In the Market for Views

Yesterday, Saturday, was the first day that we hadn’t planned an outing the night before. After perusing all of the tourist literature we have accumulated, we decided to head out on Incheon Line 1 to the Dongchun-dong area for a quick peak in the Square One mall (I’m attempting to Christmas shop.) before walking about an hour to the Mt. Cheong-nyang mountain with it’s temple, observation platform, and Incheon Landing Operation Memorial Hall. Then we’d head into Ongnyeon-dong to visit their traditional market before catching the metro back at the Song-Do Station market in Ongnyeon-dong.

It ended up being a great outing even though the weather surprised us and what was to be a relatively mild 44 degree F winter day turned to snow and we ended up a bit wet and chilled by the time we returned.

Our first glimpse of the Heungryungsa Temple. It is actually more of a complex with smaller temples beyond the larger temple. This one was hosting some youth event with lots of music, so we just peeked inside.

More of the grounds. The 10 Thou Shalt Nots? A list of ways to focus on your breathing?

The inside of one of the smaller temples

The outside of one of the smaller temples

Immediately behind the temple grounds was a walking path up to an observation platform. Before heading up, we had looked down into one of the parking lots and saw an ambulance with 1-1-9 on the side. We figured somebody in one of the temples was having a medical issue. We continued on.

The start of the walk up from behind the temple grounds

More of the climb up. It was on the last set of these stairs that we saw a group of what seemed to be 20 rescue workers carrying a young man (20ish) down on a stretcher. We pulled over to the side as they went by. Not sure what happened. The man was awake though he even with the blanket he seemed cold. It is all stairs until the top. As you start back, there is some earthen path so not sure if he twisted an ankle or went out too far for a photo or what. But, 1-1-9 to the rescue!

One of the views from the top on a wintry day.

Another view, the bridge you see there is the Incheon Bridge which goes to the airport. This concrete bridge opened in 2009 and is South Korea’s longest-spanning cable-stayed bridge. It’s a little over 13 miles long.

I continue to be amazed by how little I know about history, and I even find it interesting. At some point, I learned about the Korean War, I think. Anyway, whatever facts went in have fallen behind other information that I either use more frequently or found more interesting. So, our whole trip to the Incheon Operation Landing Memorial was fairly informative even with the always interesting English translations.

It was a key battle in the Korean War that led to the recapture of Seoul which apparently fell to the North Koreans a number of times during the war. The Battle of Incheon was led by General MacArthur on behalf of the United Nations troops. It was code named Operation Chromite and took place in September of 1950. 1,350 were killed including 224 Americans (out of a total of 36,000+ Americans killed during the war).