NAMSANGOL TRADITIONAL VILLAGE

Yesterday (that was Friday here) we rode the subway downtown and caught the Seoul City Tour Bus (www.seoulcitybus.com) intending to ride it round its 2-hour loop. But Peter is a little large for the seats and so we broke the tour at Namsangol Traditional Village, nestled at the foot of Mount Namsan more or less cheek-by-jowl with Seoul’s financial district.

The site of the village was a popular resort outside the city until early in the twentieth century. Now it’s a combination of park/garden and historical site, with a compound of five traditional style Korean houses dating from the mid-nineteenth-early twentieth century surrounded by park. Some of the houses are partly reconstructed from original materials, some are reproductions. They housed the well-to-do, including the family of a Queen. All of them are very beautiful structures, their interiors tranquil and calming.

Outside the compound two men doing traditional crafts were working, seated cross-legged on thatch-covered platforms, weaving baskets and making rope sandals. The sandal-maker was dexterous and concentrated—his hands seeming to know what to do on their own. The basket-maker sprinkled grains of some sort for the sparrows (Eurasion tree sparrows, very similar to our house sparrows) who were hopping about alertly. Samples of the work —a basket for chickens to lay/nest in; eggs bound in a long line; baskets that functioned like dust-pans or grain scoops; lots of sandals, including assorted tiny ones made from coloured plastic rope—hung across the front of the platforms.

The grounds were full of daycare children, groups wearing identically coloured t-shirts of yellow, bright pink, pale blue, red. The children were enchanting, and mostly so young they were engrossed in their own doings—hunkered down patting the sand for instance—and not paying much attention to what they were seeing or being told. In the compound we watched older ones playing with traditional toys—whipping tops, rolling hoops, and jumping up and down on something like a low teeter-totter (not anything I’d want to try!).There was also a large group of green-vested volunteers pushing people in wheelchairs through the gardens, all enjoying the place and settling to picnic lunches.

We left the village and hopped back on the Tour Bus to the end of its route, more or less where we began, then walked along a short stretch of the reclaimed Cheonggyecheon Stream that runs through downtown—past dummies dressed in military uniforms, part of a display labeled Peace for Korea 2010. Then “home”.

I haven’t figured out how to add pictures to this blog yet, but Peter has assembled a trove of them into an album at photobucket. If you want to see them go to:

http://s993.photobucket.com/albums/af58/pharrisutoronto/seoul1/?albumview=slideshow