Читать книгу South Korea - Mark Dake - Страница 8

It was April tenth. The morning was nippy, overcast and grey. Heju and I got in the Scoupe to begin the drive to our first destination, Ganghwado (do means “island”), located about seventy-five kilometres northwest of our current location, Myeongil-dong in east Seoul. Off we headed northwest along Expressway 88 — named for the year Seoul hosted the Summer Olympics. The road hugged the south shore of the Han River and traced the great span of Seoul from east to west, a drive of more than an hour, in which time we passed more than twenty bridges that cross over the river to the north shore. Then, as the infrastructure and apartment buildings began petering out in the far western reaches of Seoul, we switched onto Road 48, which took us northwest across the wide expanse of the Gimpo Plain toward the coast.

I found the drive along the No. 48 a bit disappointing. Covering the plain was a combination of flat agricultural land and pockets of low hills, and along the weaving road was a haphazard assortment of spartan dwellings and light industry. We arrived at the coast by Ganghwa Bridge at the base of a thickly wooded mountain slope. Across the kilometre-wide Yeomha Channel we could see the northeast shore of Ganghwa Island. Along the mainland and Ganghwa shorelines we could see nothing but muddy banks and woods. Except for the channel’s dangerous looking, swirling grey-brown waters, nothing moved. Despite Ganghwa being the country’s fifth largest island, we could see no cars, people, boats, or villages along its shore. It was as if time stood still.

The far shore rose slightly to a wooded knoll, desolate and tranquil. Unlike most of the inhabited islands of Korea, which have at least a small port to shelter a handful of fishing trawlers, I could see nothing in the way of a single vessel or harbour.

But perhaps the silence and tranquility were not so surprising. After all, North Korea lies just 1.6 kilometres north of the island across the narrow Han estuary, and boat traffic and commercial fishing is prohibited in these waters. Being in such close proximity to the enemy, the ROK troops stationed here are in a state of constant readiness.

We drove across Ganghwa Bridge, ripples and eddies swirling in the strong current. Twice daily, the Pacific Ocean pushes and sucks vast quantities of water in and out of the Yellow Sea basin, resulting in the world’s second-highest tides. Here, along Ganghwa Island, high tide rises nine metres above low tide. The rapid rise and descent creates powerful currents that can sweep along at seven or eight knots between the islands as the tide sweeps in from the south and recedes in the opposite direction.

* * *

Ganghwa Island has been privy to some pretty remarkable history, due to its geographical location at the entrance to the Han River and its proximity to Seoul, just seventy kilometres upstream. During the last millennium, Ganghwa had served in times of trouble as a refuge for royal families, governments, dethroned monarchs, and disgraced officials.

Mark Napier Trollope, a British chaplain stationed in Korea who went on to serve as Bishop of Korea from 1911 until his death in 1930, trekked across Ganghwa Island and wrote that during the first eight centuries after Christ, it was considered a simple prefecture. Then, in the eighth century, its stature was raised to that of a fortress. Ganghwa was “the first outpost to be attacked and the most important to be defended in case of invasion by sea.”

Over the years, the island has received the full brunt of foreign assaults. The Mongols invaded in 1231, and through 1258 attacked Korea seven different times in an attempt to dominate the Goryeo kingdom. The Goryeo king, Gojong, fled to Ganghwa in 1232 and established a government in exile and a mini fortified capital. The Mongols burned and pillaged towns and villages across the peninsula, including the ancient former capital city of Gyeongju in the southeast. In fact, Ganghwa was about the only area of the country not to be overrun, as the Mongols would not or could not cross the Yeomha Channel to land on the island. It would not be until 1270 that the royal court returned to the mainland. In the 1350s, the last of the Mongol garrisons were jettisoned from the country.

Paul Theroux wrote, in Riding the Iron Rooster, that the Mongols were then conquering on horseback half the known world, including Moscow, Poland, eastern China, Afghanistan, and Vienna.

Then, in 1636, the Manchu-dominated Chinese Qing Dynasty sent 120,000 soldiers overland to Korea. The Joseon king at the time, Injo, moved his entire court to Ganghwa, but this time the Manchus took Korean vessels to Ganghwa, and overran the island and set the fort and buildings on fire. Injo surrendered and Korea became a client state to the Manchus, whose army devastated parts of the country and plundered its cities.

In October 1866, the French Far Eastern Squadron — seeking retribution for the execution that spring of four French priests who had been proselytizing Catholicism in Korea — sailed up the Yeomha Channel and bombed Ganghwa’s coastal fortifications, landing at the coastal village of Gapgot, near today’s Ganghwa Bridge. They proceeded to burn much of nearby Ganghwa town to the ground. Five years later, the U.S. Asian Squadron anchored in the channel and pounded the island forts with shells before its soldiers moved to land and decimated the Korean soldiers in what’s known as the Sinmi Invasion (sinmi means “year of the sheep” according to the Chinese Zodiac calendar).

Ganghwa has seen its share of death and destruction over its long history.

Just over the bridge, in Gapgot, a former historic town (though today, a four-lane main road runs through it), we drove to the Ganghwa War Museum. Over the winter, Heju and I had attended a national tourism exposition in Seoul, at which the Ganghwa Department of Culture and Tourism booth was represented by a youthful and friendly employee, named Gu Yun-ja, who spoke excellent English and insisted that we contact her when we visited her historic island. She had told us she would arrange for a tour of the museum. The appointment was for ten o’clock this morning.

