Baekje Festival

Korea is a great blend of the new and the old. Here are some of the old.

I am not sure who these plants are bowing to, but they look really awesome. We watched a little four or five year old climb off the school bus tonight. She jumped to the sidewalk, turned around to face the bus driver and gave her a big bow. How cute is that? Bowing is still a major part of Korean culture.

A load on a woman’s head is a fairly common sight. This woman was strolling down a busy city street. Also, I saw a woman in a very busy subway, fling her heavy tote bag up onto her head and head for the door of the train. No hands!

This is a mailman making a delivery. They really have their work cut out for them. Addresses are almost nonexistent here. At times, the mailman will stand in the road and call out names waiting for the addressee to respond.

I just thought this was an awesome picture of some of our amazing sister missionaries.

We attended a Baekje Cultural Festival. We rode in this very classy(?) tour bus with very… blue curtains. Elder Biesinger is talking to Sister Jenson, one of the other senior couples.

When we saw this statue, not knowing what it was, we decided that it was a hungry missionary after a long, hard day of missionary work. When we got inside the museum, we saw the smaller version with a sign that explained its use. Many, many years ago it was used as a chamber pot.

This awesome staircase has a painting of a golden incense burner. This treasure which is over 1,000 years old was just recently found.

Pretty classy!

This was in a fancy display case, but I don't know if it's the original.

We'll consider it so.

In the midst of the festival, this Buddhist priest was praying either in thanks for a good harvest, or for a successful tug of war.

This large group is busy making bowls on their potter’s wheels. They were very serious about their work, measuring each bowl to be sure each one was identical to the others.

Guess who got a job hauling water for the tourists. (?) J/K

There is a little home inside this haystack. It looked pretty cozy, but I can’t imagine living here in the winter.

After a hard day at the festival, people could eat at one of many little “restaurants” that were scattered around the area. Notice, we still sit on the floor, even when the floor is just dirt.


Remember that tug of war the priest might be praying over. Here is the end of the rope. Now that is what I call a rope. There were hundreds of people lining the rope just to move it to the starting place.




Here is a short clip of moving the rope.

And this is just to get the rope in place to have the contest.

We were really surprised to see this very western marching band.

This is what is usually seen by way of “marching band.” Notice the cool ribbons on the hats that they swirl around by moving their heads.

They were having a compitition, so this is just one of the mady drum groups participating.

I told this woman that she looked very beautiful and asked if I could take her picture. She was delighted and struck this great pose for me.

At one point in Korea's long history, the peninsela was devided into three kingdoms. One of the Kingdoms was Bakjae (sometimes written as Pakjae), and has spread some of it's culture to other area, including Japan. The Kingdom is long gone, but the culture is still celebrated. We really enjoyed it.

Have a great day!