Happy New Year! Is Korean Seollal Changing?

Happy new year, readers.

It's a good day, the weather's finally not so bone-chilling, and the wife is away on vacation.

Not that I'm up to any mischief... I wouldn't be here blogging if I were, now, would I?

Since I've come to Korea, one of the things I've noticed is a big change in how the Korean traditional holidays (that is, Seollal/Lunar New Year) and Chuseok (Harvest festival) are practiced.

The typical/normative Korean Traditional Holiday^(tm) experience remains that of going to the grandparents' house, having a ritual for the ancestors that involves big tables full of traditional foods that take a long time to prepare and clean up, the women spending hours in the kitchen, the men playing cards or games in the other room, and the consuming of chapchae, ddeokkuk (new year) and songpyeon (chuseok).  Grandparents give money to the children, and the children bow to the living ancestors (parents, uncles, especially grandparents) and some or all of the family goes up the mountain to trim the grass and perform maintenance on the family gravesite.  And the children wear really cute Hanbok.

Frankly, I'm not the guy to describe all those ceremonies.  The Korean does an admirable job of it.

I'm interested in the way the holiday's changed: my first year in Korea, Seoul was a ghost town during the new year celebration.  The usual complaints were raised: traffic is a pain, it's impossible to get tickets,  the women do all the work, it's boring sitting around at your grandparents' house all day.

Meanwhile, this year Seoul's museums are staying open, and a lot of the palaces and plazas are featuring cultural events, displays and performances this Seollal.  People are traveling overseas instead of visiting the family.  Meanwhile, a recent survey reports that only one in five Koreans consider their grandparents part of their family.

Tonight's topic on TBS eFM is the ways we celebrate Seollal/Lunar New Year: what do you do, and is it different than it used to be?  It's a holiday, so we're picking a happy topic, and I'd love to hear from readers, how do YOU celebrate the new year?  Have travel concerns changed the way you celebrate? Have you spent holidays away from family? Why?  Have you ever attended the cultural events instead?Whether you're Korean or not, we'd love to hear what you get up to on Korea's traditional holidays.

The Best thing About Chuseok

Well, not really: there are tons of great things about Chuseok:

The mountain I'm going to climb later today, the food, the finally-cooling-down weather, the food, the good times (especially if you've been invited to a Korean family's chuseok gathering), and the food... but one little joy that I haven't mentioned yet is...

little kids in Hanbok!

(so cute)

Chuseok really Seoks this year: Rain in Seoul and Seyo's Got Good Timing

I may never have told you the story of the most touching gesture I had from a friend on Chuseok: in my first year, a buddy spent the whole day of Chuseok with me, down at Gyeongbok Palace and Namsangol Folk Village, because he couldn't imagine someone being alone on Chuseok day.  I was really touched by that.

This year, I'm with Wifeoseyo and her awesome family.  We drank some seriously classy Ballantine's whisky: me, my pop and brother-in-law, and have had a great old time bopping around Daegu.

This evening, Wifeoseyo got online and saw news reports that basically, Seoul is currently completely under water.


Here be a shot borrowed from news sources.

the images on the news are incredible, too.  Is it seriously like this?

(another - source)

So from a sensible person (say, wifeoseyo)'s perspective, looks like I got out of town just...in...time.

From a blogger's perspective, holy crap I'm missing out on the greatest blog photo essay this year!!!  And that's why bloggers are different from ordinary people.  Sensible people say "I'm not doing that.  That's buttflapping crazy!"  Bloggers say "I'm in.  Just let me get my camera."


The mad blogger in me wishes I was there, so I could put on my bathing suit, strap on some water wings, put my camera in a dicapac (got one for the honeymoon with coral) and go out exploring Seoul underwater... hoping I didn't get washed out to the Han River, like my buddy Joe almost did.

If you have a floody Seoul story, share it in the comments.

Chuseok...the Two Best Things To Do in Seoul

In case you doubted my word about Spam for Chuseok before, here's an oldy but goldy blog post about it: yeah.

