Last updated Sunday June 10, 2007
On one trip we visited the Korean Folk Village, about an hour south of Seoul. It was a rainy, overcast day, but we had a great time, and wait until you see the hat dancers at the bottom of the page.
Koreans like to place stones in front of their houses and public buildings that stick up and have a nice shape. They used to also put up what looks like totem poles too.
A few hundred years ago the Korean peasants lived in a house like this, complete with sanitary facilities. David E. Wang is taking the place of an ass pulling the grinding wheel for grain.
A nobleman would live in a bit nicer house like this one. Even the garden fence has a tile roof. The large covered pots are for fermenting kim chi. There is a peeping Tom looking in the bedroom window. The kitchen is an open air affair.
What nobleman's house would be complete without a jail and a rack to torture people? That little girl doesn't realize that it isn't a piece of playground equipment.
Near the nobleman's house were the trades people, like the basket maker and the blacksmith.
You can't talk about Korean culture and not have a Buddhist temple. Temples always come complete with drums and bells.
The Folk Village has some great entertainment. They had drums and cymbals and the dancers had these funny hats with streamers hanging off the top. When they danced the streamers went around in a circle when they rotated their heads. The dances went on for an hour and every eye was riveted.
To top off the entertainment was a rope walker that danced and did stunts on this rope strung between some poles. He had a wireless microphone on and kept up a commentary and told jokes, I assume because everyone laughed.