Perhaps not directly national security related on the surface but for those who are interested in Korean culture and geography this might be of interest. Unfortunately for many of us our time in the Taebek mountains has been part of military training but I recall often coming across temples in very remote areas and the beauty of the area around Jirisan. But we should recall that Jirisan (Jiri Mountain) was the area where north Korean guerrillas operated for as many as 5 years after the Korean War, I think finally being eliminated around 1958. However, north Korea attempted to develop resistance in this area in the mid to late 1960's and as the Vietnam War was at its height in 1967-68 the ROK Army with some US support from US Special Forces Detachment Korea and 1st Special Forces in Okinawa was conducting counterinsurgency operations in this area. See Daniel Bolger's 1991 work Scenes from an Unfinished War: Low intensity conflict in Korea 1966-1969. (Available commercially as well as through the Command and General Staff College at Leavenworth)
V/R
Dave
Dave
Along the Trail of Korea’s Mountain Spirits
Joe Ray for The New York Times
Overlooking a roof at Haeinsa, a Buddhist temple.
By ELISABETH EAVES
Published: November 30, 2012
THE titanium spork was a Christmas gift from my brother Gregory, a choice that seemed random at the time. I had no use for ultra-lightweight dual-use cutlery. But nine months later, almost 7,000 miles from my home in New York City and nearly catatonic with exhaustion, I was thankful for its lack of heft. Gregory; my husband, Joe; and I had been hiking for 12 hours while hoisting a 30-pound backpack over steep and slippery rock in a thick mist. After nightfall, headlamps fading, we spotted dots of light below us in the dark, and heard the eerie whoosh of a wind generator. We stumbled down to the Satgat-jae shelter, a basic cabin for hikers perched at over 4,200 feet in South Korea’s Deogyusan National Park. I unpacked my spork.
It was Gregory, now living in South Korea and flush with the zeal of the newly expatriated, who had suggested we hike a portion of the Baekdu-Daegan trail. The Baekdu-Daegan is a mountain system running the entire length of the two Koreas, some 870 miles. On maps, it appears as the topographical backbone of the Korean Peninsula, but I soon realized it was also a psycho-spiritual one. The notion first occurred to me when Gregory told us that his city-dwelling Korean girlfriend said he would understand her better if he hiked the Baekdu-Daegan. And when Joe and I checked out of our ultramodern hotel in central Seoul, the receptionist clapped when I told her what we were about to do.
South Korea may be among the most wired and densely populated countries in the world, but its first religion many centuries ago — before the arrival of Christianity, Confucianism and Buddhism — was based on the worship of mountain spirits. The Korean version of feng shui, known as pungsu-jiri, holds that the nation’s energy flows south along the Baekdu-Daegan ridge and outward along its branches. By the time of our trip, I had developed a theory that the mountains are to Koreans as the Wild West is to Americans: even if a New Yorker, say, has never set foot on a ranch, he likes to think he’s got a little bit of cowboy in his soul. It’s part of the collective unconscious.
Since the ’80s, as both freedom and wealth have spread in South Korea, so has the popularity of mountaineering. As it has, the South Korean portion of the Baekdu-Daegan has become hikable along nearly all of its 457-mile ridge, with trails built and maintained by the Korea Forest Service, part of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Weekend warriors tackle it in chunks, and a hardy few attempt the entire length as an epic two-month trek.
In the spring, Gregory had mailed me the only English-language guidebook to the trail. The spork had been a subtle lure, but I took the guidebook as an all-out invitation and began making plans for a September trip. My brother had lived in South Korea for much of his 20s, but, always too busy or broke from my own globe-trotting, I had never visited. Now he was moving back there at the age of 37, in love with Korea, the Korean language and a Korean woman. I wanted to better understand his decision, which seemed to be either a bold gamble on personal happiness or a crazy one. And I wanted to know the place that might be his permanent home.
(Continued at the link below)
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