Weekends in Mungyeong
As in every country, in Korea there is a divide between the city and the countryside. As I wrote in A Woman of Questionable Morals, I suffer each time I leave the city and each time I return. But I’ve had the good fortune to meet a group of great people who live in the mountainous countryside outside Seoul, which has given me the best of both worlds.
The bus ride to Jeomchon, which takes about two hours, winds through mountains and rice paddies. Then a smaller local bus takes me from from the local terminal, past small farms and placid ponds full of lotus flowers, to the home of my friends Jess and Mayo in a small village called Singi.
Jess and Mayo’s computerized entryway, which leads to their sleek and minimalistic space, faces the nearby mountains and the farmland they share with a local pharmacist, a man Jess calls “Dad.” Here, Jess and Mayo and their neighbors harvest tomatoes, eggplants, gochu peppers, chicory and perilla leaves.
Last month, they invited me down for a memorable multicultural dinner party, followed by a visit to the famed Mungyeong Apple Festival. It was so much fun that I returned the following weekend — this time with friends Dawn and Derek in tow.
More snapshots and commentary below …
WEEKEND 1
Mungyeongsaejae
An interesting thing about the city/country split here in Korea is that Seoul’s ex-pat population, which is more often than not employed in the private academy industry, is not particularly diverse. Seoul’s paying parents expect teachers to be mostly Americans (or Canadians, whose accent is similar to the coveted American accent), mostly Caucasian and mostly young. But EPIK, which places teachers throughout the country in the public school system and especially in poorer places, recruits more diverse candidates. And so ironically the countryside is where I’ve encountered the widest variety of ex-pats so far in South Korea. At Jess and Mayo’s, I ate Colombian chicken stew and Mexican burritos with Brits, Indian-Canadians, South Africans and Americans alike.
The party games that followed were ridiculous; the Brits and South Africans knew nothing about baseball, while they were astonished at how little we Americans knew about soccer. When it came to explaining Monica Lewinsky or Bill Cosby, communications completely broke down, with hilarious results. But of course, us being residents of a country whose first language is not English, we were all excellent at charades.
The next day, we made breakfast and boarded the bus for Mungyeongsaejae, a famous mountain park that hosts a huge apple festival each year. According to Jess, Mungeyong is known as a hub for traditional Korean cuisine, and for its apples and omija berries. We sampled it all.
The apple stands were surrounded by honeybees. I couldn’t help but feel skittish, but the vendors seemed completely at home amid the stinging insects; here, this woman displays the bees’ hearty endorsement of her fruits in particular with pride.
A temple made of apples. My dream house?
A crowd watches a woman rolling freshly-pounded tteok (rice cakes) rolled in misukaru (roasted soybean powder).
My lovely hosts, Mayo and Jess, snacking on some fried japchae.
On my first weekend, it was warm enough to walk barefoot, as many hikers do, up the smooth mountain path that leads through three huge gates to the summit. Someone told a story about scholars pounding this path flat as they walked from the country to take their examinations in Seoul, but it may be apocryphal.
After the second gate, we crossed over a crystal-clear stream to have omija makgeolli, gamjajeon and dotorimuk at a small restaurant at the foot of a picturesque bridge.
Omija makgeolli
Dotorimuk salad
I had planned to leave that evening, but after the third or fifth or seventh pitcher of makgeolli, Jess and Mayo and co. had convinced me that I had to stay an extra evening so we could have a soak at the local jimjilbang, whose waters were piped in from a local hot spring. Which of course, I did.
WEEKEND 2
The next weekend, the crew asked me to visit again, and I gladly agreed. Our friends Dawn and Derek decided to join, so we took them by the apple festival for a while before heading back to Jess and Mayo’s. This time, we disembarked in front of the nearby beef festival.
Seeing rows of adorable, fuzzy cows in great distress strangely did nothing for my appetite, so we didn’t stay for lunch. Jess and I settled instead on a big bowl of vegetable soup, at a traditional joint in the mouth of the valley leading to Mungyeong Sajae. The others ordered duck, which came with approximately 400 side dishes.
We wandered a bit afterwards amid the apple booths, and talk turned to fall traditions like making campfires and s’mores. It was a bit too chilly to camp out without proper gear, but I mentioned another Weaver family tradition: brumbling, also known as “hiking while drinking.” After dinner, we walked up and down the hills behind Jess and Mayo’s house, tipsy on wine and more omija makgeolli, and tried to find the stars. Guard dogs on frayed ropes barked at us as we passed through neighborhoods of squat houses and dusty roads, under the gnarled silhouettes of persimmon trees, and the sounds of our suppressed laughter echoed off the stone walls.
There is something sacred about being alone with just your chosen companions in the outdoors. In all my time here, it was the first time I have experienced this.
On my last day in the country, we headed out through acres of recently-shorn hayfields to a a roadside restaurant where we had ordered up a special feast: duck roasted with pumpkin. It takes an hour to prepare, so we had to ask Dawn, a second-generation Korean-American, to call ahead for us. Then to keep calling them, to inform them that we’d be another 10 minutes late, because we kept stopping to take big swigs of makgeolli and pictures of all that we saw.
Factories and farms, but no factory farms
No such thing as a wasted space in South Korea; this garden is planted in an old railroad bed.
The afternoon ended with a round of beers and a huge feast under a stand of persimmon trees, near the restaurant’s garden, where several long rows of cabbage reassured us that the only thing fiercer than the effects of global warming is the piranha-like determination of the Korean people. Crisis be damned, there will be kimchi. And duck in a pumpkin. At least, here in the countryside.
Afterwards, I was happy to head to the small bus terminal once again, and to return to Seoul, which is feeling more and more like home. Walking out into the lights of Gangnam, gazing up at the skyscrapers looming above me, whipping out my wallet to head through the futuristic turnstiles of the subway, listening to the bilingual announcements and urgent buzzing singing out over the intercom, settling into the comfortable seats of the 01 bus to Mokdong … it all felt so good.
The Jeomchon crew has said that their sojourns in Seoul make them just as happy to head back to the country. So the fact remains that most of us need these constant visits to the other side to make us feel more at home. I wonder why that is? Why aren’t we satisfied unless we can clench as many experiences as possible in the palms of our hands? Now that buses and planes and video chats have connected us to our loved ones with frightening efficiency, can we ever truly be at peace with where and who we are? And will I ever be able to type a rhetorical question on my computer about cities, love and life without feeling as though I’ve become derivative of a fictional journalist played by Sarah Jessica Parker? Mulayo.
I think what I’ve come to realize, however, is that I find the greatest satisfaction in being with good people, wherever they happen to be. Walking with Jess through the moonlit fields near Mungyeong, eating grilled prawns on the beach with Woody and Josh or swimming off the island of Muuido with Megan are all things that I remember with great happiness, not because they were simply interesting experiences but because they were experienced with interesting people. I’m blessed to have had so many already in this new country, and looking forward to many more.
