My camera’s been a bit dodgy lately as it got too much moisture over the past month with the viewfinder sometimes working, sometimes not. Yesterday, of course, it wasn’t working so I somewhat aimlessly pointed it at that slightly dimmed disc in the sky all the while trying not to look at said disc. Unsurprisingly, the photos didn’t come out as stellar as a professional like myself would hope! So, I decided to do something with the three passable pictures that I normally don’t do - except on my jagged teeth if I’m feeling self-conscious - I heavily photoshopped them to make them look somewhat decent. You see the whole time I was actually inadvertently taking photos of a bird’s nest in a tree, but thanks to modern technology it comes out looking somewhat like a solar eclipse! Enjoy~!

The solar eclipse as seen from Suncheon

The solar eclipse amongst overcast skies in Suncheon

Solar eclipse (and photoshop)-induced darkness in the middle of the day

Several hours after the storm little 'ole Okcheon creek is still trying to cope with what it's been through

Newly formed rapids on Okcheon creek leading towards the footbridge and Dongcheon river

Trees, grass, park benches - everything's submerged!

This muraled walkway is usually three metres above river level - not on this fateful day

Fellow concerned Suncheonian observing the damage

More photos and commentary located here.

The total rainfall over the last nine-day period is over half of Sydney’s annual rainfall and well over London’s drizzly annual total of 611mm. (- which leads me to an aside for another time – why it is that Sydney receives twice the rainfall in year as London, yet in London it seemingly always rains whilst in Sydney there’s water restrictions!?)

The bulk of the rainfall has fallen on the 7th (last Tuesday) with a daily total of 216.5mm, yesterday with a total of 108.5mm and today with a whooping 179.5mm and the day’s not over yet! Okcheon, the creek outside my apartment well and truly burst its banks and overflowed onto the surrounding footpaths both last Tuesday and today.  Dongcheon – the river which Okcheon flows into and which eventually flows into Suncheon Bay has seen a huge influx of water, bursting its banks, rising a good 5 metres in depth and nearly coming up to bridges over the water at its peak. Thankfully, the rivers and creeks are well embanked and well drained to cope with this monsoonal weather and there hasn’t seemed to have been significant damage to residential or industrial areas with the water levels dissipating quite rapidly from their peak.

My adult students say that this monsoon season has been the wettest in at least 20 years and there still seems life in it yet – the forecast for the next week consists of mostly rainy and overcast days. We may well hit a 800mm before this monsoon season is out.

* If you’re Korean literate, you’ll able to view the charts  provided by the Korean Meteorological Association (KMA) on past weather details, where I found the figures for this post.

But, nowadays I guess after six years since I first stepped onto this peninsula, what used to fascinate me has become mundane, what used to excite leaves me feeling numb, what used to piss me off … well still does piss me off but I don’t what to burden y’all with the details, and what used to arouse me .. well that still does!

I guess in essence, Korea has bcome the ‘real world’ for me, it’s no longer eye-opening, it’s no longer special, it’s no longer worth writing home about. Sure, there still plenty of funny situations and unusual and quirky daily occurences, but I’ve been here so long that they are just a part of life here. Sometimes I envy my friends and people I meet who’ve just come here, wide-eyed and filled with curiosity … only for it to dampen by grumpy long-timers such as myself.

Korea’s still a wonderful, fascinating, interesting country and a great place to live. But, I guess it’s now home, and no one wants to write about home.

I’ll try to write more about Korean life, in particular Jeonnam life, for folks interested overseas, but the longer I’m here the more difficult it is to see ‘home’ through a ‘newbies’ eyes.

The title will stick regardless.

Kia Tigers baseball match

Pre-match entertainment as the crowd readies itself for the match

Full house at Mudeung baseball stadium watching the action

Chunnam Dragons soccer match

The action's on the field, the Dragons are playing in the fluorescent parking attendant yellow strip

Chunnam Dragons' cheer squad, as you can see not many people go to mid-week matches in Korea!

In terms of GDP, Seoul with a total GDP of $US221,659 million in 2007 (which is comparable with that of Portugal) led the way followed by Busan, Gyeonggi-do and the highly industrialised Gyeongsang provinces. However, when you look at GDP per capita, there are interesting results:

The industrial city of Ulsan leads the way with a GDP per capita of $US44,511, comparable with that of the US itself, well la-di-da! Followed by Chungnam with a per capita income comparable with that of little ole New Zealand, and followed by the biggest surprise of all, my Korean home province of Jeonnam with a GDP per capita of $US26,373, comparable with that of Greece – well they both hug the coastline and have a healthy love for seafood! This is very surprising as Jeolla province, in particular Jeonnam has always been a rural, agricultural outpost and not particularly wealthy at all. Though, I imagine large industrial plants such as nearby Gwangyang’s POSCO plant have contributed largely to its newly-found relative affluence.

On the other end of the scale I was surprised not only to see the third and fifth largest cities, Daegu and Gwangju, at the bottom but, also by the huge variance in GDP per capita across this small nation. According to these figures, Daegu and Gwangju are very poor indeed compared with Ulsan, Chungnam and Jeonnam. Daegu has a GDP per capita of just $US12,931, comparable with that of Russia, ouch! Gwangju isn’t much better with a GDP per capita of $US14,711, similar to that of Poland. Having lived in Gwangju for six months I did notice that it is a relatively poor city compared with other parts of South Korea though am surprised by the scale of its relative poverty, along with that of Daegu, where from my several visits I would have never assumed its as poor as it is. Seoul also was a surprise for me as I assumed it would lead the GDP per capita figures but it only comes in fifth. I assume this is largely due to having a fairly large proportion of residents being recent and not-so-recent in-country migrants from poorer parts of the country looking for a better life.

