Historical Sites around Gyeongju, Bulguksa Temple, and Hyundai Heavy Industries

Day 8 - Historical Sites around Gyeongju and Bulguksa Temple

Click on the image above to view the album

Day 8: Wednesday 14 July 2010

Today will be a shorter entry. We visited many sites all around Gyeongju today, but they will be best described in the album. I am guilty of caving and going to pizza hut for lunch. I have eaten many traditional Korean meals in the past few days and needed something that tasted the way I expected to…and will confess…it tasted fantastic. We spent the afternoon at the Gyeongju Museum viewing many beautiful artifacts that were excavated from a few of the Silla tombs in the area. We also visited the Seokguram Grotto, which is the last official stop on the Silk Road! It is a cave carved into the side of the Gaya Mountains that houses a beautiful statue of Buddha, looking out over the valleys and at the Sea of Japan (which we could see from the hill!).

Because of the danger of being looted and pillaged along the Silk Road, “hotels” were set up along the mountain that were caves carved out of the sandstone. They were up on ledges and could only be reached by ladder. The idea is that you would carry all of the goods you were selling up to your room and then pull up your ladder so that no one could reach you or steal your goods. And thus, they carved out a cave and placed a Buddha inside to protect those on the Silk Route. Really cool!
From there we went to another UNESCO world heritage site that was absolutely beautiful – the Bulguksa Temple. We were even able to stick around and watch the monks sound the bell! I have a great video to share with my students when I get back!

And then, we enjoyed a yummy, yummy dinner of kalbi, or Korean BBQ in which we sat at tables of four with a grill in the middle of our table and grilled our own ribs (like the meal the Parks had shared with me). It was a great end to our evening and we all sat outside enjoying the weather, grilling out, laughing, and recounting our favorite experiences from the past few days.

Day 9 - Hyundai and Seoul

click on the image above to view the photos

Day 9: Thursday 15 July 2010

Today’s entry will be a quick one, so I’m combining these too. We were around Gyeongju and the surrounding area until about one o’clock today as we visited one last Silla tomb, Hyundai heavy industries, a seafood buffet, and a loooong 4-5 hour bus ride back to Seoul. Hyundai heavy industries was pretty cool. They make so much more than cars! The corporation was founded by a guy named Asan who built an incredible empire. Along with cars, Hyundai also constructs many different large freight and tanker ships, submarines, construction equipment, engines, industrial robots, power plants (electrical, nuclear, wind, and solar), offshore oil rigs, oil and gas plants, process equipments… you name it, they make it! We got to take a bus tour of the shipyard and dry docks and were blown away at the magnitude of the ships – holy cow! We also learned that the benefits for the employees are extremely good – education is free for everyone’s children and they have 18,000 apartments available to be rented by their employees.

Our tour guide (not our Hyundai guide, but the one who has been with us on the bus for many days), explained to us that in Korea everyone wants to graduate and work for the large corporations because the pay is much higher than smaller businesses, the benefits are much better, and it is the iconic job to have. She said the average Korean makes $2,300 a month, but the average Hyundai employee who has been working as a constructor for ten years makes $5,000 a month. Big difference. She says there is a major need for people in the smaller industries because everyone desires to work for the large companies (Hyundai, Samsung, LG, etc) that it’s all or nothing – some people continue on the graduate school rather than work for a small company.

We are supposed to have a free evening when we arrive in Seoul tonight and I think we’re all looking forward to a few hours of shopping and leisure time – it’s been a crazy schedule during the field trip, but an absolutely amazing one.

Tomorrow….we are going to the DMZ! I am 98% excited and about 2% apprehensive…but I think the apprehensive part of me is the part that will keep me grounded in reality and will keep my wits about me tomorrow. I’m so excited about it, but cognizant that this is not the place to mess around or bend rules. I will take pictures wherever I can, but can genuinely guarantee that there will not contraband pictures.