The Adventures of Team Daniels: A Love Triangle

What does a sordid love triangle have to do with spring flowers? I still don't totally know, but I will explain as best as I can.

The story takes place at Hanwoosan (sometimes called Hanusan) Mountain.

This is the winding road we took to get to the top.

Yes, we cheated by driving up instead of hiking. We just walked a short road up.

After taking in the view, as we were studying the map, a girl started talking to me in English. She eventually said she was here from Seoul with work, 'Pishing' TV (Fishing TV), and asked if they could interview us.

She was tall and thin and had gorgeous shiny hair. Look how ridiculously small I look standing next to her. 😂

Here is their whole crew and our whole crew. I inquired as to why a fishing show would be filming on a mountain. She said they also do travel stories, not only fishing stories.

It made a bit of a scene; a film crew with microphones to talk into and buffer things being held up in the air, talking with a group of Migooks (Americans). A tour guide that works on the mountain grabbed us as soon as we were done and asked if we wanted to hear the story of Hanwoosan.

His English was much better than my Korean, but it was still pretty choppy. We could understand the big story but missed a lot of the details. I have searched everywhere on the internet for the story but cannot find it.

Here is the gist: there was a prince who was in love with a princess.

They would meet on the mountain and eat manggaetteok, or rice cake, together. There also happened to live a group of goblins on the mountain in golden caves. These goblins were unkind to the people.

These figures appear to be children rolled up in rice cakes.😳

One goblin in particular, Somok, fell in love with the princess.

To prove his love, he killed the prince. Of course the princess was devastated and died as well. Here is where the story gets fuzzy. Something about the princess being turned into an azalea bush,

and the prince going into the clouds, and sometimes a cold wind blows, hence the name of the mountain, Han (cold) and woo (rain).

There is more about the goblin eating some bad blossoms that made him fall in a deep sleep,

and when he awoke he was a gentle giant, sharing manggaetteok (sometimes shortened to manggae) with all.

Tteok offered to spirits is called boktteok, meaning good fortune rice cake, and is shared with neighbors and relatives. We came upon our new friends from 'Pishing' TV enjoying some manggaetteok.

And like any respectable Korean, they shared their manggaetteok with us.

This area is well-known for their special manggetteok made of 'sweet' red beans and wrapped in smilax leaves. I can't tell you how many different occasions you think you are biting into sweet chocolatey goodness, only to discover it's red beans. Not cool, Korea, not cool.