We met Yun-ja, along with a museum guide who spoke only Korean, and the four of us moved slowly through the well-appointed and handsome interior of the museum. There was a glassed-in exhibit that incorporated G.I. Joe–type figures into a recreation of the battle between American and Korean soldiers that had occurred at Gwangseongbo (the suffix bo refers to a main citadel or garrison, where approximately 350 soldiers are stationed) on Ganghwa Island on June 11, 1871. In the exhibit, the Americans, decked out in blue uniforms and black leather boots, were curiously depicted in positions of submission. Six were supine and very dead; several others were on the ground, impaled by the swords of Korean soldiers. The Koreans wore baggy white pants and shirts of cotton — rather like judo attire — and straw shoes, and not a single one was injured or dead. The display would have been fine, were it accurate, but it was not, and visitors with no, or rudimentary, knowledge of Korean history, would wrongly conclude that the Yanks were walloped that day.

“What a bunch of BS,” I whispered to Heju furtively, because I did not want our museum guide — a stern, serious woman who I thought would not take kindly to knowing her museum was being maligned — to hear me.

The fact is that only three of 759 U.S. soldiers were killed that day, but close to 350 Koreans lost their lives. You see, the Americans were equipped with lightweight carbine rifles but the Koreans had only swords, spears, and slow-loading matchlock muskets. It was a monumental mismatch. I have seen graphic photos of the slaughter that showed American soldiers standing over the bedraggled bodies of Koreans, lying where they had fallen.

An American, William Elliot Griffis, who lived in Japan in the 1870s, and was one of the first historians to chronicle Korean history, wrote in Corea: The Hermit Kingdom, that the U.S. Asian Squadron had sailed to Korea in 1871 to seek trade ties. America was already trading with Japan and China and was desirous to trade with Korea as well. But Corea — as it was then spelled — kept its borders tightly closed.

The accepted Korean perspective today is that the U.S. squadron, though, did not arrive only to seek trade and sign a treaty. They contend it was to exact revenge for an incident in which a U.S.-flagged ship, the USS General Sherman, had steamed up the Taedong River to Pyongyang in 1866 and, after hostilities, its crew members, including several Americans, were reportedly beaten to death.

The U.S. Asian Squadron had arrived off Ganghwa in May 1871. Their flagship was the Colorado, and there were two gun boats, Monocacy and Palosa, and two corvettes, the Alaska and the Benicia. The Commander-in-Chief was Rear Admiral John Rogers, and there were eight hundred infantry and marines aboard the ships as well as the U.S. minister to Peking, Frederick F. Low, a man wary of entering the “sealed country,” believing Koreans to be “semi-barbarous and hostile people.” Admiral Rogers seemed prepared for war.

The modest Monocacy and Palosa were the only vessels of the five suitable to head up the shallow Han River to Seoul. But when the two ships finally anchored just south of Old Seoul, only low-ranking Korean officials were sent to meet them. King Gojong, then nineteen, would not hold power until he turned twenty-one. His father ruled as a regent in place of Gojong, and he was known as Prince of the Great Court, or Daewongun (dae means “great,” won “court,” and gun “prince”). His foreign policy was simple: no foreigners, no Catholics, no treaties or trade with the West or Japan.

Rebuffed, the U.S. admiral informed the Korean representatives that his squadron would survey the land from the local waters by ship. Korean maps featured cities, rivers, and hills painted in generous and artistic detail, but were usually rudimentary, with little sense of proportion and no reference to longitude and latitude. Monocacy and Palosa moved downstream along the Han, then south through the long, narrow Yeomha Channel. Along Ganghwa’s east shore was a twenty-kilometre stone wall, first erected (of earth) during the twelfth century. Along it were guard posts, armories, forts at regular intervals, and artillery emplacements for cannon. Surrounding the island’s four coasts was a total of five garrisons, seven forts, nine gun battlements, and fifty-three minor posts. In short, it was well-defended.

As the ships sailed south through the channel, they suddenly received cannon and musket fire from behind the wall. “The water was rasped and torn as though a hailstorm was passing over it,” wrote Griffis. “Many of the men in the boats were wet to the skin by the splashing of the water over them.”

Amazingly, the ships were not damaged, due to a combination of lack of mobility of the Korean cannons, poor quality gunpowder, and bad aim. Monocacy and Palosa fired back with ten-inch shells.

The American ships anchored in the channel and demanded an official apology, and ten days later, on June 10, they received a letter, but no apology. They decided to launch an assault in retaliation and sent cannon fire toward Choji Fort, the southernmost of the battlements, destroying it. Admiral Rogers ordered 759 infantry — 105 of them marines — and seven howitzers to the fort.

Choji Fort was deserted when the Americans arrived and they decided to camp overnight there. The next morning they marched north for two kilometres along hills and ravines, dragging the howitzers to Deokjin Fort, which had also been abandoned. They destroyed it, too, before continuing on to Gwangseong Citadel, a few kilometres north of Deokjin. But when the Americans reached the citadel, a mass of Korean soldiers charged down from the embankment. The Yanks answered with the howitzers, which scattered the Koreans. The corvette Palosa, moored just offshore, poured a steady stream of shells at Gwangseong’s stone rampart as American infantry and marines charged up the 150-foot hill to the fort, met only by sporadic musket shots. Matchlock gunpowder burned too slowly to allow for quick reloading.

The invaders gained easy entry through openings blasted in the walls. The first American through, Lieutenant Hugh McKee, received a bullet and died, but soon the American troops were decimating the natives. “Goaded to despair, [the Koreans] chanted their war-dirge in a blood-chilling cadence which nothing can duplicate,” wrote Griffis. They fought with furious courage, using spears and swords and even throwing stones or dust into the Americans’ eyes. “Scores were shot and tumbled into the river. Most of the wounded were drowned, and some cut their own throats as they rushed into the water.”

Koreans at the rear of the fort retreated, and the Yanks attacked. There was more fierce fighting and another fifty Koreans were shot dead. Another coterie met the same fate. Griffis described the U.S. soldiers as “mowing them down in swaths. Moving at full speed, many were shot like rabbits, falling heels over head.”

