Andong, a small city in the middle of S. Korea, holds a mask dance festival every year.

It draws performance troupes from all over the world.

A Korean harvest ritual

The Taiwan dance and drum troupe was one of the big highlights .

You can glimpse the main drummer in the background of this shot.

The main drummer was totally kick-butt.

Everybody was issued a yellow cardboard sun visor.

Also pictured: a two-story Taiwan god puppet.

This shows pretty clearly how the performer looks out the belt-buckle of the god puppet.

The main clown narrator for this Korean folk drama troupe was fantastic.

His monologue was fun to watch, even though we understood not a word.

End of the festival, it's time to clean up and go home.

There were a number of talent show activities.

This group did a kind of Michael Jacksonesque dance routine.

We carted all our camping gear to Korea, and we only managed to actually go camping once.

The mountains were nice, but we were expected to camp in a little field that was directly across the street from vacation apartments. Not exactly secluded, or rustic.

We spent a fair bit of time in the Suwon Bus Terminal. The stand here sells peanunt-buttered roast squid.

Peanut Buttered Roast Squid.

As near as I can tell, the small square guy is a cube of slightly melted peanut butter?

In the subway stop at Yaksu, there is a machine that sells cartoon sheep popcorn.

The popcorn appears to be in some way endorsed by Unicef.

Who knew those dudes were in the jiffy-pop business?

Yep. We went camping. There was little to do except hang out in the tent and drink rice wine.

...and smoke cigars, of course.

In town the day after, we found an Ethiopian war memorial. During the Korean War, Ethiopia sent troops to fight for the south.

Look at the enlargement picture if you want to know how to spell Ethiopia in Korean.

Nearby the Ethiopian monument, there was a place called the Ethiopian Cafe.

In keeping with Korean style, there was not a single even vaguely Ethiopian item on the menu.

The DMZ.

We took a tour here with a whole busload of English speaking folk.

Looking northward into the no-man's land.

The sign says, "Do not come close or take pictures."

To celebrate Korea's massively fortified military stand-off with the North, they built an amusement park.

This wall is a good indication of how seriously Koreans take the idea of eventual unification.

Our Fearless Leader, Mr. Park. Notice the weird mis-shapen statue of a Japanese style cartoon policeman.

Question: How to give a military installation that friendly family vibe? Cartoon police!

If the moon is shatteed by a meteor, bronze people will put it together again.

The guy on the left is Korean, but he grew up in England. He came back to do his two years' military service, which allows him to keep his citizenship. We ended up talking to him quite a bit.

Being stationed on this border scares the living hell out of the soldiers.

Another angle of propaganda.

This road leads to North Korea.

The yellow spike-covered barrels look especially surreal, as if they were pulled out of a video game.