Nicole’s Travel Guide to Korea: Gunsan
Mar. 12th, 2021 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
niori_1709Before heading to Korea, I had never heard of the city of Gunsan. It wasn’t mentioned in the guidebook I used as a first round of research. Even when I got in the country, it didn’t come up as a potential destination. It wasn’t until I was making plans to meet up with a friend who moved to Korea a year or so before me, did Gunsan come to my notice. It was the city she was living in and I was to go down there and stay with her for a weekend.
Gunsan is a port city about a three-hour bus ride south of Seoul. With a population of roughly 278 thousand, a good percentage of that from the US military air force base, I’d consider it a medium sized city by Korean standards. Once upon a time it was a small fishing village of little importance. While there were some historical events that went down, Gunsan didn’t make its mark until the Japanese occupation moved in. Along with fishing, the area was good for growing rice. It was ideal for a port meant to ship that rice back to Japan. It officially became an international port in 1899, mainly settled by the Japanese in the beginning. After WW2, the city slowly built up into what it is today.
I didn’t know what to expect when I stepped off the bus. It’s one of the times I didn’t do any research beforehand and left it all up to my friend. She didn’t disappoint. She decided the best way to see the town was on a bike. Now, it had been a very long time since I had ridden a bike. Bike riding has never been a favoured past time of mine, but I was willing to try anything (or re-try, in this case). In exciting news, I didn’t die, even if I almost drove into a pole and almost jerked into traffic. Even if it wasn’t my cup of tea, I fully admit that biking is a good way to take in Gunsan.
One great thing about biking around is that it’s very easy to get to the less crowded areas with less traffic. That’s not to say it’s rural -far from- but it goes more small business/residential. Going through these areas brings you past some pretty green places. In a lot of those green areas are a lot of interesting memorials. We actually came across one of the biggest memorial statues I’ve seen outside a museum in Korea. It was in this little sliver of a park, visible from the road. It looked super interesting, so we decided to take a break there and check it out. It’s cut into three sections. The first part is two pointy columns on top of a tall stone block carved with a dragon relief. On one side there is a wall carved with soldiers, holding rifles and waving a flag at the front of the line. They are fierce looking ones, with determined expressions on their stone faces. On the other side is another tall rectangle block with inscriptions in Korean and a lotus blossom on top. The other three sections are less elaborate, mostly pillars with maybe a few decorative carvings at the top (the nicest being Korea’s national flower, the rose of Sharon -a beautiful white-pink flower with a magenta centre and a fuzzy white stigma- which is a lovely detail in its simplicity) or lions lounging as they guard the base. There is one that has a side carved with a cheering crowd dressed in traditional hanboks.
The memorial gives a quick plaque with a brief explanation in English, but it doesn’t do the story justice. This is a memorial that, like many things, has to do with the Korean War. Gunsan was mostly untouched during the war, but that didn’t mean it didn’t experience some damage. There was a battle here, where Korean marines held off North Korean forces in order to give the people of the town and port time to evacuate. It must have been terrifying, stuck in the hills around the town, doing your best to keep back a force with superior numbers so the people below -maybe some of them you know- can get away. That takes a lot of bravery, and if there’s anyone in Gunsan who should get a memorial, it’s these guys.
After leaving the memorial, we took our bikes to the destination my friend had in mind. We made our way to the east side of Eunpa Lake Park. The way to the main area has you taking paths along a lake, as the name would suggest. It’s a beautiful trail to take in the summer, with the smooth blue-grey water with greenery on all sides. It’s a lovely place, one I’m so glad my friend decided to take me to. If you want to cross the lake you need to take the wooden boardwalk. It’s not long, but it is fun. The boardwalk’s entrance is a set of four half of an octagon shape that gets smaller with each one you pass through. They’re made with the same wood and design of the boardwalk itself. The road is wide enough to allow two lanes, but you’re not allowed to bike across it. It was time to go for a walk. It was easy to walk the bike across and never felt crowded, even when you passed people. It’s straight, so there’s no curves or hills to worry about. If you want to take a break, there’s a round shoot off that has benches to sit on. It’s completely detached from the main roadway, save for the two ramps down, which means you don’t need to worry about getting in anyone’s way. The middle of the boardwalk goes up like a suspension bridge, with the side cables arching up to the main support beam. There’s a fountain near one of the shorelines, that spouts out jets of water timed to music. The two of us stopped and watched it for a bit, needing a break and a distraction.
At the end of the boardwalk is a small building, wall-less (with support beams holding it up) but with a roof. In the middle of it is this shiny black orb, about the size of a bowling ball. It looks like something an evil wizard would use in a fantasy movie. It’s up on a chest high black podium, only adding to that effect. There’s an imprint of a large right hand carved into it, deep enough to rest your hand inside. This is the love stone. If you and your partner both place your hand in it, one over the other, it’s said that your love will last forever. I didn’t see anyone use it while I was there, and being single I didn’t use it myself, but it’s a cute thought. It reminds me of the love locks you see clicked around metal fences at places like N Seoul Tower. They may take different shapes, but they all come from the same place- a desire for love and the certainty that said love will last forever. It’s romantic and sweet. I wish all the couples who use the stone much happiness and hopefully whatever magic that may rest in the ominous orb works out for them.
