lighted river

Korea has a lot of festivals going on the whole year, especially this year.
That's why I made a list of all the ones I really wanted to see, and I just came back from my first Korean festival....the Lantern Festival in Jinju.

Jinju is located in the east of Korea and lies next to Namgang (nam= river). The city is famous for its silk production, festivals and food. It is said that bibbimbab (Korean rice and vegetable dish) has its origins in Jinju. Anyway Jinjus bibimbab distinguishes itself from the common one by the use of yukhoe (rwa beef seasoned with various spieces or sauces, in this case sesame oil). Also famous is Namgang grilled eel (minmul jangeo)...but obviously I didn't try that. ;)

I got Kate and Susanna to come with me.
The most comfortable way to travel in Korea is to take one of the express buses. They have really big seats and lots of space for everyone. It took us 4 hours to get to Jinju and a short walkfrom there to the city center. We found a nice accomodation with a riverview direktly and then had lots of time left to explore the city.

In the 1590s Jinju fought against the Japanese at this fortress. After loosing the first battle although being in superior number Japanese had to start a second battle in 1593. Unfortunately this time the Japanese won and 70000 Korean defenders perished.
The festival is held every year to commemorate the Koreans who fell in that battle.

The citycenter of Jinju is not very big so it was fun to just walk around. We saw the famous fortress, the Changnyeolsa shrine, th Honguk-sa temple and Choksong-nu pavilion and Uigisa.
Uigisa is a small shrine dedicated to Nongye, Korean's most-respected heroine. She was one of several woman selected to entertain Japanese generals. She led one of them to a rock at the edge of the river, clapsed her arms around him and threw herself into the water, drowning herself and the general.

We strolled around for a while, enjoyed the sun (while the weather in Seoul was cold and rainy), proofed our accuracy doing archery (I guess we looked funny because the people who were in charge of it took pictures of us) and walked down to the river. 

There were lanterns all over the river, in every shape one can think of. From fish to firespiting dragons, Tom&Jerry to falling Japanese.On the promenades on both sides of the river they had tents selling food and other goods from the area. There were tents where you could do your own lantern. I had to do that, and while Kate and Susanna were having lots of troubles making their lantern I did mine on my own.
Just when we finished a big opening firework started. It was so pretty and strange because Koreans were not watching it devotional but cried out and bawled.

Before going then home after an impressive and fun day we were invited to have dinner with a  religious person of high standing. He kept speaking Korean to us while one of his temple members tried to translate and we were trying to us the few vocabluries we learned so far.

Today, after having slept in we went to the silk culture experience center and had some delicious food down by the river in the sun before then finally heading back home to Seoul.