A TRIP TO BRIGADOON - Yang Dong Folk Village

As we walked up the hillside to Yang Dong Village I felt like I was in Brigadoon.  It is a traditional village run on Confucian values, mostly inhabited by two clans, the Son and the Lee families.  Each family has a patriarch and we were able to go to the 500 year-old home of the Lee family and meet with its patriarch (who is only in his thirties as his father died at an unexpectedly young age).  There is a name for the patriarch which I think is "chosun" though I'm sure I'm not spelling it correctly.  We sat in his clan's meeting hall, an open air structure with Chinese scripture hanging on the walls and a list (also in Chinese) of the family members and their duties for the season.  After we sat crosslegged in a circle (shoes off, socks on as we  had been instructed) the "chosun" came out in traditional clothes to meet with us. Dr. Peterson translated as we asked questions about his lifestyle, his duties as clan leader, and the heritage of his village.  He tried to explain the Confucian view of male/female relationships and duties, saying that men and women are equal in Confucianism, but the man has his responsibilities and the woman hers, and from these responsibilities they do not stray.  Basically, "women know their place."  The Korean girls with us on the trip - teaching assistants from the university - were giggling as he was talking on this subject and I later found out that it's because he prefaced his answer to the question about gender roles by saying "I knew you'd ask that - every American who comes here asks that question."

He also discussed the changes that have come to the village since it became a UNESCO site.  The streets of the village were thronged with tourists - mostly Korean.  Evidently the village council made the decision to become a UNESCO site with full knowledge that this would happen, and they've taken care to keep the village character - for example, there are no gift shops or restaurants in the village - except the one traditional restaurant that's been there all along.  He also pointed out that, similar to the organic farm movement in the United States, the population of Yang Dong is actually growing as young Koreans yearn for more traditional lifestyles and a "back to the earth" type movement is afoot. 

Anyway, after about an hour and a half of Q&A our legs were rebelling.  Mrs. Chai had admonished us to avoid pointing our feet toward our host, but as I shifted off of one butt cheek to another it was getting tough not to stretch my legs out.  Finally, we concluded our visit with sliced watermelon offered by our host, along with homemade cherry juice.  Then we were free to explore the village, including the vacant home of the other chosun and the traditional Confucian school (no longer used as the village children now have a modern school at the bottom of the hill). 

The patriarch ("Chosun") of the Lee family graciously answering our questions about Korean traditional live and Confucianist lifestyle

Though the hanok houses are centuries old and some even have thatched roofs, Yang Dong is inhabited by wealthy farmers and scholars.  The "chosun" is completing his Ph.D. in Education, and the wealthy "chosun" of the Son family lives in a nearby metropolis during the week and uses his ancestral home as a weekend getaway  The quaint houses have satellite dishes and there are nice cars parked by them.  After eating at the traditional "restaurant" - which is actually somebody's home - we stepped out of Brigadoon and onto our bus, headed for our hotel in Daegu. BTW, speaking of the thatched roof houses, Dr. Peterson explained that thatched roofs had actually been outlawed during President Park's industrialization period because they were considered backward. But the residents at Yang Dong prefer them because of their insulation properties and convenience. 

Doesn't even look real, does it?

A school group on a field trip - looked like they were collecting botany samples from the creek