And in case you didn't have any Chuseok plans yet, and because you're hooped for getting out of town now, in case you're stuck in seoul, because tickets have been sold out for about seven weeks already, as another expat whose gotten stuck in Seoul before on Chuseok, when you can't be sure ANYTHING will be open, let me give you some tips about the best things to do on Chuseok:

1. Go to Namsangeol Folk Village.  This is the Folk Village right near Korea House, right near Chungmuro Station, right near the bottom of Namsan (Nam Mountain) right near downtown Seoul.  Every chuseok they have tons of stuff to see - performances on the stage, activities like making songpyeon or your own paper-mache hanbok doll, and the like.  There's lots to do, and a lot of demonstrations of traditional Korean arts.  The park isn't too big, and the stage area has a lot of seating, but it might help to reserve a seat: a few times I've gone and had standing room only.

2. Climb mountains.  Particularly the busy ones.

One of the genius things about Seoul, that's never promoted in the Hi Seoul promotional materials (stupidly) is that there are about twenty great mountain hikes, ranging from "I could do this with my step-mother" to "better bring your climbing gear" in difficulty, all within reach by the Seoul Subway and Bus System.  Public transportation still runs on Chuseok, as do the odd taxi, so you can definitely get there, and they're mountain trails: it's hard to close those, isn't it?

Head up to the north end of the #4 Subway line, choose a peak, and strike out for it, get up to Uijeongbu and do likewise; check out this list of mountains in Seoul, or this one, or this one.  Or do Bukhansan, which holds the guinness world record for busiest mountain, meaning it's the one mountain in the world where climbing it will stress you out, or the one mountain you SHOULD climb if you like being around crowds.  Yes.  It's the COEX of Mountains.  But on Chuseok, there will be fewer people up there than any other day, because most folks are with their families.  So take the chance... and September to October are PERFECT climbing weather in Korea.  And Koreans are seriously NEVER more pleasant than when they're on the mountain - it's one of the sweetest aspects to the culture you'll ever find.

Also:

They're gorgeous.

Must be Chuseok! Order your Spam Set.

this is from a twitter post posted by a facebook friend...

One of the charms of Korean holiday culture is the gift giving culture: for a while I thought it was dumb, or lame, or stupid, that Koreans give each other toothpaste, spam, and olive oil sets for chusok, but now I just think it's goofy and funny.

Now, the spam might well hearken back to Korea's post-war poverty, a time when the US Military saw to it there was lots of military issue spam in the country, but it was mostly a luxury item for impoverished Koreans.  Some foods, for example budaejigae, came out of that period, and are frankly, some of Korea's best down home lunches, regardless of whether Korean food promotion is proud or ashamed of that period of post-war poverty.  I'll take a good old homey budaejigae over a pretentious boutique cafe lunch any day.

One year, my boss gave every foreign staff member (and every foreign Korean staff member) huge boxes of spam.  None of us knew what to do with it: none of us used spam in our cooking, none of us particularly liked spam.  We had to sign our spam sets out with the front desk; some of us never claimed one, and a few of us left them in the staff room for months before getting rid of them.  We mostly re-gifted them, and we kept one around, to set it up beside our computer monitor, so that it blocked the glare on the computer monitor between 10 and 11 am, when the sun shone in the window.   Were we being passive-aggressive?  Perhaps... but for seollal, our bosses gave us bottles of wine instead, which we actually used.  Another boss gave cash.  That was the best, and if any of my readers are Koreans, thinking of gifts for your foreign friends, cash or gift certificates are probably the perfunctory gifts we'll appreciate most.

The interesting thing, to me, is how in my anecdotal experience, it's so totally acceptable to give out a basically thoughtless gift here.  I asked Wifeoseyo and she said the same: It's just the giving of the gift that matters.  Everybody knows it's perfunctory gift anyway, and there seems to be an unspoken agreement to just be OK with that.  When I give a gift to Wifeoseyo, I want to think about her style, her taste, what she needs, what she expects, and what will make her feel happy: I spend a lot of time thinking about possible gifts, and even writing down in my pocketbook ideas that would make her happy, come gift-giving time.  Making scrapbooks, remembering old conversations, stuff like that.

