.

 This is a coastal city and also has a restored very old village.  Actually it may not be correct to say restored.  I think it has been continually occupied for hundreds of years,  but it is open for tourists and school tours,  even though the houses are occupied by permanent residents.

Note the grass roof and the near perfect symmetry of the rope lines 

With Brother Choe in one of the old villages.

Nelda almost fell over backward - and the water jug was empty. 

  

Then we flew to Jeju Island for 4 days.  This is  a tropical setting.  It is a volcanic island with 360 satellite craters on the main volcano -  the last volcanic activity was about 800 years ago.  

The next 7 photos are from a wonderful botanical garden that has dozens of Bosai trees.  Some are over 400 years old and some that are no more than 3 feet tall bear full grown fruit.

The man in the white hat developed this garden from a rough volcanic plot over a period of 36 years.  He was very cordial and took time to have tea with us.

Museum of War History and Peace

At this place we toured tunnels that were dug into the volcanic hills by the Japanese prior to and during WWII with Koreans being forced to do the work.  The man in the orange shirt acquired this property and opened the museum in honor of his father who worked as a slave 2 1/2 years in these tunnels.  His father went blind working in the conditions in the tunnels.

Inside the tunnel system in the mountain.  

This shell is one of those fired by North Korea into a South Korean island on November 23, 2010 killing 2 soldiers and 2 civilians.  That is just 12 months ago.  

Do we, and does our nation, still know that "Freedom and peace are not free."? 

Back at Iksan:
Nelda and Sheila were dazzled by the needlework of one of the members of our local church.  She is Brother Choe's sister.  Only a very few people have achieved this level of skill.  All the elaborate embroidery you see was hand crafted by Auntie as we call her.

She showed Nelda and Sheila more than 50 such dresses, tapestries, etc. 

Typical scene as you travel by car, bus, or train.  

Of course we had to ride the train and go to Costco.  We bought a microwave this trip and lots of groceries, so the trip home on the train was quite an adventure.

Fish from Costco - displayed Asian style.

This octopus in Costco cost about $30 US dollars.  

Yes, that is a well loaded shopping bag in Sheila's hand in one of the traditional markets. 

We had a wonderful time having Ed and Nelda travel with us for a few days of the first 2 weeks, then spending a full week keeping up with us in our regular activities.