Last weekend I took a hike up Pukhansan Mountain to the Northwest of Seoul. I entered this National Park from the western side. Entering the park from this side is really picturesque because the view of the peaks from here is really stunning. Parking at the park costs 1000 won an hour which is quite expensive if plan on spending a full day here. Mass transit may be a better option for you. Entrance to the park was only 2400 won.
Bordering the front gate of the park are many hiking stores, convenience stores, and restaurants. The first hiking store booth right next to the parking lot there is an old odashi that speaks English who will joke around with you. He is really funny and will give you a foreigner discount because he sees so few foreigners come to the park. In fact that day I saw only two other foreigners on the mountain. It is to bad because the park is such an easily accessible place that will give you a much different view of Korea besides high rise buildings and the traffic jams people are accustomed to in Seoul.
The park features numerous trails and you can buy a map from the funny odashi at his hiking booth. You have the choice to go up numerous peaks which all go from 700 to over 800 meters high. I chose to climbs the highest peak, Baekundae peak which is 834 meters high. Starting up the trail you will follow a beautiful creek that winds up the side of the mountain. The creek was filled with rushing water and small swimming holes that the locals were using to swim in. Also towards the bottom of the mountain the creek is packed with families having picnics. The further up the trail you go the less the people.
There are also numerous Buddhist temples to be explored on the mountain. One particular temple you can see from the trail is one that has a stunning huge rock carved buddha that must be 30 feet tall. Well up the trail I was hiking on I passed by a Buddhist temple. What was amusing about this temple was that it had a satellite TV dish in front of it. It appears that the modern world is now even changing the way the Buddhists monks live. What was also funny was that their was a pay telephone outside of the temple also. Soon enough I will probably see the monks carrying cell phones with Hello Kitty stickers on them.
Once the trail broke away from the creek it became really steep and many areas had installed cables to help climb up the rocks with. In these areas with the installed cables the trail becomes bottle necked with hikers who are going up and down trying to use the same cable. So it will take some time to work your way up these areas.
As I traveled along the route I over heard some hikers talking about somebody who was threatening to jump off the mountain. Further up the trail I saw a crowd of hikers standing around looking down the side of a cliff. Apparently the guy decided to jump off the cliff. The park rescue personnel were already down there trying to treat the guy and apparently he was barely alive and they brought a stretcher down and tied ropes to it to get it pulled up the cliff. The rescue personnel recruited me to help pull the stretcher up the cliff. By the time we had pulled the strecher up the cliff the person had died. When we got him pulled up he was really messed up so it wasn’t suprising that he had died. What I found interesting was that nobody seemed to be really shocked about this guy killing himself. Everyone was real nonchalant about it. In Korea suicide is an accepted practice for business, financial, and personal failures that disgrace you and your family. In Korea many government officials including the Pusan mayor have taken their own lives. Many businessmen have jumped from buildings or from bridges over the Han River to kill themselves. Students even kill themselves for failing college entrance exams. In my unit one year ago before I got here my unit’s senior KATUSA killed himself because he got dumped by his girlfriend because he had been away from home so long serving his military commitment. These are definitely some stressed out people over here. Don’t kill yourself, if you have to move to the other side of the peninsula or something.
After leaving that scene I continued up the mountain. After some very steep hiking I finally reached the bottom granite face of Baekundae peak. Here the trail was extremely bottle necked with hikers. It took some time to work my way through all the hikers. It was extremely crowded. At the summit of the mountain there is a Korean flag in place at the observation point.
Standing on the summit provides a great view of Seoul and the entire Kimpo peninsula. This day was a bit hazy so I couldn’t see North Korea. But on a clear day you could definitely see North Korea from here. On the summit I got talking to some ajushis who were amazed I can speak some Korean. It is bad enough I was getting treated like a zoo animal up there because I was the only foreigner on the mountain but the zoo animal could also speak some Korean. It was like they had just had a horse speak to them. Now I know how Mr. Ed felt.
The ajushis commented that they could not believe I was so tall and not fat. I guess every tall foreigner in Korea is supposed to be fat. I better work on my beer gut. The ajushi than asked me if I was an English teacher and where I was from. When I told him I was an American soldier you could visibly tell he and his friends were amazed. I guess I didn’t live up to the stereotype that many Koreans have of us being drunk all the time, getting in fights, and looking for prostitutes. This stereotype actually fits Korean males better than it does American soldiers.
However this stereotype helps ajushi not feel so bad about his own misbehavior when he can say the Americans are doing the same thing. The real stereotype of an American soldier in Korea is one who works his ass off all day, on vehicles, sweeping the motorpool, and mowing grass when he isn’t in the field. The times he has off, he is sitting in his room playing his Playstation for endless hours and drinking beer with his friends in the barracks. People fail to realize how few soldiers actually spend all their time in the ville getting drunk and being stupid.
The many American soldiers here are barracks rats just counting down their days. But every year the handful of soldiers that do get in trouble in Korea always get made up by the media to represent all 37,000 soldiers here. However after telling them I was a soldier the ajushis quit talking with me and left. I told a friend of mine about this and he told me I should just say I am an English teacher here from Canada. I will never do that because I’m sure Canadian English teachers wouldn’t appreciate that but why should I not be proud of what I represent? The American Army has freed more people and done more good than any other Army in world history. Name one army that has done more good for the world than the American military. If ajushi has a problem with it, it is his problem not mine.
Anyway I proceeded back down the mountain. Going down the mountain was really quick. I got up the mountain in 4 hours at a leisurely pace and made it down in 2 hours at a leisurely pace. I was definitely tired afterwards but it was a really good day. Great weather, beautiful scenery, and some weirdness with the guy killing himself. Just another typical day in Korea.
