Buso Mountain Fortress

04.05.2013

In the morning we wandered around Daejeon looking at puppies. We tried to find some decent breakfast that wasn't ramen noodles. No luck. I settled for a green apple yogurt smoothie.

We decided to go and see the site of the mountain fortress in Buyeo. It was destroyed in 660 AD when the Shilla people took over the Baekje kingdom. The book said that there was a direct bus from Daejeon to Buyeo, but it wasn't so. It took us a little longer than expected to get there, but we had a pretty full adventure anyway.

There were hardly any people at the temple, so it was nice to get a little fresh air and away from the manic tendencies of every day Korea. We went way out into the countryside. When we got there, it is a very short walk to the fortress. There was a temple for three military leaders. At the top of the hill, you can see the site of the warehouse for the fort and also a museum that shows you how people lived have in the ground in "pit houses". There was also a special marker for the cliff where 3,000 women jumped, after they learned that their side was losing to the Shilla. The story is that they refused to be captured, so they all jumped off this cliff onto the rocks below and died. They called it Nakwaam Rock, the rock of falling flowers. I told Dave that if North Korea invaded and killed/captured him, I'd probably just join the invaders, rather than jump off a cliff. Seems like an unneccessarily extreme reaction to a war. Just sayin'.

From there, you can walk down to a temple in the side of the cliff where there is a spring you have to drink from to become three years younger. Instead of walking all the way back up, there is a ferry you can take back to town, which was awesome. I think Dave's injured knee had enough stairs for the day. After the ferry, there was a very bland and corporate feeling sculpture park.

We were too starving to appreciate the park, so we had the craziest meat-wrapped-in-lettuce-with-rice (dolssambap) meal I have had yet!

King Sejong