Hidden Shrines of Gwangsan-gu 

By Isaiah Winters  Along the hillocky western edge of Gwangju is the sadang archipelago. These sadang (사당), or ancestral shrines, pock the forests of pine and bamboo that every year … Read More

Forgiveness over Permission – Three Places You Probably Shouldn’t Visit, Unless You Do

  By Isaiah Winters  I wish I stuck to normal hobbies. I do like hiking, golfing, and swimming, but my inner Mr. Hyde always hijacks these and veers them off … Read More

More Than Just a Beach: Spending a Week in Wando County 

By Isaiah Winters  Before the last of this year’s summer weather left us, I spent a week in Wando County poking around in search of sites other than the well-known … Read More

Kota Kinabalu: I Flew to Borneo Last July and Boy Are My Arms Tired Kota Kinabalu

As a young man in Canada, nothing was more riveting, nothing was more important than the first season of the TV show Survivor. It was a cultural phenomenon, uniting people around the globe in their desire to see who would emerge victorious after the final tribal council. One of the fondest memories of my youth was huddling around the television with about ten other people one summer evening to watch Richard Hatch claim the million-dollar grand prize.   

A Tale of Two Valleys: Swimming Deep in the Mountains of Gokseong 

Fed up with the two-hour drive to half-decent beaches only to swim under the punishing gaze of killjoy lifeguards guarding me from life, I’ve retreated deep into the mountains of Gokseong County to swim in peace. In this edition of “Lost,” I’ll bring you along to two of Gokseong’s beautiful valleys terraced with swimmable pools of pure mountain spring water, each with nary a lifeguard in sight. One valley is perfect for the crowd-loving extroverts among our readership, while the other is fit for the misanthropic troglodytes among us who truly believe that three’s a crowd. So, without further ado, let’s jump in.

Three Lazy Hikes Along the West Sea

By Isaiah Winters I hate the West Sea. It’s shallow and muddy with a color palette usually ranging from some metallic sludge to full-on dirty dishwater. In last year’s August … Read More

Peeling Through the Past

By Isaiah Winters I never cared about wallpaper – until now. That’s because on a recent revisit to one of Gwangju’s oldest abandoned hanok houses, a friend showed me just … Read More

Yeongsanpo’s Steady Erasure

By Isaiah Winters Yeongsanpo in Naju harbors a lot of history. The former river port is linked to Joseon-era tax collection, Japanese-era origins of industry and Christianity, plus the modern-era … Read More