Seoul's Palace

The Off-season

Travel is the reason why we expatriated to South Korea. This small nation is like a gateway to the rest of Asia. You can fly to most places for around half it would cost to fly from the States.

Any college grad can sign a year-long contract that pays his or her way to Korea and for accomdations for the year. Usually, you're gaurenteed a couple of weeks vacation, some national holidays off, and an attractive completion bonus.

Suddenly, it doesn't matter that you know next to nothing about the Korean workplace or culture. The guidebook says you can learn to read Hangul, the Korean alphebet, in a split. Your bags are packed, and your slick new visa is taking up an entire page of your passport.

What you don't know is that you can't usually pick your vacation days. Koreans work long hours without complaining or being paided and so will you (at least the not being paided part), and your day will most likely be split into two shifts spanning all eternity.
When you finally get a break long enough to see some sights, everyone else in S. Korea (sometimes all of Asia) has off, too. Airfares almost double and hotels charge around an extra ten percent per night. You want to travel in the off-season, but you can't...

Unless you're willing to wake-up at 4:30 a.m., depart from Gimpo International airport at 6 a.m., check into a hotel at a quater till eight. Take a taxi to the nearest bus terminal, find your favorite activity (in our case--hiking), start your day at nine, and go non-stop until you depart at seven Monday morning--just in time for eleven o'clock class.

That's exactly how we toured Jeju island this weekend. The main attraction was an 18 kilometer slug up Hallasan, which brings me back to the beginning--Korean Culture and the Korean workplace.

Korean-style hiking can explain a lot about Korean culture. It is goal oriented, it's fast-paced, and it's crowded. You can throw that old adage, "It's the journey not the destination," off the mountain. It doesn't apply, here. What matters is that you can get to the top of the mountain, eat a full course meal, and back in a day.

They're not the Himalayas, but Korean mountains are nothing to scoff at. As any Korean will tell you, they were afterall what kept Korea from being constantly trampled on by its more empire oriented neighbors.

Despite the fact that most trails are steep, narrow, and stoney stairways straight up, they are as crowded as a subway station. It's not the gentle sweep of the breeze that just brushed against your arm. It's a sixty year-old lady in sweaty gore-tex that just nudged you out of her way.

Summit View

No trekking allowed past these posts.

Park rangers at the top of the mountain direct the human traffic.

Lava Tubes

These tubes show some of the geologic processes happening beneath Jeju's surface and the dormant volcano, Hallasan. The ceiling shows hardened lava stalagmites.

These errie lights illuminate the tunnel.

The cooled lava still has a molten form.