old and new korea

Korea, Shining with a Balance of the Old and New

One of the sheer pleasures of living in Korea for Chris Carpenter, an American who teaches news-writing at Ewha Womans University, is to wake up every morning to the sounds of temple bells. Behind his house in Incheon there is a humble mountain called Yaksan, literally “Medicinal Mountain.” On the base of it, there is a Buddhist temple whose giant bell rings every morning at 4:20 a.m. In the summer, when he goes to bed with his windows open, he can hear the ringing sounds more plainly -- one of the professor’s favorite parts of living in Korea. “It’s one of those big bells they ring by swinging a log that hangs by ropes,” he says. “It's a throwback to old Korea.”   Since moving to Korea in 2005, Carpenter has taken advantage of life in the Korean suburbs. Living in Incheon, he goes to the grocery with his family on his days off, eats ice cream from Natuur and hangs out at a park that runs through the center of the town. The malls in Incheon are huge, sometimes stretching for several blocks like the ones you find in Washington D.C. “When we moved here, it didn't feel that different from the States in a lot of ways,” says Carpenter who grew up in the American Midwest of Indiana. “People go about their daily lives and pretty much keep to themselves.”     It’s when he travels that the sense of the country really gets under his skin. During the first summer he was here, he went to camping in Mt Taebaek and other parts of Gangwon province - one of the most memorable trips he has had to date. “It's hard to recall exactly why I liked it so much,” he says. ”The land was beautiful and I love to be outdoors so it was really nice.”   There are also the adventures of traveling. When he went to Mokpo in January 2007 with his daughter, who was then a year and a half old, they were staying on one of the islands off the coast. On the evening they had planned to leave, a storm came up and the ferry service was cut off. He ended up staying in a tiny minbak house right on the edge of the sea. With no stores on the island, the owners showed their kindness by giving them food.   “It snowed and was quite cold,” he says. “But it was a good adventure.” Then there are the more common destinations, like Jeju and Gyeongju, one of his favorite places in the country. “I love Seokugram -- the grotto with the giant Buddha statue,” he says. “It's amazing.”   In the winter, his is planning to go down south with his family and see Yeosu. Except for the traffic jams, which force him to leave home at dawn for weekend trips, he finds his life in Korea to be very calm and settling.   “The balance of the old and new is the realm charm of this country,” he says.