Summer Vacation

In an effort to take a last spin around Korea and keep things cheap on the eve of a much larger trip, I used my summer vacation last week to scrape west along the southern coast of the peninsula. Busan, as usual, under-performed, but it did make for a nice springboard into Jeolla Province, a collection of largely farming communities and islands in the south west.

The first stop in Jeolla was the historical capital of the region: Gwangju. Unlike Gyeongju in the southeast, Gwangju's history is much more modern. Rather than the seat of the ancient government, these citizens boast the birth of the modern one. Although "democracy" in South Korea was established after the war in the 50's, it didn't really take root until the 80's. To spare you the boring details, after 2 decades of "presidency," Park gets assassinated and the military wipes out the interim government. General Chun becomes the new "president" of the "democracy" and on March 18th the people of Gwangju start demonstrating. The "communist rebellion" is violently put down however, and in what Koreans consider their own little Tienanmen Square, somewhere between 127 (government's claim) and 2000 (most extreme estimate) civilians were killed. Visiting the memorial grave site left me with both the awe of meeting a celebrity (for I had studied this event when I was at Yonsei) and the humility of being faced with sacrifice (especially for something Americans hold in such high regard).

Jeolla is known as the bread basket of Korea, and the food there doesn't disappoint. The highlight meals were the barley bibimbap (substituting steamed barley for plain white rice) and the massaged duck (massaged in sugar-vinegar-red sauce!), but everything right down to the barbecue or steamed pork was fantastic. The surprising thing was that it didn't rely on any "specialty foods" that couldn't be procured in Seoul, like Andong did. It wasn't even that the seasoning was more brilliant or complex. By and large, the stand out difference in the south west cuisine was freshness. Be it vegetables, rice, or meat, every ingredient tasted like it hadn't been packed up, cooled, preserved, or shipped, probably because it hadn't.

Compensating for the regions lack of vast cities, Jeolla's natural wonders were both breathtaking and expansive. I took the time to get up a mountain once I arrived in Mokpo, Jeolla's primary port. In contrast to the sprawling, tawny mess of spray-tan tourists that is Busan, Mokpo was the most quaint I've ever felt from a Korean town. A combination of the quiet atmosphere, the islands throughout the bay, and the wreath of mountains gave gave the effect either a hot version of Hokkaido or some Michigan lake town that was miraculously also in Appalachia. As wikitravel could tell you, there's not much to do here beside eat ray or leave, but somehow you don't care. Scaling Yudal mountain in the late Friday morning heat was not exactly agreeable, but it turned out to be one of the few times I've gotten a sense of gratification from a climb. For me, altitude doesn't add much to nature, but peering out into what looked like a mountain range sprouting from the ocean was terribly impressive.