After stopping to look at the stone, we finished crossing the boardwalk (which also lights up at night. We weren’t there for it, but it’s something to keep in mind if you get to Gunsan) and headed out of the park to get supper. After that, and after dropping our bikes off, it was time to get ready for the main event of the weekend. That event? A baseball game. I’m going to assume that baseball needs no introduction. Even if you’ve never played it, baseball has been absorbed into your mind by the sheer number of instances it appears in pop culture. I love baseball. It’s close to softball, which is not only my favourite sport, but one I enjoyed playing all through my childhood. It’s a sport that even runs through my family, so I was down to go to a baseball game, even if watching any sort of sporting event isn’t my go to form of entertainment (I like in person games more than televised ones, and prefer playing myself to both of them). When you get a big group of people to go who are really into it, it’s probably going to be a good time. As I said, I don’t need to explain baseball, but give me a moment to explain how Koreans do it.
It is the same sport with all the same rules of course, but boy howdy do they take it seriously. Like, hockey for Canadians seriously. The big difference is the way the seriously manifests- it’s no angry screams and jeers or taunts in the crowd. If your team is winning or losing, a Korean crowd is having the time of their life carrying on. The crowd is having a blast, with group cheers and songs, complete with moves and dances. If someone gets caught on camera and projected onto the jumbo screen, they go all out, not worrying how silly they look. You especially see this with the elderly fans, which is something that translates into many aspects of their lives. It’s so much fun to see, even better to be right there in the crowd and go along with it. Just because I didn’t know the words didn’t mean I couldn’t hold a clapping beat. There were also those long tube things that make an obnoxious noise when you knock them together. It really is the most annoying sound, but boy is it fun to beat them and scream cheer when your team does something awesome. It was, when it comes to sheer excitement and joy, the best part of the weekend.
That’s the crowd, so onto the game itself. I knew nothing about the teams I was going to watch going in (in fact, I was that oblivious person who had to ask ‘so what colour am I cheering for?’ Once we took our seats). The Korean Baseball League has ten teams and the home team we were going to see was The Tigers (I can’t for the life of me remember the other team). That team is still the most successful, though I’m sad to say the game itself wasn’t the best one ever. Here’s the thing about baseball- it’s super exciting until it isn’t. This was a pretty boring game, full of balls, walks, and even more foul balls. There were bursts of action, but for the most part it was just a lot of waiting. If it hadn’t been for the sheer energy of the crowd, I probably would have been very, very board. There was the also the problem of the heat. This was in summer, and summer in Korea is disgustingly hot. It’s an ungodly mix of heat and humidity that can raise the temperature upwards of 35 degrees. Add the sun bearing down on you and it can be very, very rough, especially for a person like me, who doesn’t handle hot weather well. It was a very sunny, very hot day sitting in an open stadium with the sun gracing us with its presence. Even after the sun went down, the air was sticky. I felt miserable by the end and I was ready to bask in an air-conditioned room, take some painkillers for my headache, and sleep for nine hours. It was a disappointing end to the day, especially after having so much fun earlier, especially at the game. It’d still recommend going to one if you’re in Korea, but maybe not in the middle of summer (I went to another baseball game in fall in Seoul and had a much better experience).
I did sleep those nine hours and woke up the next day refreshed and ready for further adventures. For our day two activities, we were going to focus on history, which of course is one of my favourite subjects. Our search took us down to the wharf, where both old and new combine to make a really interesting area. Half the wharf is just that- a wharf, with fishing boats tied up and sitting on the mud, waiting for the tide to come in. On the other side, it’s both a step back in time and an ode to the modern military. Gunsan still has quite a few buildings that date back to Japanese colonialism. I have to admit that I was a bit surprised that so many Japanese built buildings have survived, but that’s neither here nor there. While not all of these buildings are on the waterfront, quite a few of them were, and I saw all of those ones. While first walking around, I didn’t know the exact history of the area, but even I was able to pick out these buildings and say ‘wait, this one is different’ even if I wasn’t sure of the context. I guess that’s what happens when you spend enough time in a country- you gain the ability to pick out what architecture sticks out.
The first of these buildings we came across was the old customs office. The building easily caught my attention, and not only because someone else was already posing in front of it. It was a red brick building, which is what makes it stand out. The entrance is made of large blocks of stone and there are also lots of windows. There are two vertical wooden signs on each side of the baby blue door, one with writing in Korean and the other in Japanese. The building was built in 1908 and its location in this part of town makes sense, given this is where the international trade came in and out. The other two historic buildings are both old banks, one that looks like it was built in a more contemporary European way, with brown bricks and cream archways. The second was a mix of western influenced Korean style, with white concrete making it up. The first back, maybe ten-ish minutes on foot from the customs office, was the former Gunsan branch of Japan’s 18th Bank. The original one was established in Nagasaki. The branch in Gunsan opened in 1907. Unsurprisingly, this bank was used to benefit the Japanese community in the city over the Koreans. The bank oversaw the buying of rice and land, and a lot of it was done with little agreement of the original owners, if any at all. The second bank, just down the road, is the former Bank of Joseon. Don’t let that name fool you- it too was established by the Japanese in 1922, right in the middle of their colonization of Korea.
Obviously, none of these buildings are used for their original purpose. While the Bank of Joseon did change itself to the Bank of Korea after liberation, it became a lot of things between then and now, including a wedding hall, nightclub, noraebang (a song room, which is basically Korean karaoke), and finally, the Gunsan Modern Architecture Exhibition Hall. The Japanese no 18th Bank now houses an art gallery, and the customs house is also an exhibition hall. All three have been designated historic cultural properties and have since been restored to their original glory. None of them were open the day we were there, so we didn’t get to see inside. I really wish we could have, because I would have loved to see what had been done inside to restore (or preserve, in the case of the customs house, since a lot of interior there is original) to keep this snapshot of history. If the work they did to maintain the exterior of the buildings is any indication, then they must have done an effective job. Preserving history is always a difficult task, so the people in charge deserve at least some praise for making it happen here.
