Moaksan

With three fellow teachers I hiked up Moaksan, a mountain outside of Jeonju. We originally planned to go to another mountain, but due to the language barrier and our incompetence we failed to get there.

The hike took a couple of hours, and was a bit of a haul, but we had the constant reminder in the form of gaggles of Awjumas (the term for old Korean ladies) barreling past us. There is nothing to put a young man in his place than being bested by a 4’10” elderly woman.

On the way up we encountered something that, even now, is totally inexplicable. A well outfitted Korean hiker (these people take their hiking equipment seriously) was heading back down the mountain with an off-road unicycle. One had to step gingerly up the broken rocks that zig-zagged up the mountain, but apparently this man was either capable of unicycling up or intended to unicycle down.

At the peak of the mountain, which is handily the highest geographic feature as far as the eye could see, there was a massive telecommunications installation. For some odd reason the powers that be thought it a good idea to allow the public to wander around on the building, and so we climbed this too.