The figures are surprising, largely because of the huge imbalance between the most prosperous and least prosperous regions. Hopefully, the Government is doing a lot to address this imbalance as figures such as these suggest problems could well arise in the future if such startling wealth imbalances – with Ulsan being almost four times more prosperous than nearby Daegu – are not adequately addressed.

P.S. I couldn’t be bothered going to soccer training tonight after our big tournament over the weekend in Ulsan because it’s cold outside and I’m a soft git, where we performed really well as a team and did not disgrace ourselves winning our first match before losing the following three against strong opposition.  The fill-in goalie did a reasonable job for a joker who still doesn’t know just what he’s doing there!

Beautiful ceramic vase

For when only the best will do ...

I did also have an ulterior motive for the visit, however. You see the sleepy village of Byeongyeong (or Byoungyoung, or several other derivatives), just outside the town of Gangjin, was the temporary home of Korea’s first Westerners, a Dutchman named Hendrick Hamel and fellow captives. Bookkeeper Hamel and his crew-mates had the misfortune of getting shipwrecked on the island of Jeju-do, just south of the mainland of the Joseon Dynasty in 1653, then aptly known as the ‘hermit kingdom’. What followed for Hamel and his men was a thoroughly unpleasant, uncomfortable and seemingly inescapable thirteen years at the hands of their Korean captors. Seemingly uncertain just what to do with the 35 hairy barbarians wrecked onto the Jeju shores, their captors carted the weary Dutchmen north from boondock to boondock until they became guests of the Joseon King’s court and a constant source of amusement for the king in Seoul, then known as Hanseong, for a number of years.

Eventually, the king tired of the hairy rogues and banished what was left of them – several of the crew died over the years – to what was, and still is, the outpost of the nation, deep, dark Jeollanam-do. Five men ended up in Namwon, Jeollabuk-do, five ended up in my very own Suncheon – it was cosmopolitan even way back then! – and the remaining 12, including Hamel, in Byeongyeong. Hamel and his men left their mark on the town of Byeongyeong as you will see in this informative link created by a visiting Dutchman, Jan Boonstra, 342 years after his co-patriots left including: 6ft western-style walls (previously unseen elsewhere on the Korean peninsula), irrigation canals, and statues remarkably similar to Jeju’s harubangs (previously unseen elsewhere on the peninsula). Other traits, which are somewhat touchy and controversial in nationalistic, homogeneous South Korea, are the apparent residue effects of probable inter-breeding between the randy Dutch and the fair maidens of Byeongyeong, and possibly, Namwon, and even gasp, Suncheon. Anecdotal evidence points to individuals of these parts, particularly those of the Nam family name, having tall, robust physiques, Western facial features and lighter eyes.

Jeju-do harubang

Byeongyeong harubang

From Jan Boonstra’s website:

It is also possible that some men met local women and through marriage or otherwise fathered children, whose descendants still live here. The Dutch were given the Korean name Nam. There are several roots for the clan of Nam in Korea, but one originates from around Byeongyeong. And it is from this region, that many people named Nam have typical features like a large body and facial characteristics that may well be from the foreigners in the 17th century. When professor Kim Tae Jin of the Chonnam University in Gwangju did research on this subject, he encountered resistance and a lack of cooperation from the people, as it is regarded as shameful to have mixed blood and not to be of pure Korean breed. Maybe the grand (sic) grandparents of these nice old ladies could tell more! Long time ago, before the Korean war, a tall man from Byeongyeong with western facial features called Nam, moved to the north and became a general in the army. It is said that when the North Korean army raided this area, the village of Byeongyeong was spared on special orders from general Nam.

This link, also created by a touring Dutchman, also contains anecdotal evidence of blue (or blu-ish)-eyed locals. Unfortunately, I didn’t encounter any myself that day but, have from time to time have met Koreans round these parts with almost Eurasian features and light eyes – perhaps they are distant descendants of Hamel and his men!

Hamel and a few of his men managed to comandeer a boat in Yeosu in 1666 and escape to Japan, where they relived their encounters which formed the first Western accounts of the secretive Joseon dynasty.

Thankfully, the historic links between Hamel and his men and the Joseon Dynasty have fostered friendlier relations between the modern states of the Republic of Korea and the Netherlands, particularly that of Gangjin county and Hamel’s hometown of Gorinchem, who share a sister-city relationship and relatively frequent cultural exchanges. Another welcome new attraction to the village of Byeongyeong is the Jeolla Military Fortress Hamel Memorial Museum, in honour of the Dutchman and his mates. Below are some photos of the museum and surrounding. The full album, also containing the Celadon festival, is located here.

Jeolla Military Fortress and Hamel Memorial Museum

6ft walls unique to Byeongyeong

17th century Dutch cannon

Hamel's Journal (or replica of)

Dutch plate

天高馬肥 : 천고말비 :

’The sky is high and the horse is fat’

- which essentially means the skies are clear, the weather’s nice and with harvest just over, food’s in ample supply so people get fat.

One of my favourite activites in Autumn is get to a mountain somewhere and take snaps of the Autumn foliage of the Asian maple trees. My favourite place to do this is Naejangsan, around 45 minutes north of Gwangju and 25 minutes south of Jeonju on the Jeolla buk-do/nam-do border. Here’s a few photos from 2004 depicting the stark contrast a few months can make, Naejangsan in autumn and winter.