Dispatches from the Peninsula

by Chris Tharp

  * * * *

  The next day, after a lunch of bibimbap (mixed rice) and gogi mandu (meat dumplings), we boarded another bus that would take us all the way to the entrance of the park. The bus rolled out of town, following the slow-moving river and eventually entering countryside, winding through low hills and farming villages. This was rice country, and the landscape was dense with countless paddies, recently harvested.

  One thing I noticed: everyone we passed seemed to be well over sixty, as if all the young people had disappeared, or migrated into the city. Korea’s aging rural population is going to present huge challenges to the country in the years ahead. Most young people want nothing to do with farming, and a trip to a rural area will show any visitor just that. Truly elderly people work the fields and drive patched-together tractors. They perform the backbreaking labor that has become so unfashionable for the younger generation. There is a shortage of younger women in the countryside, forcing many of the men who do stay to take foreign brides from countries such as China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Many of these women come for purely financial reasons and are sometimes trapped in miserable, even abusive relationships, with little or no legal recourse. But the age differential in the country is a real dilemma and forces the question: who will grow the food in twenty years’ time? Perhaps the Koreans will be forced to import their farmers, with whole towns full of Indonesians or Vietnamese working the soil.

  After the town of Hadong, the road joined up with a big, wide-banked river, with sandbars popping up throughout its lazily flowing water. At one point we passed a massive field containing an art installation comprising hundreds of scarecrows. The harvested fields reflected the sunlight in deep green and gold, and the leaves on the many trees were now the color of rust. Autumn was in full effect, though the sun shone confidently and traces of summer could still be tasted in the air. This was my first time out of the city since I had been home in the summer, and it felt right.

  After turning off onto a two-lane road and rolling through some small green tea plantations, we came to Sangyesa, the famous temple and village that marked the beginning of Jirisan National Park. We donned our small packs and walked up toward the temple’s main gate in hope of finding a room. We quickly located a minbak, which is a sort of country lodging very common outside of the cities in Korea. Minbak are meant for groups of people to stay in at once. You are provided with a very basic room, attached to which is an equally bare-bones bathroom. The room contains no furniture. Some blankets and thin sleeping pads are provided by the host, but otherwise the guests sleep right on the floor, which can be heated up in the cold months. Floor-heating is found everywhere throughout Korea and is a marvelous invention. It’s a wonder that the rest of the world has yet to catch on.

  Sangyesa means Twin-Streams Monastery, and is the head temple of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. It was founded in the year 722 and has been an important center ever since. Like many others in the country, the temple was burned to the ground by the Japanese during the Imjin Wars of the late 16th Century. It was rebuilt after that and has since retained its form.

  I have a confession to make: I’m not a big fan of temples. I don’t really get excited about them. The truth is they often bore my nuts off. When I first arrived in Korea, I was curious about the temples and spent some time exploring them, marveling at the detail of their construction, and basking in their general glow of serenity. But after one year in the country I became kind of templed out, and to this day, whatever the Asian country I find myself in, I never run off to the first temple in the area; more than often I give it a skip. While I have been floored by some (Cambodia’s Angkor temples live up to every word of the hype), I all too often lose concentration and start thinking about what I want eat for lunch or how good that first beer will taste.

  Sangyesais an exception to this rule. It is one of the coolest temples in all of Korea, if not Asia. While lacking the grandeur of other sites, it sits nestled at the base of a mountain, shrouded by both deciduous and pine trees. A small road approaches the temple, with vendors on the side, selling roots, bark, and herbal wood–all of which is used in traditional Korean medicine and cooking. The road follows a small, fast-moving stream which is spanned by a stone bridge. As you approach the main complex–composed of scores of buildings–you gently climb, rising from the valley, onto the foot of the stony mountain that protects the wooden temple. That day I poked around the site on my own, later following a trail that ascended up the mountain from the temple, leading to a famous 60-meter waterfall called Buril pokpo. As I climbed up from the valley I entered into a realm of silence, save for the wind through the trees and the sound of the river flowing far below. It was the most peace I’d experienced on the peninsula, up to that point. I had no idea that such silence was possible in this most cacophonous of nations.

