Temple Time

Last week I went to Chuncheon, located about 150km N/NE of Seoul, pretty close to the NK border. And I discovered a delicious candy called "Crunky". I documented his adventures through Chuncheon to the Pyeongcheong Buddhist temple. Hijinks ensued.

Crunky arrives.

Chuncheon is a nice place, not much to the city itself besides a market and its being the birthplace of dalkgalbi, a delicious chicken dish.

We took a quick taxi through the city and arrived at Soyang Dam, built in 1973. Soyang Lake was created as a result. At the time it was the largest private dam in Asia. (If you can find a more interesting fact about a dam, or a waterway, related to the 1970's, I'll eat my hat.)

After walking down to the ferry, we arrived at the other side of the lake, a rocky beach that lead to a rockier pathway to the foot of the hill where the temple was. In Korea (and I imagine in other Buddhist countries) there's a superstition involving the stacking of rocks in order to receive good luck. Anyone who walks by and adds one is said to achieve good luck. Normally, this is seen as a joke, just something to do while taking a hike. The closer one gets to a Buddhist temple, the less of a joke it becomes.

More pictures of the way up:



At the top is Cheongpyeong Temple, a rather small temple by Korean standards, but remote--it's a four km hike after taking the ferry. There was a few open air restaurants on the trail and some food shacks as well. Korea has 45 million people squeezed into an area the size of Indiana, so the concept of "remote" is relative.

According to the legend, a princess fell in love with a commoner, but he was killed. His soul, in the form of a snake, came to her and drained her energy. She made a pilgrimage to Cheongpyeong Temple, and prayed for release. There was a huge thunderstorm, and when it passed, the snake's corpse was floating in the river. She prayed for another 100 days and her lover's soul, free of the snake, returned to her one last time. Oh my...

Here's a few of the temple. There'll be more posts soon, I promise:

The entrance