Chuncheon, South Korea - April 7, 2008

We spent one day and night here. Jim spent the day in meetings, but I was met by the wife of one of the deans and she took me around that day to see a dam, lake, temple and market. We had a great time.

Our first stop was at the large hydroelectric dam which creates a big lake. Min took this photo of me in front of a fountain with stainless steel fish.

A view of the lake with a lovely railing.

We took a ferry across the lake and then walked up a trail to a temple. We stopped on the way for some traditional Korean food, which was delicious.

This is a statue of a woman in a Korean folk tale. It reminded me of the little mermaid in Copenhagen. I don't know the story.

Here's a waterfall we passed on the way up to the temple. Buddhism was outlawed in Korea in the 10th century. At that time some monks moved their temples to hidden locations. This was one of those temples, tucked away in the hills of northern South Korea.

This is the main gate to the temple complex.

Some information if you would like to learn more.

People make a donation and can have a lantern hung in their name. All the temples we saw had these ceremonial lanterns hanging because the Buddha's birthday was coming up May 12th.

Another of the buildings of the temple complex.

Some painted scrolls and flowers.

I jsut love these colorful painted eaves. Can you see the birds? They are a bit hard to see, but there are 5 carved wooden birds here.

Inside the main temple building.

The ceiling of the same building.

Another building - more painting.

I saw these little piles of stones everywhere. People pile up stones and make a wish or prayer.

Looking back down from the temple at the top of the complex.

From here we walked back down the mountain to the lake and ferry. As we approached the village by the lake we were told that the boat had already left, but it wasn't 2:30 yet, so we thought we'd continue on. We couldn't see the landing yet, so didn't know if the boat was still there. When we rounded a corner we could see that the ferry was still at the dock, but by now it was 2:29. We could see people below us running to catch the ferry. The next one wouldn't leave until 3:30, so we started running. Then we were again out of sight of the boat. We didn't know if it would wait for us or not, so we kept running.

This is a picture of the trail that I took on the way up. But this only shows part of it. Thank goodness it was downhill to the lake. We kept running and running. When we could see the boat we waved and kept going. When we finally reached the boat we were greeted with applause by the ladies on board. Oof da!  We were glad we made it. Fortunately it was a cool day, so we stood by the railing on the boat to cool off during the crossing.

Next we returned to Chuncheon, where we visited a traditional market.

It must have been strawberry season. We had some wonderful fresh fruit in Korea.

Dried fish.

Many many vegetables. The Korean diet is rich in vegetables.

These are Korean wedding cakes.

Our hotel in Chuncheon. That hillside was covered with Azaleas.

That night Jim and I had another traditional Korean dinner with men from the university. You can see the coals for cooking the meat. We had a different style Korean barbecue here, which was just as wonderful as the first one in Seoul.

After a comfortable night and a brief tour in the morning we were driven back to Seoul.

I didn't do much research before, during or after this trip. My comments are based on what I remember from the visit. If you know more or can fill in some blanks I'd be happy to hear from you. E-mail me