Surrounded by all these historic buildings it only makes sense that, if Gunsan is going to have its own museum, this is where they’d put it, and put it here they did. The waterfront is home to the Gunsan Modern History Museum. Much like the name implies, it’s a museum that showcases the history of the city. It has all the normal things you’ll find in a museum, with a particular slant towards maritime history. You see that the most on the first floor of the museum. When you first walk in, you’ll find yourself in an open lobby, where you’ll see the first item of interest. Off to the side, placed beside the stairs, is a replica of a lighthouse. It’s hardly to scale, being around fifteen feet tall-ish fairly skinny. If you’ve seen a lighthouse, you know what you’re going to see- it’s just the tower part (a long tube) painted white with a red top. There’s a railing all around near the top with a ladder that led to the windows to get into the light area. The replica of the light also isn’t to scale, and I can’t imagine it’d be a blinding light if it were turned on, but it looked legitimate. It’s not overly special, but I think it was a good thing to open the museum with. What is a better symbol to represent the ocean than a lighthouse?
After the lobby, you head into the display rooms that focus on life for those who make their life and living on the ocean. There are some interesting artifacts in display cases, a lot of them having to do with trade or fishing. The centre piece of the floor is the large replica of a traditional wooden fishing boat. It’s not quite as large as a real one, but I’d say it’s maybe half to quarter of the size. It also didn’t look like a finished boat (it lacks any sort of colour, which means it’s just stained wood), more like an oversized model boat. That doesn’t take away from the levels of neat, especially with the two sails down. It’s not seaworthy, but it’s enough to imagine that the real thing would be. I come from a fishing village and have always wondered what it would be like to be out working on a fishing boat. Looking at that model, which is old timey traditional, made me wonder that all over again.
The second floor of the museum is the special exhibition hall. I’m not sure what’s there now, since those tend to change, but when I was there it was dedicated to exploring the Okgu farmer’s struggle. During colonialism, the Japanese made up the majority of landlords, especially when it came to farmland. These landlords demanded a very high price to farm on the land, but not in money. Rent was 75% of any crop the farmers grew, which I don’t need to explain is a high price. It left farmers struggling to keep enough for themselves and to sell for their own profit. If it was a bad year? Then it was even worse for them. It’s no surprise that they eventually refused, and from there a movement was born. It started with a riot on a local farm, which continued on at two police stations when the head of the farmer’s union was arrested. I wish I could tell you that the injustices were corrected, and the farmers given a fairer deal. It would be great to say that things changed for the better and all was well, but this isn’t a story, and I can’t. Justice and colonialism never go together, no matter who’s doing the colonizing. The protestors were all arrested and put on trial. This was the first-time farmers organized to take on the police in Korea in modern times. This is a story I had never heard of before coming to Gunsan and that’s a shame, since it’s a fascinating one. There’s always something inspiring when every day people try and find ways to stop legitimate injustices, even when they fail. There were quite a few artifacts scattered in display cases, including the papers dealing directly with the trails of the protestors. There were also a number of dioramas, the best of which is a model of one of the riots at the police station. On one side are a handful of in their police uniforms. They’re in defensive positions, ready for an attack. Coming at them from the opposite corner are the farmers, men and women dressed in traditional hanboks. Many of them are holding farm tools, and despite the unmoving nature of the diorama, you can tell they are marching forward. The painting of the faces is tiny and has a severe lack of detail, but it’s easy to imagine the looks of determination and anger that should be there. You can almost hear the angry cries that should be echoing in the air and the fury that would be clinging around them. It’s a simple diorama, but it’s one that manages to pack a punch that such a scene truly deserves.
The third and final factor is where the museum’s main selling point is to be found. The advertised slogan of the museum is 1930s time travel, and this is where that comes into play. This floor is set up to look like a Gunsan city street from the 1930s. It is absolutely fascinating, because it honestly looks like streets, even with the scaled down buildings. When you first walk in, you’re greeted with a storefront beside you. These are the first two of the eleven buildings replicated there. They’re two-story buildings, with the doors on the first thrown open so that you can walk into the one room display room. Like I said, the first is a storefront, where there are items across shelves behind a sales counter. There’s a stove for heat in one corner, with boxes and barrels piled up in the other ones. Like most of the models, the buildings are wooden, with sliding paper doors. There are tables just outside those doors, with even more items that would have been for sale. This was the general store. Just down the street from it was a shoe store, with a shelf of shiny rubber shoes just outside, waiting for you to try them on. Then there’s the wholesale store, where dried food goods in jar after jar look ready to be bought. Just outside the door there’s a rickshaw, which is one of those single seat carriages that a person pulls for you. You can’t go for a ride, but you can climb up on the bright red contraption for a picture. That angled building is the old rice exchange office, where farmers brought their rice to trade for money. It’s an open floor plan, with show cases holding various items from the original exchange. A neat little detail is the black board on one wall, with rice prices written in chalk. That’s because those prices changed so often it needed to be erased and replaced quickly. Thus the chalk.