Around the fort lay dead 243 Koreans, an estimated one hundred more were dead in the water. Only twenty prisoners, all wounded, were taken alive. The Americans lost three men, and ten were wounded.

“It is said that even the commander of the American troops was much moved at the intrepid spirit of General Eo and his soldiers,” we read in the war museum.

After a mere forty-eight hours on Ganghwa, the invaders re-boarded their ships, taking with them an almost fifteen-foot-wide beige and yellow cloth flag the Koreans referred to as “Sujagi.” The flag featured two huge black Korean characters representing General Eo Jae-yeon, who had been killed in the battle.

The Americans interred their dead on a nearby island, but the Koreans who had been killed were left unburied. Wounded Koreans, however, were cared for by a ship’s surgeon, but when Admiral Rogers sent word to Korean officials that he would return the injured, he was told, “Do as you please with them.” The wounded were set ashore.

On July 3, after thirty-five days in Korean waters, the squadron set sail for China. The battle had garnered but a few paragraphs in American newspapers. The Daewongun, though, referred to it as a glorious victory for his country, having driven the enemy away.

Dr. Horace Allen, a Protestant missionary who arrived in Seoul from Ohio in 1884, and was employed first as a doctor with the U.S. legation, then as a diplomat at the legation until 1905, called the American attack an unfair and monumental mismatch, a “useless slaughter, one from which no good results ensued, and of which we have not since been proud.”

In the museum, we paused in front of the Sujagi. The flag had been taken back to America and had hung in Annapolis, Maryland, until it was finally returned to Korea in 2007. As we moved along, I was taking copious notes and asking lots of questions, which had to be translated into Korean by Heju, answered by the guide, then translated by Heju back into English. When the guide didn’t know an answer, Yun-ja would phone her tourism office to try to secure one for us. Thus, what normally should have been a two-hour tour ended up taking twice as long. It was close to three o’clock before we left.

We thanked the guide and Yun-ja, who had made a half-dozen calls on our behalf, and we apologized for taking up so much of their time. Yun-ja replied enthusiastically: “I loved so many questions — I learned so much today!”

After grabbing bowls of ramyeon (fried noodle soup) at the food hut by the museum, Heju and I drove the short distance west to Ganghwa town, which is located on a long bend in the island road that widens to six lanes through the town. On this tranquil island, the traffic here seemed incongruous, vehicles noisily motoring along at seventy or eighty kilometres per hour. Like many other towns and cities across the peninsula, this one was not what you would call pedestrian-friendly.

“If I was mayor, I’d reduce the number of lanes from six to two, and the speed limit to about twenty,” I decried to Heju. “It feels like we’re on a motorway.”

The town looked dusty and worn. We parked and strolled along the main street, past nondescript old shops that looked as if they’d been slapped together quickly with aluminum and concrete. I had naively envisioned the town as an attractive, historic little place, like one of those two-hundred-year-old colonial villages you would came across in, say, Massachusetts or Maine.

In the 1960s and ’70s, the country began modernizing and industrializing at a furious pace, transitioning from a primarily agrarian economy to one in which manufacturing played a major role. Sadly, the traditional rural villages of hanok dwellings constructed from wood, clay, tile, and granite gave way to inferior quality metal and concrete structures. In the cities, many of the hanoks and other one-storey homes were replaced with hastily built low-rise apartment blocks constructed of low-quality materials. Little attention was paid to aesthetics. Most communities were not well planned, and development happened haphazardly, particularly in big cities like Seoul, where millions had flooded to from the rural areas in search of employment. Seoul’s population in 1966 was 3.8 million; four years later it was 5.6 million. There were no heritage buildings of any sort that we could see as we strolled along the main road in Ganghwa town.

When British chaplain Mark Napier Trollope explored Ganghwa town in 1902, he described it as having four pavilion gates, a bell and bell-kiosk, and a number of other public buildings, though he did admit that they were in less than stellar condition: “The empty and ruinous public buildings, for which there is no further use, present a sad picture of decay,” he wrote. Except for the forts, which were for the most part constructed of stone, and the city gates, which are usually granite, almost everything in Korea’s long architectural history was built of wood and clay, which is prone to decay and fire. Trollope added, “Monuments, in a land where the most usual material for architecture is timber rather than brick or stone, have a way of not lasting.” He wondered why stonework — Koreans are excellent masons — had not played a larger role in their architecture.

For the trip, I carried with me the 1997 Lonely Planet Korea guidebook, among other guidebooks. It was quite uncomplimentary of the island, noting it was an “overrated” tourist attraction. “The tourist literature and some guide books to Korea go on at some length about Ganghwado’s attractions, giving you the impression that the island is littered with fascinating relics and ruins. To a degree it is, but you have to be a real relic enthusiast to want to make the effort.”

A tad harsh, I thought. The government had obviously spent time and funds to refurbish the forts on the island and establish the museum. There was real opportunity here to learn more about significant Korean history. I for one was content to absorb it in the short time we had on the island. It was getting late in the day, so Heju and I returned to the car and went in search of lodging, which we found in the town’s west end, in the form of the West Gate Inn (Samungjung), a plain three-storey “love motel.”

I had checked my parents into a love motel — the only accommodation available close to my Myeongil-dong flat — when they visited me in 2000.

“Why’s our bed heart-shaped?” my mother had asked me.

“Because love motels are for couples,” I replied simply.

In the West Gate Inn’s lobby, the clerk — her face hidden behind a pull-down window shade — asked if Heju and I would be staying for two hours. (This is a standard first question asked of guests upon their arrival at love motels.)

“No, we’re staying until tomorrow,” was our stock reply.

Our room had the usual well-stocked assortment of toothpaste, toothbrushes, hairdryer, hairbrush, comb, razor, shaving cream, aftershave, cologne, moisturizer, shampoo, and soap. A small fridge offered complimentary juice, and TV cable programming provided oodles of channels. I appreciated all the amenities. The only drawback was that the room had no bedside reading lamp. Love motels never did.

