화성

I've been spending most of the week and a half since I arrived in Korea meeting up with old (and some new) friends, relatives, and previewing for my Korean class.  But it became a little boring staying in Sinchon all of the time, so I decided to take a trip to Suwon with a friend.  I wanted to do some more travelling around Korea this year, but I wasn't sure where to go.  Last year, I went to most of the touristy places in Seoul, Gyeongju and Andong on a class field trip, Jeju, and Busan.    Fortunately, the Light Fellowship provided all of the Light Fellows with a lonely planet guide free of charge.  I had originally wanted to go to Ulleungdo and Dokdo, but realized it would probably take several days to complete the trip.  So I decided to make the trip to Suwon, which is only an hour south of Seoul and reachable by the Seoul Metropolitan Subway network.  

Suwon is famous for 화성 Hwaseong (華城), which is a fortress wall built in the late 18th century.  It surrounded a palace which housed King Jeongjo of the Joseon Dynasty.  Walking along the entire wall takes about 2 hours, so we decided to walk about a third of it and take a shuttle to see the rest.  

The Hwaseong fortress wall

 

장안문 (Jang-an-mun), one of the gates leading into the fortress

The city of Suwon was built around both sides of the wall.  In this picture taken atop the wall, you can see a busy intersection and street that runs right underneath a portion of the wall.

Suwoncheon creek

Standing next to 무궁화 Mugunghwa (無窮花), Korea's national flower

In the northeast corner of the fortress, there was an archery center where we could learn archery and practice shooting 10 arrows.  The wall was built with platforms from which archers could defend the fortress.  South Koreans are excellent archers, and the national archery teams holds all of the women's Olympic archery records and over half of the men's records.  The Korean women's team has also won the team archery competition at the Olympics every year since 1984.  It amazes me how Olympic archers can hit the bull's eye on a target over 70 meters away.  We aimed at targets about a quarter of that distance, but I was only able to hit the target board 3 times, and all three times I missed the circular target.  Right-handed bows cause the arrow to want to go to the right, so I had to aim at a point far to the left of the target.  Also, I had to aim above the target to get the right projectile motion.  Wind wasn't an issue that day but I'm guessing that would cause huge problems (any archers out there?).   

Learning archery!  Please mind my horrible technique.  

with King Jeongjo

신풍루 Sinpungnu (新豊楼),the main gate to the palace 

Overall, it was a nice day trip.  I left Seoul around 9am and managed to arrive before dinner time (5pm).  Hopefully I'll get to do some more travelling in Korea before I leave.  

Classes start tomorrow.  I'm excited and a little nervous at the same time.  I'm excited because I'll finally be able to start learning more Korean again and have some structure to my days, but nervous because I've heard how difficult Level 5 is.  We'll see how it goes.