#cheoram

After we got off the V-train, we had three hours to kill in Cheoram (철암). We started by walking around the entire town, down every street in the town. Then, we had two-and-a-half hours left to kill in Cheoram.

Cheoram isn't a major tourist destination. We saw only a few people in the town. And I may have been the first westerner that some of them have seen in person.

The town was divided by this stream.

Many of the buildings looked very old. The paint was peeling off everywhere.

The market had no people in it. It felt a little post-apocalyptic.

Even more so when you went inside the market. This is a really small town, so the market doesn't need to open every day. It just opens sometimes.

Another picture of the stream running through the town.

Cheoram is a coal city. I heard that it had the biggest operational coal mine in South Korea. (But I don't know if this is correct.) I wouldn't be surprised if every family in this city has at least one person working in the mine.

The coal mine looms over the entire city. The black mountainside gave the city a sort of gloomy atmosphere. And the rainy weather didn't help at all.

At one point, the road ended, and we had to wind our way through these alleyways.

It was kind of refreshing getting away from the giant buildings of Busan and Seoul, though. All of the buildings in this town were small.

And most of them were in disrepair. This clearly isn't a rich town. This is the back of the market. There are pictures of the front of the market posted above.

The fronts of the buildings mostly looked fine. it was just the backs of the buildings that looked like they were about to fall apart.

This sign says "O Train, V Train, memory lane. Please follow the arrow." And we sure did make a lot of memories in Cheoram. While living in a big city like Busan, it is easy to forget that there are small towns like this. This town gets some new traffic from the O and V trains. (Although, that was clear, since we were there...)

After our grand tour of Cheoram, we went to the only open restaurant that we could find, and we got some galmaegisal and makchang, two types of pork.

After dinner, we still had 2 hours to kill, so we sat in Cheoram Station and played Plants vs. Zombies on my iPad.

Finally, the O-train came. We climbed back into the train to finish our tour of the Korean countryside.

Cheoram has been a bit of an inside joke between me and my girlfriend since then. We keep talking about the marvelous time that we had in Cheoram. The unforgettable memories. For example: I told her that I might be moving to a new city next year (which is true...EPIK is losing a lot of funding in Busan). She asked me what city and said that she would follow me and find a new job there. My first response was Cheoram.