At least the bed wasn’t heart-shaped.

* * *

By late morning (we were slow-risers) we were back in the car. The sun was shining, a welcome reprieve from spring’s grey and chill that had been dogging us for most of the previous weeks, and this substantially improved the look of Ganghwa town, though not entirely: to me it still appeared dusty and crumbly. Heju informed me she wanted to return to the war museum to visit the Catholic shrine that she had noticed there the day before.

Heju attended Catholic Sunday mass whenever possible and sometimes reminded me that her Catholic name was Catherine, which she adopted while attending the private and Catholic St. Mary’s Elementary School in Daejeon with her elder sister. Few Koreans could afford such tuition in the 1960s and ’70s, but Heju’s father was a banker, a position near the top of the economic ladder, and of his four daughters and one son, he sent two to private school. “We had servants,” recalls Heju fondly. “They walked with me to school and did my homework for me after school”

So we headed back to the museum, though a visit to a shrine did not seem terribly titillating to me. When we arrived, there were twenty-one school buses in the museum parking lot, and groups of noisy young students were piling out of them. We walked to the far side, behind the museum, then up a slight knoll that overlooked Yeomha Channel. There was a slight clearing in which stood a statue of Mary. Heju stood in front of it and bowed.

“Bow to Mary,” she insisted sternly.

I was taken back. I wasn’t religious in any way. “I’m not Catholic,” I sputtered.

“It doesn’t matter, it shows respect. Bow,” she ordered.

“I won’t,” I said defiantly.

The modest Gapgot Catholic Martyr’s Shrine honours the memory of Korean Catholics who were beheaded during different periods between 1801 and 1871. There were four major state purges of Catholics during this time. One of the first such executions occurred in 1801, after a Korean Catholic was discovered sending a letter to Peking, seeking Chinese soldiers be sent to assure freedom to practise Catholicism in Korea. The purges were frightening periods, equivalent perhaps to the reign of terror that befell the aristocracy during the French Revolution.

There were two main execution sites in Seoul along the Han River’s north shore: Jeoldusan, in front of today’s Yanghwajin Foreign Cemetery, and about eight kilometres upriver, at Saenamteo (sae means sand and grass, nam is south, teo is place) at Yongsan. The severed heads of executed Catholics were displayed on poles for all to see, including in Seoul and in Gapgot, then a ferry terminal for passenger travelling between Incheon and Seoul.

On a plaque near the statue of Mary it was written that a Korean Catholic duo of a father and son had gathered the remains of some of those who had been executed and buried them in proper graves. Paul Park, the father, did so in 1839, while his son Soonjib (Peter) Park, continued the practice during the 1866 extermination. Soonjib Park collected the remains of the French bishop Siméon-François Berneux, who in 1856 had been appointed head of the Korean Catholic Church. Berneux was tortured and beheaded on March 7, 1866, at Saenamteo.

In the 1840s, a handful of French Catholic priests from the Paris Foreign Missions Society began to stealthily arrive in Korea to minister to Catholics. The priests were left relatively undisturbed until the Daewongun, who assumed power in 1864, and who believed Catholicism to be a direct threat to his rule and to Confucianism, orchestrated the great purge of 1866. Six French priests met their deaths that year by execution.

The Anglican bishop Trollope wrote in early 1900 that of the three main foreign missions in Korea — American Presbyterians, English Anglicans, and French Roman Catholics — the last were the most aggressive in moving through the peninsula and preaching. The Korean court had restricted travel to within fifty kilometres of treaty ports without a special passport. Presbyterians mainly stuck to Seoul or took passport-conducted jaunts outside the city, said Trollope. But the French went anywhere, and made a virtue of their defiance. This adventurous spirit — risking life to preach — made the French priests a target of the Daewongun.

Soonjib Park witnessed 150 executions during his lifetime. He died in 1911, at the age of eighty-two, and was buried in his hometown of Incheon. In 1961, his body was transferred to the Catholic holy shrine at Jeoldusan in Seoul. In 2011, it was moved to where Heju and I now stood.

From the hill, we looked east out over Yeomha Channel and the long-abandoned Gapgot Bridge, its single lane still linking the island to the Gimpo mainland. The water in the channel appeared grey-brown and the far shore was a mix of pastoral greens and muddy browns that reached up the low mountain ridge. There was not a soul in sight, and the only sound came from the birds singing in the trees.

We saw a small cabin sitting on the edge of a patch of sparse woods and walked over to investigate. A plaque on the wall stated that a Catholic priest now resided there. We wandered around the building and noticed a skipping rope lying on the front porch. It was good to know that even a man of the cloth could have fun exercising.

When we returned to the parking lot, a group of ten young Korean marines in green fatigues had arrived and were standing motionless in marching formation. On the islands northwest of the peninsula and in proximity to North Korea, ROK marines have a discernible presence. We approached the young leader. His name, Samoon Song, was stitched onto the front of his uniform, and he sported four bars on his shoulder. From Samoon’s implacable expression, I concluded that he did not suffer fools gladly.

“Excuse me, could you tell us how many soldiers are stationed on Ganghwa?”we put to Samoon.

He turned and stared at us icily. “About twenty thousand.”

We decided to press our luck. “Would a North submarine be able to navigate the channel?”

“No, it’s too shallow,” he reluctantly muttered.

“Which areas of Ganghwa are guarded by soldiers?”

At this, Samoon looked chagrined. “Ganghwa’s entire north coast and the west coast of Gimpo have barbed wire,” he allowed. “There’s no access to the coasts for citizens there.”

Heju sensed Samoon was itching to march his troops off, and she tugged at my arm and whispered “Let’s go.”