I talked to an older lady (and yeah, this is generational), and she said, point blank, that she'd rather her husband just gave her cash for her birthday, so she could get what she wanted.  Weddings are the same: people give envelopes of cash on wedding days, and used to give cash to teachers as well - the white envelope culture works here, and again, wedding couples generally just agree to be OK with the way wedding halls sometimes even have a cash machine in the lobby, so that you don't even have to plan at all - just show up at the wedding hall with a bank card.

Do people in North America give thoughtless, perfunctory gifts?  Sure.  Ever got a box of chocolates for valentines day?  My Dad is a pastor, and pastors get a lot of perfunctory boxes of chocolate and christmas cake and pastries, come Christmas.  Back home, people give thoughtless gifts too.  Here, it seems like people don't even try.

So... do the Koreans you know feel embarrassed at all about giving cash, or olive oil, or toothpaste, to even close relatives, or is everybody still openly OK with it (even if they quietly bring it home and go "what the HELL am I going to do with twelve kilograms of spam?")

And what have you observed the younger generation do on gift-obligatory times?  Are young people also scooping up boxes of spam?  Have the types of perfunctory gift changed, though the gifting culture hasn't, or are things totally different now?  Is re-gifting OK, so long as it's done discreetly, the way we replace the cards on Christmas cake and pass it along, back home?

Talk amongst yourselves.

In Honor of St Patrick's Day: How to Really Improve Korea's Brand

So here's the idea.

St. Patrick's Day is coming, and everybody knows what that means.

For the uninitiated, here's a great 30 second history of St. Patrick's Day.

So here's the thing.

(image)

Not a lot of people know a whole lot more about Ireland than U2, sheep, Guinness, and all the symbols and images associated with St. Patrick's day. That's not a whole lot, really... and if you trot out those stereotypes as all you know, you'll get the verbal smackdown from your Irish friend just as quickly as if you make another f*#&ing 51st State/Exchange Rate joke to a Canadian. So yeah, it's unacceptable to wallow in ignorance about this awesome country, and unique culture, but the fact remains: a lot of people don't know all that much about Ireland.

But then, let's look again:

Yeah, the world doesn't know that much about Ireland... but what they DO know about Ireland is pretty darn positive. Cute Leprechauns, Guinness beer, four-leaf clovers, and a holiday that, while not observed in Ireland itself, has been popularized expressly as an excuse to have another day of the year to get smashed. And as Halloween has demonstrated, any excuse to get drunk will do. Who doesn't smile when the person they just met tells them they're Irish? Nobody, that's who, because everybody's had a great time at a St. Pafter's day party sometime in their life. Unless you've got a rugby or a football (that's soccer) rivalry somewhere in the background, that's most of what a lot of people know about Ireland. Not a bad start, frankly. Even I find myself predisposed to liking the Irish I meet because of those associations.

Along with that, St. Patrick's day means that, to be honest, I know a swack more about Ireland than I know about the Czech Republic, because there's no day when everybody dresses in blue and yellow and drinks pilsners. There are a whole ton of countries about which I know less than I know about Ireland, thanks to that silly drunk holiday which isn't even observed as a party day in Ireland (it was the Irish-Americans/Americans who really picked up on St. Patrick's day and started getting smashed - [fact check update] in Ireland, St Patrick's day is a week long religious holiday, where getting smashed might be part of the festivities; that's different from in Canada, where it's just a one-night drink-off.)

And here's what Korea can learn from this: with all that stress and anxiety about becoming better known around the world, here's all they really have to do: get the millions of Koreans living overseas to ...

