One of my favorite parts of our travel was spending a day and night in a traditional Korean folk village in Nagan. There are several of these villages around the country, where the residents have agreed to continue maintaining traditional lifestyles in order to attract tourists, and help keep their heritage alive.

A panoramic image of most of Nagan village from on top of the wall. The straw-thatched roofs are the most easily identifiable “traditional” aspect.

The “traditional lifestyle” looks idyllic, but includes being willing to completely re-thatch their rice-straw roofed homes every single year (that’s how long the thatch holds up) and keeping enough plants growing on their small vegetable patches to be relatively self-sufficient for the year. Lots of them grow plants on every available surface, so it was common to see big squashes/pumpkins growing on the roof! Seemed dangerous, but it must work.

One part of traditional life is the very Korean task of pickling food. These are rows and rows of one family’s pickling jars: probably various types of kimchi all in different stages of pickling out in the lawn.

Nagan is pretty unique, because it’s one of the only traditional villages with its wall intact. The walls helped protect during foreign invasions, which were really common, since Korea was seen as the entry-way to a land attack anywhere in East Asia. The wall had beautifully decorated gates and watchtowers, and we were able to walk around the whole town on the top of the wall. The village is nestled in a valley in lush green mountains. The views were stunning, especially the sunrise and sunset.

A stretch of the wide (easy to walk 2-across on the top) wall around Nagan, and the beautiful mountains surrounding the village.

One of the beautiful watch towers at the gates of the wall.

Beth on the wall at one of the look-out points where it widened to fit more people.

The village included several dozen homes, a few small family restaurants, some small working spaces – a pottery shop, smithy, fabric dyeing house, fish/frog pond, and some open spaces for dances and games and a performance stage on what used to be the “VIP guesthouse”. They even have the original jail and courthouse, though these have been updated to have kitschy statue reenactments, and are clearly not used any more.

Stuck in a jail cell at Nagan.

When we arrived, we didn’t have plans for the night, but were hoping to stay in the village. Unfortunately there were no easy-to-find signs to explain which houses had accommodations. We wandered a bit before asking for mercy at the main office, where we found a man who spoke about 12 words of English – plenty to get across “sleep tonight where?”. He led us through the narrow dirt paths to a house with a small “minbak” (home-turned-guesthouse) sign. He shouted inside and a grandma came out and spoke some really fast Korean with him.

She showed us the room – some beautiful and completely bare yellow linoleum flooring and a pile of blankets. Bed! But it did have a mounted television and AC unit! Odd combos here. We also had a little kitchenette and bathroom (with simple hose/bucket “shower”) attached through a doorway. Cozy. The beds were an experience, and not something we needed to have more than one night of. We spread about five blankets on the floor to make some padding, and each had two sand-filled (rock-hard) pillows to lay our heads on. At least we were exhausted, so sleep came pretty quick.

In the village, we wandered all the winding paths and stopped at the points of interest – photos in the jail cells, shopping at the pottery shop, and watching a bunch of traditional performance. I’m REALLY bummed that I lost the videos – we saw some folk dancing, drum performance, and a small part of a traditional Korean “Pansori” or opera with a single singer and one drummer. Beautiful.

Pansori singer and drummer. She uses her voice, simple body movements, and a fan to tell her story.

A traditional folk dance group performing on the lawn in the center of Nagan village.

A parade! We didn’t expect it, but heard drumming and jingling bells, and turned to find people in traditional costumes dancing down the street. Fun!

At one performance, the “warm-up act” seemed to be a bit of a comedian. He called up some audience members to play a game a lot like hacky-sack. I got volunteered and had to go to the front and try to hack this sparkly pom-pom toy. I was never good at hacky. I got 3 hits, and they got some good laughs. I’m not sure what he said about me, but I guess it was funny. In exchange for my mild humiliation, they gave me some hand-made candy, which looked like tofu, but tasted like very mildly sweet/woody taffy. Pretty good. Glad it was those and not the candied silk-worm larvae, which a whole lot of other spectators were eating.

Beth being really bad at traditional Korean “hacky”.

The time in Nagan was peaceful, and gave a great glimpse into Korean culture. We ate at one of the little family restaurants, and even got a pitcher of the local rice wine with dinner. It’s unfiltered here (not like Japanese rice wine), so it’s milky and cloudy looking, but mildly sweet and easy to drink. It went great with our bibimbap (rice mixed with veggies and meat) and pork stew (more fat than pork, but tasty).

Carved wooden statues with crazy faces, supposedly in place at the gates and in front of homes to keep evil at bay.

We even got out at night to take in the stars, and got greeted outside our room by a walking stick bug as big as my hand. Super cool! To remember our time, we bought some nice hand-made ceramic bowls and cups that we’ve already started using here at home.

Many more memories of the trip, and life since we got back, to come! Watch this space…