Nagan Folk Village

Some fifteen kilometers NW of Suncheon lies the Nagan Folk Village. A functioning , as in people really live there, 17th century korean walled village.

In fact Here are the walls.

Interestingly they are all mortarless.

They run for a solid 2 kilometers around the village and are roughly 15 feet thick. They have paved a pathway over the top.

All the houses in the village except the lords home are roofed in rice straw thatch.


Here is some recreated Korean bondage.

A rather nonplussed cow.

The ever present Korean shamanistic totems.

And a traditional Korean swing. Apparently women used to love these things.

Kimchee Festival

Today I wandered t the kimchee festival in Gwangju. It was a foodie paradise.

Every good Korean Even needs to have a mascot. I refrained from asking for a hug.

Oddly I think he is supposed to be a leafy cabbage; which is the sort you use for kimchee as opposed to the denser varieties we in the West favor.

There were dozens of kimchee booths offering up uncountable goodies of Korean provenance.

Lotus roots and Radishes.

Garlic in salt and vinegar. I bought a kilo of this for presents to my Korean teachers.

Korean Pastry.

Kimchee; lots and lots of Kimchee.

Kimchee cook offs.

Kimchee instruction for hopeless unenlightened foreigners.

Directly next to the kimchee classes for children : ) We got a cute little plastic kimchee bucket.

And finally a Magic Kimchee Garden which was ver proudly all organic and inside the convention center. I had a wonderful time.

Down to the River to Play

Elias loves his river here. And fortunately its not polluted like the vast majority of Korean waters.

Rice harvest

So rice paddies are really small compared to other types of grain fields and so rice threshers are also rather small.
Out in the country the local farmers harvest and dry grain fro their ow use and to sell at a higher price than unprocessed grain. The old men and women use large rakes to spread it out on long narrow platic mesh tarps.
It makes me think of Zen rock gardens.
On Mondays I walk a mile between two of my country schools and a solid half of that mile has these stretches of rice bleaching in the sun.
The farm wives are also busy proccessing tons of other plants. These weeds are beaten with a stick to loosen the seeds and then sifted to remove the leaves that come off during the beating.
The farmers are always puzzled when I take pictures but don't seem too mind that much.

This evening's centerpiece

In Korea you work with what you've got.

Our mascot for the evening is Archimedes my little wooden owl.