We got the message. I may be a doughnut short of a dozen at times, but I was not permanently obtuse. I thanked the leader and he abruptly marched his platoon across the lot.

We drove along the island on a road that ran beside the channel, and stopped on the shoulder about halfway down the island. The map indicated that a dondae (sentry post) was located somewhere along the channel in this general area. Beside the road, on the inland side, spread a wide shallow pond sectioned by narrow raised earthen walking paths about a foot or two above the waterline. An elderly farmer was standing on one of these paths, so we strolled out and introduced ourselves.

He gave us a big smile, showing us his front teeth, which were generously lined with so much silver that if he melted them down he could probably take early retirement. “I’ve been farming here for fifty years,” he told us. He explained that every spring he dammed the pond to form paddies. His water source was a local stream that flowed from somewhere inland to the channel. In the paddies he planted rice in May, and harvested it in late September or early October. He recalled how, before the first bridge was erected (Gapgot Bridge, built to connect Ganghwa to the mainland in 1969), the only mode of transportation to the mainland was via an oarsman, who rowed people back and forth in a large skiff.

We crossed back over the road and approached two men who had parked their van near our Scoupe and were preparing fishing rods.

“Fishing in the channel?” we asked, assuming that this was the only logical choice.

“No, over there,” one replied, pointing to the pond.

“Oh. In the dammed water?” I remarked.

“No, it’s the Han River,” he declared assuredly.

But the Han, of course, flowed nowhere near here. “The farmer told us that the pond is formed from a little dammed stream,” I said politely.

“No, no, no, no, no, it’s the Han River!” he boldly insisted.

I could not in good conscience let such an egregious error slide. “But the farmer said for sure it was a local stream,” I tried innocuously, because I did not want to appear overly didactic.

“You sure?” he asked breezily.

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said, not giving it a second thought.

“Why did you think it was the Han?” I queried curiously.

“I was just guessing,” he said blithely. With that I present the quintessential Korean male: so absolutely confident in his abilities, so supremely sure of himself, so convincingly self-possessed that the mere thought he could be wrong, ever, about anything, would never enter his consciousness.

After Heju and I had a quick look at the dondae, we returned to the car and drove a few kilometres south to Gwangseong Citadel, where the hundreds of Korean soldiers had met their fate when they clashed with the Americans in 1871. We popped our heads in to the tourist hut by the parking lot and asked if we could get a short tour. It was already 4:30 and closing time was in a half-hour. An English-speaking guide, Lee Nam-suk, reluctantly agreed to take us around. She appeared weary and slightly aggrieved. “It’s busy this time of year,” she told us. “We get up to two thousand visitors a day.”

She led us up the path to the fort, which was built on a high, broad, circular promontory, heavily wooded and overlooking the channel below. It jutted several hundred metres out into the water. The grand front gate of the fort was a massively thick wall of cut granite blocks with a tunnel through it. Atop was a heavy-looking traditional wooden arched roof that curved sharply upwards at the corners. The fort was originally constructed in 1656, and had been repaired in 1977. Unfortunately, our guide was unable to show us the fort, since we had so little time.

We walked up the dirt path that ran parallel to the channel It was lined with beautiful pine trees, their roots exposed from the erosive action of rain and wind. In a small clearing, seven gravestones honour the Koreans who died in the battle that took place here. They call this spot Sinmisunuichong, which translates as “A Tomb for Those Who Died Righteously During the Year of the Sheep.” A small stone monument, Ssangchungbi, or “Memorial Stone for Loyal Twins,” honours General Eo Jae-yeon and his brother Eo Jae-sun, both killed during the battle. Their bodies were interred in their hometown, Eumseong, in North Chungcheong Province, but of the Korean soldiers killed by the Americans here in 1871, the ashes of fifty-three remain.

I was puzzled and asked Ms Lee why there were no names of the dead on the graves, only a reference on the plaque to “nameless heroes.” Ms Lee replied that many of the soldiers weren’t professional military men, rather, they were peasants or servants of the lower class who not only often weren’t well-trained, but this segment of society often had no names. “Many of the bodies were too mangled to be identified, too” she added, “and families didn’t come to search for the bodies because they probably lived too far away.”

We continued down the path that led to the water and came upon a low stone rampart; behind it, three cannons faced the channel, weapons that were likely fired at the American ships.

When Ms. Lee returned to her office, Heju and I strolled farther out onto the spit, where pine trees lined the shore. We were the only ones there; everything was so still. The only sound was a flock of geese that passed low overhead, calling out as they flew northward in their V-formation. It was high tide and the murky brown water in the channel — only about half a kilometre wide at this point — flowed swiftly in the middle. Moss-laden boulders lay just off shore. The sky had turned grey in the growing dusk, and I trained my binoculars on the Gimpo mainland.

I scanned the heavily wooded shore, but nothing moved. A bit farther along, a small village appeared devoid of inhabitants. Then I noticed the telltale signs of military presence — barbed wire that topped the chain-link fence that ran along the shoreline was partially hidden by trees. At regular intervals tall floodlight posts and camouflaged guard posts poked up.

Dusk fully upon us, Heju and I returned to the car and headed back to town for some dinner.

Back in town, we stopped along the main road at a brightly lit chain restaurant, which, from its familiar name, I knew would offer modest prices. Inside was bustling, and a feeling of warmth and congeniality pervaded. This was common in many restaurants. You see, Koreans love eating out, whether with family, friends, or work colleagues. I contend it’s a national hobby, along with mountain-climbing and drinking (the latter particularly with men). Young kids often accompany their parents to restaurants, and run and play, which can make for a hectic, lively, and noisy environment.

At the table beside us sat two older gentlemen. One wore a blue jacket. He reminded me of Larry King, if Mr. King were Asian. Sitting across him was his pal, about ten years his senior, who was decked out in a wrinkled green coat, listening to his companion with rapt, earnest attention.