1. Pick a random Korean holiday. I recommend Hangeul Day... but call it Sejong Day because that's easier to pronounce.

2. Dress all in red.

3. Invite Non-Koreans to the party. As many as you can, and make them part of the fun.

4. Everybody get royally smashed.

I recommend making it a mixer drinking party, as a tribute to soju -- soju might be hard to get around the world, but there are lots of other alcohols that are as fun as soju to mix with other drinks -- everybody dresses in red (this gives the party a recognizable visual identity, just as the drink-mixing theme helps people remember what to do) and it's only natural for it to turn into a bar crawl, because Koreans always hit up two or three places on their epic drinking binges. If at all possible, the party should end at a karaoke bar of some kind, another nod to Korean drinking culture, but that's by no means necessary.

And seriously, if Koreans abroad invited all their non-Korean friends to the party, and acted un-clannish for one night, so that everybody could join the fun, how long would it take for this to catch on? Exactly as long as it took for American frat-boys to go "HEY! ANOTHER DRINKING HOLIDAY SWEET!" and that's it. And within fifteen or twenty years, every university in sight would be dressing up in red, oiling up the karaoke machines, hitting up the barbeque restaurants, and mixing juices and liquors with other things, until the cows came home. It would have none of the pretension of trying to get Hanshik institutes established all around the world (that's never going to work, anyway), it'd make learning about Korea fun, there WOULD be an origin story -- people could learn about Hangul and Sejong, which in my opinion is the highest achievement of Korean culture -- but that would by no means kill the joy-buzz of having another night of the year when everybody gets happily sloshed.

So all my Kyopo readers, and Korean friends abroad: this is all you have to do to make Korea more famous worldwide, to make people like Koreans abroad, to lash some positive associations onto the Korean diaspora. Start planning your parties on Sejong Day, bring along as many non-Koreans as you can, and wait for the magic to spread. And dress in red.

You don't think this:

(image)

Will improve Korea's global image more than this?

(source)

Then you're just wrong, buddy.

Back-Blogged: Christmas trip to Suncheon Bay and Boseong Lights Festival

So... my nemesis Dan Gray of Seoul Eats and I got together and planned a nemesis-themed Christmas party. It was great.

We got turkey from the army base near Itaewon.

There was way too much food for the size of the group (as Christmas dinners should be), so I got to take home a pumpkin pie. The world is a wonderful, wonderful place.

Joy was there with a hat she got from one of those places (Baskin Robbins, Paris Baguette, and I forget which others) that always have a dumb awesome hat contest.

Chris in SK was there, with his hilarious girlfriend, as were a bunch of Dan Grey's friends from the Seoul Eats meetups, and Kelly NameChangedForPrivacy made an appearance as well, as did an old coworker whom it was great to see.

Then, Girlfriendoseyo and I hopped in a car and started driving: we were heading down to Boseong, for the Tea Fields there, where every Christmas they string the tree plants up and put on a light show. We drove all day, stopping for an early dinner in Jeonju, home of the world's best bibimbap, where they threw more food at us than we could comprehend, and had the best yukhoe (raw, minced beef - traditionally not a favorite of mine, but I'll make exceptions) I've eaten in a long, long time.

The lights were nice. Strangely, the closer we got to the lights, the nicer they looked, and the were definitely the prettiest when we were right out there, walking around in the middle of the field.

Thanks to a botched reservation, courtesy of Roboseyo the dumb, whose Korean (lack of) skill still leads to the occasional snafu, and sometimes makes him feel like a noob, we got stuck out in Boseong with, literally (she checked) not a single room for hire within a forty kilometer drive. We drove to Suncheon, where there was one hotel room open in the entire town, and that thanks only to a cancellation (this is what happens when you travel inside Korea on holidays... especially on years when all the red letter days fall on Saturdays and Sundays)

(Here's a video of the lovely lights of Boseong, and Suncheon bay. Keep reading for more on Suncheon.)

