As part of our world history and geography studies, we’re memorizing countries and other geographical features of Europe and Asia. Because my husband works in South Korea on a rotational basis, it was just natural for us to want to learn more about this fascinating country. After finding the Korean Peninsula on the globe (and on several maps) and conducting some research, we started compiling our discoveries:- South Korea lies east of China
- Bordered by North Korea (with which it was united until 1945)
- To the southeast of the Korean peninisula (across the Korean Strait), lie the islands of Japan
- It takes Daddy 22 hours to get there
- He is 15 hours ahead of us, (so he can always tell us what tomorrow’s going to be like)
- The topography – mountainous – most is not suitable for farming
- The climate is similar to ours here in the middle Tennessee region
- The majority of the people live in Urban areas, primarily in Seoul, the country’s capital
It was interesting to research the Korean conflict and how it is related to the Cold War.
Because my husband lives in South Korea half of the time, he was able to share so much about the culture there. Of course, we know that it is heavily dominated by futuristic technology (Samsung, LG, Hyundai, Kia). It was mind-boggling to discover that the largest Christian church in the world is located in Seoul with 800,000 members, and that Seoul is also home to 11 of the world’s 12 largest churches!
Of course, we love crafts and paper projects, so we had to build Crayola’s model of Seoul’s South Gate.
And the boys decided to learn about and color the South Korean Flag using Crayola’s South Korea Coloring Page. Daddy brought home a variety of coins and paper money, jewelry boxes (for me!) with abaolone shell (aka mother-of-pearl), some empty Korean cereal boxes (which was neat to see!), the Korean game Go, and a couple of wooden model kits – a trebuchet catapult and a Geunjeongjeon model, which they built together. Evidently, their idea of crafting over there is a little bit more intense than ours. Thank goodness it came with pictures in the instructions!
Saying “Hi!” in Korean is simple – “Hei!” And thank you is “Ko mab sub ni da.” Gary enthralled us with tales of his grocery shopping experiences and his dining adventures (eating octopus, for instance). We’ll wrap up this post with a little information on the shipyard where Gary works. The drillship he’s assigned to as a supervisor is still under construction. The following is a picture of the ships – the Poseidon is the one on which he will be working. Can you believe that the shipyards there put out one ship per week? In fact, they are the world leaders in ship building. At a later date I will post additional pictures of the shipyard, but those pictures are with Gary on the other side of the world right now!
