Dear Friends and Family,

Once upon a time, in a far away land, a long, long time ago, there lived a beautiful woman named Nongae. Nongae was rather ordinary - beyond loving her husband so much that she felt his sorrows more deeply than her own. One day, a large, evil army conquered their valiant home city. Nongae’s husband fought gallantly to defend his home and survived the battle. However, after the battle was lost, he could not survive his despair at the loss nor the thought of living while his comrades did not and so Nongae’s husband ended his life. His wife spent many days weeping, inconsolable. And then she became angry, deeply angry. With nothing to loose and anger in heart, Nongae took a job as a professional female entertainer at a house of ill-repute that important officers of the evil army favored for drink and entertainment. The beautiful Nongae quickly established herself as a favorite of the commander of the entire evil army. One dark night with only a sliver of moon on the horizon, Nongae persuaded the commander to take a romantic walk near the river. They walked until they neared the location of a rock called “Danger Rock” by the locals, whereby Nongae seized the commander with all her strength and dropped them both against the rock, into the river, drowning the commander, depriving the evil army of its leader, joining her husband in death, and placing herself into legend.

The year of this story was 1593. The valiant city was Jinju. The evil army belonged to Japan. And the legend of Nongae appears true, although information is scant and story-teller in me could not resist adding the touchy-feely. But I saw – actually stood – on the rock! What was known as Danger Rock (Wiam, in Korean) was changed to Righteous Rock (Uiam) in memory of Nongae’s “self-sacrificing spirit.”

Nongae’s time, the late 1500s, was a dark period for the whole of Korea. An ambitious Japanese warlord by the name of Toyotomi Hideyoshi had set his sights on conquering China and logically concluded that to acquire China, he should also control Korea. Well, why not? So with some 150,000 troops, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Busan and easily carried the day. They marched inland, caused Korean King Seonjo to flee to Pyongyang, and had captured Seoul within a month. The Japanese seemed well on their way to China. However, in the waters of southern Korea, a once mighty Japanese navy began to suffer major losses to a small Korean fleet directed by one Admiral Yi. The Japanese began to loose battle after battle and even little Jinju, cozily set in the mountains away from the sea, had its moment of victory against the Japanese. In the fall of 1592, 3,800 men retreated into Jinju’s hill fortress and miraculously managed to defeat an army comprised of 30,000 Japanese.

But the Japanese refused to be cowed by their losses and their determination was especially bad for the city of Jinju. In June of 1593, the Japanese army returned to the city, this time some 100,000 troops strong, to wipe away the disgrace of their previous defeat. During that second battle for Jinju, the Japanese won, slaughtering some 70,000 soldiers and civilians. Nongae’s resulting heroic suicide became cause for celebration amongst the defeated. And if suicides of beautiful ladies offered comfort, the times must’ve been dark indeed.

I learned all this and more while perusing “Jinjuseong” – Jinju’s castle/fortress, my next stop after my quest to visit an old brass bell failed. My game taxi driver accepted my money, nodded at my assurances (“괜찮아요” – “It’s alright”), and we exchanged sympathetic smiles before he dropped me at the fortress entrance. The day had become lovely, clear and sunny but wind chilled to the point that later I nipped into E-Mart to purchase tights and warmer gloves. On the surface, the fortress was not terribly remarkable – just the usual Korean-style historical buildings set on a hill, bordered by the river. But my time at the fortress was made remarkable by unusually interesting stories on placards, intimidating statues, rather beautiful scenery, an excellent museum of Japanese invasion artifacts, and by entertaining glimpses of a boat anchored in the middle of the river with an inflatable, slightly larger than life dummy. I did not figure out why anyone would take the trouble to keep a dummy inflated on a river – but I found the arrangement laughable. Perhaps you had to be there!

Finished with the fortress and with two hours remaining before my train departed, I slung my bag across my chest and ventured, on foot, a visit to the “Smoke Signal station in Mangjinsan,” figuring that a smoke stack would make a nice change from the usual Korean-style building tourist attractions. The uphill journey probably should’ve been strange: I passed a few small factories, a long row of small houses with blue roofs and rusted fences, a 5-story temple shiny with gold paint and framed by a modern apartment building, lines of clothes drying in the wind, and a brand new picnic pavilion, surrounded by stubby trees, overlooking the river. As I neared the hilltop and what I presumed would be the smoke stack, I began to hear music. Finally, I broke away from the stubby trees and found a music group, seated against an ancient smoke stack. Pious Christians? Budding rock stars? The sun was descending behind the smoke stack and yet the music group ended up being more interesting than the smoke stack, which disobligingly did not offer an English explanation of its history.

On my way down, I smiled at an old lady hobbling up the hill on a cane and thought, “I’ll bet she’ll pass me on the way down.” She did. And not because I stopped to photograph paintings on the temple! Korean old ladies are tough, tough.

On my walk to the train station, I paused to purchase four hot red bean cakes shaped like fish from a vendor while two wide-eyed little girls dressed in pink gawked at the foreign stranger standing on their street. I suppressed my annoyance under a smile and gave them each a cake.

As the sun set and the dusk fell upon the winter-brown countryside, I took a train to the city of Yeosu. And the next morning I awoke yet another city, a city by the sea, but still not as beautiful a city as Jinju.

So long!

Laura