The man’s soliloquy must have been fascinating, so I whispered urgently to Heju. “Tell me what they’re saying, please. Maybe I can use it in the book.”

“I don’t want to,” she said. Understandably, she did not like to get involved in strangers’ matters.

“Come on, please! What they’re saying could be very important!”

Heju reluctantly acquiesced and sat quietly and unobtrusively, listening. Several minutes later she relayed their conversation to me. “One guy was saying: ‘I’d like to live with a Japanese woman. I don’t like Korean women. They’re too tough. They try to control you all the time. Japanese women are softer.’”

I learned quickly when I first arrived in Korea that public displays of emotion — be it anger, impatience, happiness, joy, sadness, or surprise — often displayed with dramatic aplomb, can be part and parcel of Korean society. I’d watch as two ajummas, for example, verbally jostled in a market, or a female customer unhappily harangued a shop clerk, or a pair argued vociferously at a café. Public spats can be compelling theatre, like watching the final tempestuous act of a Shakespearean tragedy, though such occurrences seemed to warrant scant attention from passersby. It’s a stark contrast to Canada, where public etiquette and politeness is a national trait.

The connotation ajumma in Korea usually refers to a housewife of mid-age or older who has jettisoned most proclivities to retaining youth, and whose demeanour can at times be aggressive. The word can also equate to a female of working-class distinction. When I’m at my local outdoor market, I’ll ask the woman behind the fish stall, “Ajumma, godeungeo eolmayeyo?” (Ma’am, how much is the mackerel?), and she won’t blink an eye. But at the bank, I once used ajumma to address the fortyish teller, and she rebuked me.

Dr. Horace Allen noted in his 1908 book, Things Korean, that when Korean women were “pressed too far, they will turn, and the fury into which they then work themselves is something awful to contemplate.”

Heju explained that during the Joseon period, Korean women played prominent roles in the royal court and politics, and historically are known for their assertiveness. “It’s not an insult to me,” she added agreeably, about the scrappy nature of her female compatriots. “It’s true — most Korean women like to argue,” she added, in a matter-of-fact tone.

When the KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) evening news came on a few minutes later, I asked Heju, who was intensely absorbed in ingesting the noodles from her bowl, to please transcribe the lead story. “I can’t,” she said nonchalantly, not looking up, “I’m eating.”

“Come on, please,” I implored.

But she wouldn’t budge and I was relegated to watching the screen and imagining my own plotlines for the accompanying news videos.When Heju wasn’t looking, I added a sprinkle of arsenic to her noodles.

Suddenly, the phone on the cashier’s desk rang. The manager, an ajumma, picked it up, listened for a moment, and then shouted angrily into the mouthpiece: “You brought me old seaweed. It falls apart when I roll it. Bring me good seaweed tomorrow!” She then slammed down the receiver and threw her plastic gloves onto the table in a pique. The restaurant’s deliveryman was her next target: “What happened to the lid for the rice bowl?” she argued as the man slipped on his motorcycle helmet and made a hasty exit.

* * *

The next day, in the greyness of the late-morning mist, Heju and I returned to Gwangseong Citadel for another quick look around. Being spring meant that it was school field-trip season, and the parking lot was jammed with nearly forty school buses, streams of elementary school kids pouring off them in class-friendly, colour-coded tracksuits, carrying lunchboxes and being shepherded along by their respective teachers.

After a short sortie at the garrison, in which we entered the main citadel through the massive gate to find a circular earthen embankment with a low stone rampart on top, we drove to Ganghwa’s southeastern tip to visit Choji Fort, where the U.S. infantry and marines first came ashore in 1871. Again, the parking lot was packed with tour buses and in a large square adjacent, masses of chattering elementary school kids were gathered. Gift shops offered tacky back-scratchers and toy bows and arrows.

We attempted to talk to some of the kids about what they had learned on their field trips, and several could not recall anything they had seen. Two veteran media-savvy kids defiantly refused to grant us their time and walked off. Others complained they were tired. One decried that the walk up to the fort at Gwangseong Citadel was a bit difficult.

Giving up on getting the student perspective, we strolled over to the hard-clay shore, which was strewn with rocks. The day was overcast but windless. Just south of us, the imposing Choji Bridge crossed over the channel. A smattering of visitors stood along the bank looking out over the water. I wanted to speak to a group of five senior women who had wandered over to the water’s edge.

We introduced ourselves and asked the women where they were from.

“Seoul,” they replied.

“Gwangseongbo gabwasseoyo?” (“Did you have a chance to visit Gwangseong Citadel yet?”) Heju inquired.

There were puzzled looks all round. “Gwangseongbo mwuo?” (“Gwangseong what?”) one asked Heju in a perplexed and indignant tone.

“Gwangseongbo … the citadel,” Heju explained.

One shook her head and irritably announced, “Urineun daehakgyo an gasseoyo!” (“We didn’t go to that university!”).

A third interjected: “Naneun Gwangseongbo an salyayo. Seoul salyayo.” (“I don’t live in Gwangseong. I live in Seoul.”)

We tried a new tack, suggesting there had been a battle here at Choji, during which the Americans had pounded the fortification with cannon fire from the channel.

They were not familiar with it at all. “Urineun mollayo! Uriga eotteoke alayo? Uri yeogi an salyayo. Amado palsip neomeun saramdeuli museunili isseoneunji algyeoyo!” (“We wouldn’t know about that! How would we know? We don’t live here. Maybe eighty-year-old people would know what happened then!”)

Heju and I took our leave of the ladies and strolled back up the path to the fort, which had been built the same year as Gwangseongbo (1656) and had also undergone restoration work. On the path, we came across a large board displaying several black-and-white photos of American soldiers from the battle. In one photo, the soldiers were standing next to the fort, and the caption read: “On the afternoon of June 10, 1871, the U.S. ship fired cannon for two hours at the fort. The Americans reached shore but no shots were fired by the Koreans.”

