Preparing to return to Korea for an extended period, I’ve been looking back at little memories from when I was there before. On cute one was as follows:
I was working very close to Olympic Park – a large, open area with trees and grass and sports areas for basketball and tennis. (Koreans can’t play defense for shit…)
I didn’t take advantage of it as I should – just like I didn’t living in Hawaii – but I remember one day…
I read in a Korean history book and a travel book about a mud fort-like excavation at Olympic Park dating back to the Paekche/Baekje Kingdom.
I was interested in Korean pre-modern history and went to see it.
I found historical guide signs for it, but I couldn’t locate the mud wall.
I’d follow the arrows, and walked all over the place, but couldn’t see it, and would retrace my steps back to the signs with the arrows, two, three, four times, but it just wasn’t there…
…About the fifth time, it dawned on me —- the hill I was walking up and down until I was exhausted —– was the mud wall!!!
…I laughed out loud at myself…
I was thinking “fort” and “wall” in terms of historical fortifications in the US I’d seen. I just didn’t go back far enough. I should have thought about ancient sites from the Native American period of history…
Like the burial mounds here in Georgia.
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Maybe if I had been in Korea after Iraq War II, and they had used the term “berm” instead of “fortress wall”, I wouldn’t have walked up and down the thing until my calves burned hot…