Then you turn the corner to loop around the block, one wall is painted to look like the shoreline, with a small wooden two-person boat resting on the sand below. Over in the far corner, a 3D art piece of a more modern fishing vessel tied up at a wharf, complete with fishermen in yellow gear getting ready to cast off. Across from it is the harbour warehouse, where trade items would have been stored until they could go through the customs house (not represented here). There’s a large soil tiller to represent the farmers from the area, and an even more miniature area that shows the homes up in the hills surrounding the city, which were the old-fashioned straw huts. You’ll pass by the Gunsan theatre and station before getting to the most interesting building, the school. The inside is set up as it would have been in its heyday, with the students’ desk lined up in two rows. The teacher’s desk is up on a stage at the front of the room, a writing board the only thing on the wall behind it. The last one before you leave the hall is the Impi Train Station, a white concrete building with a bright blue bottom. This was a building that played a part in the farmer’s revolt from earlier.
This kind of set up is nothing new for museums, and this wasn’t even the most elaborate version I’ve ever seen, but it was one of my favourites. The detail they put into the buildings is wonderful, but it’s even more than that. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s the feel of it. It just feels like it’s transporting you to this place, to this time. It is designed to be a snapshot and it’s an effective one- like one of those old postcards you can find in museum gift shops everywhere. This is the section of the museum I suggest spending the most time in, just so you can look in every nook and cranny.
The museum takes maybe an hour to get through, but it doesn’t mean your exploration needs to end there. Once you head back outside, there’s still more to see. Next door is the Jinpu Maritime Theme Park. This isn’t a theme park in the traditional way, but more of an open-air museum, featuring military equipment. We’re talking big equipment too. Much like the outside of the War Memorial in Seoul, there are tanks, jets, planes, and even a battleship. There are sixteen in all, a few of them repeats. They’re all parked in a massive parking lot, with lots of room to wander around them. There’s a reason why this is a perfect place for such a display, and not only because it has a lot of free space. The harbour was the location of a naval battle that went down in history for being the first warships to use gunpowder in battle. The date was 1380 CE and Korea had long been defending its shores against Japanese pirates. They had already decided that they needed something different if they were going to end the threat, and the head of the project had the idea of ‘what about finding a way to use gunpower on the ships?’. Gunpowder was nothing new, but the concept of integrating into naval warfare was. So, the scientists went to work and came up with some modified weapons, which helped the eighty Korean ships beat the pirate fleet of five hundred once the battle came. It’s hard to imagine it now, with all the concrete and modern machines around you, but this great victory did happen just offshore. I imagine it must have been shocking for those pirates, being blindsided by all these gun powder powered weapons out on the sea, where presumably they had no idea it was coming. I’m sure more than one had a panicked thought of ‘I did not sign up for this’. There couldn’t be a better place to set up this park, with that as a historical backdrop.
The crown jewel of the park is, of course, the full-sized battleship the Wibongham. It was a fully functional combat vessel, having served its time during the Vietnam War, before being retired to the Gunsan Harbour. No matter how many times I see a battleship up close, the sheer size of them throws me. I know they’re big but walking up to them still leaves me feeling super small every time. You can take some stairs up to walk along the deck or go inside, where a display area has been set up. Before we get to that, let’s pause on a rather baffling…centrepiece, we’ll say, right outside the ship. It was a statue of a killer whale built into a long hedge, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what the material was. The whale is the right colours (black and white) but faded, and ‘swimming’ just above the ‘surface’ (the hedge). Only its head, dorsal fin, and raised tale stick out. The dorsal fin doubles as the bow of a ship (just the bow, no ship attached) with a couple who are very much not Jack and Rose (much younger, in modern clothes, and Korean) but doing the ‘I’m flying’ pose from Titanic. To the top that randomness off, giant blocky red capital letters that spell ‘love’ are down by the tail. It must sound so confusing reading about, but I can assure you- it’s just as confusing seeing it in person. It makes no sense- why an orca? Why Titanic? What ‘love’? What does any of it have to do with the military machines surrounding it? I have no clue to any of it. It’s a super cute art piece for sure, but just…why?
Once I got over my ‘what the heck?’ about the whale/Titanic/love statue, it was time to head into the open area of the battleship. It’s also set up to function as a museum, be it smaller and more focused than the modern history one. While there is a section all about warships and living on one, the majority of it is about weapons from the time of the naval battle, particularly artillery. It’s well organized with lots of English displays, and if you’re a fan of ye old warfare, it’s certainly worth your time. The two biggest items on display (biggest in terms of interest, not size) are those gun powder weapons that were invented for naval battles. The first is basically designed like a canon. The second as the Hwacha, or fire cart. It’s shaped like a catapult, except instead of a spoon-looking contraption, it’s a solid couple of boards tied together with holes punched in. Your normal arrows are put into those holes. The holes are big enough to fit a large tube filled with gunpowder, and it’s easy to see where this is going. It could shoot out multiple rocket powered arrows at once. Not only did it mean multiple projectiles at once, but arrows are light, and so the cart was easier to move around and position. It’s not an original one, but it still gives you the idea of what was being used at the battle.
With that, it was time for me to head to the bus depot to get my ride back to Seoul. It had been an amazing weekend, one full of surprises. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Gunsan, but it delivered more than I could have anticipated. I didn’t even get to see it all- there was still lots of see, like the only Japanese Buddhist temple left in Korea, a railroad village, cherry blossom spots in the spring, islands, and even the longest seawall in the world. Gunsan had all these things that I had never heard of, but it’s a place that should be on more peoples’ itineraries. I haven’t gotten back down there since (my friend moved back to Canada), but if someone ever said ‘hey, let’s go to Gunsan’, I’d go in a heartbeat.
