Chuseok!

Chuseok is the Korean Thanksgiving. While it doesn't celebrate the Brits and Natives finally getting along, it is a basic Korean celebration of the harvest moon (or at least according to wikipedia). In the weekends leading up to Chuseok, families go back to their ancestral tombs and pay respect to their beloved lost ones. Ancestral tombs are usually just walled in mounds with a tombstone infront of it. You can find these tombs almost anywhere, from hillsides filled with them, to just a random tomb in the middle of a tourist area. Most of my students ended up studying or visiting their grandparents house to cook traditional Korean food for Chuseok.

For Chuseok I ended up getting Friday off, and originally planned to visit an island to the east. However due to less-than-favorable weather forecast, my friend and I opted to drink too much soju the night before. So when we slowly woke up around noon on a beautiful Friday afternoon, we decided to shop. I'll skip explaining the shopping experience because it was less than thrilling or fruitful; however, we did stumble upon a beautiful set of recreated Korean government buildings. And literally stumble, because we came out of the Underground mall and suddenly there they were. In the middle of a city...

Jejumok-Gwana

Sadly these buildings were burnt down multiple times throughout history (including a nasty burning during the Japanese occupancy of Jeju), so the buildings we saw were rebuilt. To say they were gorgeous, would be a terrible understatement. Sadly my camera was only once able to capture just how vibrant these gorgeous paintings were. The colors alone left me absolutely breathless. Because of Chuseok the government buildings had local Koreans visiting and flying kites there. We decided to join in and, I would just like to say, we represented westerners' kite flying skills very well!

On Saturday, my friend Justins' friend from Seoul was down visiting. So we took her to the south of the island to check out an old Dutch ship. The ship itself is rather boring, but when you walk inside it explains the history of a Dutch ship that came ashore at that very beach.

The Story

There was a group of Dutch traders sailing from Thailand over to Japan; however, their ship crashed off the coast of Jeju, killing about half the crew. After crawling ashore and asking for help from the government, they were forced to perform manual labor for about 7 years. During this time they tried multiple times to escape and steal food, which resulted in brutal beatings. Finally after a well planned escape, they found a way over to Japan where they were unfortunately imprisoned for a full year. It was only after that year, that they managed to finally make it to the Dutch trade outpost and freedom.

Not the luckiest men as you can see. The two top floors told us that story, while the bottom floor was just a history of the soccer stadium Jeju island has. Which was dull to say the least.

We then headed to the beach and the beautiful rock penisula that the ship is beside. While I can't remember the name of the formation, from up the hill the penisula looks like the back of a curving dragon. It actually is very neat! But mostly it was a delightful and relaxing walk! After that, we headed home!

On Sunday we headed out to check out the Teddy Bear museum and the Sex & Health museum. Which I shall discuss in another post!