Throngs of school kids streamed by with their teachers. I could hear the latter exhorting “Bali! Bali!” (“Hurry! Hurry!”)

Bali is a commonly heard word. This is an energetic, ambitious society where people want to get things done quickly. None of the classes stopped to check out the photos or read the information. The teachers simply rushed their charges along, likely to keep them on schedule.

It was not at all relaxing for us in the centre of this swirl of motion, so Heju and I retreated to the car and headed to our next destination: Mani-san (san means “mountain”), at 469 metres, is the tallest mountain in the island’s five ranges. There was a trail that led to the top, to a reportedly five-thousand-year-old stone shrine. We headed west into a swath of agricultural plains, passing a few concrete farm shacks with galvanized tin roofs, a rusting apartment building, and smatterings of small industrial units.

We parked at the base of the broad Mani Mountain and got out. A wide path led onto the mountain and into the woods, past a souvenir shop, a small restaurant, and the public toilets. It was late afternoon, and it seemed we were the only ones setting out on the trail that day; we didn’t see anyone coming down either, for that matter. We started off along the forested path, a small creek running alongside. It was very quiet and serene and the air was fresh.

After about twenty minutes we came to a small clearing where the path became narrower and steeper, though it was still quite an easy ascent. Only the sounds of chirping birds, gently rustling tree branches, and the distant barking of a dog reached us. There was a tranquility and harmony up here.

It’s not hard to understand why hiking is so popular in Korea, what with so many mountain trails available across the peninsula. But despite the beauty and peacefulness, I must admit that Korean terrain is some of the most aggravating I have ever encountered. A preponderance of steep hills and mountains cover much of the country, and even the smallest ones are often rugged and steeply sloped. An officer in the U.S. military once referred to it as “dinosaur hump country” for its up-and-down terrain.

The west coast has its plains, of course. But to navigate them means traversing around a complicated patchwork of earthen banks that separate millions of little rice paddies and countless agricultural plots. And even country roads aren’t always amenable to walking. Most don’t have shoulders, requiring sometimes trudging alongside the pavement through weeds or briar. So it is to mountain trails such as this one on Mani Mountain that hikers, particularly adults, flock on weekends.

I gravitate toward easy rolling hikes like those Bill Bryson experienced while trekking in the Lake District in England. In Notes from a Small Island, he describes mile after mile of happily wandering along winding paths through undulating green meadows and fields lined with stone fences, and on coastal paths overlooking the sea. I prefer this type of topography, as you can move briskly. But it’s a terrain you won’t find much of here on this peninsula, and lugging my 250 pounds of flesh up Mani Mountain was not really my idea of a good time.

Heju and I came to a trail sign, which informed us that Mount Mani was one of the ten best energizing places in Korea, a reference to feng shui and geomancy, the Asian philosophy espousing the belief that the Earth produces a positive energy life force.

“I feel great from the mountain’s energy — that’s why I’m not tired!” enthused Heju. She was a big believer in feng shui.

“I feel like shit,” I moaned despondently. “My thigh muscles ache.” Mani Mountain is obviously capricious about who it dispenses fortuitous feng shui to.

Ironically, Heju was in a positive frame of mind physically that day, while I was the one complaining. It was usually the other way around, with Heju lamenting about various aches, pains, ailments, and things like blood clots, stiff muscles, palpitations, and headaches, of which no doctor could find any trace. Eastern medicine doctors that she visited, however, would prescribe expensive herbs and potions, which Heju steadfastly believed would alleviate her many symptoms.

“Hurry up!” Heju urged impatiently. “We better be off the mountain by dark. I can’t see the path at night.”

We were about three-quarters of the way to the summit when we were afforded a slim view north, out over a swath of alluvial plain, into which were carved out thousands of small, orderly, rectangular plots bordered on the north by a low wooded mountain. Today’s Ganghwa was formerly four separate islands, but over time and after millions of tons of silt and mud have been washed along the Han and Imjin Rivers to the Yellow Sea, the space between the four was filled to form a singular island, thirty kilometres long and fifteen wide. Ganghwa’s narrow plains, scattered between the low mountain ranges, contain rich soil. It was an arresting view. We pushed on.

About ninety minutes after starting out, we reached the summit. There was a helicopter pad there. We were met by a stiff southerly wind that whipped over the bending tree boughs. The view was south, and wow, what a vista! A haunting, deep purple sky rimmed by the setting sun’s silvery outline. For thirty or forty kilometres a vast expanse of mud flats spread out until it met the grey, hazy islands and shallow leaden sea. Along the country’s west coast, about 1,800 square kilometres of mud and tidal flats are exposed during low tide. They seem to stretch forever, and indeed they reach as far as thirty-five kilometres offshore.

As I looked through my binoculars, I spotted a Korean Airline passenger jet on its southbound approach to Incheon International Airport, located on Yeongjong Island, off Incheon’s coast. The plane seemed to hang motionless, as if suspended in mid-air.

My thermometer read nine degrees Celsius, but the biting wind made it feel much colder. Exacerbating matters was the fact that light whispers of cold rain had begun to fall as the remaining streaks of twilight began to fade. The inclement weather didn’t bother me: I was from Canada; today was merely a late fall day there. But Heju was cold and morose, and her exuberance had been replaced with silence. She removed a thin wool shawl from her backpack and wrapped it around her head.

“You look like an Afghan nomad,” I kidded buoyantly.

Despondently, she said, “I’m going down. I can’t see at night,” and she started back down the trail.

“Hey, wait for me — we’ll go down together,” I called, but she was already disappearing behind a large boulder.