  Lost in the Valley of the Moon Bear!

  I was a Boy Scout in those now-distant days of my youth. The Boy Scout Motto is simple: Be Prepared. These words have echoed around in my head through countless backpacking and camping expeditions. I grew up in the woods. I’ve spent years in, around, and on mountains, and I know how to prepare correctly before going outdoors. This was one of those rare times when I didn’t follow my own rulebook, when I neglected to heed my own advice.

  The following morning, when Josh and I strapped on our packs, they were pitifully light, which should give you an idea of just how under-prepared we were. We stopped at the village store and purchased the following items: three cans of tuna, four bottles of soju, and a park map, which was printed on a blue-and-white bandana that Josh tied around his head. At least we were now unlikely to lose the thing. What more would we need for survival, other than a bit of all-American gumption? Thus geared up, we trounced up the road and stuck out our thumbs, easily catching a ride up to the next temple, from where we planned starting our hike up to Mt. Jiri’smain ridge.

  On the do-rag/map, we saw that there was a trailhead next to this temple. This trail climbed up a ridge that eventually intersected with the main massif of Mt. Jiri. There was an established overnight shelter near this intersection, where I was sure we could sort out some blankets and perhaps a couple of bowls of noodles. Wherever Koreans gather in groups of ten or more, there is always food for sale. Knowing we were going to such a place, I wasn’t too concerned that we lacked even the most basic necessities for such an endeavor. I didn’t even bring a lighter, much less a coat.

  Once we got to the temple, we couldn’t locate the trailhead. We wandered around the parking lot where the trailhead was supposed to be, but it was nowhere to be found. So we made our way to the main complex, which was small by Korean temple standards. I saw a man–the temple’s gardener, I presumed–hoeing away in the dirt. I greeted him in my very limited Korean and clumsily asked him about the trail. Josh had a Korea edition of Lonely Planet, which showed the trail we were looking for. I pointed it out to the man and listened to his response, which was delivered with machine-gun speed. He must have assumed that I was fluent, based on the fact that I was polite enough to address him in his own language, but the truth was that I spoke Korean with just slightly more fluency than, say, your average goat.

  “Aiy… shiminchiludahsheebiruyagoimnikamina… upseoyo… tashimininminda!”

  I had recognized just one word out of many that sprayed out of his mouth: upseoyo. It means: it isn’t there. It’s one of the language’s more useful terms, and one that anybody who spends time in Korea will become familiar with right away, as it’s often spat our way by shopkeepers or others who don’t wish to bother dealing with a foreigner.

  “Trail upseoyo?”

  “Nae! Tuh-ray-ul upseoyo.” He shook his head and got on with his hoein’.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “He says that there is no trail. I think.”

  “That’s bullshit. It’s on both our maps.” Josh touched his book to his do-rag.

  We trudged around the grounds of the temple a bit more, up past
the main building, and into the trees behind it. It was there that we spied a small path heading deeper into the woods, and, more importantly, up.

  “I bet this is it,” I said. “It’s heading in the right direction. I bet he just doesn’t want foreigners to go on the good trail.” It’s amazing how you can convince yourself of the outlandish if you want to do something badly enough. I didn’t trust the gardener. One thing I had learned after a year and some months in Korea is that you will often get ten different answers for one question, depending on who you ask.

  So Josh and I headed up the trail, which indeed looked promising. For a while it climbed up and away from the temple’s grounds and rambled along the hillside, high above a river valley. We could hear the sound of cascading water below. Thick forest covered the mountainside, and the leaves were turning on the trees. The air was clean and it was sunny and cool–perfect fall weather. As we hiked on, I got the sense that we were heading into one of the wildest valleys that Korea had to offer. Korea is one of the most densely populated places on the globe, with little land left that isn’t built-on or cultivated. The mountains are the only places that offer up any kind of solace or escape, and here we had found what seemed to be the biggest secret.

