By One of the most enjoyable things my wife and I do when we are in Korea is that we like to spend weekends in small Korean towns. One of the towns that we spent a weekend in during our recent trip to Korea was the small port city of Samcheok on the East Coast of Gangwon province. As this Google Earth image shows Samcheok is a small town built around hills and its fishing port:
On the various hillsides in the city the old Korean style homes can still be seen:
These old homes are becoming a rarity in Korea as many of them are being demolished and replaced by apartments, but such development for the time being seems to have bypassed Samcheok.
My wife and I got a hotel room on the outskirts of town that had a great view over the Sea that Cannot Be Named:
We had the most expensive room in the hotel and it only cost us 45,000 won which we were pretty happy about. After getting settled into the hotel we then walked to downtown area near the port in search of sashimi. Along the way we saw plenty of shops selling fish and other items caught out at sea:
However, we didn’t want any fish bought at a store; we wanted something fresh from the sea and that is why we continued to walk over to the port. The center of life in Samcheok is definitely its port where many of the towns residents earn their living in the fishing industry:
The weekend we were in Samcheok the rain hardly ever stopped, so it made taking pictures very difficult. Here is how the port area looks like on clear day:
At the market place seen above my wife and I began our search for some fresh sashimi:
The people who work at the marketplace are mostly the wives of the fishermen that bring in the fresh catch of fish every morning for their wives to sell during the day. They sell the fish out of plastic bins to mostly restaurant owners and the few tourists that make it to this off the beaten path city:
My wife and I had plenty of fish to choose from but here are the two fish we decided to purchase:
The fisherman had just brought his catch of fish in when we bought these two. While the fisherman’s wife chopped up the fish for us, my wife and I spoke to the fisherman who was by far the youngest fishermen at the wharf. He told us he was 30 years old and only started fishing this year because he got married and was working his father in laws boat. Much like Korea’s agricultural sector the age of Korea’s fishermen seems like it could be an issue of concern in the future if young people like the fisherman we spoke with choose to not work in the industry.
Anyway the fisherman’s wife did a great job preparing our fish and for the rest of our weekend in Samcheok we were eating fresh sashimi with every meal and it was quite good:
A visit to Samcheok is definitely not for everyone because it is a very slow moving provincial city, but for those looking to see what a time capsule of what much of Korea was like 20 years ago, Samcheok is definitely the place. However, my wife and I were more interested in the fish which any fans of fresh sashimi can appreciate during a trip to Samcheok.
10:35 am on January 1st, 2009 1
When you get back to America, you might snack on some Brazil nuts and season your meals with cilantro, which contains elements that chelate with mercury, lead, aluminum and other heavy metals and are carried out of the body as waste. The chelation process also removes essential minerals like selenium, magnesium, and zinc, which can be replenished by eating Brazil nuts. The PCBs in that fish have now taken up permanent residence inside your fat cells. No way to get rid of them except by reducing your body fat.
11:50 am on January 1st, 2009 2
Sonagi you make it sound like Korean fish is as dangerous as US beef.
12:33 pm on January 1st, 2009 3
I remember walking the beach in Busan with my mother-in-law, and she found someone selling live eels. I bought one and the lady skined it and cut it up for us for sashimi. It was very good, and my mother-in-law had great fun in introducing me to raw eel.
5:16 pm on January 1st, 2009 4
ahhhh my town
slow moving indeed. but if you live here in the main city center, you don't experience too much of the older culture.
10:35 pm on January 1st, 2009 5
Sonagi, as I understand it, you won't remove PCBs through weightloss, unless that loss comes from liposuction. As you lose weight, each cell might shrink, but the PCBs (and other lipo-philic or hydro-phobic compounds) merely becomes more concentrated. A woman can decrease her PCB quantities by expressing breast milk, which contains a lot of fats. It's a pretty horrible thought; to purify yourself, you must poison a baby.
I don't know what the GI ate exactly, but if they were smaller, younger fish, they would carry a reduced load of contaminants.
11:32 pm on January 1st, 2009 6
I believe Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world. Fish is a staple there – so I guess a benefit of the PCBs is longer life.
1:16 am on January 2nd, 2009 7
You're right, Brian. Losing weight causes PCBs to be released into the bloodstream, where they can cause more harm than being stored away in fat cells. I would guess that the only way to reduce plasma concentrations would be to donate blood periodically and somehow avoid consuming more. Fish isn't the only contaminated foodstuff. In December, testing of Irish pork revealed PCB levels up to 200 times greater than the maximum safety limit set by the EU. I'm guessing the source was fish by-products in the animal feed, yet another reason to eat meat from pastured animals, or at least animals fed a vegetarian diet.
BTW, those fish look fairly large, especially the first one. I limit my fish consumption to sardines, herring, Alaskan wild-caught salmon, US wild-caught shrimp, and occasionally sea scallops. I don't even eat tuna anymore.
1:49 am on January 2nd, 2009 8
Good idea on the Brazil nuts.
Brazil nuts, along with toast, juice, milk and Trix, form a complete breakfast that not only meets, but exceeds the recommended daily allowance for aflatoxins and radioactive radium.
Normally, you would have to eat a smoke detector or a Glock night sight to get that kind of nutrition.
6:11 am on January 2nd, 2009 9
I usually stay at Chuam beach when I spend the night there. But I ride through there quite often up and down the coast on the bike.