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| A Woman's Directory For Travel and Life. WAVE Journey is your one stop online resource for women oriented businesses and services around the world. WAVE Journey is for every woman to enjoy. If you love to travel, cook, read or revel in outdoor activities this website is for you. If you are looking to connect with other like-minded women or if you are interested in finding businesses or services that cater to women, WAVE Journey is your number one online resource. South Korea: Pilgrimage to Jeoldusan ~ A Fall Day’s Journey Along the Han River in Seoul Article by Tamara |
| WAVE Journey |
| Women's Adventures, Vacations & Experiences ~ Your Journey Starts Here! |
This trip is a treat for these nursing home residents who have occasional outings but no longer
have control over when and where they can go out into the world outside the nursing home.
With prayers, as the custom usually is, the van departs from the Hwagok’ neighborhood’s
multi-story “villa” streets and alleys and heads out into the 8-lane thoroughfare which leads to
the highway. The prayers are in Korean, an Our Father, Hail Mary and Gloria, intoned in a level,
chant-like cadence.
Sister Modesta drives the van. She is in her fifties and wears a nuns’ gray robes, but she is
very energetic and looks much younger. In the front seat is Susana, a Korean woman with
bobbed hair who dresses like someone in their twenties and occasionally talks about her
daughter. Then there are Anna halmoni, Katerina halmoni and Maria halmoni. They are three
“halmonis,” which means “grandmother” in Korean. Anna is a quiet reserved woman in her
eighties with wispy white hair who always asks if I had my breakfast and often sat for a long
time holding my hand, which she said was to cold. At lunch she had a reputation for taking a
long time too. Sadly as the months passed, she came to depend more and more on a
wheelchair to get around the building. Then there is Katerina, a seventy plus year old woman
who once was a professor of English. A stroke the previous year left her in a wheelchair,
unable to speak. Still, she always has an alert look in her eyes, and as the months went by,
she regained partially her ability to speak and walk with the assistance of a four-legged cane.
The day of the trip to Jeoldusan she still has not regained any mobility outside of the
wheelchair, however. Finally there is Maria halmoni, often swaddled in blankets or thick
sweaters, who had white hair and spoke in shrill, partial sentences and one of her hands,
usually in a glove, tapped involuntarily without ceasing, save when she was asleep.
The van follows the highway along the Han River, which affords panoramic vistas of the nearby
National Assembly Building and the rocky crags and forested slopes of Pukansan National Park
across the river on the northern side of the city, beyond the rows of tower apartments facing
the river, repeated forms that somehow escape systemization and homogenization in their
spatial composition.
It is an early fall day, clouds with the hint of rain, which fortunately holds off for the morning.
The air is just cool enough for a blouse over a tee shirt, or for long underwear and two
sweaters if you are Anna halmoni.
On the way to Jeoldusan the van stops at a half-full parking lot at the Han River Park on Yoido,
a broad, flat area along the river with walking paths, playgrounds and sports courts, ferry boat
rides, and a large pole set up where a tightrope would be stretched across the river in coming
weeks to support a tightrope walking contest across the river.
Sister Modesta, Susanna and I each push one resident, after the involved process of
unloading the wheelchairs and then helping the three elders ease themselves out of the van
and into the chairs. The walk ends at the rose garden, its bushes with blooms of varying
shades and hues interspersed between symmetrical walkways radiating out from the center.
The walkway around the outside has big stones in it. Pushing the wheelchairs is difficult,
forcing us to pull them backwards across that stretch of sidewalk. In the center of the garden
is a set of plexi-glass statuettes from Peter Pan: the alligator with clock, Sally, the pirate, and
of course the green clad fellow himself. The roses are past their prime, petals on most, faded,
some left as only rose hips.
After visiting the rose garden it is late morning and there is the need to hurry if the residents
are to make it back in time for lunch. Back in the van, as she is driving across one of the many
bridges that span the Han River, Sister Modesta points out an uplifting, church-like structure,
unornamented save for its single cross and says, “That’s Jeoldusan.” It sits on a wooded bluff
overlooking the river. Looking at this tranquil site on the riverbank, the tourist ferryboat
making its way along in the river below, the stream of traffic along the bridge, the tower
apartment complexes nearby, to imagine Jeoldusan as a site of martyrdom is difficult. Through
a neighborhood of streets with family owned shops and restaurants, brick and granite face
apartment buildings and fifteen story apartment towers behind, we drive.
The van eventually comes out in a winding loop of road that parallels the highway briefly
before reaching the grassy, gardened Jeoldusan Martyr’s Museum grounds. Parked cars spill
out of the available spaces and park along the road, which leads up to the museum. Today the
museum and chapel are bustling with visitors. A wedding party assembles to snap photos on
the stairs as the river breeze blows slightly.
These buildings of the museum and chapel sit on top of a knob of rock, a place in olden times
called “silkworm head rock” or “dragon head rock.” In those days the beauty of this place
along the river attracted poets from China , seeking to enjoy the river’s natural beauty. The
persecution that gave the location its present name, however, took place in 1866.
Sister Modesta is busy with preparations to take three
of the residents from the Jeanne Jugan nursing home
in Seoul for a fall outing along the Han River . Getting
the three residents ready for the trip requires helping
them, on shaky legs, navigate the step up on to the
running board, sliding into the seat inside. There are
also three wheelchairs to put in the trunk of the van.
of the residents from the Jeanne Jugan nursing home
in Seoul for a fall outing along the Han River . Getting
the three residents ready for the trip requires helping
them, on shaky legs, navigate the step up on to the
running board, sliding into the seat inside. There are
also three wheelchairs to put in the trunk of the van.
| Photo courtesy of South Korea CVB. |