My Epic Travels: The Road to Achieving Dreams: School trips

Every now and then, as epik recruits, we manage to go on a school fieldtrip. They are mostly boring trips to places that no one really wants to go. Every now and then, something stands out.

On my last trip we went further into the mountains to an area near a small town called Youngwal. This trip was made up of four visits to museums and lunch at a buddist temple. It sounds like an interesting trip but when you cannot read a word of Korean its a different story altogether.

In South Korea evryone is proud of a 'South Korean' island called Dokdo. The reason for this is because there is a waging battle between the Japs and the South Kopreans over this peice of land. If it were Japanese territory, it would extend their fishing rights among many other interesting things. I met a man by the name of Jai Ryong who wrote a book on this topic and made an effort using maps dating from the 16th century to prove the Dokdo is Korean. He gave all my children a lesson on, "Why Dokdo is Korean Territory".

He was so passionate about the topic and he came across very strong. When he was talking, I felt like a was getting a lecture from Hitler himself. He was talking in Korean but I knew axactly what he was saying. Every time he would say 'Dokdo', the kids would say, 'Korean', or, 'Nay' which is not the correct spelling but it means yes. Half way through the lecture, I got hold of his book and started reading it to really understand what he was saying. It is brilliant how he used geographical maps to determine that Dokdo is Korean teritory.

At the end of the lecture I told him that I was really enjoying his book and he gave me a free autographed copy. I will mail him to ask for permission to put a couple of pages on my blog in the future. Inside the book he wrote......

"To Marc Radloff, from Jai Ryong"
"Dokdo is the KOREA island"

I loved this and it really portrayed his belief and shows how passionate he is about his work.