August 19: Busan Day 1

 Abe served in the Busan South Korea mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from August 2021-August 2023. He spent 9 weeks doing home MTC and spent the first transfer of his mission in New York, waiting for his visa. He arrived in South Korea in November 2021. Brandan, Becky, Abe and Gibson traveled to South Korea this week to see a bit of Abe's mission.

We stayed 4 nights in Busan. Abe wasn't allowed to swim on his mission or even go to the beach in the summertime so we reserved a room on Gwangalli Beach. This is the view from our hotel room.

After a good night's rest, we started our visit at the mission office. A meeting house, the mission office, a missionary apartment, the mission leaders' home and the area facilities office are all located here. Abe lived here while he was assigned as a tech missionary, financial secretary and AP.

Monday is their PDay so it was a good day to visit with President Lim and Sister Kim, Abe's mission leaders. They were born in South Korea, but lived in the United States for about 30 years while President Lim got his PhD and taught at American universities. Sister Kim is chatty and fun while President Lim is more reserved. They are both very kind.

Several current missionaries were at the church for PDay. Abe taught two of them at the MTC, Sister Kutzen on Abe's right and Elder Komatsu wearing a graphic white T-shirt.

This is a photo of the missionary transfer board at the mission office. The Busan mission has grown by about 50 additional missionaries since Abe was there.

Brother Lim had work to do while Sister Kim took us to lunch at a tiny restaurant near the mission office. The restaurant served Chinese food, Korean style called jungshik. We learned it's very common for Korean restaurants to provide you with an apron to protect your clothes.

After lunch we took a taxi to the Gamcheon cultural district. Gamcheon began as temporary housing for refugees during the Korean War. All of the buildings are tiny and packed closely together. In 2009, the area was transformed into an art space, with brightly colored buildings and outdoor installations.

We walked along some of the streets and alleys.

These tiles are arranged to make the outline of a whale.

Lots of the art is inspired by the tiny, colorful houses, like the tile decorations on this staircase.

We tried a marshmallow covered ice cream bar. The shopkeeper toasted the marshmallow with a dinosaur shaped torch.

Here is a photo of Gib eating the ice cream.

There were many artworks referencing The Little Prince. Here is one mural.

And another.

And another.

We met Abe's friend, Lee Jun Ho for dinner. Lee Jun Ho is a member of the church and a soccer enthusiast.

Lee Jun Ho ordered beef short ribs called garbijjim for dinner. Koreans eat lots of side dishes. Typical side dishes are kimchi and other types of pickled and fermented vegetables, noodles, braised greens, salads and steamed eggs. You pay for your main dish and all of the side dishes are complimentary. Everyone serves themselves out of all of the dishes on the table, using chopsticks, spoons and tongs. Meat is very expensive in South Korea. With 60 million people living in a space the size of the state of Oregon, there's not much room for raising big animals like cows. However, we ate far more meat during our trip than we normally eat at home because Abe's friends were so generous.

This is a view from our hotel room at night.