Korean Folk Village....Winter Style

AFTER a brief hiatus to head back to work for one day (Monday) we were back into some much needed vacation time.

With Christmas behind us we now have the week off from work which covers us for New Year and means we don't have to be back until Tuesday next week. Unlike the summer vaction, we have decided to stay around Suwon for our time off so yesterday we decided to keep ourselves busy by heading to the Korean Folk Village which is located just south of Suwon.

When my mum and Aimie came to Korea they both visited the folk village for the afternoon to see what it was all about, but I'm pretty sure that my experiences will be totally different to theirs, thanks to the varying climate.
The snow which made it's way here on Sunday is still around and due to the cold weather the Folk Village had a few different things going on.

The Folk Village itself, to explain it's function, is basically like an outdoor museum. It has a section filled with Korea's take on world history, a small amusement park for kids and then it has an old fashioned Korean village set up where people live and work just as if they were still living life in old Korean times. It's filled with several old style houses, mock ups of farm and other such work places which are designed to give a feel of how far Korea has come since it's development into a first world country.

Not that I am an expert on such things, my Korean history is probably about as good as my English history, but their seemed to be an extremely authentic feel to the village with the people living and working there dressed in traditional clothes and not blessed with any of the modern facilities which Korean's are lucky enough to be blessed with today.

Before going there, thats what I thought the folk village was all about.... but it turns out it isn't!
We met Anna at Suwon Station at 11.10am so that we could catch the free shuttle bus from there to the village and after a twenty minute drive along some very unfamiliar roads we made it there. At the opening part of the village their are some old style Korean houses which you can look in and as you start going further in there are some interesting exhibits and also examples of Korean art.

Thanks to the fact that we all had drinks and food, we weren't able to head into the 'world heritage' folk part of the village so we instead went towards the amusement park to spend some time. Despite it being close to freezing outside we were determined to enjoy ourselves so we braved the cold to ride the pirate ship (not as scary as the Talkster Haloween one!) also also take a couple of rides on the bumper cars. Me and Charlie rode some ride which looked deceptively like a waltzer but after three minutes of spinning around forwards, and then the same amount of time going backwards, it was fair to say we'd had our fill of amusement park-ness for the time being.

We carried on through the sculpture park part of the village before arriving at the special winter 'Sledding Hill' which had been created thanks to the snow which had landed in Suwon earlier on in the week. Unwilling to get himself too cold and wet Charlie decided to sit sledding out but Kevin, Anna and I were eager to find out exactly how dry we could attempt to stay! After a couple of runs up and down the hill, it was fair to say that I had definately got enough snow down my trousers for one outing so we decided to move on.

Back the way we came through the amusement park we headed towards the village itself, but not before finding a lake which was nicely frozen over and which had been set up with several Korean games on there. These were the traditional 'spinning top' game (as seen at the palace I'd visited in the summer) as well as a rather novel take on ice skating which basically involved a couple of skate blades being attached to a piece of wood. The way to get yourself around was to use a pair or small pick-axe looking devices for leverage but as Charlie discovered, these didn't work too well in the thick snow which surrounded the frozen water.

After the lake started to get over crowded with excitable school children we headed to the actual village itself to look around. It was intereting to see what had been made out of the old houses but soon it became way too cold for us to be spending time standing still so we headed for warmer climbs in the form of a restaurant.

Following our dinner we hit a couple of souveneir shops where Charlie purchased some gifts and me and Kevin tried to avoid being hwranged into buying things by a rather pushy bunch of sales people.
We got the bus home at 4.30pm and headed back to our houses after an enjoyable day out. I'm glad that I was able to see the folk village in the winter, I think I probably would have enjoyed the experience in hotter temperatures but the fact that there was sledding set up and a Korean version of ice skating made the experience even more enjoyable.

There's a bunch of pictures like the ones on this blog on my photo gallery website and there's also some entertaining videos on photobucket of our attempts to ice skate and sled if you're interested in taking a look.

For the time being take care

Ben xxxx

“Positive or negative energy is exchanged like a fair trade, the more you give, the more you receive."

Master Jin