Jo Hyun Jae

Day 2

The next day we got up shortly after dawn to go to Buyeo (former name Sabi), the capital of Baekje since A.D. 538 and where most of  “Seo Dong Yo” was shot.

There was no direct transportation from Yu Shing to Buyeo and we needed to transit at Gongju, the capital of Baekje from A.D. 475 – 538. We only spent very little time at Gongju – merely walking from one bus terminal to another which only took us about 15 minutes. My brief impression of Gongju is that it is a very nice historical city with quite a number of tourist interests. I would like to go back to visit this city again.

Just after 9:00 am, we arrived at Buyeo. Buyeo is quite a small city with one main street. In the intersection of the main street, there is giant statue of King Seong, the grandfather of King Mu — the King who was beheaded by a Shilla soldier in the first episode of SDY.

Shortly after arriving at Buyeo, we went to visit the Buso Mountain Fortress. This fortress is a mountain fortress with Sabi, the capital of Baekje, in the centre. It is believed that this fortress was built before 538 when the capital of Baekje was moved to Sabi and its central function was to defend the Palace. The fortress was really big. The first building we saw at the entrance of the fortress was a big gate inscribed “City of Sabi”. I think this must be the gate that Seo Dong entered with his army when he tried to reclaim his throne. Inside the fortress, there were many buildings, mainly temples and pavilions in Chinese style with Chinese characters engraved on the wall.

There is also a very sad story about this fortress. At the back of the fortress, there was a cliff called Nakhwaam which means “the rock of falling beautiful flowers”. In A.D. 660, Baekje was defeated by Shilla-Tang Alliance (King Mu’s son was the last king of the Baekje dynasty ). The legend tells that around 3,000 court ladies and other women plunged into the Baengma River from Nakwhaam to keep their loyalty in the face of the invading troops. Probably because so many lives were lost and blood was shed at this rock, it became red in color.

It took us approximately 2 hours to walk around the fortress. Just at the entrance of the fortress, there was a tourist centre. The tourist centre is very big and provides a lot of information and, most importantly, the staff at tourist centre can speak many languages: Japanese, English and Chinese. After chatting with the staff about the places where we would like to go, we decided to go to the SDY film set. We missed the direct bus from the city to the film set but we were told that the last bus that ran from the film set back to the city centre would leave at 2:30 pm. Hence, we must complete our visit to the film set by 2:30 pm. We immediately jumped into a taxi, and on the way to the film set, we could see signs of the film set every 50 meters. One will not miss the sign as it shows two lovely cartoons of Seodong and Seonhwa. After a journey of about half an hour, we were at the entrance of the film set.

The film set was actually smaller than I expeced. There were many well known places such as the Baekje Palace, the Shilla Palace and Haneulchae which were all located next to each other. The place where Moraksu and his followers live in exile is just within 5 minutes walking distance to the Palace. “It should not take Moraksu 10 years to go back to the Palace,” my friend said.

While we were wandering around the film set with wild eyes and taking as many photos as we could, my friend suddenly screamed: “What are these? What are they doing here?” I looked around and saw some human size “supermen” (the Japanese ones) standing on the ground. We had no idea why someone put these ugly figures there and we sincerely hoped that someone would remove them soon as they really spoiled the scene.

After spending two hours at the film set, we had to leave reluctantly as the last bus back to the city was leaving at 2:30 pm. The bus stop was on the other side of the road with many small restaurants nearby. We went to one of the restaurants to buy some drinks and found that many SDY photos and autographs of the casts were hanging on the wall. There were autographs of JHJ, LBY and many other co-stars of SDY. We could not resist and took a lot of photos. The owner of the restaurant, a very nice lady, was quite happy to see us taking photos. I think she must be very proud that she had served the SDY crew and they must have a very good relationship. The lady knew that we were waiting for the bus and whenever there were any vehicles passing by, she would check for us. Finally she called us: “Ajuma! Ajuma! Your bus is coming”. Well, my friend and I did not like to be called “Ajuma” but we still appreciated the warmth and kindness of this nice lady.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

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