We left Daejeon very early on Thursday morning for a long haul to Yeongju, which is in the northeastern portion of South Korea. The trip was a fairly long one given the hectic pace of our schedule thus far. Several of us took the opportunity to catch up on sleep and also to get to know each other better. Once we arrived at Yeongju city hall, we were greeted by the Mayor, Kim Joo Young.

The mayor was willing to have a lengthy dialogue about the history of the region, the current state of economic affairs and the goals for the city in the future. One thing which the Mayor pointed out to us was the abundant sunshine in the city. In fact, we had all noticed that the haze of the city had been replaced with a clear sky and lots of sun. As a result, Yeongju is working towards lots of green energy through the benefits of solar panels being installed in numerous places around the city. They also are looking towards wind as another source, although their primary influence appears to be solar at this time.

Mayor Kim was gracious enough to host us also for lunch at a local favorite restaurant of his. Our meal for that afternoon was a bowl of chicken stock with a chicken boiled inside flavored with ginseng. The chicken was then stuffed with rice. This meal was delicious, although it was a little more difficult to access the chicken through chopsticks. It was a whole chicken (about the size of a cornish hen) and we used chopsticks to open the chicken to reach the rice and eat the meat. This proved to be the most difficult chopsticks related task I had the entire time I was there, but I certainly enjoyed the meal and the hospitality of the Mayor.

From there, we traveled to MuSum, a traditional folk village which is still in operation. One of the very interesting things here is that the people who live in the village and give tours of the location are living in a combination of two worlds. The ancient world of Korea, which homes built on top of logs to provide a firm foundation and modern Korea, with Satelitte dishes in the middle of their homes bringing hi-definition television and Internet into the middle of a traditional village.

The villagers here live on an island of sorts, with water surrounding their home and the banks protected by sand which has been shipped in. The island is accessible only by a road (or boat, I guess). The road was not very friendly for our bus driver to try to navigate but most of the cars parked in the village which the villagers use were smaller and would be able to negotiate fairly easily. The living quarters were accessible by small doors and the living rooms were open air. Some of these homes were literally hundreds of years old.

From there, we went to the traditional village, where we had tea in a very formal setting overlooking the mountainsides and the stream below. This villa was out in the middle of nothing – no indication of technology anywhere. There were no antennas, no telephone poles. While there were lights outside, those were the limits of what you saw that indicated any technology was present at all. The courtyard of the villa was dirt and the paths to all of the guest rooms were also dirt. I was very thankful that there was no heavy rain this evening.

We would be sleeping in these guest houses for the evening. The accommodations were like nothing I’ve ever experienced. There was only a coffeepot sitting on a table which held some books on the floor. There was no other furniture in the main room. Off of the main room, I was lucky enough to have a kitchen with a refrigerator. Off of that room was a combination shower/toilet/sink. Inside the main room there were several blankets and large mats which were stored on top of a few boards which had been nailed to the wall and hung from the ceiling. I cheated and slept on top of four of these mats, which I folded up into more of a mattress. The room was surprisingly warm once I turned on the floor heating system. All of us who spent the night there slept better than we had the entire trip thus far. But the highlight of this experience was when I happened to look at my iPhone while we were being shown around upon arrival there. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – five bars of cell phone signal and a strong wi-fi signal. To make sure, I opened Safari (the Apple web browser) on my iPhone and went to www.newsok.com to see if it was indeed working Internet. Sure enough, it pulled up a story which had just been published. I showed it to my colleague from Minnesota and said “Dude. I got Wi-Fi.” This statement made our top ten list of phrases which caught us off guard during the trip. The next morning I shot a video of my experience there. Camerawork by Rep. Lindsey Holmes (D-Anchorage):

Villa (Large Quicktime – 428.6 MB)