Gunsan is a port city about a three-hour bus ride south of Seoul. With a population of roughly 278 thousand, a good percentage of that from the US military air force base, I’d consider it a medium sized city by Korean standards. Once upon a time it was a small fishing village of little importance. While there were some historical events that went down, Gunsan didn’t make its mark until the Japanese occupation moved in. Along with fishing, the area was good for growing rice. It was ideal for a port meant to ship that rice back to Japan. It officially became an international port in 1899, mainly settled by the Japanese in the beginning. After WW2, the city slowly built up into what it is today.
I didn’t know what to expect when I stepped off the bus. It’s one of the times I didn’t do any research beforehand and left it all up to my friend. She didn’t disappoint. She decided the best way to see the town was on a bike. Now, it had been a very long time since I had ridden a bike. Bike riding has never been a favoured past time of mine, but I was willing to try anything (or re-try, in this case). In exciting news, I didn’t die, even if I almost drove into a pole and almost jerked into traffic. Even if it wasn’t my cup of tea, I fully admit that biking is a good way to take in Gunsan.
One great thing about biking around is that it’s very easy to get to the less crowded areas with less traffic. That’s not to say it’s rural -far from- but it goes more small business/residential. Going through these areas brings you past some pretty green places. In a lot of those green areas are a lot of interesting memorials. We actually came across one of the biggest memorial statues I’ve seen outside a museum in Korea. It was in this little sliver of a park, visible from the road. It looked super interesting, so we decided to take a break there and check it out. It’s cut into three sections. The first part is two pointy columns on top of a tall stone block carved with a dragon relief. On one side there is a wall carved with soldiers, holding rifles and waving a flag at the front of the line. They are fierce looking ones, with determined expressions on their stone faces. On the other side is another tall rectangle block with inscriptions in Korean and a lotus blossom on top. The other three sections are less elaborate, mostly pillars with maybe a few decorative carvings at the top (the nicest being Korea’s national flower, the rose of Sharon -a beautiful white-pink flower with a magenta centre and a fuzzy white stigma- which is a lovely detail in its simplicity) or lions lounging as they guard the base. There is one that has a side carved with a cheering crowd dressed in traditional hanboks.
The memorial gives a quick plaque with a brief explanation in English, but it doesn’t do the story justice. This is a memorial that, like many things, has to do with the Korean War. Gunsan was mostly untouched during the war, but that didn’t mean it didn’t experience some damage. There was a battle here, where Korean marines held off North Korean forces in order to give the people of the town and port time to evacuate. It must have been terrifying, stuck in the hills around the town, doing your best to keep back a force with superior numbers so the people below -maybe some of them you know- can get away. That takes a lot of bravery, and if there’s anyone in Gunsan who should get a memorial, it’s these guys.
After leaving the memorial, we took our bikes to the destination my friend had in mind. We made our way to the east side of Eunpa Lake Park. The way to the main area has you taking paths along a lake, as the name would suggest. It’s a beautiful trail to take in the summer, with the smooth blue-grey water with greenery on all sides. It’s a lovely place, one I’m so glad my friend decided to take me to. If you want to cross the lake you need to take the wooden boardwalk. It’s not long, but it is fun. The boardwalk’s entrance is a set of four half of an octagon shape that gets smaller with each one you pass through. They’re made with the same wood and design of the boardwalk itself. The road is wide enough to allow two lanes, but you’re not allowed to bike across it. It was time to go for a walk. It was easy to walk the bike across and never felt crowded, even when you passed people. It’s straight, so there’s no curves or hills to worry about. If you want to take a break, there’s a round shoot off that has benches to sit on. It’s completely detached from the main roadway, save for the two ramps down, which means you don’t need to worry about getting in anyone’s way. The middle of the boardwalk goes up like a suspension bridge, with the side cables arching up to the main support beam. There’s a fountain near one of the shorelines, that spouts out jets of water timed to music. The two of us stopped and watched it for a bit, needing a break and a distraction.
At the end of the boardwalk is a small building, wall-less (with support beams holding it up) but with a roof. In the middle of it is this shiny black orb, about the size of a bowling ball. It looks like something an evil wizard would use in a fantasy movie. It’s up on a chest high black podium, only adding to that effect. There’s an imprint of a large right hand carved into it, deep enough to rest your hand inside. This is the love stone. If you and your partner both place your hand in it, one over the other, it’s said that your love will last forever. I didn’t see anyone use it while I was there, and being single I didn’t use it myself, but it’s a cute thought. It reminds me of the love locks you see clicked around metal fences at places like N Seoul Tower. They may take different shapes, but they all come from the same place- a desire for love and the certainty that said love will last forever. It’s romantic and sweet. I wish all the couples who use the stone much happiness and hopefully whatever magic that may rest in the ominous orb works out for them.
