August 17, 2005

I took a short hike (2.8 km) up Sorak mountain and visited an old cave with a Buddhist shrine. A monk was there praying. I went inside and it felt oppressively lonely in there - if I understand right, in the past monks would go to the cave alone and live there. I don't know how they did it. I also saw a giant Buddha statue at the base of the trail. Alas, it didn't really feel like climbing a mountain because there were tourist shops all along the trail. I also went swimming in the East Sea near the mountain.

There's much more of a military presence up here (about 30 miles south of the DMZ, maybe?). On the way to the beach traffic was stopped to let several tanks or motorized artillery pass by, and I saw a lot of jeeps and soldiers on foot, and a lot of barbed wire. In Seoul, I didn't see much, even near the U.S. base, everything was very low key as far as I could tell.


Buddha statue


Sorak mountain