August 26 until September 3

Just make me happy with a Korean!

After a day of rest in the Gapyeong Resort the three of us cycle back to city hall, where we thank Nam-Young and Sim once again for the lovely accommodation. Another friend of Wooki, Chang Moon, joins us. He tells about the Dutch Paralympics cycling team, which at the moment is training and staying in Chuncheon to prepare themselves for the Beijing Paralympics in a couple of weeks. Chang Moon and Sim make some phone calls and arrange a meeting with Matthijs Honig, the team’s coach, in the evening.
Chang Moon decides to chaperon us to Chuncheon since it is his day off; Sim invites us to stay at his home there tonight. The relay-race unexpectedly gets a sequel.

Chang Moon quickly fetches his mountain bike, which he has set up with a MP3 player and a small loud-speaker. Accompanied by the joyful sounds of loud pop and jazz music we cycle the short distance to Chuncheon. We normally prefer the sound of silence whilst cycling, but Chang Moon, organiser of the annual Gapyeong jazz festival, cannot live without music.

Coach Matthijs is a spontaneous young guy, once a mountain biker himself, who takes his task seriously. He doesn’t just want his team to participate at the Olympics, but to win as many medals as possible. Unfortunately the athletes are resting after a long day of work-outs when we arrive, so we ask Matthijs to wish them luck.
We end our day at the Sim family; the lady of the house, Jung Jae Young, has prepared a fantastic meal, which is served with home-made plum liquor. The daughters present me with a gift: a number of doll transfers to stick in my - by now - famous diary. The presents and gifts never seem to end.

August 28 the day has finally come: after five days in Korea we are cycling on our own in our 38th country! Jung Jae Young made us a western-style breakfast with slices of toasted bread, fried eggs, bacon, cheese and jam that easily lasts us for an hour or three.
We climb out of Chuncheon Valley on an ascent that, like the gifts, never seems to end. A worthwhile reward awaits us though, in the shape of a broad view of Chuncheon and the adjacent reservoir. The sun colours our skin, dozens of butterflies flutter around us, slopes are packed with hibiscus, evening primroses and flowering cosmos. Korea really is beautiful.
In the mountainous landscape people have cleared parts of the forest to bury their dead. At the levelled spots half-round spherical hills are created under which the deceased lay. The half globe is covered with grass, sometimes flanked by two stone statues serving as protectors, or with a tombstone in front. Most farmers want to be buried on their own land, often on a high point overlooking their crops.
The Korean government asked people to stop burying the deceased and instead cremate them. Korea, which is 2.3 times bigger than the Netherlands, consists for 70% of mountains and has a population of 48 million people. Therefore the country is densely populated and needs every metre of level land for agriculture and the construction of houses.
At a service office of the tourist information in Yanggu a leaflet is handed to us, in which the town recommends itself in a special way: 'Right in the middle of the country. The cleanest area across the nation. Come to Yanggu. You become a decade younger.'
We’ve just covered sixty kilometres of mostly uphill and actually feel a year older.

It's another day. We climb into Seoraksan National Park and conquer our first real Korean pass: the Hangyeryeong Pas. Initially the landscape doesn’t really change, apart from the dwindling farmlands in the forested mountains. The higher we ascent though the more untamed the landscape becomes, with steep precipices, wild flowers and road-kills in the shape of snakes. We camp next to the Jayangcheon River, where we enjoy a lovely and reviving bath.

We race downhill, out of the park and in the eastern direction. After two hours we arrive at the East Korean Sea. Expecting to see glorious beaches where young amorous couples draw hearts in the sand, we recoil from the atmosphere. The entire coast is sealed off by high steel fencing and unfurled barbed wire. On every hill and spit of land military posts are positioned, where armed soldiers meticulously watch the sea, fearful of a North Korean invasion. The public can access the beach only at a few spots, and only during the day. Every evening the steel gateways are firmly closed.
We find a quiet spot for the tent in Gyeongpo Park, close to the city of Gangneung, only one hundred metres off the beach.

We intend to stay here for two days, but a cold-front from Siberia is a spoil-sport. The second day it starts raining cats and dogs, the mercury drops about eighteen degrees Celsius.
The elderly couple of the next-door guesthouse, Mr Kim and Mrs Lee, sympathises with us and persuade us to move into their minbak (guestroom), where the ondol (heated floor) revives us. Mr Kim and Mrs Lee (20% percent of Korean people carry the surname Kim) are retired and make some extra money by renting out the minbak and hot showers during summer.
When they hear we are from the Netherlands, they tell us their life-story and Korea’s history.
After the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953, many American soldiers stayed in South-Korea to protect the country from the communist north. From that moment on many children were born from Korean mothers and American fathers. Korean society and law doesn't acknowledge these children, because here children can only be registered in the father's family register. The children literally do not exist, the “misfits” had no future in their own country, and the first Korean adoption wave became a fact.
During the sixties and seventies of the last century Korea still was underdeveloped, there were large-spread famines and unemployment was widely prevalent. Many women were not able to feed and take care of their children and had to give them up for adoption. In the year 1967 Dutch writer Jan den Hartog appeared in a popular television talk show and asked the Dutch people to help the poor Korean orphans by adopting them like he had done himself.
'Even if you help only one!' Den Hartog cried out emotionally.
The entire Dutch population was mesmerised and felt compassion for the misery and disaster of the people in that faraway country.
Until that time adopted children in the Netherlands were mainly from Dutch descent, but after this television program things rapidly changed. Many prospective adoption parents suddenly wanted to have a Korean child. The Korean government gladly co-operated. The second Korean adoption wave was a fact. A couple of years later over one-third of the adopted foreign children in the Netherlands was of Korean origine.

We listen to Mrs Lee's sad story. It's the year of 1976, the country is poor, there's no food, no jobs. Her husband has died, which is terrible in a country where women are stricken from their own father's register the moment they marry and it is a shameful act to outlive your husband. She has no job, no support system, and no way to sustain her family. Every day is a struggle to feed her two small children: six year old daughter Inja and three years old son Doshik.
In the end she has to decide, just like many other Korean mothers, to give her children up for adoption.
For thirty years she cries for the loss of her children every day…
In the year of 1995 she marries Mr Kim. He can't bear her sadness and grief, immediately starts to search for the children, to reunite them with their mother.
In the year 2006 he finally succeeds. The, by now adult, children still live in the Netherlands and Mr Kim and Mrs Lee visit them. An emotional reunion takes place.
'Now I am only a little sad every day, mostly happy though,' Mrs Lee says.
At night we silently lay in bed. Losing your children, we can't think of anything worse.