Gyeongju

My son and I were wandering the Bronze Age petroglyphs on the far side of the Hyeongsan River and the feeling in the air was already bizarre, as he had just pointed at one of the sheer cliffs and exclaimed “Buddha!”, despite having no apparent knowledge that the area was some kind of sacred fertility precinct thousands of years ago (in Korean it’s called “애기 청소 / Aegee Chungso / Baby-Washing”). The carvings on the rocks are visible if you look closely—I only discovered them after taking a picture, draining the colors, and then fiddling with the contrast—but I find it somewhat eerie that the boy found his own arcane way of sensing their spiritual significance.

…and, as a result, I’ve shamed all of my ancestors, from Adam on down. You should be able to watch the video here. The segment with my family starts at about 44:00.

There isn’t a whole hell of a lot left of the Shilla Dynasty. Aside from two spectacular sets of ruins in Gyeongju—Seokguram and Bulguksa, of course—and a few decent sculptures in the local museum, nearly everything this thousand-year old culture created has been completely destroyed. Part of me suspected that this was due to a lack of artistic fervor, but absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence: it’s also possible that the last millennium of Korean history was turbulent enough to nearly erase the Shilla from existence.

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile, I’ve gotten super busy with social media marketing ever since my new post at Aclipse as International Marketing Assistant. Check out my blog posts here, and follow me on twitter at @arieldrosen for more Korea updates!

Anyway, Thursday was Korean Memorial Day, so everyone got off work! My friends and I decided to travel to Gyeongju to ride bikes and check out some historical sites. Gyeongju was the capital of Silla, an ancient Korean dynasty, (57 BC – 935 AD). There is also an amusement park there! But we’re saving that for another trip. It takes about an hour and half to drive there from Busan, but the drive was beautiful so no worries. Ok, here come the photos!

On Tuesday and Wednesday our bosses took the teachers from our school on a staff workshop trip. It was teacher’s day on Wednesday so it is common for employers and employees at schools to celebrate it together. This year we got taken to Gyeongju. All of the teachers have to write a report to show our appreciation to the governor, as he is the one who funds these trips! So here is David’s and my report…