  Suddenly we heard a massive rustling in the underbrush below. I stopped and peered into the dark bushes.

  “You hear that?”

  “Yeah.”

  Something thrashed and cracked as it moved along. I could see the branches and shrubs quiver and sway, but couldn’t quite spy what was responsible. Whatever it was, it wasn’t stealthy, and it was big.

  “Maybe it’s a bear,” Josh posited.

  “A bear? In Korea? Get the fuck out of here…”

  Eventually, the trail snaked down to the river itself, and we began following a series of yellow ribbons that were tied to shrubs and tree branches. These marked the route. The “map” contained in the Lonely Planet–that most useless of tomes–was pathetic. So at one point we stopped and I asked for the do-rag map, which Josh now wore on his very sweaty head. He handed it to me. It was saturated in greasy man sweat. Despite this, I could see that the trail was supposed to be following the ridge, which was still high above us. We were deep in the hollow, but I was unconcerned. I had faith in my instincts: I figured the trail would eventually leave the valley and head up to the ridge.

  We trundled on for a couple more hours, zigzagging across the river and ever so slightly climbing up the valley. After a while it became apparent that we would have to make better time. We had gotten a late start and now we were well into the afternoon. On top of this, Josh was the slowest hiker I’d ever trekked with. I’m a very fast hiker–I like to cruise down the trail and make good time–but Josh was the total opposite. He absolutely moseyed, meandering along the rocky trail at the pace of Jell-o, gently tapping his newfound hiking stick across the ground, and frequently sitting down for prolonged breaks. Perhaps he was taking it in, enjoying his surroundings. I’m sure my hell-bent rushing annoyed him to no end, but I wanted to get to the shelter before sunset, which would happen at around six-thirty in the evening–and even earlier in the dark of the valley. It was now almost four. We didn’t have time to spare.

  The terrain got steeper, which heartened me a bit, but as the sunlight began to diminish, I again became worried. And then we lost the trail. It just disappeared. The ribbons which marked the way stopped, and the river bottom now became a ravine–a stony obstacle course. The going got noticeably tougher. The hillside was now completely overgrown, and pretty much impassable without a machete. We lacked even a set of nail clippers. The temperature was dropping. And we had now had little more than one hour of daylight left.

  I backtracked to the last ribbon, thinking I had somehow missed a deviation in the route; that the climb to the ridge that I had been expecting all afternoon would now magically appear. No dice. The flags just ended. The trail was indeed upseoyo.

  Despite the wildness of the locale, the river was lined with miles of small plastic tubing. This tubing was used to siphon fresh water and take it to the villages and temples down the valley. It takes men to maintain such a line, and earlier in the hike we saw just that: they passed us as we hiked up the river. They carried huge packs laden with supplies. They were bearded with scruffy hair, and had faces like dark rawhide. These were true mountain folks, and probably worked the valley, keeping the waterlines flowing.

  I stumbled back to Josh and told him that there was no missed trail; that the thing just apparently petered out into the forbidden terrain. The end of the line. We were now facing the painfully real possibility of having to spend the night where we were. There, where we had stopped on the river, were two plastic tubs containing extra tubing and other waterline supplies. Next to one of the tubs was a stinking, half-wet blue tarp, underneath which was a moldy piece of thick blue material–a blanket of sorts.

  “Well, if worse comes to worst, we could wrap up in the blanket and sleep under the tarp.”

  “We could,” I replied.

  I convinced Josh to try to continue up the river, one more time. “We’ll just have to follow it all the way up. We know that the mountain shelter is near the water source.”

  After two minutes of scrambling and rock-hopping, we quickly gave up on that idea. We were bruised and scratched up from trying to force our way through the thick brush. We were out of options, and I sat down on a rock and put my head in my hands. It was then that Josh spied our salvation.

  “I see something green over there. You see it?”

  I looked to where he was pointing and saw something sticking out from the trees, a shade of bright green that stood out from the natural hues surrounding it.

  “It looks manmade,” he said.

