Cheongju was busy with many visits and my tooth gave another sign of itself

Wednesday we drove southbound, to do hiking - well it was a 45 min walk around a temple area that had been moved when the dam was constructed. The day was warm, so we bought everybody icecream before continuing by bus to the dam. We then walked to a photographic exhibition along the river.

Fantastic lunch yet again, this time in the countryside with sashimi.

Presidents old summer residence was a beautiful place and we had some nice hiking around the golf course. Dinner was at a steakrestaurant "Red&White" where we also got some wine.
The first bottle of 1865 Cab Sav by San Pedro was very good.
The second was "corked". The bouquet had a strong sting and the taste was clearly bitter. Judging by the reactions of the manager it was the first bottle that was ever returned for being "corked". They did not know what to do, it was like Finland in the '80s. However, we were asked to select a new wine which Anna did.

Second bottle was a Chianti and third was an Escudo Rojo. Both very nice wines. Here we were also served the first cheeseplatter of the month!

Thursday we went to the Hankook factory - seeing the Bone china manufacturing was very interesting.

We visited Korea Telecoms Cheongju site and were taken to:
a) their handyphone repair centers service point, where people come with their issues.
b) the crossconnect rooms - where ADSL connection wires where configured
c) the operations center and the adjoining fixed, transmission and LTE equipment rooms
afterwards we had coffee in their cantina and it evolved to a small fingerwrestling...

Then we continued to the Early Printing Museum where we got to understand the seeming contradictions of early information.

Printing in korean with metal types was first done in early 1200's. However the only book that has survived to present days is the Jikji, printed in 1377 in a smaller town like Cheongju.
It was printed with chinese characters as was common in those days. The art of printing was used, but did not spread significanlty. In that it's similar to gun power, fireworks, paper manufacturing and other inventions created in china a long time a go which moved very slowly to Europe.

Hangul is just the alphabet and that was separately introduced in King Sejungs time.

We ended the day with a dinner together with DG Roh Kyung Bin. The dinner included some Chinese Rice Spirits and naturally we also introduced singing and Salmiakki koskenkorva...

That concluded the last part of the Formal Rotary program as Friday should be rest day...