But we found a place to crash. And you know how food tastes way better when you're starving, and there's a chance you won't eat the next day? Well dear readers, when you're worried that you'll have to spend the night in a skeezy 24 hour jimjilbang near Suncheon Bus Terminal, or crammed into reclined bucket seats in the car, waking up once an hour to run the engine and warm up the car... then even a simple room in a business hotel seems like a luxury suite. Oh, yes it does. And yeah. The irony was not lost on me, that we were driving around Jeollanamdo, and there was no room at the inns, on CHRISTMAS night. I'm also sad to report that we didn't see any shepherds, and no angels appeared.

On Saturday morning (the 26th), we woke up early enough to check the weather reports: it called for snow on Sunday, so we decided to drive as far as we could on Saturday, rather than do the lion's share of the driving in bad weather. Thanks to some sweet sleuthing, some good luck, and another cancellation, Girlfriendoseyo once again found us a place, one town over from Boryeong, and this one was pretty sweet. It was a beach condo, and it was an amazing, gorgeous place to say... except that whole below freezing thing. (it was cold and windy. Pretty, but bad beach weather).

However, before we headed out, we got a chance to meet up in Suncheon with Brian in Jeollanam-do, in Jeollanam-do. We had a nice hanjeongshik meal with Brian and his fiance, who's just wonderful, and I'm happy to report that Brian's a wonderful guy, and the in-Jeollanamdo's, as a couple, are adorable. Girlfriendoseyo liked them the first time she met them, last Christmas, and this year again, we had a grand old time. We'll look forward to the next opportunity to hang out with them.

After lunch, Girlfriendoseyo and I headed out to Suncheon Bay, which Girlfriendoseyo told me is spectacularly beautiful.

I concur.

It was crowded, crowded crowded (cf: famous places in Korea, Korean holidays)

And this poor girl was there. She'd dressed appropriately... give or take twenty degrees celsius.

I nearly froze my camera and my fingers taking pictures at first (it was beautiful bobbing in the breeze... but cold), and then, climbing the hill to the Suncheon Bay observatory, I was sweating in my winter gear....

but the photos were worth it. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, worth it.

from the observatory

The water reflected the amazing blue sky.

Buddha's Birthday...a bit of video.

The Parade in Seoul


The cutest float: Thomas, the Buddhist Tank Engine


outside Bulguksa Temple...
huh?


a kid playing ssireum with his mom in one of the parks in Gyeongju. Cute. Sweet bippy I envy Gyeongju their expanses of green stuff. (It had rained the night before, so it was extra pretty.)

SparkleDown III and the Lantern Festival

OK.

Soundtrack: Love Love Love by Mountain Goats: this song always comes to my mind when it rains.

So Sparkledown III started off by Anguk Station, at a tea room which most of us liked quite a bit: the tea tasted good, and the lady kept bringing free stuff by. Cool.

We decided to move on when the music went from the nice classical stuff to the nice Korean traditional stuff...and then to the compositions on instruments that could best be described as piercing, and don't easily slide into the background, along with vocalists making grunts and moans that ALSO don't easily slide into the background.

It was raining, but we walked up to a Panini place I like (I'll write it up some other time), and we had a nice time there before strolling over to Jogye Temple to see the lanterns, and collecting a couple more people.Then it was to an "India Style" wine/lounge place near what was once Piano Street (the piano keys have all been dug up... I don't know what's going on there, but it sure is dirty right now.)

Anyway, some of the people in these pictures are online personalities, and some aren't, so you might recognize a few faces. The conversation all afternoon was really pleasant, and then in the evening it got a little goofy from time to time, but I think it's safe to say a good time was had by all. We moved on to a favorite bar of mine, and bumped into a coworker of mine, and more laughs were laughed.
And that was Saturday. Thanks to everyone who came out: I appreciated seeing you, and to those who didn't come, you missed out.

Then: Buddha's birthday and the Lantern Festival in Jongno.

But first a picture of Lotte Department Store: I like silhouettes.

Then: the street festival was a proper street festival: it was colder than other years have been, but the turnout was good. The air was clear and the light was somehow balmy, and the rain held off until a few flecks in the evening.