  We climbed up the hillside, away from the river a bit, and came upon a tiny house of sorts. A hut. And this was no rotten old hut. It wasn’t a dilapidated, rickety, leaky hut, but a well-apportioned, very lived-in hut. It was made from plywood, and covered on top with a bright green tarpaulin–which is what had initially drawn Josh’s gaze. Not only was it a fully-formed shelter, it also came complete with:

  sleeping bags, 2

  giant bag of rice, 1

  case of ramyeon instant noodle packets, 1

  toilet paper rolls, several

  candles, many

  cigarettes, 6 packs

  Nescafe, 1 box

  working gas camping stove, 1

  extra fuel, 3 tanks

  one complete set of pots, pans, cups, bowls, spoons, and chopsticks

  an underground hearth to heat the whole thing up

  a huge stack of firewood

  jug of gas for accelerating the lighting of such a fire, 1

  It immediately occurred to us that the guys we saw several hours earlier--the two grizzled men heading out of the valley–must be the ones who lived in this little cabin, this lucky lean-to, this hut-of-plenty. Those men must have been maintenance workers on the waterline. Best of all, they were maintenance workers on the waterline who were taking the night off and going into town. I was sure that they weren’t due back any time that night, so Josh and I were more than happy to play Goldilocks and hut-sit in their absence.

  We immediately busted out the stove, cooked up a pot of rice and ate it with the tuna that we had bought down in the village. Josh started a big fire in the hearth underneath. We drank down some of the soju and listened to the strange Korean critters come alive in the night. I “borrowed” a pack of smokes and had my first in days. We drank more soju and actually talked to each other, finally breaking a glacier’s worth of ice that had frozen over us for the previous two days. After the third bottle of soju, Josh threw up, his Western stomach being no match for Korea’s gnarliest liquor. The image of Anna invaded my mind, along with thoughts of my recent, shameful encounter with her and her new man. The bundle of snakes which had poisoned me since our breakup in July suddenly released, and I could, for the first time, finally feel my bile ebb.

  “FUCK
IT!” I listened to my voice echo in the empty valley, perhaps the emptiest in all of South Korea.

  After the last swallow of booze, I took one more breath of the mountain air, crawled into the warm hut, closed the door, slid into the soft bag, and went to sleep.

  We arose at first light. We made some cups of instant coffee, washed the dishes in the river, and tidied up the place. We left a 10,000-won note for the rice, smokes, coffee, and “rent,” and quickly skadoodled back toward the temple, slightly hung over, but happy in our bellies and well-slept.

  This hut was well out of the way. It was totally–intentionally–hidden from view down at the river. It’s a miracle that Josh even saw it in the first place. The man had the eyes of a raptor. His eyes are the only thing that saved us from spooning under a filthy tarp in the bushes, from pressing our warm manflesh against each other in a desperate bid not to freeze to death. May God rain praise upon Josh’s eyes.

  Once we managed to hike out of the valley, I discovered that Josh and I had never even made it to the trail denoted in his Lonely Planet and on the do-rag map. We had followed an unmapped route that, yes, did end at the top of the valley. We probably weren’t far from the original shelter we had sought, but no doubt it was unreachable, thousands of meters above us up the mountain wall. We had, in fact, been in a closed area: a sign erected where the trail emptied out onto the main road informed us of this in bold, threatening Korean, as well as English. The part of the park where we had hiked had been designated a reintroduction area for the Asian moon bear, which was probably what we heard thrashing in the brush the day before. Visitors were strictly prohibited, subjected to all sorts of nasty fines. That’s what the hoeing man at the second temple was trying to tell us, but sometimes not understanding the language can serve your particular interest at the time. Oops.

  I knew little about Asian moon bears, other than they weren’t particularly dangerous, and that they were severely endangered, due to loss of habitat and centuries of over-hunting. It seems that their bile does wonders to harden the dicks of the men of not just China, but those residing on the peninsula as well. Such a creature cannot be allowed to live, it seems. In this part of the world, erections take precedence over everything else.