I walked along the ridge and found the altar, which Ganghwa guides claim was erected about five thousand years ago but some experts claim is of much more recent construction. It is called Chamseongdan, which roughly translates to “An Altar to Worship the Stars.” It is the size of a small house; larger and more impressive than I had expected, it is constructed from thousands of small rocks that have been carefully piled up to form a circular wall with a roof. There is a graceful symmetry and beauty to it. A wire fence encloses it, but twice a year — on January 1 and on Chuseok, or Korean Thanksgiving — officials open the gate and permit visitors to enter.

As I turned and began to make my way down the path, my phone suddenly rang. I had to dig through my waist pack, which was stuffed with a wallet, notebook, mini tape recorder, camera, compass, and the kitchen sink, to retrieve it.

It was Heju. “Are you coming?” she asked, sounding exasperated.

“No, I’m going up,” I told her facetiously.

“Be careful. It’s slippery,” she warned, ignoring my comment.

“I know.”

“I don’t care about you. I just don’t want my camera to get damaged,” she deadpanned.

“Don’t worry. I tied it to my ankle. It’s dragging along the path,” I joked.

“Hurry up. I’m waiting,” she demanded, brushing aside my attempts at humour.

Yes, my lady. I’m a mere plebeian, at your beck and call, my life’s mission to serve you.

I trekked as fast as I could without slipping, and about a third of the way down, caught up to her in the dark grey shadows, as she sat on a stone step on the path waiting for me. We made it back at the car in about forty-five minutes, just as darkness enveloped us.

* * *

Back at the West Gate Inn, we watched TV and feasted on sandwiches. We had stopped at a small supermarket and a bakery and bought a long baguette and a package of sliced ham and processed cheese slices. This would be our standard diet on the trip. There was also bottle of orange juice and a couple of apples for dessert. It was much cheaper than eating out at restaurants every night, and saved us time, as we didn’t have to stop for meals; Heju, though, preferred the long sojourns at restaurants.

We found ourselves watching an episode of World’s Most Shocking Moments: Caught on Tape 2. One of the videos showed monks hurling items from a building at hundreds of riot police below. A cherry picker, with six men inside, was raised up beside the building. As the bucket got to the fourth floor, it suddenly flipped, sending the six men hurtling like limp rag dolls to the ground. When the host announced the video had been shot at a Jogye Buddhist temple in Seoul in 1999, I snapped to attention.

“We’ve got to visit that temple to find out what happened!” I announced excitedly.

After the show ended, Heju, who had been unusually sullen, launched a verbal barrage that caught me off-guard. I accepted the fact that, on occasion, Heju could be a bit moody. Mostly, I had taken her mini-combustions with a grain of salt (as most Korean men do if they hope to remain in a relationship with their wife or girlfriend).

“This trip’s WORK. It’s a boot camp. It’s not travel!” she erupted.

I was gobsmacked. My immediate thought was that this could be highly problematic. We had only just begun the driving part of the trip, and still had about another hundred days or so to go. If she was upset now, what kind of mood would she be in three months from now? I also failed to understand exactly how being driven around in a car constituted “work.”

Heju had seen me preparing for the journey and had scanned through “The Bible.” She knew I planned to stop at a long list of places each day. I think, though, that she had erroneously envisioned us being on a bit of a semi-vacation, leisurely motoring through idyllic countryside and enjoying long, languorous meals on restaurant patios overlooking rivers and contently shouting “Tallyho” through the car window as we purred along in our Bentley. Instead, we were bogged down in long days.

Heju and I were a bit of a Yin and Yang. She was sociable and gregarious, and relished her leisure time. I was intense and driven, and was deriving satisfaction from checking off the list of places we were seeing and gathering facts and information. I didn’t consider what she and I were doing to be work.

“Taxi driving is work. Construction is work!” I retorted heatedly, recalling short stints I had undertaken in both jobs in Toronto when I was younger. “Sitting in a car is NOT work … it’s travel!”

“It IS work!”

“So, do you want to be carried around in a chair like a queen?” I shot back sarcastically.

For a moment I feared she might answer yes, because Kim Heju on occasion will proudly ascertain that she is the 34th generation descendant of King Gyeongsun, who from AD 927 to 935 ruled as the fifty-sixth and final king of Korea’s Silla Dynasty.

Heju continued tersely: “And we’re spending too much time in Ganghwa. At this rate we’ll never finish the trip on time!”

She had a point. We had been on the island for three days and had yet seen only a museum, two forts, and ascended one modest mountain, which even my mother could have hiked up. Even I was mystified at our slow progress. But I was also royally irked. “If you want to pay for everything — motels, food, car, and gas — you’re welcome to decide how long we stay in one place,” I contested. “But since I’m paying, and since I spent two years preparing, it’s my decision!”

Long after the trip was over, I realized that Heju was right … sort of. The journey wasn’t as fun as it could have been. I hadn’t intended it to be. My mission was to gather data, and I went about the task with resolute and efficient determination. In my “Bible,” I hadn’t included stops at pubs, or splurges on a good meal, or singing in a Karaoke room. Nothing about seeing a movie or sitting on the grass in a meadow and smelling the roses. Those were time-fillers. Heju would have enjoyed doing those things, but the trip was my priority. I should have provided a more balanced and relaxed ambiance for Heju. I feel bad that I didn’t. Unfortunately, this profound clarifying moment of self-awareness hadn’t yet occurred, and I was, at the time, angry about what I considered her childish behaviour.

I went out for a walk. It was nearly eleven o’clock and a light rain was falling. I strolled along the virtually deserted sidewalk, and passed a solitary elderly man pushing a large antique wood cart loaded with trash bags that he had been picking up from in front of the local shops and restaurants. Ironic, I thought. Korean multinational high-tech companies like Samsung produce silicon computer chips the size of a pinhead; yet here was someone collecting garbage using the same methods employed in medieval agrarian societies.