There was calligraphy

Free Hugs (this guy really liked his)
and my buddy Charles, the high school pal who's responsible for me coming to Korea in the first place (far left) -- you can thank him in the comments


There was a yoga demonstration that probably led to about 300 men signing up for classes. And after tea and dinner at a Japanese Restaurant in Myeongdong, I pulled out my tripod and took low-light pictures that actually had still frames instead of "he can't quite hold the camera steady" blurs.
played with the light intake to get these different takes on the same place
The lamps at Chunggyecheon (I actually took this picture another day... same stuff, though)


More from tonight:


And the Buddha's Birthday parade snaked from Dongdaemun to Jogyesa, as usual. There were tons of floats, including some that seemed like weird fits for a Buddha's Birthday celebration (a pig on a motorbike with a flame thrower? That brings ME closer to the Buddha Mind, why do you ask?)

And the cartoon Buddha (who reminds me of the Buddy Jesus)



This lady had a high powered fan to keep her gown flowing. She was like a ballerina in a snow-globe.
And the real reason I took my tripod: pictures of Tapgol Park at dark.
I love this park on Buddha's Birthday.



Ya shoulda been there, readers.

Buddha's Birthday Lantern Festival

Hey there. Today's the Buddha's Birthday Lantern Festival in Jonggak.

If you live anywhere, ANYWHERE near Seoul, get your butt down to Jonggak (near Gwanghwamun) and check out the street festival. Build a Buddhist lantern, hang out with the peoples, take pictures, and all that cool stuff.

Seriously, the Lantern Festival is the best day of the year in Seoul, and casts Korea in about the most positive light you'lee ever see it. If you don't believe me, here's my glow-in-the-dark happy post from attending two years ago.

Even more: check out the parade in the evening, from Dongdaemun all the way down to Jogyesa Temple (basically the Westminster Abbey of Korean Buddhism), and after dark, poke your head into Tapgol Park, strung up with lanterns: one of the prettiest sights I've seen in Korea, and nice enough I'm actually bringing my tripod downtown to get better pictures of it this year.

In Case You Missed It...

This video was buried near the end of the really long Andong Mask Festival post. . . and I wanted to bring more attention to it, because this was one of the loveliest experiences I've had in all my travels, and I'd like to share the wonder.

In case you said "Post too long already. Will not watch." -- if you did that, you made a mistake, missing out on this one.



Skip the rest if you like, but watch this video. (Hang on to the end, too: there's more.)

Andong Mask Dance Festival, Scenery, and Really Really, Ridiculously Good Food

So I heard about this thing called the Andong Mask Dance Festival, one of those Korean culture touchstones and all. Girlfriendoseyo explained to me that Andong is the heartland of Korea's confucian heritage -- the guy whose face is on the 1000 won bill lived there, and his house made it onto the money, too.
So something cool is definitely cooking in Andong, and we both needed, badly, to get out of dodge, anyway.

What is the meaning of this picture?  Keep reading...

So Andong it was. Rattling around in the train, starting at Chongyangni in standing room only, and moving into seats after the first hour, we got out of the city, and began to wonder as the city dwindled away.

The countryside is checkered with rice-fields shaped both regular and irregular, on average, about this size:

A really overbearingly beautiful sky kept us looking out the window.
Rickety old train stations
Instead of the fancy new ones with radar motion detector sirens to whistle if you step over the yellow line: this.
Finally, we arrived in Andong, at about 1pm.

Lunch time. 

Now, possibly my favourite Korean food is JjimDalk -- a special kind of chicken dish with sweet and sour soy-based spicy sauce, clear chewy noodles, and some veggies (most notably onions, carrots and potatoes) tossed in for balance.  Good eatin' dear readers.  If you can't make it to Andong (though you really should), the best place I've found in Seoul so far is right next to Boshingak Bell by Jongno Station. . . but I'll write more about that place another time.

