Archery is big in Korea. The first Korean archer to reach the top of an Olympic podium was at the 1984 Games and a further 15 gold medals have followed in the individual and team events. Women have won all 6 Olympic team event titles since its introduction at the 1988 Games (Seoul, naturally!), with men winning 4 out of 6. Koreans are introduced to archery at primary school (promising children get 2 hours' training each day) and, throughout school and university, the less able are weeded out until the very best adults are hired by company teams run by 33 organisations, who provide a wage and pension to archers employed solely to compete for them. While most teams count the number of elite archers on one hand, Korea's
total currently stands at 147; remember this when you're watching Rio!
The wall of the 1794-6 UNESCO World Heritage Hwaseong Fortress is believed to have been constructed very scientifically (the holes between the bricks are just big enough to fire guns, arrows, or long spears through in case of an attack); it stretches 5.52km, punctuated by four gates.
before popping into its informative museum
We dallied a long time in the museum, and things weren't looking optimistic for lunch. Eventually we stumbled on a cafe which at first looked closed but whose very nice proprietor sprang into action as we pointed at pictures on the wall, and, within ten minutes of furious frying and boiling, served up tomato-miso soup with cabbage and soft tofu bubbling on a fiery tableburner, sideplates of preserved mushrooms, squares of salty nori, the obligatory kimchi and bowls of sticky rice and, to cap it all, a mackerel.
We dallied a long time in the museum, and things weren't looking optimistic for lunch. Eventually we stumbled on a cafe which at first looked closed but whose very nice proprietor sprang into action as we pointed at pictures on the wall, and, within ten minutes of furious frying and boiling, served up tomato-miso soup with cabbage and soft tofu bubbling on a fiery tableburner, sideplates of preserved mushrooms, squares of salty nori, the obligatory kimchi and bowls of sticky rice and, to cap it all, a mackerel.
The very fine and highly recorated Janganmun Gate, the northern gate of Hwaseong Fortress, served as the main entrance because it was in this direction that the king approached when arriving from the capital city Hanyang, modern-day Seoul.
Our last find was the seven-arch style Sumun gate, straddling the point where the nearby stream reached the fortress.
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