Life through Metal Chopsticks: Travelling! #1: Jeonju

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Our first trip as a YAV group was to 전주 (Jeonju), a town about an hour from Daejeon famous for two things: its traditional folk village, and its 비빔밥 (bibimbap). But our first stop was somewhere less well known: 금산교회 (Geumsan Church). This church was started by an American Presbyterian missionary, Lewis Boyd Tate, who was one of the first to enter Korea as a missionary. The church was interesting, there were actually two buildings -- the original church moved to the site in 1908, and a new modern church building for the people that still come to worship there. The old church was an L (ㄱ in Korean) shaped building, traditionally the men sit in one branch of the L and the women in the other. There's even a curtain that can be pulled across towards the pulpit so the men and women at the junction can't see each other and get distracted. 조덕삼 (Jo Deok-sam), 이자익 (Yi Ja-ik), 박화서 (Bak Hwa-seo), and 왕순칠 (Wang Sun-chil) helped constuct the building and later became important in Korea's religious development.

Simon on the man side

Ladies on the woman side

Anna Curl at the pulpit

Showing both sides with Anna S. at the pulpit

Bell tower outside

New sanctuary for current worshippers

Dr. Mattie Ingold, who also happened to be Lewis Tate's wife, was the main influence for the next institution we visited. The institution is called Jesus Hospital. It was a missionary hospital founded here under a different name, but the people knew it was a Christian organization and so they called it the Jesus Hospital, and eventually the name stuck. It has become one of the best hospitals in Korea since it was founded in 1898. We actually didn't visit the hospital itself, but the medical museum about its history. Inside we read the story of the hospital and saw some… historical equipment. Ouch.

Ouch.

Old x-ray machine, nifty!

Next we headed to the traditional village area. There we saw the traditional architecture and the village layout. It's all narrow buildings with open areas in between, and all with those cool roofs. We just walked around, got little gourds carved with our Korean names, and took a lot of pictures.

Kickin' it traditional village style

Things of note:

Paper making process - There is a paper-making industry here, and they can make anything out of it!

Calligraphy - Haejung 이모 showed off her calligraphy talent, making a poster with our Korean and English names written in Korean on a piece of traditional paper

Beverage stream - put cups so they float around to everyone
Cutouts - Not sure why, but there were a lot of wooden character cutouts

Intricate furniture - on sale in an auction house by the road, they kept telling us to come back for the auction later

Pillow shop - Not pillows as you'd expect, these were traditional head rests carved from wood
Longevity scenes - In the same shop, there were very intricate carved and painted scenes full of Korean symbols of long life. Also, a chicken dragon, about which I have yet to learn in detail.
Traditional Korean games - An arrow throwing game similar to lawn darts and a game where your throw sticks with Xs on one side to move around a board.

Display showing paper-making process, itself made of paper

Haejung 이모 making something I'll keep forever

Beverage stream

My favorite cutout

Shiny.

You want me to sleep on that?

Long life scene, can you spot all the symbols?

Arrow throw

And ring toss

These are the... dice?

How does this game work again?

Then it was off to a restaurant to eat the food 전주 does best, 비빔밥! I think I've described it before on here, because it was my first meal in Korea, but 비빔밥 is a bowl full of veggies with an egg (in this case, raw. Yikes!) on top. You mix it all up with rice and spicy red sauce, and chow down! As you can see in the picture, it also came with plenty of 반찬 (side dishes) to try.

Ready to eat!

This seems normal to me now. Huh.

Finally we headed to the local palace grounds. We saw a traditional band playing with very different instruments and styles than I'm used to. I don't even have any clue as to how they kept time, there was hardly any rhythm I could detect, but they made it work. The palace itself was our first exposure to the intricate painting with its particular color scheme for the royal places in Korea. The main square in the palace was interesting, there was a main path to the throne that commoners (like us) are not allowed to walk on, as it's reserved for God. We also saw a statue containing a royal umbilical cord, and on the way out, traditional Korean dances. Finally, next to where we parked, we saw a children's center with this awesome slide that came from inside and wrapped around the side of the building! Then, it was time to head home.