Goseong Dinosaur Park

Goseong is about and hour's drive east of Changwon and is located along the coast. On Saturday, Arianne invited Katie and I to go along with her and two friends to a dinosaur park there. We were eager to accept the invitation, particularly after seeing an advertisement for the park on television.



Katie and I made friends with this traditionally-dressed Korean guard.



The park featured a full-scale reproduction of a traditional Korean "turtle ship", the world's earliest example of an armored battle ship. The Koreans used these ships to defeat the Japanese navy in the late 16th century, after the Japanese invaded Korea in their quest to conquer China.


A statue of a Korean soldier with a trident.


This is Jane, a friend of Arianne's. Jane is Korean, but has lived in California for some time. We really enjoyed getting to know her.


Arianne, cutting a ripe persimmon as we sat down to have a midday snack.


We combed the rocky beach for some time looking for dinosaur tracks (the park is famous for, among other things, dinosaur tracks along the shore). We kept running into these creepy little critters... Insect? Crustacean? Who knows?



Katie with Jane, Arianne, and Jennifer. Jennifer is from the U.S. and lives in Tonyeong, not far from the dinosaur park.


The museum at the park featured animatronic dinosaurs in addition to the usual dioramas, placards, etc., that one would normally expect to find.



We also caught a "4-D" movie, which, as you can see, we really enjoyed. The movie was really a 3-D cartoon, all in Korean -not that it mattered. The fourth "D" probably refers to the fact that the seats in the theater convulse, and little bursts of air hit you in strategic areas (face, legs, back of the neck), in correspondence to what is happening on screen. We all had a blast.


Nearby a festival was being held. I was never clear on what exactly it was all about, but there were kites and people dressed in traditional Korean clothes and playing instruments.



Toward evening we walked over to the festival to enjoy some bibmibap.


Dessert: Sweet red bean paste-filled dinosaur cakes.