After stopping to look at the stone, we finished crossing the boardwalk (which also lights up at night. We weren’t there for it, but it’s something to keep in mind if you get to Gunsan) and headed out of the park to get supper. After that, and after dropping our bikes off, it was time to get ready for the main event of the weekend. That event? A baseball game. I’m going to assume that baseball needs no introduction. Even if you’ve never played it, baseball has been absorbed into your mind by the sheer number of instances it appears in pop culture. I love baseball. It’s close to softball, which is not only my favourite sport, but one I enjoyed playing all through my childhood. It’s a sport that even runs through my family, so I was down to go to a baseball game, even if watching any sort of sporting event isn’t my go to form of entertainment (I like in person games more than televised ones, and prefer playing myself to both of them). When you get a big group of people to go who are really into it, it’s probably going to be a good time. As I said, I don’t need to explain baseball, but give me a moment to explain how Koreans do it.
It is the same sport with all the same rules of course, but boy howdy do they take it seriously. Like, hockey for Canadians seriously. The big difference is the way the seriously manifests- it’s no angry screams and jeers or taunts in the crowd. If your team is winning or losing, a Korean crowd is having the time of their life carrying on. The crowd is having a blast, with group cheers and songs, complete with moves and dances. If someone gets caught on camera and projected onto the jumbo screen, they go all out, not worrying how silly they look. You especially see this with the elderly fans, which is something that translates into many aspects of their lives. It’s so much fun to see, even better to be right there in the crowd and go along with it. Just because I didn’t know the words didn’t mean I couldn’t hold a clapping beat. There were also those long tube things that make an obnoxious noise when you knock them together. It really is the most annoying sound, but boy is it fun to beat them and scream cheer when your team does something awesome. It was, when it comes to sheer excitement and joy, the best part of the weekend.
That’s the crowd, so onto the game itself. I knew nothing about the teams I was going to watch going in (in fact, I was that oblivious person who had to ask ‘so what colour am I cheering for?’ Once we took our seats). The Korean Baseball League has ten teams and the home team we were going to see was The Tigers (I can’t for the life of me remember the other team). That team is still the most successful, though I’m sad to say the game itself wasn’t the best one ever. Here’s the thing about baseball- it’s super exciting until it isn’t. This was a pretty boring game, full of balls, walks, and even more foul balls. There were bursts of action, but for the most part it was just a lot of waiting. If it hadn’t been for the sheer energy of the crowd, I probably would have been very, very board. There was the also the problem of the heat. This was in summer, and summer in Korea is disgustingly hot. It’s an ungodly mix of heat and humidity that can raise the temperature upwards of 35 degrees. Add the sun bearing down on you and it can be very, very rough, especially for a person like me, who doesn’t handle hot weather well. It was a very sunny, very hot day sitting in an open stadium with the sun gracing us with its presence. Even after the sun went down, the air was sticky. I felt miserable by the end and I was ready to bask in an air-conditioned room, take some painkillers for my headache, and sleep for nine hours. It was a disappointing end to the day, especially after having so much fun earlier, especially at the game. It’d still recommend going to one if you’re in Korea, but maybe not in the middle of summer (I went to another baseball game in fall in Seoul and had a much better experience).
I did sleep those nine hours and woke up the next day refreshed and ready for further adventures. For our day two activities, we were going to focus on history, which of course is one of my favourite subjects. Our search took us down to the wharf, where both old and new combine to make a really interesting area. Half the wharf is just that- a wharf, with fishing boats tied up and sitting on the mud, waiting for the tide to come in. On the other side, it’s both a step back in time and an ode to the modern military. Gunsan still has quite a few buildings that date back to Japanese colonialism. I have to admit that I was a bit surprised that so many Japanese built buildings have survived, but that’s neither here nor there. While not all of these buildings are on the waterfront, quite a few of them were, and I saw all of those ones. While first walking around, I didn’t know the exact history of the area, but even I was able to pick out these buildings and say ‘wait, this one is different’ even if I wasn’t sure of the context. I guess that’s what happens when you spend enough time in a country- you gain the ability to pick out what architecture sticks out.
The first of these buildings we came across was the old customs office. The building easily caught my attention, and not only because someone else was already posing in front of it. It was a red brick building, which is what makes it stand out. The entrance is made of large blocks of stone and there are also lots of windows. There are two vertical wooden signs on each side of the baby blue door, one with writing in Korean and the other in Japanese. The building was built in 1908 and its location in this part of town makes sense, given this is where the international trade came in and out. The other two historic buildings are both old banks, one that looks like it was built in a more contemporary European way, with brown bricks and cream archways. The second was a mix of western influenced Korean style, with white concrete making it up. The first back, maybe ten-ish minutes on foot from the customs office, was the former Gunsan branch of Japan’s 18th Bank. The original one was established in Nagasaki. The branch in Gunsan opened in 1907. Unsurprisingly, this bank was used to benefit the Japanese community in the city over the Koreans. The bank oversaw the buying of rice and land, and a lot of it was done with little agreement of the original owners, if any at all. The second bank, just down the road, is the former Bank of Joseon. Don’t let that name fool you- it too was established by the Japanese in 1922, right in the middle of their colonization of Korea.
Obviously, none of these buildings are used for their original purpose. While the Bank of Joseon did change itself to the Bank of Korea after liberation, it became a lot of things between then and now, including a wedding hall, nightclub, noraebang (a song room, which is basically Korean karaoke), and finally, the Gunsan Modern Architecture Exhibition Hall. The Japanese no 18th Bank now houses an art gallery, and the customs house is also an exhibition hall. All three have been designated historic cultural properties and have since been restored to their original glory. None of them were open the day we were there, so we didn’t get to see inside. I really wish we could have, because I would have loved to see what had been done inside to restore (or preserve, in the case of the customs house, since a lot of interior there is original) to keep this snapshot of history. If the work they did to maintain the exterior of the buildings is any indication, then they must have done an effective job. Preserving history is always a difficult task, so the people in charge deserve at least some praise for making it happen here.