On Saturday, we went to Jjim Dalk street, where about a dozen restaurants serve the famous dish, and the ridonculously harsh competition, plus the reputation of the town, plus the reputation of the street, has refined each place to the point where no place outside of "Chicken Street" can come within the same flippin' ORBIT as these places.

The Jjim Dalk (찜닭), and dear readers, I believe I have eaten enough of it to be able to say, was perfect.  In every way.  The freshness of the meat and vegetables, the balance of the sweet honey tang with the dark soy, the spiciness just enough to bring the other flavours out on a now-sensitive tongue, and the portion was...uh...a lot.  Seriously, by the end of the meal, I was counting bones trying to figure out if they'd secretly given us more than one chicken.  "Two necks I tell you!  And thrEEEE legs!  They gave us at least one and a half birds!  Those over-feeding fiends!"  It might have just been one chicken in there, but it felt like seven by the end of the meal, and it looked like two for sure:
So we did what any sensible pair of epicures would do, given a portion of perfect food large enough to fill us up twice over...
Tried to eat it all anyway.  That was as far as we got. . . pretty respectable, though.  I managed to maw down a few more noodles after we took this picture, but it had reached the point where my mind and my throat were holding negotiations each time I tried to swallow, so we had to leave some behind.

Here's Girlfriendoseyo, looking as full as a . . . really full thing.

(A little more here:)

and more again about Andong JjimDalk at FatmanSeoul, here.

Girlfriendoseyo found a really nice guest house that was originally built 600 years ago by a writer.  

We slept in buildings like this.
And this.


Which were heated like this:
The old way, with a fire burning under the floor.

In the morning, we ate this:

some of which was probably taken out of these:

Pots for storing pickled side-dishes like kimchi.

The mask festival, then.  

It was cool.  Dancing, lots of people, the city put its best foot forward.  We didn't have time to catch TOO much of the mask dancing, what with everything else going on, and the weather and scenery being so splendid. . . but the mask stuff was cool, too.

Traveling to and from places was actually one of the highlights, as the scenery in Gyungsan province reminded me of the BC Interior, kind up up Okanagan Valley way, with the mountains a little lower and the land a little more domesticated with beautiful rice paddies.

The rice plants were nearly yellow, which means they're almost ready for harvest, and the heads were bowed almost right over.

Taken around Hahoe Folk Village, as the sun got low in the sky:Hahoe Village was in fine form itself: this might be one of the better pictures I've ever taken...

More of the Hahoe Folk Village countryside and sunset (with special guest Jumping Fish at 2:05):

People actually live in this village.  You can even stay there--a few of the places put up guests.

The sunset was amazing, from start to finish.

This was the performance spot where the musicians set up during the fireworks show. This is another of the better pictures I've taken in my life.

But the possible highlight (if you HAVE to choose between the countryside, the jjim dalk, and this) was the fireworks:

Now I'm sure I've spelled this wrong in Korean (feel free to correct me in the comments), but over at the folk village, they do this thing called 선유줄불놀이 Seonyu Julbulnori: 

Traditional Korean fireworks.

I'd explain the whole thing... but just watch the video.  It's worth it.  These things were so beautiful.

These fireworks were different than others -- usually the aim of a fireworks show is spectacle.  Big, loud, amazing, people say "WOW!" and small children scream in fright.  These ones were so mellow and peaceful -- like bright flower-petals floating to the ground, and it created an ethereal atmosphere that was gentle and lovely, instead of the usual, expected thrills that fireworks bring.  Maybe the cognitive dissonance: "This isn't what fireworks are supposed to be like!" heightened the experience, or the fact Girlfriendoseyo and I TOTALLY did not expect this experience... but I got blindsided by beauty this weekend, dear readers.  Gobsmacked around a bit.

Video: Fireworks.  Hang on for a surprise at the end.

(photo from Ohmynews)

Here's a great picture of the 줄불놀이 - Julbulnori - from this site.

and a few other places, where people with better cameras than mine took better pictures than mine, of the fireworks.