Catholic Martyr's Shrine

On Saturday, a group of girls got together to go visit the Catholic Martyr's Shrine near Hapjeong. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but the gardens were lovely. My friend Becky organized the event, and she did a great job of providing background information and guiding us through the park. 

This was one of the first things you saw when you got to the park. Koreans do a good job with public art, most of the time. I'm collecting pictures to do a post on that someday, but it wasn't unusual to see a statue. What was a little less usual was the more natural approach to gardening here. It seems like most of the public green spaces here are pretty highly manicured, so this was a refreshing change. 

There were some lovely, ivy covered buildings. I'm not actually sure what they were, but they were pretty!

This was a statue to commemorate all of the early Catholic martyrs who were beheaded. The building in the background is a large Catholic church that is connected to the park. 

There was a place to light candles. This was about half of the candles that were lit, and we were there at 10:30 in the morning...

This is Becky, and she is giving us background information on what the rest of the park will be. It was a guided walk through the Catholic stations of the cross. I was familiar with the original stations, but I wasn't aware that they had been revised to follow the Bible rather than tradition. Becky explained some of the differences to us. 

Right next to where we were sitting was this memorial. Just beyond those trees is the Han river, which is a quite large river. There is also a bit of a drop from where we were standing to the actual water. Apparently, back in the day, Catholics were killed by being pushed off of the cliff into the river. 

For each of the stations of the cross, they had one of these carved stones. The explanations were all written in Korean, so we didn't benefit too much from that, but Becky was able to explain each of them to us. 

Station number 6 (according to the old list) is where Christ meets Veronica. This is my friend Veronica. It seemed fitting that they should pose together. 

I really loved the style of the different stones. They were surprisingly detailed, and the facial expressions were really nice. 

There was a statue of Mary, in a pose to bless people. In the few minutes we were near the statue, I saw two people who must have been Catholic come up and lean forward to put their heads in her hands. I presume this is for some sort of blessing. Then, there were the people who were more touristy, and they would pose with the statue in a variety of ways. The contrast was rather extreme. 

I was a little surprised when I looked closer at the statue. Mary is wearing hanbok, which is the traditional Korean costume, although the veil isn't part of hanbok. 

The whole garden had the natural, countryside feel to it. There were lots of patches of wildflowers and plants. If I can paraphrase Jane Austen, I have rarely seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by and awkward taste. 

After we toured the gardens, we went inside the tiny museum to cool off, because it was unseasonably hot that morning. Becky wanted to get a group photo, so we asked a group of Korean girls standing nearby to take it for us. We asked in both English and Korean. There was some giggling and hesitation for a moment, then two girls come forward. Only, instead of taking a picture of all of us, this is what happened. 

Ahh, the wonders of being a foreigner in Korea. There is always something random that will happen. After this slightly awkward picture, we managed to get them to take a group picture of us. 

All in all, it was a nice way to spend a Saturday morning, even if it was ridiculously hot for the middle of September. From left to right, this is Sarah S, Caitlin, Becky, me, Jungmi, Jennifer and Veronica.