Travel Club!

The next meeting of the West Ocean Travel Club will be Monday February 24.  The presentation by Siyoung Park on Travel through South Korea will be in the Tower 2 Multi-Purpose Room at 7, preceded at 6:30 by an optional potluck dinner.

From our presenter:  “Korea, to some people, is a very mysterious country.  North Korea, an extremely closed communist society, was once labeled as part of the axis of evil, while South Korea is the world’s 12th economic power, very liberal-minded, and the home of many popular cultural icons.  Korea had been a one-nation state until 1945, when the Allies and Soviet Union divided the country along the 38th parallel; this borderline changed to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) after the Korean War. 

In this talk, I will focus on South Korea, starting from the capital city of Seoul, where tradition and modern are superimposed.  Although many of the world’s largest Protestant churches can be found in Seoul today, Korea remains a strong Confucian and Buddhist society; famous temples, some quite remote, allow tourists to meditate and experience Buddhist monks’ daily lives.  Since Korea is a peninsula–a land bridge between Japan and China–the ocean has played a major role in its history.  The temperate, volcanic island of Jeju and the many small islands dotted along the coast of South Korea resemble Greece and islands of the Mediterranean Sea. 

From my collection of many years, I will show photographs that range from the extreme traditional to the extreme modern that illustrate the dichotomy that is visible in every aspect of Korea today.  We will also discuss the potential for reuniting Korea that makes its current leaders so anxious because of the risk of making the entire country a communist state.”

We welcome all our members and look forward to meeting West Ocean residents who love to travel!