South Korea - Pusan - May 2000

Although I get to travel to the far east several times a year on business, there is virtually no time for recreation and these trips are usually packed with factory visits, meetings and endless packing and unpacking as you move from one hotel to another. The time difference of 8/9 hours ahead of the UK also means that I spend half the night catching up by talking to the office or responding to e-mails so this can also be an interesting exercise in sleep depravation.

Despite these difficulties I have had the opportunity to meet some extremely friendly people and share some of their foods and customs. There is a genuine concern for us foreigners from practically everyone I have met on these trips to ensure that visitors have a favourable impression of their country and people go out of their way to help visitors in all sorts of situations while out and about.

Due to a lack of seat availability one weekend I flew out to South Korea a Friday afternoon instead of the usual Saturday flight. This meant we had the weekend to relax before the first meeting scheduled for Monday morning. To the south of the industrial area at Changwon is the sprawling coastal city of Pusan. The Haeundae beach area is a well known holiday resort area and myself and colleague Mike managed to get rooms in one of the older hotels on the seafront. I had sent both faxes and e-mails to the hotel to see if there was any diving in the local area on the Thursday before travelling and the answers came back with a couple of telephone numbers. One of the hotel staff kindly called these for me on the Saturday afternoon and arranged for me to be collected from the hotel the following morning at 11:00 am.

The next day two Korean guys arrived at the hotel dressed in flying suits and met me in reception. Their English was about as non existent as my Korean but with the help of the hotel concierge we made sure they were there for scuba diving rather than jumping out of aircraft. As it happens one of them, Mr J B Hwang, a former member of the Korean special forces, owned a diving shop and was also involved with skiing, ballooning and skydiving together with some other aerial activities as I was about to discover later. We met another couple at the shop, a Chinese acupuncture doctor and his wife who were also there for the diving. After comparing my certification cards with the Korean Underwater Diving Association ones they had we selected some equipment and loaded their minibus and headed for the port area.

Pusan is a very large city and is a main centre for export from the industrial heart of the country. Bearing in mind the difficulty we had in communication, a mixture of sign language and basic words told me that we were heading for one of their usual shore entry sites at Bag Hun Po which was a favourite for local fisherman near to the container port. The area was also overlooked by cliffs and was the centre for the Pusan Paragliding Club.

We kitted up on the beach which was a shingle area between a man made concrete block jetty and the natural base of the cliffs. Taking care to avoid the fishermen dotted along the jetty we surface swam out past the end of the cliff area before descending to the seabed at around 10 - 12 m. The bottom was rocky with a mixture of vegetation and there were an incredible variety of starfish of different colours together with sea cucumber and other invertibrates. The vis was poor due to a recent bout of storms in the area but the more interesting sights were to be seen by closely observing the nooks and crannies of the reef where crabs, shrimps etc were to be found. There were a number of smaller reef fish rooting about for food and some flatfish on the sandier bottom areas but nothing specially outstanding. The most incredible thing that I discovered was that the language barrier I had experienced since meeting my new friends was completely absent underwater. Myself and diving buddy Lee Dong Myong were easily able to make each other understand using standard hand signals which seem to be universally recognised. This was due to the similarities between the teachings of the KUDA and PADI and most probably all the major diving agencies but I found it to be quite a memorable event particularly so far from home.

Following the dive we were getting dried and packing the gear away when Mr Hwang asked if we would like to join him for lunch. This turned out to be a very hospitable meal of large spider crab and noodles at a local restaurant. On the way we dropped the dive gear back to his shop and he showed us his selection of newspaper clippings with some of his other sporting activities. One of these was paragliding and it turned out that he was the senior instructor at the local school. He could see my interest and asked if I would like to try it for myself. He had a large canopy specially for tandem gliding with a harness for a passenger. It sounded like a good idea to me and we agreed to go back to the coast in the afternoon.

Now it did occurr to me that here I was 8,000 miles from home with someone I had only met earlier that day, I could not speak much of his language but was prepared to strap myself to him and jump off a cliff together. The acupuncture doctor and his wife decided to go home instead after the meal. Back at the coast we went to a large field used for training and landings to collect the paragliding gear before driving up a winding road to the top of the cliff. Mr Hwang had a lot of friends here and one of these who was in the Korean navy got talking to me as we waitied at the top of the cliff. He spoke some English which he had learnt when he spent some time in the UK at college. He had trained under Mr Hwang and spent most weekends flying when his leave permitted.

Paragliding is like a self sufficient version of the parascending chutes you see being towed behind boats at holiday resorts. The canopy is shaped like a wide curved wing but the rigging is much more complex to give a proper wing profile. The launch technique is to use the prevailing breeze to inflate the canopy then turn and walk or run into the wind and let nature do the rest. As long as this is in a reasonably high position it is possible to fly for some time by finding thermals or updrafts to stay aloft.

OK for the theory, but when it came to the practice, I was taking a lead from Mr Hwang who was clearly in control at this stage. I was harnessed in front of him as he twisted around to lift the canopy. When he said go, without hestitation I ran to the edge of the cliff as the canopy lifted us in the stiff breeze. I could not resist flapping my arms as we gained height over the tree line on the steep slope below. This was absolutely fantastic and the feeling of complete freedom as well as an incredible view of the harbour area was amazing. We flew along the tops of the trees and after a couple of turns to gain height I was give a chance to try the control cords. These deform the right and left leading edges of the canopy and a pull on the right toggle makes a turn in this direction and vice versa. I have to say that this was the nearest thing to the freedom of flying like a bird with no sound other than the rush of the air past your ears. The experience was very close to the excitement of parachute jumping, which I did try a few years ago, without all the build up and need to take a noisy plane to the exit height. We did soar out along the ridge to the end of the land and then out over the bay we had dived in the morning. The height was around 500m and despite the 'no flying for 12 hours' after diving rule the low altitude was not a problem. We glided back inland and came to a perfect landing on the training ground. Mr Hwang could tell from the enormous grin I had from ear to ear that I had enjoyed the experience and after helping him to pack up we travelled back to the hotel.

When I got back my colleague Mike was nursing a combination of sunburn and ant bites he got from sunbathing at the pool. I still had a silly grin on my face from one of the best days out I have had for a long time. I may not get the time to take a week long diving trip here, but it will certainly be a good idea to book another Friday flight at some time for the future.

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