RAS-KB

Last Sunday I went on a Royal Asiatic Society-Korea Branch tour. We took a bus ride a couple of hours south of Seoul to see some patriotic sites since it was March 1st, Korean Independence day.

The first place we went to was the shrine of Admiral Yi Sunshin, who played an important role in the defeat of Hideyoshi's invasion (1592-1597).
Here is his shrine. The inside of his shrine with incense burning in front of his spirit portrait. I think this is officially a government site but a Buddhist temple runs it.

This is the grave of Admiral Yi's favorite son who died in battle during the invasion. The writing on the stone tablet is in Korean, not Chinese characters as it was erected during a period in Korean history in which there was an effort to use Korean, rather than Chinese letters.

After going to the shrine we went to the Onyang Folk Museum. They had a neat outdoor display. This is an old house with jars for fermenting kimchi and for storage purposes outside.

This is a model of a paper mill, I imagine the real thing was bigger.

A child's sled.

A child's cart.

Except for the vest and fly whisk, these are all pillows.

Farming implements. One can see how they could easily become weapons during peasant rebellions.

A blacksmith's shop.

Puppets: disturing in any culture

After the folk museum we went to the Independence Memorial Hall. Despite the name it's gigantic. You have to walk about a mile from the parking lot to where the exhibition halls are. It's really big to allow for large national ceremonies. There was one on this day because it was Idependence Day. They have these neat little family bikes which you can see on the right side of the picture.

A model of Korean guerilla armies fighting Japanese soldiers.

A very large monument.

Have your picture taken with a great independence fighter!

A statue of An Chunggun, one of the people I am studying. They had a neat exhibit on him and I was able to pick up some useful books. The clerks were so kind that they gave me a couple that had been damaged for free (the undamaged ones had all sold out so I wouldn't have been able to get them otherwise--the damaged ones were in pretty good shape).

So a successful trip!

I will present on An Chunggun next week at the Rotary Club and the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch (I had to give an impromptu presentation on the bus during the above tour!) on An Chunggun so please be praying for me!