Ruminations in Korea

Ladies and Gentlemen!  Boys and Girls!  Children of all ages!  Welcome!  Welcome to the strangest show on Earth!

On Sunday, I took a  150 kilometer (round trip) motorcycle ride to the weirdest place in Korea, the Jasujeong Amethyst Cave near Ulsan, Korea.  It is quite possible that this is the strangest place on Earth.  I have been many places around the world, but so far, I think this amethyst cave is the oddest place I have ever visited.

I left home early Sunday afternoon and headed North out of Pusan.  I sped along highway 35 North through Yangsan and eased off the throttle after escaping the clutches of Pusan and the surrounding area.

Highway 35 continued to run North wedged between the No 1 Expressway to the East and a river to the west.

I turned West at the small village of Samnam and rode past rice paddies

and on toward the mountains.

A few kilometers into the mountains I passed a pond that reminded me a lot of a pond that I used to swim in when I was a kid growing up in Utah.

Another minute or two down the road, I arrived at the weirdest place in Korea, the Jasujeong Amethyst Cave.

Jodi at Asia Pages has written about this cave before, but reading about the cave and actually seeing inside are different animals.  I thought I would take some pictures so that others could see what is inside the cave.

Outside the cave is a nice and fragrant herb garden.  That is where normality ends and the oddities begin.

The first thing to note is that it is somewhat difficult to find the entrance to the cave.  It is hidden amongst a collection of freakish and terrifyingly unsafe-looking children’s rides. Once you find the entrance and pay the 5,000 won entry fee, you walk into the cool, dark, wet cave.

Most of the things inside the cave would be out of place in someone’s garage, a flea market or even a garbage dump.  When viewing these pictures, it is important to realize and undertand that all of these things are inside an old amethyst mine up in the hills outside of Ulsan,Korea.

Near the entrance is a shallow pool with the statue of a small rodent-like creature in it.

There was an Egyptian section.

The Egyptian section also contained a very non-Egyptian, Korean mummy replica.

Don’t be surprised if you are staring into the stagant, murky water of the the cave and a boat suddenly floats on by.

In the center of the cave is a huge area with row after row of plastic seats.  There is a stage at the far end of the central chamber where mediocre Chinese acrobats perform several times throughout the day.  But most of the time, the chamber, and thus the rest of the cave, resonates with the sound of Korean “Bongchak” music (eletric organ music sped up to “Chipmunks” speed) accompanied by the clanging of huge scissors weilded by a guy selling pumpkin taffy inside the cave.

Walking past the stage, you come to a shallow pool filled with a very large and very detailed re-creation of… DOKDO!  There it is in all of it’s glory!  You can’t even escape the “Dokdo is Korean Land” propaganda deep in the bowels of a cave.

The Dokdo display even has the individual structures, such as the helicopter pad and storage facilities included.

For me, beyond any doubt, the most bizarre part of the cave was an entire section devoted to aliens… the extra terrestrial variety…

Notice the odd movie poster plaque in the bottom right corner of the above picture.

A closer look at the broken and decrepit aliens reveals a collection of escapees from the Island of Misfit Toys that make an army of plastic garden gnomes seem like fine art.

The crown jewel of the alien collection is a replica of the “Alien Autopsy” alien.

There was an evolution room filled with sculptures of the evolution from monkeys

to a naked guy on a cell phone.

At the end of a very long, low passage was a statue of a Buddha.

From there, you can move on to the “Sculpture Hall”.  The sculptures are all women, and most of the sculpted women are doing odd things such as aerobics

or wrestling (?)…

Up on the upper level of the cave, at the very end of the cave, in a pitch black alcove i saw something on the floor that the flash from my camera revealed to be a run down clock depicting DaVinci’s Last Supper.

What ANY of these things were doing in an old amethyst mine is completly beyond my understanding. The whole cave is dark, dank, musty, and cold.  Everything on display is old, faded, and an a shocking state of disrepair.

Lest the whole thing seem like some otherworldy hodge-podge of discarded refuse, there was a wall of very old cave paintings and carvings.

And YES… an ACTUAL tiny collection of amethyst!

For more pictures of this strange, strange place, visit my photo gallery.