Moonscaped Moon Village

Here's the lowest part of Baeksa Village.

There's the left section, with some signs of demolition around the edges.

I zoomed in for this, to see what was going on at that gate. The black car seems to belong to a woman volunteering to take care of the area's stray cats, who are now in a colony in the building to the left of the car. There is a way to get through the building into the street on the left. I also saw a guy open the gate in the lower left.

The roof to the apartment building here has been closed off, but I can still see most of the area. Almost everything has already been demolished. I should have come back earlier. But I would soon see it's not all gone.

Also, what's that, a stage?

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You can see a boundary marked by the street between what was demolished and what hasn't been yet. Also interesting to note the way they turned that hill into terraced flat landings through a handful of methods.

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I went down to the street to look closer at the gate.

In the other direction, what appears to be the main gate to the construction area is straight ahead. Also, there's still a trendy-looking cafe in the building on the left.

The brick apartments are also abandoned now.

Cat shelter?

The moon village backs onto this property.

I didn't stick around long because I suspected the workers would be emerging from the gate any minute, and I'd be visible.

Cat exit.

Another sign about the cats.

I noted the leaves piled on that one car.

Another cat door, but this one says "oi!"

I went around looking for mountain paths uphill of the village, and on my way up, I disturbed this little guy who scampered out of my way.

I slipped under a curtain, and I was at the upper edge of the village.

This thing still remained.

Gloves left on it.

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I made my way along the rim.

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There's a path leading up I'd like to take, but I'm concerned about visibility from the bottom of the hill.

To give an idea of how secure the site is, this is all that cordoned it off at one point.

At some point, I exited, went downhill and observed the workers leaving, and returned to keep going.

This wall appears to be made with hardened bags of maybe concrete stacked on top of each other.

I remembered a lot of the roads that had been here before, but this one was probably not original.

Looking downhill. I'm not being followed, yet.

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And looking back the way I came, where I could also see the sunlight fading.

A clsoeup look at the earth exposed.

All natural.

Looking downhill toward the leftmost section. I couldn't rule out that there might still be people down there.

Further uphill, I saw a row of houses.

And this more official building.

Around here, I was hidden enough by the moonscape that nobody downhill was likely to see me.

Approaching the last row of houses seemed like a suitable goal.

I decided against walking on that sidewalk.

There was one house on even enough ground to enter.

I was rewarded with a pile of books.

The washroom.

I went around a corner and this guy frightened me.

I photographed this because it looked to me sort of like a playful puppy.

Yeontan.

A fenced-off area.

And a fenced-off mountain path.

Street signs for streets that no longer exist.

Heading back, and the way is still clear.

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I saw this basketball, and it reminded me of the one signed by Michael Jordan given to Kim Jong-il. Sometimes you end up in a museum in North Korea, sometimes you end up squashed in a moonscape.

A pipe of some kind with an unusual-looking fitting.

Back at the gazebo.

This looked like it would make a suitably depressing Christmas tree. I didn't take it.

As I was exiting in the same place where I saw the cat before, I heard a cat meowing. He came out of this golf bag, right before I got this picture, and ran over to me.

It turned out that, yes, I had cat food with me.

He sniffed it but was more interested in me.

Coetzer believes he ran into the same cat about three years ago, but that seems unlikely.

As I left, he followed me down. Also, two other cats came out.

One on the left went for the food, and the one on the right posed with the excavator.

Yes kitty, Choi Soon-sil should be afraid.

He seemed a little sad I was leaving.