Roadtrip Daegu Haeinsa Gapyeong

Roadtrip to Daegu, Haeinsa, Gapyeong hanok village and Jeonju hanok village with Yoon and his mom.  it was his mom's birthday weekend and he wanted to take her to stay in a traditional korean inn (hanok).  first we had to go to Daegu to do this tour with North Korean defector kids who were learning english from fulbright scholars as part of some kind of US embassy program

these fishnet gloves that the tour guide has on has got me so hot right now.  actually Daegu is the hottest city (temperature wise) in Korea because its inland and surrounded by mountains.

old school glasses so old they are cool again

my sentiments exactly girl, Daegu is hot and kind of doesn't have a lot going for it.

the Don of Daegu?

the former North Koreans were saying these are the flowers of Kim Il Sung's cheerleaders or something.

more Daegu hotness.

traditional game where you throw arrows into those holes.  other traditional games were laying around too. 

went to some old korean medicine place.

a peek inside one of their mojo bags.

they gave us all a chilled pouch of what tasted like what you think traditional Korean medicinal drinks would taste like.

just one lick?  Please?

Yoon's mom looking stately.  I don't know how she can sit on floors like this like it ain't no thang.

this kid was particularly eager and bright eyed.  actually they are not kids they are all 17 and up i think.  We didn't ask them about their past cuz you're not supposed to unless they want to talk about it.  Anyway later Yoon told me that for a North Korean to defect they first have to have ton of money (hard to come by in North Korea where everyone is super impoverished).  Then they have to have a handler help them get across the border to China.  Then they have to go overland the the Chinese border in the south where they can enter Thailand and there they are accepted as political refugees and then are able to hop over to South Korea from there.  I can only partially know how hard this is because I have travelled overland in China across much of it and its got to be terrifying for someone who just defected.  Often times once they hit China they have no money at all because they had to use it all at the North Korean border to bribe their way into China, so a lot of the females have to go into prostitution for a while before they can make enough money to get down to Thailand.  As you can imagine it's super dangerous for them and anyone that helps them.  They have to communicate with smuggled in cell phones, notes, radios, etc...  They face getting shot, executed, and all that awesome stuff.  Usually it's only the more well to do North Koreans that make it out.  I'm not sure how many well to do North Koreans there are but it seems like everyone is super poor.  Families will put up everything they have to get one of their kids out.  Hopefully you get a better idea of what huge risks these people and their families have taken to get out of North Korea.  I want to read more about it.

we made a side trip to Haeinsa temple on gaya mountain.  somewhere in-between Jeonju and Daegu.  Yoon's mom went there once when she was young and wanted to go back again.  

there were a bunch of ajumas selling foraged vegetables, roots, and other foods.

random sculpture, random ajuma looking through.

LOVE these colors.

here's an example of how the 21 megapixel resolution of my 5D mark II helps me.  I can crop in closer and its still decent quality, despite me not having any zoom lenses and shooting this with my 24mm f/1.4L lens.  This isn't even a 100% crop.

here the full sized uncropped shot.

this story seems pretty cool and ripe with visuals.  don't know what story it is though.

we made our way to Gapyeong Hanok Village. 개평한옥마을.  The place we stayed at was actually a national treasure and was the filming location of a few TV dramas.

walking up to somewhere to find something to eat.

kimchi pots in the night.

there was a loud taekwon do club in the adjoining room.

a random selection of electronics

we bought a bottle of this Pine liquor and it was really strong 40% and pretty hard to drink.  we drank about 30% of the bottle before we called it quits on this one.

our room.

we attempted to find something, anything in the night.  the GPS didn't even show a town around us.  we were deep in some serious countryside.  we came back and just drank some makkoli outside on the top porch thinging.

This whole post is one day, the most photos in one post that i've put up in a while.  guess it was a busy day.  This is really the first time i've seen anywhere in Korea besides Seoul.  Good stuff, and this trip put me on my way to loving Korea again