This document is a transcription of a message found in a bottle floating in the Hangang River in October, 2006. Doubtless this is yet another attempt by the Korean establishment to distract attention from deeper economic woes.

A long-expected Journey

Unah had spent literally weeks planning what she would eat in Korea and writing down addresses of interesting restaurants in a notebook. She also planned a gruelling holiday itinerary -- one day in Seoul, then a trip to the northeast coast and a visit to the DMZ, then down to the southeast to Yeongcheon (the 'town' in which her father lives, you may recall), then a day in local university town Daegu to have a hanbok made for me, then a weekend on the volcanic island of Jeju with her father, brother, sister, sister's husband, and sister's two daughters, then back to Yeongcheon and finally, rather surprisingly, a few days of unplanned free time.

23, Crundle Road, the erstwhile home of Ms. Park Choi Hui, is an important address in the history of London's Korean and Nuristani communities. Recently I have gained access to the house and completed a Sketchup model showing the house and garden as they were during Ms. Park's lifetime.

Plans, elevations and views prepared from the model are presented here in the hope that they can be of assistance to anyone trying to recreate the drama of Ms. Park's life and achieve an insight into her extraordinary mind.

If you are researching Ms Park's life or work, or were a friend or colleague, then please feel free to get in touch with me and I will send a copy of the model.

I would like to express my gratitude to Sir Clive James for helping gain access to the house, and for agreeing to omit certain details of Ms. Park's life from his recent book, Cultural Amnesia.

Articles in this blog have little topic icons associated with them that can be used to associate articles together. Here's a guide to what the icons mean. Click on an icon to see the most recent articles in that topic.

Korea

This icon is for everything that relates to Korea. Most of these articles relate to hwacha (화차), territorial disputes (except dokdo), and dancheong (단청), which are three of Korea's greatest inventions.

Hwacha

Perhaps no other object stands so strongly for human ingenuity and resourcefulness than the noble hwacha. And when I say 'ingenuity and resourcefulness', I mean 'at creating problems'. And when I say 'stands so strongly', I mean 'explodes with a bang and rips people limb from limb'.

The following is an article by David Scofield, originally published in Asia Times Online in 2003. I post it here in flagrant violation of copyright because I refer to it often, it's been posted on other sites already, and it's interesting. I apologize anyway.

The article was primarily interesting for being one of the very few voices in English that said anything at all about China's 2002 Northeast Asian Project -- a revisionist initiative in which the various kingdoms of what is now Korea, Manchuria and the rest of Northeast Asia aire declared to have been Chinese. The implications of this for independant Korea may be deep.

Slug -- the unsung hero of mushi-ken

Mushi-ken (虫拳) is the oldest Japanese Rock Paper Scissors like game, and was the most popular until the advent of janken (i.e. Rock Paper Scissors) during the last century. The three 'throws' are slug, snake, and frog.

Problem

Snake beats frog in this variant, and frog beats slug. Such is the way of the jungle. This leaves us with slug beating snake, which seems silly. Why wasn't some animal that's actually capable of defeating a snake chosen?

Incorrect Explanations

Various interpretations have been put forward over the years: