Korea Trip - Part 2

Visiting Deokpo and Okpo

My granddaughter and her family live in the small town of Deokpo on Geoje Island in South Korea. Deokpo has a small beach along with a mix of new buildings, old decaying houses, and numerous well kept vegetable gardens.

Looking down into Deokpo from a nearby hill.

During morning runs and afternoon strolls around town I've noticed puzzling contrasts. On the one hand, there are nice modern houses like the one below with its immaculate accompanying vegetable garden. On the other hand, a shabby hovel sits close behind.

A mere 30 meters behind the nice modern house shown above sits a dilapidated dwelling with pathetic chained dogs.

Here's another puzzling contrast: First, nice looking little vacation rentals:

Next, an amazing pile of junk directly across the street from the vacation rentals. You would think someone would clean up the trash!

Open fires and trash burning greatly diminish the charm of Deokpo for me. Small cooking fires like the one below are not really the problem.

The real problem is trash burning just after dawn in rusty oil drums. Here's one example off in the distance in the center of this picture. Notice the hazy smoke from other fires suspended over the trees.

Smoldering trash produces an acrid, choking smoke that hangs in the valleys between surrounding mountains. Each morning as I emerged outside for my morning run I inhaled an unpleasant lungful of this nasty smoke. Daily running routes were chosen to avoid as much smoke as possible. Don't people realize that open burning is the equivalent of spreading trash all over the neighborhood? Here's the beginning of my running route. Notice smoke drifting above the gray building near the center of the picture. Look down the center of the road just to the right of the light pole to see a fresh plume rising in the distance.

About a mile or so from Deokpo, just over a mountain, is the larger city of Okpo. Okpo is filled with colorful shops and restaurants densely packed on almost every street.

I was amused by some quirky store names:

Sophie will be the star attraction of my next post!