Other Sights in South Korea
A good geology field trip
isn't just looking at rocks.
Red hot peppers. Many
reddish-colored foods in Korea are spicy hot - be warned!
ICHEON
xxx
CHIAKSAN NATIONAL PARK
National Park. The
Chiak Mountains here are mostly floored. Still heading eastward, toward the
Taebaeksan Basin, where Cambrian rocks & fossils await.
In north-central South
Korea, along Highway 55, we pass by the beautiful forested mountains of
Chiaksan by Archean metamorphic rocks of the Kyonggi Gneiss Complex.
TAEBAEK CITY
Taebaek is an old
coal-mining town in southeastern Gangwon South Province, eastern South
Korea. It is the closest city to two classic Cambrian sections in eastern
Korea's Taebaeksan Basin.
On our way to dinner - the
sun has set, providing nicely silhouetted mountains near the northern entrance
to Taebaeksan Provincial Park.
An interestingly-lit
restaurant in Yuhwanggol, on the southwestern outskirts of Taebaek City.
Harsh & garish & energy-wasting & light-polluting pinkish-orange
lights that are seen everywhere in modern America at nightime are refreshingly
absent here.
The main restaurant
hall. Notice everyone is sitting on the floor. I'm not used to
that! My legs felt quite cramped at dinner & I did a lot of shifting
around (as did others in our group). Dinner was boiled beef with vegetables
- excellent, and I mean excellent.
One of my dinner partners
was Soon Il Hong, the mayor of Taebaek city. He offered me some sojo as
soon as dinner started. Sojo is a strong, clear Korean liquor - it's very
inexpensive (cheaper than bottled water or beer or pop). I'm not a
drinker, but when the mayor of Taebaek, South Korea offers you something, how
can you refuse? I indulge.
The restaurant grounds had
carved statues of the Korean zodiac symbols. They are carved from rock -
they are not cement castings or anything like that. The rock is
apparently masanite, a Cretaceous granodiorite used for exterior
decorative purposes & building stone in many parts of South Korea.
The pic below of a thinking monkey (left) gives a sense of scale.
TAEBAEK CITY (cont.)
I spent 3 days in the
Taebaek City area. The destination for the 2nd day's dinner was downtown
Taebaek. Our group got some stares from the locals, including a little
Korean girl who was delighted to practice her English with us.
Walking to the restaurant at
dusk.
In America, a sign like this
wouldn't engender much confidence in food quality.
Next door was another
restaurant with this street-side sign. This was our destination.
A fantastic feast laid out
for us.
But, another meal sitting
down on the floor with cramped legs.
Well, I suppose you get used
to it. (Nope)
Here I am with some of my
Cambrian colleagues from Sweden, Germany, France, China, and Korea.
Our third dinner was also at
a place in downtown Taebaek City - this time we're eating outside (on chairs!!)
at a Korean “country-style” restaurant. Fantastic! We're cooking
beef over a hot & scary-looking flame-thingy in the center of our table.
Cambrian researchers from
left to right: James St. John (me!) (America), Shanchi Peng (China), Jim Jago
(Australia).
Our table was the only one
surrounded by others - scary flames shooting up as beef drippings caught fire
encircled us during the entire dinner. FUN!
The green bottle is sojo -
we were toasting trilobite genera all night long.
TAEBAEK CITY (cont.)
I stayed at the Sky Hotel
during the three days looking at geology in the Taebaek City area. This
is the best place to stay in the entire Taebaek area. This was a nice
place - I had a single room with a terrace/balcony. I was up on the
fourth floor, but it was labeled the fifth floor. I noticed that the
floor numbering skipped the 4th floor. I didn't find out why until well
after returning from Korea. Apparently, the Korean words for “four” and
“death” are the same (“sa”). So, a hotel's 4th floor in Korea is just as
unlucky, if not more so, as a hotel's 13th floor in America. I've even
heard that many Koreans don't hang out in groups of four because of this.
The grounds of the Sky Hotel
are apparently along an old rail line that hauled coal. The railroad is
ripped up, but the roadbed is apparent, as are chunks of coal that fell from
the railcars. The creek in the foreground is the Sodo River (Sodo Creek)
(Sodocheon).
Interesting little sign
having a caricature of a coal miner on the hotel grounds - a tribute to
Taebaek's coal mining glory days. A large, three-dimensional, rotating
version of this made of flowers can be seen in downtown Taebaek. After
the coal mining industry collapsed in this area, Taebaek's population crashed
from about 100,000 to about 70,000 today.
The folded & faulted Taebaek
Coalfield (aka Samchok Coalfield) in eastern Korea is east-west
elongated in shape. It contains economic concentrations of coal in the
Late Paleozoic Pyeongan Supergroup. The siliciclastics-dominated
Pyeongan Supergroup is mid-Carboniferous to ?Triassic in age, and
disconformably overlies the “Great Limestone Series” (= Cambro-Ordovician
limestones of the Joseon Supergroup).
Coal occurs in the upper
Geumcheon Formation (upper Moscovian Stage, upper Middle Pennsylvanian) and the
lower Jangseong Formation (?Artinskian Stage, Lower Permian).
Economic concentrations of coal occur in the lower Jangseong. Not
surprisingly, both the Geumcheon & Jangseong Fms. are cyclothemic.
GUINSA TEMPLE
The Tientai order of Korean
Buddhism originated at the Guinsa Temple Complex, located at Yunwha Ji in the
Sobaek Mountain Range (Sobaeksan), Chungcheong North Province, South
Korea. The order claims over 1 million followers.
My friend, Alex Lin (Jih-Pai
Lin) from Taiwan, pointing out that the Guinsa Temple Complex mainly receives
three groups of visitors - Korean speakers, Chinese speakers, and English
speakers.
Three Cambrian colleagues at
the Guinsa Temple Complex:
Hyun-A Hwang from Korea
(left),
Jih-Pai Lin (“Alex”) from
Taiwan (now an American citizen) (middle),
and Yuan Jin-Liang from
China (right).