Surrounded by all these historic buildings it only makes sense that, if Gunsan is going to have its own museum, this is where they’d put it, and put it here they did. The waterfront is home to the Gunsan Modern History Museum. Much like the name implies, it’s a museum that showcases the history of the city. It has all the normal things you’ll find in a museum, with a particular slant towards maritime history. You see that the most on the first floor of the museum. When you first walk in, you’ll find yourself in an open lobby, where you’ll see the first item of interest. Off to the side, placed beside the stairs, is a replica of a lighthouse. It’s hardly to scale, being around fifteen feet tall-ish fairly skinny. If you’ve seen a lighthouse, you know what you’re going to see- it’s just the tower part (a long tube) painted white with a red top. There’s a railing all around near the top with a ladder that led to the windows to get into the light area. The replica of the light also isn’t to scale, and I can’t imagine it’d be a blinding light if it were turned on, but it looked legitimate. It’s not overly special, but I think it was a good thing to open the museum with. What is a better symbol to represent the ocean than a lighthouse?
After the lobby, you head into the display rooms that focus on life for those who make their life and living on the ocean. There are some interesting artifacts in display cases, a lot of them having to do with trade or fishing. The centre piece of the floor is the large replica of a traditional wooden fishing boat. It’s not quite as large as a real one, but I’d say it’s maybe half to quarter of the size. It also didn’t look like a finished boat (it lacks any sort of colour, which means it’s just stained wood), more like an oversized model boat. That doesn’t take away from the levels of neat, especially with the two sails down. It’s not seaworthy, but it’s enough to imagine that the real thing would be. I come from a fishing village and have always wondered what it would be like to be out working on a fishing boat. Looking at that model, which is old timey traditional, made me wonder that all over again.
The second floor of the museum is the special exhibition hall. I’m not sure what’s there now, since those tend to change, but when I was there it was dedicated to exploring the Okgu farmer’s struggle. During colonialism, the Japanese made up the majority of landlords, especially when it came to farmland. These landlords demanded a very high price to farm on the land, but not in money. Rent was 75% of any crop the farmers grew, which I don’t need to explain is a high price. It left farmers struggling to keep enough for themselves and to sell for their own profit. If it was a bad year? Then it was even worse for them. It’s no surprise that they eventually refused, and from there a movement was born. It started with a riot on a local farm, which continued on at two police stations when the head of the farmer’s union was arrested. I wish I could tell you that the injustices were corrected, and the farmers given a fairer deal. It would be great to say that things changed for the better and all was well, but this isn’t a story, and I can’t. Justice and colonialism never go together, no matter who’s doing the colonizing. The protestors were all arrested and put on trial. This was the first-time farmers organized to take on the police in Korea in modern times. This is a story I had never heard of before coming to Gunsan and that’s a shame, since it’s a fascinating one. There’s always something inspiring when every day people try and find ways to stop legitimate injustices, even when they fail. There were quite a few artifacts scattered in display cases, including the papers dealing directly with the trails of the protestors. There were also a number of dioramas, the best of which is a model of one of the riots at the police station. On one side are a handful of in their police uniforms. They’re in defensive positions, ready for an attack. Coming at them from the opposite corner are the farmers, men and women dressed in traditional hanboks. Many of them are holding farm tools, and despite the unmoving nature of the diorama, you can tell they are marching forward. The painting of the faces is tiny and has a severe lack of detail, but it’s easy to imagine the looks of determination and anger that should be there. You can almost hear the angry cries that should be echoing in the air and the fury that would be clinging around them. It’s a simple diorama, but it’s one that manages to pack a punch that such a scene truly deserves.
The third and final factor is where the museum’s main selling point is to be found. The advertised slogan of the museum is 1930s time travel, and this is where that comes into play. This floor is set up to look like a Gunsan city street from the 1930s. It is absolutely fascinating, because it honestly looks like streets, even with the scaled down buildings. When you first walk in, you’re greeted with a storefront beside you. These are the first two of the eleven buildings replicated there. They’re two-story buildings, with the doors on the first thrown open so that you can walk into the one room display room. Like I said, the first is a storefront, where there are items across shelves behind a sales counter. There’s a stove for heat in one corner, with boxes and barrels piled up in the other ones. Like most of the models, the buildings are wooden, with sliding paper doors. There are tables just outside those doors, with even more items that would have been for sale. This was the general store. Just down the street from it was a shoe store, with a shelf of shiny rubber shoes just outside, waiting for you to try them on. Then there’s the wholesale store, where dried food goods in jar after jar look ready to be bought. Just outside the door there’s a rickshaw, which is one of those single seat carriages that a person pulls for you. You can’t go for a ride, but you can climb up on the bright red contraption for a picture. That angled building is the old rice exchange office, where farmers brought their rice to trade for money. It’s an open floor plan, with show cases holding various items from the original exchange. A neat little detail is the black board on one wall, with rice prices written in chalk. That’s because those prices changed so often it needed to be erased and replaced quickly. Thus the chalk.
