The Marmot’s Hole

Saturday’s Korean traditional music tour to Damyang, Jeollanam-do went well. At the very least, it appears we didn’t disgrace the nation, according to Yonhap News.

Here are a couple of samples:

After the tour, I stuck around and headed on Sunday to Suncheon’s Nakan Folk Village, the best preserved of Korea’s old walled towns. The original earthen wall was put up in 1397 to protect the town from Japanese pirates who used to prey on the town during the late Goryeo/early Joseon era. The earthen walls were replaced with sturdier stone ones in 1424.

(Panorama of Nagan Folk Village. 1,200px version here)

The folk village has more thatched-roof homes than you can shake a jipangi at, and is a pleasant enough place to walk around, especially if you’ve never been to a Korean folk village before. Like Hahoe Village in Andong, many of the homes have been turned into restaurants or minbak, so the place has a touristy feel, but not overbearingly so. Anyway, if you’re in the area, it’s definitely worth a visit.

Much less touristed is nearby Beolgyo, a small hamlet that is now part of Boseong-gun. As fans of Korean literature are no doubt aware, Beolgyo is the setting for much of Jo Jung-rae’s magnum opus The Taebaek Mountains. Now, I’m not going to bullshit you and say that I’ve read it, although I am familiar with what it’s about and I did watch director Im Kwon-taek’s film version.

Home of Kim Beom-woo. In The Taebaek Mountains, it’s the home of Kim Sa-yong, the “good” landowner

Namdo Inn. This Japanese-style inn appeared in “Taebaeksan Mountains” as the place where the commander of the police counterinsurgency forces and his men were lodged

If you’ve got an interest in contemporary Korean history, there’s plenty to see and feel in Beolgyo, a town that is, for all intents and purposes, a product of Japanese colonial policy. The town was developed as a transportation center to ship agricultural goods from the Jeolla provinces to ports like Yeosu. The Japanese also engaged in a number of ambitious but divisive land reclamation products in the area. The Japanese penetration of the region and the colonial projects they pursued intensified class and ideological conflicts in the Beolgyo area that long outlived colonial rule. Jo’s The Taebaek Mountains examines this colonial legacy and the tragic conflicts that ripped South Korean society in the years between Liberation and the end of the Korean War.

Beolgyo’s downtown area is a place only a Japanese colonial administrator could love. Which, in a way, makes it kind of interesting. Like Gunsan, there are a number of old colonial-era buildings maintained as reminders of Korea’s difficult past. The town does get a fair number of visitors who come looking for the different places described in Jo’s book. Many of them, including the old Japanese Financial Collective building, Kim Beom-woo’s home, the Japanese-style Boseong Inn (now called the Namdo Inn), and the Sohwa Bridge, where mass executions took place during the 1948 Yeosu-Suncheon Uprising and, in the novel, rightists and leftists apparently traded turns executing political opponents.

Financial Collective. Red brick building of the type loved by Japanese imperialists for official structures. Viewed today as a symbol of Japanese exploitation of Korean farmers in the Jeolla provinces