Then you turn the corner to loop around the block, one wall is painted to look like the shoreline, with a small wooden two-person boat resting on the sand below. Over in the far corner, a 3D art piece of a more modern fishing vessel tied up at a wharf, complete with fishermen in yellow gear getting ready to cast off. Across from it is the harbour warehouse, where trade items would have been stored until they could go through the customs house (not represented here). There’s a large soil tiller to represent the farmers from the area, and an even more miniature area that shows the homes up in the hills surrounding the city, which were the old-fashioned straw huts. You’ll pass by the Gunsan theatre and station before getting to the most interesting building, the school. The inside is set up as it would have been in its heyday, with the students’ desk lined up in two rows. The teacher’s desk is up on a stage at the front of the room, a writing board the only thing on the wall behind it. The last one before you leave the hall is the Impi Train Station, a white concrete building with a bright blue bottom. This was a building that played a part in the farmer’s revolt from earlier.
This kind of set up is nothing new for museums, and this wasn’t even the most elaborate version I’ve ever seen, but it was one of my favourites. The detail they put into the buildings is wonderful, but it’s even more than that. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s the feel of it. It just feels like it’s transporting you to this place, to this time. It is designed to be a snapshot and it’s an effective one- like one of those old postcards you can find in museum gift shops everywhere. This is the section of the museum I suggest spending the most time in, just so you can look in every nook and cranny.
The museum takes maybe an hour to get through, but it doesn’t mean your exploration needs to end there. Once you head back outside, there’s still more to see. Next door is the Jinpu Maritime Theme Park. This isn’t a theme park in the traditional way, but more of an open-air museum, featuring military equipment. We’re talking big equipment too. Much like the outside of the War Memorial in Seoul, there are tanks, jets, planes, and even a battleship. There are sixteen in all, a few of them repeats. They’re all parked in a massive parking lot, with lots of room to wander around them. There’s a reason why this is a perfect place for such a display, and not only because it has a lot of free space. The harbour was the location of a naval battle that went down in history for being the first warships to use gunpowder in battle. The date was 1380 CE and Korea had long been defending its shores against Japanese pirates. They had already decided that they needed something different if they were going to end the threat, and the head of the project had the idea of ‘what about finding a way to use gunpower on the ships?’. Gunpowder was nothing new, but the concept of integrating into naval warfare was. So, the scientists went to work and came up with some modified weapons, which helped the eighty Korean ships beat the pirate fleet of five hundred once the battle came. It’s hard to imagine it now, with all the concrete and modern machines around you, but this great victory did happen just offshore. I imagine it must have been shocking for those pirates, being blindsided by all these gun powder powered weapons out on the sea, where presumably they had no idea it was coming. I’m sure more than one had a panicked thought of ‘I did not sign up for this’. There couldn’t be a better place to set up this park, with that as a historical backdrop.
The crown jewel of the park is, of course, the full-sized battleship the Wibongham. It was a fully functional combat vessel, having served its time during the Vietnam War, before being retired to the Gunsan Harbour. No matter how many times I see a battleship up close, the sheer size of them throws me. I know they’re big but walking up to them still leaves me feeling super small every time. You can take some stairs up to walk along the deck or go inside, where a display area has been set up. Before we get to that, let’s pause on a rather baffling…centrepiece, we’ll say, right outside the ship. It was a statue of a killer whale built into a long hedge, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what the material was. The whale is the right colours (black and white) but faded, and ‘swimming’ just above the ‘surface’ (the hedge). Only its head, dorsal fin, and raised tale stick out. The dorsal fin doubles as the bow of a ship (just the bow, no ship attached) with a couple who are very much not Jack and Rose (much younger, in modern clothes, and Korean) but doing the ‘I’m flying’ pose from Titanic. To the top that randomness off, giant blocky red capital letters that spell ‘love’ are down by the tail. It must sound so confusing reading about, but I can assure you- it’s just as confusing seeing it in person. It makes no sense- why an orca? Why Titanic? What ‘love’? What does any of it have to do with the military machines surrounding it? I have no clue to any of it. It’s a super cute art piece for sure, but just…why?
Once I got over my ‘what the heck?’ about the whale/Titanic/love statue, it was time to head into the open area of the battleship. It’s also set up to function as a museum, be it smaller and more focused than the modern history one. While there is a section all about warships and living on one, the majority of it is about weapons from the time of the naval battle, particularly artillery. It’s well organized with lots of English displays, and if you’re a fan of ye old warfare, it’s certainly worth your time. The two biggest items on display (biggest in terms of interest, not size) are those gun powder weapons that were invented for naval battles. The first is basically designed like a canon. The second as the Hwacha, or fire cart. It’s shaped like a catapult, except instead of a spoon-looking contraption, it’s a solid couple of boards tied together with holes punched in. Your normal arrows are put into those holes. The holes are big enough to fit a large tube filled with gunpowder, and it’s easy to see where this is going. It could shoot out multiple rocket powered arrows at once. Not only did it mean multiple projectiles at once, but arrows are light, and so the cart was easier to move around and position. It’s not an original one, but it still gives you the idea of what was being used at the battle.
With that, it was time for me to head to the bus depot to get my ride back to Seoul. It had been an amazing weekend, one full of surprises. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Gunsan, but it delivered more than I could have anticipated. I didn’t even get to see it all- there was still lots of see, like the only Japanese Buddhist temple left in Korea, a railroad village, cherry blossom spots in the spring, islands, and even the longest seawall in the world. Gunsan had all these things that I had never heard of, but it’s a place that should be on more peoples’ itineraries. I haven’t gotten back down there since (my friend moved back to Canada), but if someone ever said ‘hey, let’s go to Gunsan’, I’d go in a heartbeat.
